La Reine Sans Tête

A few posts down, I have another Anne Boleyn papercut that I did before I came to England. That one I encased in resin and it turned out okay. I can now see why the old masters sketched things again and again and again before they put it to the canvas. I think this depiction of Anne Boleyn at the scaffold worked out better. I know a little bit more about some of the details of her death which helped add to it. This one is pretty large, about 4 feet by 3 feet in height. This and the menagerie have been my favorite ones of the whole series.

Swollen Hands, Swollen Heart

Not quite as elaborate as the menagerie, but yet still informative, this is the story of John Gerard who was imprisoned in the Salt Tower of the Tower of London in the 1590s. He had been imprisoned and and tortured and his hands had swollen up to the size of balloons. Withstanding all of those things, he escaped from the Cradle Tower one night, shimmying down a rope across the moat to freedom.

Menagerie-a-Trois

Today I completed what I think will probably be my most ambitious papercut of the set. It's of the Tower of London menagerie that had been in existence since roughly 1201 to about 1835 when they were removed to the London Zoo. Here I do a really rough history of animals that had been in the collection throughout the ages. The size is about 4' x 1.5'.


Can you see:
1. A flutist playing for a lion
2. An artist painting the first elephant that many people had ever seen in Europe
3. A polar bear being taken for a walk by the menagerie keeper so that it can fish in the River Thames
4. People lining up to go into the menagerie, the admission price a cat or dog to feed to the lions
5. A dog that gets thrown in with a lion, but the lion befriends it and it continues to live with the lion
6. An elephant that get fed wine every day
7. A lion that is poked with a hot iron at exactly the right time during Queen Elizabeth I's coronation speech
8. A pipe smoking baboon
9. A monkey that is holding onto a boy's leg that he just tore off
10. An ostrich that ate 80 nails
11. Lions that can tell if you're a virgin or not?

All this and more is found in this papercut. Quite the history!

Ranulph Flambard

So here's the second completed papercut of I've done for the Tower. This one is of Ranulph Flambard. No one names their kid Ranulph anymore, I wonder why. Anyway, he was imprisoned in the tower. One night, his friends hid a rope in a flagon of wine and had it delivered to his chambers. He shared the wine with his guards who grew sufficiently drunk enough for him to escape without their noticing. Ranulph climbed down the tower wall, but the rope wasn't long enough and he had to jump the rest of the way and, luckily enough, landed in a cesspool to break his fall.

Happy Valentine's Day!

King Bran

The white parts near the bottom will look better when they are glued down, more continuous, but here's what I'm currently doing. This is a papercut about the legend of King Bran. Here's a bit more about it:

Another Tower raven legend chronicled in the Mabinogion states that upon the death of the giant king Bran the Blessed (bran means raven in Welsh), his head was cut off and buried at the “White Hill” in London, (usually identified as Tower Hill) “with the face turned towards France.” This burial is known in the Welsh Triads as one of the Three Happy Concealments of The Island of the Mighty. As long as Bran’s head stays buried there, Britain will be safe from invasion. It is as if these older legends, folktales, and superstitions fused to form the current Tower of London raven legend. (Fortean Times UK)

I'll post more as I do more!

Super Tuesday

Today is the last day for people to vote on my design for Threadless (preferably a $5). Vote for me and then go vote for your favorite presidential candidate!

I Am Come Hither to Die

I'm going to be in England for the month of February. I will more than likely be able to do some papercuts of stories from events that happened at the Tower of London. I have been wanting to try a new format and so I had my dad cut a large board out of oak plywood. Then I painted a light image of the Tower in the background. Then I did a layer of resin. The layer that I did was a clear resin and didn't dry very fast. I think put an image on and poured another layer on. This layer was a different brand and dried faster, but it wasn't clear and it shrunk up the sort of undry layer of resin beneath it. This didn't work so well, but it gave me a clearer idea of what I need to do in the future, which is, plan ahead and don't do anything half-ass. This is a good life philosophy. Anyway, I learned a lot about Ann Boleyn in the process of doing this. I was fully expecting to do a scherenschnitt of her on the chopping block, but instead found that she was executed French style by a swordsman while kneeling.

Here are her final words:

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.