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The Heritage Trust
Preserving the Past for the Future
About Me
- Littlestone
- Studied art and design at Swindon School of Art, Wiltshire, England and afterwards Japanese painting and calligraphy at Kyoto University of Fine Arts, Kyoto, Japan. In 1966 I was a lay monk at the Zen Buddhist temple of Ryozen-an in Kyoto and practiced under the guidance of its Director, Ruth Fuller-Sasaki and senior monk Dana R Fraser (co-translator of Layman P'ang: A Ninth Century Zen Classic). Also present at Ryozen-an was the author and poet Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder was one of the first Westerners in Japan to study Zen Buddhism and was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's book, The Dharma Bums. I was assistant conservator (paintings) at Kyoto National Museum from 1969-1980 and Chief Conservator (Eastern Pictorial Art) at the British Museum from 1980-1986. Japan Foundation Fellow 1973-1974 and Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works since 1985.
2 comments:
Four small sarsen stones lying alongside some of the steelwork taken from the Atkinson Tunnel, and now in the English Heritage/Skanska compound at the base of Silbury Hill.
Presumably these sarsens are some of those recently mentioned in the press that have been found within Silbury. According to latest theories the stones may represent the souls of those who died at the time Silbury was being constructed.
The question now is, will these sarsens be returned to their RIGHT place within Silbury or be left exposed to 'the irreverent day' on a wooden pallet (along with 1960's steelwork form the Atkinson/BBC tunnel) before being deposited in a museum - or somewhere even worse? Will English Heritage confirm, either in the press or on their Silbury Updates website, that they intend to adhere to accepted principles of conservation and the religious concerns of some members of our society (concerns which do demand the proper treatment of these objects) or are we to expect yet again (and in the words of Lord Avebury) that they will be guilty of offending accepted, "...conservation principles, as well as the spiritual beliefs of some people."?
Looking at these stones (the religious equivalent of modern headstones perhaps) that were no doubt placed with care and reverence in Silbury by our ancestors more than 4,000 years ago, Emmeline Fisher's Silbury poem of 1849 takes on a new, sad and almost prophetic meaning.
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