Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Millefiori and roses

@brittarnhild

Walking around in Florence with our friends Jane and Lanny is pure bliss. They are the most lovely people you can imagine, and they know people everywhere. Yesterday we walked up to Piazzale Roma and Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. Up at the piazzale there are several stands where you can buy artwork from the area.

Jane told us that she was looking for a very special stand, a woman doing millefiori glass art. We could not see her anywhere, but while we were busy enjoying the amazing view over Florence from up there, Lanny walked around, asking his way. After a while he came back, all smiles. He had found her!

 Millefiori glass art is when you put tiny, tiny pieces of glass together and the result looks like a garden og a thousand flowers.......hence the name millefiori, a thousand flowers.

Here is a close photo of the artist, her name is Victoria, working on the necklace Terje bought to me.

On our way down to the city, we walked though the rose garden. The roses had just stafrted to bloom. When a joy to take photos of them with Florence as the background.

Back in Trondheim it is snowing these days.......

 

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The art of Sandra and Stefano

@brittarnhild

 On the last retreat day at Santa Maria, Paola and Thomas took us to Studio Ceramico Giusti after lunch. The place is owned by friends of Santa Maria, Sandra Pelli and Stefano Giusti. They are both ceramic artists, and have a wonderful studio and shop in a small village half an hour east of Florence, Paterno.

As soon as we came into the shop, I knew we had found a paradise, and it became even better when Stefano opened the doors to the workshop for us.

 

Sandra and Stefano want to take care of and pay forward the old traditional ceramic traditions. Unfortunately the brochure they have about the studio is in Italian only, so I will need some time to translate it.

Or I might just enjoy the photos and memories I collected.

Look what I spotted up on a wall!
It had been my birthday only a few days earlier, and Terje had told me he wanted to give me something special from Italy. When I saw this nativity, made by Sandra, where she had used a very special type of glace to paint it, I know I had found my "something special"!

Here you see Sandra telling me about the nativity and how she made it.

Sweet memories from a great visit.
We hope to see you again Sandra and Stefano.

 

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Storie di Bambini

@brittarnhild

Days when I get to know new artist, from present or past, are days filled with joy and excitement. Some times one meeting leads to another, and I am all smiles.  This is what happend last week. On Thursday the retreat group went up to La Verna, a St. Frances pilgrim site. There I saw some amazing ceramic sculptures which made a huge impact on me. I posted some photos on facebook, a friend commented, telling me about Ospedale Degli Innocenti in Florence and the museum there which has more of Andre della Robbia´s art.

 

 Terje and I went there, saw more amazing art, and also found that there was a very special exhibition in the basement showing illustrations by the children´s books illustrator Letizia Galli. Thought quite a lot of childrens books she has illustrated the history of the hospital, of the "innocent children".

I fell head over heals!

There were books for sale in connection with the exhibition. Unfortunately none were in English, every single one in Italian only. Or may be that was fortunate.......when I think of our suitcases.
I did check amazon.co.uk, and they have one :-)

Yes, of course I will buy it!

 

Here you can find some information about Letizia Galli

And here is some about Andrea delli Robbia

 

And may be most important,
here is some Storie di Bambini information.

 

 

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For couples in love

@brittarnhild

When you walk on asphalt and cobblestones hour after hour after hour, your feet get tired. Really tired. What a blessing then to find an open church, with benches where you can sit in silence, and in prayers, and may be even have a little powernap. That´s what we did this afternoon in the church Orsanmichele, close to Piazza delle Repubblica. What a lovely church. What a good place to be.

After some time, may be half an hour, we felt completely fresh, rose and were on our way out of the church when an elderly signora stopped us: "Come here, this is a special gift for couples in love, walk up the 54 steps and you´ll see......"

The 54 steps turned out to be quite a lot more, but it was truly worth it. We came up to Orsanmichele museum, on the first and second floor over (!) the church.

I have never heard of this church with the strange name but google is a very good travel helper. There I learn that Osrammichele means the kitchen garden of St.Michael and the church got its name since it was built on the site of the kitchen garden of the St. Michele monastery in 1337. It was originaly built as a grain market, I guess that explains the floors over the church.

On the museumsinfirenze website, you can read the fascinating tale about the statues. I fell in love with Madonna della Rosa by Pietro di Giovanni Tedesco, made around 1400. 1400!!!!!!! Can you imagine.

I have been looking back at my post from when I visited Florence in 2010, and smile when I read what I wrote about the sweets God were giving me. The steps up to the Orsanmichele was a sweet for sure. May be it was an Italian Easter chocolate egg. One of the biggest.

Or a special rose from Mary!

 

Sunday Market at Piazza Santo Spirito

@brittarnhild

After a week up in the Tuscan Hills, at Santa Maria, I am back in Florence, and Terje is here with me. We are staying in the apartment of our friends Jane and Lanny, who actually lives in California, but come back to Florence, Italy and Europe every year. Just now they are in Amsterdam, but we will have some days together with them at the end of this week.

Before leaving Santa Maria, Italian friends had told us that there would be an artist market at Piazza Santo Spirito today, so that´s where we headed after breakfast this morning.

 The artist market was quite big. We walked around first, were looking for some new friends we had met while we were at Santa Maria, who do ceramics, found a woman selling the softest alpacca wool, and then started to see what we could find which would be of special interest to us.

It didn´t take us long to find a woman, Cristina, who does block print, on cotton and linen, and also on paper. Cristina told us that she carved her wooden blocks herself, using old traditional patterns from Emilia Romagna.

In the early 1800´s, a technique of handprinted textile decoration developed in Romagna, the area south-east of the Po-river in Italy. Typical of this tradition is the use of hand-carved pear wood blocks for printing the designs. The mineral base of the coloring paste is rust, "La Ruggine", which gives these decorations an unmistakable character. There is an intimate beauty in this ancient craft truly worth preserving.

Soon Cristina and I were in a deep and very interesting conversation. This was really interesting.
Cristina has several different designs, and showed is tablecloths and towels where she had used the different ones. I could have bought them all.........but then I remembered our two suitcases.

In the end I left Cristina and her husband with a kitchen towel and a few pieces of printed paper.
And a mind a lot richer.

 

Here is Cristina´s website:
artecri.mysupersite.it

 

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Not surprisingly.......I went looking for colours.

Can you remember the day in Florence when I felt like the words had all left me? The city overwhelmed me (this was my first visit), I walked around with the silence of the Tuscany hills behind me, the anticipation of Venice ahead of me. I felt Florence was hard to get into, hard to breat, hard to take in.

Then I decided to do my favorite pasttime - go collecting colours. Suddenly I saw Florence with new eyes.

Have you ever tried doing a "colour harvest"? Try and I know you will be surprised.

Without special colour awareness I would never have seen the lovely purples in the second photo, though I am quite sure I would still see the icecream, and probably also the lovely blue bike. What do you think?

Two young boys sat in fron of this window. You should have seen their eyes when they watch me photograph the display. Golden memory.

How many orange shoulder bags can you have?

I am challenging you to do your own colour hunt today. And please tell me about it.

If you make a blog post, let me know the address, and I will link to it.

Let us colour the world!

Photos:

1-7 from Florence

8 salad made by Francesco

9 glass made by Afro Celotto on Murano

Last photo: Mauro among his colours

Fish soup and A Room with a View

My last night in Florence, dinner alone, and I decided to give myself a treat. Dinner at Golden View Open Bar, with a look right over to where Lucy Honeychurch stayed in her Room with a View. Jane's husband told me about this restaurant, and after enjoying a meal there I am sending a kiss his way :-).....no, I'm sending three kisses, the Italian way!

As soon as I saw that they had fish soup, or actually hot seafood soup, I knew what to have for a starter. I had a hard time when they forgot to give me a spoon at first, and I didn't want to ask for it, what if they eat fish soup with fork and bread in Florence........ I did a pretty good job but must confess it was all much easier when the waitress came running over with a spoon for me. So much for my stubbornness!

Thank you very much for your comments on yesterday's post. It is good to know that I am not all alone here in the blogging world. I must tell you though that the hotel room you saw is not the one where I sleep, but the livingroom of Hotel Scoti, where I write my blog and my emails, and where I meet my family on Skype.

Today I am on my way up to Venice by train. I'll meet Mauro, Dagmar is coming down from Austria, I'll have a walk with dottore Carlo Feli, and on Saturday I'll meet Antonella, a blog reader who has invited me to spend the week-end with her and her family.

I'll try to get online, but don't know if I'll manage.

Blogging from a hotelroom

Siesta time in a hotel in Firenze. I am supposed to blog, to share my experiences, but the words are not coming.....at least not for the blog. It is all dry as chalk, and I can tell from lack of comments that you, my dear readers feel the same. Where is the Britt-Arnhild we know? Doesn't she have any better than this to share? Where is her creativity, her flow if words......

I am writing page up and page down in my diary (the private one where I write every day), and also in my travel diary. But here in the blog.........I don't know.

I will hopefully be back to my own self some day, I will continue to blog every day as long as I find internet........but I am sorry, I don't have much inspiration to share here right now.

One day dry chalk will be coloured again, creations never stops......

....and I AM having a lovely time. Like last night when Jane and Lanny took me out to dinner, and we knotted a friendship which I hope will last for life.

Collecting sweets along the path

I was never sure if I would make it to Italy or not. The ash cloud hung heavily over Europe. Wednesday I knew, or at least almost knew, that the planes would be going. But if I flew down, what about my return. Would I take the chance? Yes, I said to myself some time during Wednesday, I am flying. I was sitting in Stiklestad church for a morning prayer, my reflection from Monday morning still fresh in my mind, I prayed for God's guidance and knew that he had something planned for me, in Italy or in Norway.

 

All of a sudden the man in front of me, in the church, started to laught. He pointed down to the floor where a long, colourful row of sweets were laying, probably a leftover from a child the Sunday before. It might have been, a child's leftovers I mean, but for me it was something completely different as well, it was God telling me that he has a chain of sweets waiting for me to gather and eat.......in Italy, or in Norway. I wanted to believe that it was in Italy though :-)

I have been collecting sweets these days, God is spreading them freely. The first one was actually the delay of my suitcase. I had several hours in Firenze before going up to the mountains and Santa Maria, now I could walk freely without my heavy suitcase. Well, the sweet became a little sour when the mountain air became terrible cold at nights and I had only the thin clothes I had been travelling in, but I couldn't complain, could I :-)

There have been alot more sweets, none to be told here though, the blog is for sharing parts of my life, not all........

But then, last night, the most surprising lollipop fell down before me when Jane suddenly came over to ask her words: Are you Britt?

Jane has been reading my blog on and off for several years. last night she read that I was going to Firenze, and since she is here for holiday right now she sent me an email and we decided to meet for dinner. The appointment I have with Jane and her husband is for tonight, so it was totally my chance that we met yesterday.

Tonight I will have dinner with Jane and her husband. I am looking forward to it :-)