Weaver of Grass

Last week we went to an excellent talk about the findings at some Viking graves  at Cumwhitton, near Carlisle. It was not so much what was actually dug up, but how it was dug up so as to preserve as much information as possible, that made the talk fascinating. Today, as we were in Carlisle, and as we can now get in to Tullie House Museum with our Art Pass, we went in to see what we had only seen pictures of. A very good exhibition it was too. Well worth visiting.
 
So, my blip would have been a brooch or some such piece.
 
But then -

- I popped in to a temporary craft exhibition – Outsider Art featuring the work of artists who for one reason or another find themselves outside the mainstream of artistic life. And at the beginning was a Historical Context. 

And there were these boots . . . I recognised them immediately.
 
The first time we went to the Outer Hebrides, many years ago now, we came across, quite by chance, an exhibition of the work of Angus McPhee, a local crofter who died in 1994. Very briefly (look up the name if you want to know more) he returned from war and became mentally ill, diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1946. He spent the rest of his life in hospital and spoke hardly a word to anyone during that time. Later he was found to have spent most of his time weaving grass, using indigenous skills of rope making he had learnt as a boy and leaving the items just lying around. The things he made were just amazing and I was fascinated when I first saw them. I bought a little book – Weaver of Grass and read all about him. It’s an extraordinary story.
 
Unfortunately most of his work is now very fragile and cannot be moved – we did see some of it in Kildonan Museum, South Uist a few years ago. So these are not the ones Angus made, but replicas made by a Scottish Weaver. They look like the real thing to me and I was delighted to see them again . . .  just by chance.