Faith and tapas
Nov. 9th, 2023 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustChronologically, our visit to Bishop Auckland last Friday was a lunch of tapas followed by a visit to the Faith Museum, but I find it easier on the tongue the other way around, so I'll let that title stand. They may sound like two very disparate activities, but in fact both are aspects of the Auckland Project, the extraordinary development charity which has grown from Jonathan Ruffer's intervention to save a set of Spanish old master paintings from dispersal (some background here) into a cultural powerhouse. We met friends for lunch at El Castillo (see what they did there?) the tapas restaurant at the ground floor of the Spanish Art Gallery, before visiting the Faith Museum which is the Project's newest venture.
Tapas ought to be the perfect food style for people who suffer from buyer's remorse in restaurants: if you always see what others are eating and wish that you'd ordered that, well, at least you get to share what your companions have chosen. But the more dishes you order, the more chance there is that you will regret some of them. Or perhaps it's just me: certainly, I should get over my conviction that this time the croquetas will be as good as they sound. So it's no criticism of the restaurant that I liked some of the dishes better than others - not to mention that our party was evenly divided between those who really like whitebait, and those who really don't. But I was right that even though I don't like calamari, they'd be worth ordering for the chickpea accompaniment; and I was doubly right to toss in that last minute order for bread, which was delicious. I only wish I'd gone with the impulse to double up on the order for charred broccoli. The carafe of rioja was perfect: we used to drink a lot of rioja, I don't know why we stopped...
Steer cleer of the desserts unless you have a very sweet tooth. An allegedly Basque cheesecake was heaped with cherries in sweet syrup which overwhelmed the delicate cheesecake. I think they were glacé cherries, and I think that was a mistake, but we did spend some time discussing whether they were maraschino cherries, and what are maraschino cherries anyway? Are they a variety of cherry, or does the name come from the liqueur? Subsequent research says that a maraschino cherry is a preserved, sweetened cherry in syrup, originally containing maraschino liqueur. The liqueur is so called because it is made from marasca cherries (from the Italian amaro, bitter), but the cherries preserved in it are varieties of sweet eating cherries. We did not have profound abstract conversation about faith, so this meditation on cherries will have to do.
Time to visit the museum: entry is through the castle:
For purposes of comparison, here's an exterior view of the museum itself:
This is what you see as you walk from the gatehouse to those inner gates, with the walled garden a work in progress on your right. I'm mildly surprised that you can get permission to build something that stands out so much, within the walls of the castle itself. I've been trying to work out what it reminds me of, and I've just now got there, looking at the photo: it's not a building, but a reliquary*, a closed box of precious things. Is that what "faith" means? Which is not to say that I hate it: it's quite appropriate to the contents of the museum. As a building, I neither love it nor hate it, though I will probably like it better when the stone has aged a little - it is so new that it is still surrounded by diggers and fenced off areas. (The dark edge is where it's wet from recent rainfall.)
Once through the gates, the museum is hidden behind the older building of the castle - or perhaps I was just distracted, turning to my right to admire the autumn light. Look at the length of those shadows; I admit lunch had been leisurely, but it wasn't yet three o' clock!
I don't know if access to the museum is also a work in progress: the current system is not great at building atmosphere. You enter as if you were going to tour the castle, but turn aside into a waiting area with a video, then down some stairs and through the café, and only then do you reach the entrance to the museum, and you're in a space beautifully designed to display a large number of objects - over 250 objects from over 50 lenders throughout England, Scotland and Wales, boasts the publicity, though I was charmed each time I saw something with a local connection - and so, fortunately, were the local press, hence articles like this one, which provides some helpful photographs.
Click the link to see the first item in the display, a cup and ring carved stone from Gainford, which I have previously seen in the Bowes Museum. Is this a religious object? We assume it is, I suppose, because we can't think what else it might be. It is cleverly displayed beside a panel of plastic which replicates its incisions in a way that makes them both tangible (you can run your fingers along the grooves) and visible (the deeper layer is differently coloured, and illuminated to emphasise this). Next to it are two reminders of Orkney: a photograph of the Tomb of the Eagles, and a carved stone ball. Are burial practices automatically a sign of faith? Perhaps. The carved balls not so much so: a whole variety of possible uses have been suggested.
As the display moves forward through time, out of prehistory, things become less ambiguous. Also pictured in that article is almost (not quite - there's a tiny cross found in excavations at the castle itself) the most local item on show, the ring found at Binchester Roman fort, just down the road (more information here: a tiny incised gem, showing the Christian symbols of an anchor and fishes. I wished they'd provided some sort of magnifying lens to view it - and a mirror to see the reverse of the ivory tau cross next to it, too.
Never mind - here's a souvenir from Canterbury:
- a pilgrim badge from the shrine of Thomas Becket. And here's a thurible designed by AWN Pugin for Durham's Ushaw College:
So many interesting things, so much detail to see. So it's entirely predictable that I had reached no further than 1948 (I think) and was reading about the post-war Jewish community of Bishop Auckland, when the attendant told us it was closing time, and ushered us out. There's more to see - there's an entire upper story, an exhibition space, which I hadn't noticed. We bought annual passes, which are also valid for the castle itself, the Spanish Art gallery, and more, and I hope we'll make good use of them...
One last picture. Those diggers that are still lined up outside? They really make the most of the evening light:
*ETA: The local paper tells me it's not a reliquary, it's a tithe barn. Sure there's a message there ...
Tapas ought to be the perfect food style for people who suffer from buyer's remorse in restaurants: if you always see what others are eating and wish that you'd ordered that, well, at least you get to share what your companions have chosen. But the more dishes you order, the more chance there is that you will regret some of them. Or perhaps it's just me: certainly, I should get over my conviction that this time the croquetas will be as good as they sound. So it's no criticism of the restaurant that I liked some of the dishes better than others - not to mention that our party was evenly divided between those who really like whitebait, and those who really don't. But I was right that even though I don't like calamari, they'd be worth ordering for the chickpea accompaniment; and I was doubly right to toss in that last minute order for bread, which was delicious. I only wish I'd gone with the impulse to double up on the order for charred broccoli. The carafe of rioja was perfect: we used to drink a lot of rioja, I don't know why we stopped...
Steer cleer of the desserts unless you have a very sweet tooth. An allegedly Basque cheesecake was heaped with cherries in sweet syrup which overwhelmed the delicate cheesecake. I think they were glacé cherries, and I think that was a mistake, but we did spend some time discussing whether they were maraschino cherries, and what are maraschino cherries anyway? Are they a variety of cherry, or does the name come from the liqueur? Subsequent research says that a maraschino cherry is a preserved, sweetened cherry in syrup, originally containing maraschino liqueur. The liqueur is so called because it is made from marasca cherries (from the Italian amaro, bitter), but the cherries preserved in it are varieties of sweet eating cherries. We did not have profound abstract conversation about faith, so this meditation on cherries will have to do.
Time to visit the museum: entry is through the castle:
For purposes of comparison, here's an exterior view of the museum itself:
This is what you see as you walk from the gatehouse to those inner gates, with the walled garden a work in progress on your right. I'm mildly surprised that you can get permission to build something that stands out so much, within the walls of the castle itself. I've been trying to work out what it reminds me of, and I've just now got there, looking at the photo: it's not a building, but a reliquary*, a closed box of precious things. Is that what "faith" means? Which is not to say that I hate it: it's quite appropriate to the contents of the museum. As a building, I neither love it nor hate it, though I will probably like it better when the stone has aged a little - it is so new that it is still surrounded by diggers and fenced off areas. (The dark edge is where it's wet from recent rainfall.)
Once through the gates, the museum is hidden behind the older building of the castle - or perhaps I was just distracted, turning to my right to admire the autumn light. Look at the length of those shadows; I admit lunch had been leisurely, but it wasn't yet three o' clock!
I don't know if access to the museum is also a work in progress: the current system is not great at building atmosphere. You enter as if you were going to tour the castle, but turn aside into a waiting area with a video, then down some stairs and through the café, and only then do you reach the entrance to the museum, and you're in a space beautifully designed to display a large number of objects - over 250 objects from over 50 lenders throughout England, Scotland and Wales, boasts the publicity, though I was charmed each time I saw something with a local connection - and so, fortunately, were the local press, hence articles like this one, which provides some helpful photographs.
Click the link to see the first item in the display, a cup and ring carved stone from Gainford, which I have previously seen in the Bowes Museum. Is this a religious object? We assume it is, I suppose, because we can't think what else it might be. It is cleverly displayed beside a panel of plastic which replicates its incisions in a way that makes them both tangible (you can run your fingers along the grooves) and visible (the deeper layer is differently coloured, and illuminated to emphasise this). Next to it are two reminders of Orkney: a photograph of the Tomb of the Eagles, and a carved stone ball. Are burial practices automatically a sign of faith? Perhaps. The carved balls not so much so: a whole variety of possible uses have been suggested.
As the display moves forward through time, out of prehistory, things become less ambiguous. Also pictured in that article is almost (not quite - there's a tiny cross found in excavations at the castle itself) the most local item on show, the ring found at Binchester Roman fort, just down the road (more information here: a tiny incised gem, showing the Christian symbols of an anchor and fishes. I wished they'd provided some sort of magnifying lens to view it - and a mirror to see the reverse of the ivory tau cross next to it, too.
Never mind - here's a souvenir from Canterbury:
- a pilgrim badge from the shrine of Thomas Becket. And here's a thurible designed by AWN Pugin for Durham's Ushaw College:
So many interesting things, so much detail to see. So it's entirely predictable that I had reached no further than 1948 (I think) and was reading about the post-war Jewish community of Bishop Auckland, when the attendant told us it was closing time, and ushered us out. There's more to see - there's an entire upper story, an exhibition space, which I hadn't noticed. We bought annual passes, which are also valid for the castle itself, the Spanish Art gallery, and more, and I hope we'll make good use of them...
One last picture. Those diggers that are still lined up outside? They really make the most of the evening light:
*ETA: The local paper tells me it's not a reliquary, it's a tithe barn. Sure there's a message there ...
