Cefn Coed Viaduct, Merthyr

“Alchemy, the masters teach, is the process of linking the spiritual to the material. The alchemist is the bridge between the worlds. It is a process of working inside a mirror, knowing always that in the end, the part will reflect the whole. As inside, so outside.”
Thomas Lloyd Qualls
At last Thursday’s talk at Bedwellty House Chris Parry mentioned that some of the 'Voice Figures' created by Megan Watts Hughes would be available for viewing at Cyfarthfa Museum today (they aren’t normally on display) – so I had to go to see them. It seemed like a longish way to go just for that, and I remembered the Cefn Viaduct at Merthyr when I’d driven past on the way to Castell Morlais with BobsBlips back in the mists of time, so I decided today would be a good opportunity for a quick recce visit. The viaduct is a fifteen-arch bridge, designed to carry the Brecon and Merthyr Tydfil Junction Railway and completed in 1866, it now forms part of the Taff Trail. I managed to get down to the river level for a few shots but had to hurry back, took longer than anticipated and I had to leg it down to Pentrebach for the tour.
Another fascinating talk by the Museum staff and the ‘slides’ themselves were mind-boggling, real works of art and reminded me of how transparencies ‘pop’ on a lightbox, really sprang into life. Incredible shapes and patterns recorded in a variety of media (paint etc) fixed on glass (and ceramic) slides. There’s a story about them with some images here :: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/visual-sound-mysteries-of-the-human-voice-revealed-by-megan-watts-hughes
But seeing them ‘in the flesh’ was breath-taking, really beautiful patterns, shapes and rich colours.
What amazes – and inspires - me is that the daughter of a Dowlais Ironworker in the mid-nineteenth century became an accomplished singer, studying and later performing in London, pursuing a scientific interest in resonance and sound patterns pioneered by Erst Chladni in Germany (a hundred years earlier) and even presented her invention at The Royal Society which had excluded women barely ten years before.