Ornamental Bird Broaches and Turbary Woods

Ornamental Birds take on much more useful forms than just ornaments on your shelf.  My new obsession is bird broaches. 

These broaches are surely the central nexus of all the various shades, tones and colours surrounding them - actually making everything I wear all of the sudden make perfect sense - somehow my clothes feel more complete with the addition of bird ornaments.  This is a recent thing too of the past two or three weeks - I've realised that bird ornaments are what I want to be wearing.  The one one the left of this paragraph for instance.  She is a very sweet creature, playing fanciful and carefree on a sea of varied checkered patterns though staying content upon the thick texture of my long loved brown, red and beige blazer.  I haven't given her a name, it's not my place to give her a name, nor is it my place to give her a gender but to me she will always be a she.  Me and She-Swan like to fold my blazer lapel outside of my open overcoat because she just loves to dance glistening in the sun.  Open to new loves and experiences and dancing into strangers eyes - never looking "weird" or "quirky" but forever looking right.  Therefore making me look right.

Now this next one is a small bird called a "Great Tit" which some would argue that in species name alone is representative of me - what with me being a "Great Tit" (geddit?).
It's only a little broach but I've given it a little tool which makes it look like a telescope, or like the poor thing is screaming geometric abstraction filled with bits of pink.  He's a sweet thing, and one can't blame him for trying can they, and he makes a very cute and dashing stand against the world - fighting not with his fists and not with guns but with his words.  He represents a character with an enquiring mind - ready to take action against the nature of existence.  He is worrying - fretting - asking why? No answers until he finds out why only to find more questions - retreating backwards - becoming self absorbed - going through spats of mental anguish followed by bouts of hyper manic egomania - he's doing all of that so you or I don't have to.  He's also lucky enough to be doing it whilst living on my lapel and making me look ever so spiffing. 

I love my bird broaches and these are the only two that I've found so far so keep your eyes peeled in the charity shops as I can give these majestic attention seekers and/or crazy dark poets a happy home on my lapels.

Other bird news is that I went to an Owl Sanctuary at the weekend.  It was really really very good.  If you live in the Manchester area you should go along, you get to feed them and fly them and all for the price of £5 - I am such an advert, but honestly it was very very good.  A link is just below:

http://turbarywoods.co.uk/

SLAVE MARKET, EXPLOITATION, ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

A swan playfully nudging a set of gauzy painted flowers with an arched head winking it's "come to bed" eyes....  This photograph showcases this notion of beauty very well and it would be a very adequate gift for an elderly and sentimental relative but this lacks any kind of genuine reality, emotional punch or volume.  Though I'm sure the sculptor had no interest in giving this any weight, it was likely one of many products of a similar ilk.  Arranged in some countryside village shop on a battered old table, with a hundred of it's kind - in different positions - peering from flowers, watering cans and rocks suitably covered with the most appeasing coloured green moss.  Beautiful as these birds may be when seen separately it becomes very apparent that we are looking at a mass produced slave market.  I think I prefer my ornamental birds to be a little less exploited.

Which makes me wonder about this next one, not only is it pointless, vacuous and exploited... it is actually much, much more exploited when purchased because this bird is functional.  It also works as a bell, a very nice sounding tingling bell of the sort I would use to summon someone I have no authority over - in the hope of tricking them into thinking I have authority.  This poor, badly sculpted bird is forever chained to a gross bark textured bell with a nightmare-blue base.  It is forever at a beckoning to my whims.  The whims of me.  A sick state of affairs which would be even worse if the creature were actually alive.  It's even sadder for both the above that for all these birds enforced posturing on the shop shelves of horrible porcelain dealers, when they are actually bought and released into freedom (probably as a misguided gift) they are eventually taken to a charity shop in Wythenshawe and sold to myself for 50p each only for me to take photos and write a review that makes fun out of them. Obviously they know their time in my house is soon up and I'll be sending them back to a charity shop.  Though probably a charity shop in Chorlton which will charge a lot more for them.

The next, and last bird I will look at today, is a very classy thing, which fulfils both the roles of being ornamental and functional.  I'm not so sure he's exploited though, he looks as if he's been decently treated what with his age.  Through hard times and many years of movement he's now the last of his kind...  I think he might be based on an cartoon character, though not one I can recall.   He's functional in that he can be used as a money box, in fact there is a hole in the middle of his centre partin which leads into his complete and total emptiness.

I saw this at the weekend when I was at the Brick Lane Market in London and would have bought it if it was 50 pence.  It was, however, five pounds.  So I took a few essential photos and then walked away.  It says on the little bit of writing in front of his large pointy feet "TRUSTEE SAVINGS BANK" so perhaps this dropped into our world from an alternate universe where birds are in control of our finances... money birds... with big green eyes.  But let's face it, that really couldn't ever be true except for in my head, and even then the idea is only on a limited offer. 


It's very sad but I think my foray into the customer landscape of ornamental birds is proving to be making me quite cynical.  What was a potentially pleasant and joyful pursuit has actually turned out to have a dark underbelly.  It's like in that film Blue Velvet when the camera zooms in on the lovely suburban grass and finds it riddled with dirty worms. 

Shouting mutely into the void and Ornamental Bird Review # 1

Time to start shouting mutely into the void.  I suppose that's what it's there for:  the internet being some bottomless thing with expanding edges no one is ever to reach the end of.  So here I am creating a place of my own to dump in thoughts, general progress in my creative life, the odd essay on fashion or any photos and reviews of gorgeous and not so gorgeous ornamental birds I see in shops.

There's probably a chance that I won't be keeping this for very long.  I imagine blogging to be very depressing, being some chattering cell in the collective unconsciousness screaming pointlessly about his own egomania.  I will possibly cancel this after a few months because there's no point screaming if no one is listening, and often no point even if people are listening, people just being people after all.  I do have a very reductive view of life, probably not a view suitable for blogging.  We'll see though.  As soon as I stop talking about the nature and folly of blogging I might actually start getting around to enjoying it.

OK then.  Time to stop blogging about blogging.....

Right then.  Look at this bird.  Never seen a peacock like it.  It's all white and gold, very regal.  I imagine it would be on the mantelpiece of some very inexpensive porcelain aristocrat called Georgina Potter.  A porcelain aristocrat with a porcelain bird with a porcelain mantlepiece.  In a maze.
This bird has very pretty eyes like a cartoon temptress.  With a great quiff like thing sprouting upwards.  A very dandy bird, obviously bored of the fashion among other peacocks to wear all sorts of flash colours and deciding instead to go plain with a bit of a gold trim.  This bird is very classy, neither indie clubs or raves she is more into early nights and a diet of rich golden buttered fairy cakes and bowls of string beans.  An early morning riser who likes a quick jog along the esplanade of the Croatian sea to wake her up for a day of writing  her novel very very slowly.  It's about the bright young things of Oxford, based upon her first love and also the gradual blurring of the class system after the war.  The ground underneath her feet is very unrealistic looking, would be better if she were stood on some simple red martian rock, or grey moon rock.  That would stretch the imagination further and make it look less cheap.  Also it's a little bit over glossy but gets away with it by being such a regal bird.  Great detail on the plummage.

I now feel like I really have made a valuable contribution to the expanding internet universe.

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