Roman Still Life

First thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for all the comments on my 500th yesterday. I feel deeply touched that so many people bothered to stop by :-))

And second, yes...in my quest for still life subjects I whipped up a times machine and zipped back to the first century AD.

Ok...I might be fibbing a little. Today we went to Leicester to visit the Jewry Wall museum. Henry is studying the Romans at school and has been asked to produce a little project on any aspect of Roman life which takes his fancy. I thought he might opt for the obvious: Roman soldier or roads but no...he decided that he wants to do his project on mosaics and Roman art! I think he fancies making a mosaic ;-)

Anyway, he wanted to see a real Roman mosaic so I Googled mosaics and came up with the Jewry Wall museum. It's small but perfectly formed and has nice Roman ruins (an old bath house) and lots of stuff to impress an eight-year-old, including real skeletons, a huge piece of mosaic work and some original wall paintings. I was impressed that it's free (the car park fee made up for it though ;-) ! H wandered round taking photos and making notes and is now confident that he can reproduce a small piece of mosaic in the right colours and patterns.

While he was doing that I wandered around also taking photos (don't you just love it when you can take photos in these places without having to be covert?) I found a replica Roman kitchen and this little tableau whispered..."I am your still life for today...blip me." So I have :-) I love that little face carved into the clay pot at the back.

While we were there I bought a Roman activities book. It's very cool and shows you how to make, among other things, a Roman water clock and a tabula...which H is dying to have a crack at. He's made a start this evening, hacking up bits of corrugated cardboard from the recycling. I'm sure the Romans would have found corrugated cardboard a very useful material ;-)