Eye - 21 September 2018

From searching and developing to imprisoned blooms

Searching and developing

A quote from scientist and Quaker Jocelyn Bell Burnell is featured in a striking sculpture exhibition in Cambridge, which runs until January 2019.

Archetypes is a collection of five pieces by sculptor Liviu Mocan on display in the churchyard of Great St Mary’s.

The exhibition, commissioned by the Jubilee Centre, is designed to invite visitors ‘into a multi-faceted conversation between history, faith, art and technology’.

Liviu Mocan uses his sculptures to explore ‘universal themes found in almost every culture and society’: belief, destiny, transcendence, sacrifice and revelation.

Around the base of The Trumpet in the Universe sculpture, which explores the theme of ‘destiny’, are twelve inscriptions from different disciplines.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s words represent astronomy: ‘If we assume we’ve arrived, we stop searching, we stop developing.’

Spotted in Swaffham

Whilst on holiday in Norfolk Ruth Serner, of Winchmore Hill Meeting, stumbled across words that may ring a bell with fans of the Friend’s letters page.

An ode to a Friend

A Friend from Walsall Meeting has been moved to put pen to paper in a lilting lyrical form.

Mary Agnes Moore wrote the limerick-inspired ode in honour of local Friend Barbara Groombridge:

There was a lady so pally
She lived in a town named Walsally
She was not a candle stick maker
She was a really good Quaker!

For forty-four years
She cared for the money

Treasured it well, as bees do with honey
It never entered her head to do anything - funny!

Imprisoned blooms and quilting equipment

Quakers in Porthmadog participated in the town’s flourishing Flower Festival this summer.

The theme was ‘Notable Women’ and Friends chose to focus their display on prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

Local Friend Frances Voelcker told Eye that, in addition to photographs and Quaker Tapestry panels about her, they ‘imprisoned dead blooms behind bars, and then filled the rest of the display area with vibrant wild and cultivated flowers’.

The display also featured equipment that Elizabeth Fry and her team gave to women convicts being transported to penal colonies.

Frances explained: ‘These included a small Bible, needles, threads, scissors and a quantity of fabric pieces with which to make a patchwork quilt during the sea voyage. This equipment enabled the women to demonstrate their needlework skills, and to have something to sell when they arrived, thus avoiding prostitution.

‘Also on display were a Quaker women’s cap, a red cloak… an enlarged “Fry Fiver”, and bilingual information about ongoing Quaker work in prisons, with pictures of Berwyn, the huge new prison at Wrexham where North Wales Area Meeting has a chaplain.’

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