Category: Yorkshire

Buying and Selling in Black and White

Buying and selling. Where to start? Well, if you’re selling, setting your wares out appetisingly is probably the traditional way to go, so my featured photo is of a front window in Betty’s, Harrogate’s well known tea room and bakery.

The soft sell continues inside. But when curiosity prompted us to stick our noses through the door of this jewellers’ in Seoul, we very promply departed, realising this was Not Our Scene. Or budget.

Of course, sometimes shop window and point-of-sale are one and the same, as with this sales van, where all the driver has to do is park up, leave the driver’s cab and pop behind his built in counter.

These days though, shopping can be all about the shopping mall. Clean, cool seductive surroundings are intended to sooth us into opening up our wallets and come prepared to spend, spend, spend. Here’s the Victoria Gate Shopping Centre in Leeds.

Life couldn’t be more different in another modern shopping centre, Mercat dels Encants, Barcelona. Crazily juxtaposed ceiling mirrors reflect the scenes below of bartering, haggling over anything from rolls of cheap fabric to flea market goods that look as if they’ve been around for decades.

My favourite shopiing experiences are often serendipitous. On our way to Scarborough last week, we paused in a small town, Kirkbymoorside, to stretch our legs and have a coffee. It turned out to be market day. And there was someone selling rather exotic mushrooms: some that he’d foraged – others that he’d grown himself. We couldn’t buy as we weren’t going to be home that night. But his enthusiasm had him talking to us for quite a while as he described his wares in detail, even though he knew he wouldn’t make a sale to us that day. He now has two loyal fans who will hunt him down very soon.

Moorside Mushrooms

So what can you tell us in monochrome photos about buying and selling? You may have seen someone shaking hands on a deal. You may have visited a trade warehouse and seen forklift trucks going about their business. You may have visited a cattle market, or an auction. Or you may just like to show us your weekly shop. When you have a post ready to publish (do join in!) please link it back to this post, and to Leanne’s Monochrome Madness page, as without Leanne, there would be no Monochrome Madness.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness

Scarborough in (Almost) Black & White

We’ve just enjoyed a couple of days in Scarborough, once Yorkshire’s premier seaside resort, with thousands flocking here once the railway came to town in 1845. More of all that another day. But for today, let’s just enjoy sea and sand – in black and white, just because … and in nearly black and white, because that’s what the camera saw early on Thursday morning. Here we are, walking along the several beaches that Scarborough enjoys. And ending with a gull, because herring gulls, usually intent on stealing your fish and chips, are constant companions here.

The tide comes in …
… and the tide goes out.

But the sea … and the gulls, are always there.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Monumental Madness

Figures in the built environment, That’s what Sue of Words Visual fame would like to see us produce images of this week for Monochrome Madness. She’s big on street photography, is Sue, and good at capturing a telling shot of a peopled urban street. But Leanne in her own post has gone down a different route, and as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so shall I.

I’m going with Monumental Statuary, and beginning on Greenwich Peninsula, with Damien Hirst’s Demon with Bowl.

Then I’m staying in London, and going to St. Pancras Station, to a statue I love to hate, finding it unutterably cheesy: Paul Day’s The Meeting Place.

Here are some details, including one of the vignettes at the bottom: lookers on.

St. Pancras Station is next to King’s Cross Station. Let’s catch the train to Leeds, and the ongoing bus to Harewood House to view Jacob Epstein’s Adam, naked as God had intended.

My featured photo is a few years old. ‘Around the Corner‘ was a literary trail designed in 2020. Scattered near Peter’s Hill (just south of the cathedral), these gold-lettered plinths read: What, are, you, going, to, meet, if, you, turn, this, corner? and is a quote from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room. And I managed to introduce a small person into the shot, thus perhaps satisfying Sue with a spot of traditional street photography.

Meet Fethera

Fethera is part of a flock of sheep now dispersed all over northern England. She and her sisters came into being for the HERD festival – part of Kirklees Year of Music 2023. They were made and designed by artists Dave Young and Jane Gaffikin from salvaged materials and reclaimed wood.

Fethera’s home is a suitable one. She’s at Sunny Bank Mills in Farsley Leeds: from 1829, a bustling complex involved in the textile industry, from raw wool to finished product and all steps in between, and employing 900 people. Now it’s still bustling, but in a different way. It now offers creative business spaces for both small and large organisations. Sunny Bank Mills Gallery has exhibitions, workshops, studio spaces and events, and there’s also Sunny Bank Mills Museum & Archive, which protects and promotes the history of the Mills. 

Fethera’s job is to welcome you onto the site, and her sisters are called:

Aina (the mother sheep) Eddero, Covero, Bumfitt, Dix, Ix and Jiggit.

These are all ancient words, used in a sheep-counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Yorkshire, other parts of Northern England and beyond. There are countless variations, but here’s one common in Yorkshire :

1. Yan 
2. Tan 
3. Tethera
4. Methera 
5. Pimp
6. Sethera 
7. Lethera
8. Hovera
9. Dovera 
10. Dik 
11. Yan-a-dik
12. Tan-a-dik
13. Tethera-dik
14. Methera-dik
15. Bumfit
16. Yan-a-bumfit
17. Tan-a-bumfit
18. Tethera-bumfit
19. Methera-bumfit
20. Figgit / Jiggit

More than 20 sheep? Put a stone down, and begin counting all over again. Repeat as necessary.

Too much information? That’s what comes of whiling away a morning exploring at Sunny Bank Mills. And there’s lots still to explore …

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

More Monday Windows from Saltaire

A bit of post Christmas fun. Here’s the exterior of Salts Mill, as seen on the bonnet and front window of a car parked just outside.

For Ludwig’s Monday Window

The bots are out to get me! For the last few days, I have been the World’s Most Popular Blogger, with stratospherically high viewing figures. This has happened in the past, and changing my password has instantly solved the problem. This time it’s had no effect. Any suggestions?

David Hockney at Salts Mill

Here we are. A large installation – a collage – one of David Hockney’s iPad works. Each of these nine ’tiles’ shows a constantly changing set of views of the same scene at different times, independently of all the others. The full image is in a case of constant flux, always showing a slightly different aspect of the snow scene Hockney was viewing. It’s a bit like those plastic puzzles that I had as a child with 15 tiles and one blank space, so you could move the tiles around till you made a picture. Or not, in my case, usually.

In the absence of actual snow this year, I offer you this snow scene for the week before Christmas, and for Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

More Windows from Salts Mill

Today I bring you not just one, but twenty or more windows from the shop on the ground floor of Salts Mill in Saltaire. Its magnificent bookshop is upstairs, but here, as you come in, you can buy posters and cards, stationery and supplies, art materials – all temptingly laid out for browsers who wander around this space, decorated with vast ceramic pieces from Leeds-based Burmantofts pottery, elegant vases of fresh lilies. The window in the featured photo is in the entrance hall to the Mill, and hints at the treasures to be found within.

For Monday Windows, hosted this week by Brian of Bushboy’s World.

A Monday Window from Saltaire

The other week, we visited Saltaire. It’s a Victorian Model Village built near Bradford by mill owner Titus Salt. Built between 1851 and 1871, it was a philanthropic project to provide better living conditions for the workers of his Salts Mill than were available in the crowded city slums. The village was designed with well-constructed houses, a church, a school, a library, and a park. But no pub. Salt had seen the dire consequences over-consumption of cheap liquor could have on workers and their families, so emphatically – no pub. Hence the name of this modern bar, which reflects Titus’ mill in its windows. The village and mill deserve a post to themselves. That’ll be for another day.

For Monday Window, this week hosted this week by PR

The Shadow of Oppression

These powerful pieces come from The Peace Museum in Salts Mill, Saltaire. Prisoner of Conscience is a three part work by Malcolm Brocklesby. This is what he says about the image above:

Then there is a second piece:

This illustrates …

The third image is simply a locked padlock, keeping a small heavy door irrevocably shut. We imagine, behind it, a prisoner the world has forgotten.

A sombre piece for an increasingly sombre world.

For Becky’s NovemberShadows.