Saturday 6 December 2008

Boats on Buildings

The Dutch have a charming habit of placing carved or ceramic pictures on their houses to indicate the name, and of course a lot of them are boats especially in Amsterdam and other canal cities.
This chap propelling a double-ended boat with a quant pole is in Boomstraat in Amsterdam. He looks early 18th century with his full bottom wig and tricorn hat. The boat seems to be full of bales of wool or cotton or something.
The picture was taken by Vereniging Vrienden van Amsterdamse Gevelstenen and comes from the Flickr pool Boats on Buildings, which is rapidly becoming a comprehensive database of boat design, at least as boats appear to artists. At the moment, the pictures are mainly Dutch so I encourage you all to contribute to make it a global collection. I have added Robert Coombes' stone boat in Brompton cemetery and a stained glass window in Aldingbourne church, Sussex featuring a submarine, a very unusual subject for a church memorial. It commemorates Engineer Vice Admiral Sir Reginald Skelton, who sailed with Shackleton and served in submarines in the First World War.

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