Food sculpture

Two galleries of egg sculpture by Christel Assante: a gallery of six images and photos from a convention with a few more pieces. Beautiful.




The Egg Man, carved and sculpted egg shells by Ron Cheruka. He uses many different kinds of eggs including emu, ostrich, rhea, and more delicate eggs like duck, goose, and pheasant, both carved and filigreed.
Via Le Web...et le reste.




The Amazing Chinese Art of Watermelon Carving.






The Art of Food Carving is an album of anonymous carved pieces. Most of them appear to be water and other melons, and as for the rest I'm just not sure. They also seem to be by the same artist, so if anyone can identify the work, please let me know.






Food is Art showcases the work of chocolate sculptor Prudence Emma Staite, including sculptures of people and scenes, playable games from checkers to jenga, wearable jewelry (I think I'd stay away from that), and even a life-sized chocolate room complete with chocolate chandeliers and sugar wallpaper (described as "lickable"!).





A collection of great ice sculpture from various fairs and exhibitions.

Fantasy dollhouses

Today I would like to present pair of stunning miniature replicas of locales from popular fantasy series. Both are exquisitely detailed, obviously labors of love.

First, creator Obelia medusa's Tiny Bag-End, Frodo's Hobbit-house faithfully recreated from the movie. Includes lots of nice close-ups.






Sal's Site has a sizeable collection of excellent dollhouse works by artist Sally Wallace, but be sure not to miss her Hogwarts. She has also done Mr. Ollivander's Wand Shop and Honeyduke's Candy Shop.






Bonus: not a dollhouse, but one of the most wonderfully detailed Lego structures I've seen: "Entrance to the Caves" by Norro. Full of little nooks and crannies, with some great landscaping -- those rocks! and those trees! These thumbnails don't do it justice -- check out the full gallery, with lots of different views.
Via The Brothers Brick.

Curse your library

Trawling the Endicott Studio blog archives to see what I've missed, I found this great post about bookplate curses; it's a brilliant idea, setting forth on your bookplate in evocative verse just what will happen to book thieves, page-folders, spine-breakers, dog-earers, margin-scribblers and other book abusers should they mistreat your library. I love this one:

Who folds a leafe downe
ye divel toaste browne
who makes marke or blotte
ye divel roaste hotte
who stealeth thisse booke
ye divel shall cooke.

Or this:

For him that stealeth a book from this library, let it change into a
serpent in his hand & rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, & all
his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for
mercy, & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sink to
dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that
dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of
hell consume him forever & aye.

Here's a more modern (and rather gentler) one:

By him who bought me for his own,
I'm lent for reading leaf by leaf;
If honest, you'll return the loan,
If you retain me, you're a thief.

Neither blemish this book, nor the leaves double down,
Nor lend it to each idle friend in town;
Return it when read, or, if lost, please supply
Another as good to the mind and the eye.

The post links to a nice collection at the Virginia Commonwealth University Library site (where all the above examples came from), which in turn links to an e-mail to the Exlibris list containing even more.

I'm very wary of lending books to even my most trusted bibliophile friends (how are those Paris guidebooks doing, Ladysusan?), but perhaps if I copy down a few of these poems in them first, I'll feel much better about the whole thing.

UPDATE: Ladysusan just shared this gem, a sign posted in the Salamanca library. Rough translation: His Holiness reserves the right to excommunicate any persons who steal, take, or in any other way remove any book, parchment, or paper from this library, without the possibility of absolution until the above should be completely reinstated. Nice.

Coziness in a cup

In need of a good place for a cup of tea and a think? Look no further.

There's something about this blog I really like. It's just a collection of pictures and brief commentary about a series of pubs and cafes -- the decor, the atmosphere, the patrons, and, of course, the tea. There's nothing fancy about them, just a bunch of simple, cosy establishments. The tone is thoroughly cheerful, contented, and as British as the Queen.

How many millions of happy cups of tea must these little pots have served. Warm and worn.

All the sandwiches present and correct. Cheese. Ham. Cheese and ham. But look at that tempting cakery. Must have some of those.

White mug. Brown tea. Yellow table. All is right with the world.