Flower Fairies: The Magical World Of Cicely Mary Barker
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I think that one thing is that the Barker Fairies have now been thoroughly commercialised. When I first met them in the 1960s nobody else seemed to know about them and they were a magical secret pleasure. Now, before somone finds the books and the wee poems, they've met the bastardised image on everything from plastic tea pots to plushies
sherbetbizarre
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This is now open:
SimonBurchell
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I just got home from visiting the exhibition with my wife. Since the ticket also included the permanent Watts exhibition, the Watts Chapel and Limnerslease House, I felt it was well worth it.
It was nice to see Barker's work, even though the exhibition was fairly small and I was in two minds about her fairy pictures. Her talent was undeniable, but she and her contemporaries completely neutered English fairy folklore.
Sadly, there were no exhibition catalogues in the shop.
It was nice to see Barker's work, even though the exhibition was fairly small and I was in two minds about her fairy pictures. Her talent was undeniable, but she and her contemporaries completely neutered English fairy folklore.
Sadly, there were no exhibition catalogues in the shop.
Mikefule
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I've seen these images before. I just looked Cicely Mary Barker up on Wikipedia. It mentions that one of her models was the girl who did her cleaning: Gladys Tidy. (Glad it's tidy?) Is this a case of nominative determinism, or a mischievous edit of Wikipedia?
My first encounters with the idea of fairies, when I was a lonely child reading old books, was with the tiny twee kind: the buttercup fairies, and chrysanthemum fairies, and so on. I remember being bemused and mildly irritated but I had little else to read, and I sort of accepted it as normal.
In my teens, I encountered the famous "Folklore Myths and Legends of the British Isles" and became vaguely aware that real folklore is full of gore, premature death, revenge, and a very nasty kind of mischief. Not twee at all.
Posters above have commented that Cicely Mary Barker, and others, neutered and sanitised folklore. I see a parallel with Hallowe'en.
When I was a small boy in Norfolk (UK), Hallowe'en was not a big thing, but some people made lanterns out of swedes, although they were often called turnip lanterns.
Over the decades, this changed to Hallowe'en becoming a major festival of tat, with kids wearing shop-bought costumes of witches and ghosts, and later, things associated with horror films, and even later, things associated with children's films.
So the festival of Hallowe'en, when the boundary between our world and the spirit world is at its thinnest, and witches are abroad and people tread carefully, has become an opportunity for children to dress as characters from Toy Story and beg for sweets. Turnips (swedes) have been completely ousted by the bigger, brasher pumpkins, and these are carved (or moulded in plastic!) with smiles, or more artistic designs.
And, as with Hallowe'en, fairies have become a marketing tool for selling imported tat to children. Fairies are now safe, cute and engaging, and an ideal thing for little girls to admire.
Meanwhile in many parts of the world (famously, Ireland and parts of the west of Scotland and the isles) there remains a genuine wariness or even fear of the traditional and dangerous fairies of folklore.
I think we are somehow spiritually poorer for the downgrading of folklore in general and fairies in particular from powerful to cute. It is part of the same modern assumption of smug superiority that leads to the sale of "I climbed Uluru" souvenirs.
My first encounters with the idea of fairies, when I was a lonely child reading old books, was with the tiny twee kind: the buttercup fairies, and chrysanthemum fairies, and so on. I remember being bemused and mildly irritated but I had little else to read, and I sort of accepted it as normal.
In my teens, I encountered the famous "Folklore Myths and Legends of the British Isles" and became vaguely aware that real folklore is full of gore, premature death, revenge, and a very nasty kind of mischief. Not twee at all.
Posters above have commented that Cicely Mary Barker, and others, neutered and sanitised folklore. I see a parallel with Hallowe'en.
When I was a small boy in Norfolk (UK), Hallowe'en was not a big thing, but some people made lanterns out of swedes, although they were often called turnip lanterns.
Over the decades, this changed to Hallowe'en becoming a major festival of tat, with kids wearing shop-bought costumes of witches and ghosts, and later, things associated with horror films, and even later, things associated with children's films.
So the festival of Hallowe'en, when the boundary between our world and the spirit world is at its thinnest, and witches are abroad and people tread carefully, has become an opportunity for children to dress as characters from Toy Story and beg for sweets. Turnips (swedes) have been completely ousted by the bigger, brasher pumpkins, and these are carved (or moulded in plastic!) with smiles, or more artistic designs.
And, as with Hallowe'en, fairies have become a marketing tool for selling imported tat to children. Fairies are now safe, cute and engaging, and an ideal thing for little girls to admire.
Meanwhile in many parts of the world (famously, Ireland and parts of the west of Scotland and the isles) there remains a genuine wariness or even fear of the traditional and dangerous fairies of folklore.
I think we are somehow spiritually poorer for the downgrading of folklore in general and fairies in particular from powerful to cute. It is part of the same modern assumption of smug superiority that leads to the sale of "I climbed Uluru" souvenirs.
