The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

As I woke at 4.00 am (not a good time), I read the catalogue of the Grayson Perry exhibition.  Just an amazing book and a great reminder of an outstanding exhibition.  However ... however, it started a number of different thoughts in my mind.

The first one is:

This was part of Grayson's Maps section.  He writes "We trust maps.  Maps are meant to be a trustworthy diagram of reality.  All maps, though, contain some very human bias.  They can emphasize desirable features and leave out the undesirable.  I like maps of feelings, beliefs and the irrational; they use our trust of maps to persuade us that there might be some truth in their beauty".  The map is an Egyptian woman's headscarf - printed silk 80 x16 cm from 1963/4 - part of the British Museum's collection.

This gave me a bit of a jot and I wondered if I should go the route of producing scarves expressing the Arab Spring and going back to my own image from Tripoli.

I could use some practice heads from the hairdressers and work up the different scarves.  The only issue is : the tutors' dislike of textiles but, at this point in my degree - is this an issue?  It would also help with the problems of not having a technician in the Print Rooms due to illness.

Next bit from the catalogue:

I was describing this to my son in Australia who works in the marine industry as I found it so amazing.  It is a Sailing Chart from the Marshall Islands made of cane and fibre shell in the late 1800s.   You take it on your canoe and use it against the stars to navigate between islands which (I assume) are shown as the small shells within the structure.

Going back to the Hamish Fulton at the IKON, I was reviewing the catalogue for Walking in Relation to Everything and came across this "painted wooden object (with pencil text)" made as a portable A4 size aide memoire of walks in Nepal in 2008.

Now I'm confused ... but I'm going to look at the headscarves as I'm really not happy with the map/book idea.