Project 365 day 230: Weavers' Cottage

This is one of the oldest houses in the village. It is believed to date from the early sixteenth century, though the adjoining manor house goes back to the late fourteenth century. The long row of upstairs windows is seventeenth century, and indicates that it was used by weavers, who needed good light for their intricate work. 

We had planned an outing this afternoon, but the weather was not good enough for it to seem worth the drive. Instead, after lunch and preparing some not very good cauliflower and a heap of chard from the garden,  I went with J for a walk/wheel around the village, the usual circuit along the Old Road, which passes this cottage, to the war memorial, then back down the parallel and later High Street. This morning her online Art Talk looked at Pierre Bonnard's soft, luminous paintings. I like them more than she does : I love the tables with check cloths set out with food and crockery, often composed with figures crowded to the edges of the frame; sunlight through windows, views onto vividly coloured gardens or landscape, the dog on the bathroom floor, his wife in the bath, cats on the chairs, often indistinct in a world of bright patterns and dappled light. We saw a good exhibition at Tate Modern about three years ago, and in the early 1980s I first encountered his work in a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou during my year of research in Paris libraries. I enjoyed scanning the Google image search results for paintings I remembered and loved from long ago, and saving them to share with J's group in the Facebook room.