Finest Pieces of Plastic by Richard Bratby Richard Bratby firstthings.com/finest-pieces-…

#HistoryNotes📜 #OTD 1694 b. #FrançoisMarieArouet (#Voltaire). A prolific writer🪶of letters penning more than 20,000 & 2,000 books & pamphlets! Died in Paris aged 83. #OTD 1695 d. #HenryPurcell, one of the greatest English composers🎵worked on more than 100 songs. Died aged 36.

Nice to see a quote from Addison’s Pleasures of the Imagination essays at the Joseph Wright of Derby exhibition in London yesterday. I was writing about these essays just recently in relation to Addison’s Walk. annetterubery.co.uk/other-writing/

This is still from my new art movie The Unbearable Lightness of Pickle. It’s about a cat who needs to put on weight, so she has to eat all the time. I paid for it myself so no one could cast Nicole Kidman in the lead. It cost £10 million & I have to pay that back from the profits

In my happy place.

Thinking ahead to the Xmas break. Which historic property will @annetterubery and I drive 2 hours to visit this year, unaware that it's been turned into a Family Festive Experience and all the Adams plasterwork is invisible behind fibreglass Nutrackers and Elf-themed Labubus?

More on that here. So far we've been seasonally happy-slapped at Chatsworth and Hardwick. This year, I don't know. Getting a strong Blenheim vibe: they've got a Wizard of Oz theme, which is surely what Vanbrugh would have wanted. open.substack.com/pub/annetterub…

There's only one way for the red-blooded Briton to celebrate the coming season. Brawls. Beefsteaks. Skimmington Rides. Suet duff and a minimum of 2 bottles of port for breakfast. This Christmas, I will be Hogarthmaxxing.

Every day is Sunday for this cove.

Queen Elizabeth I is depicted wearing an elaborate dress on this gold half-pound that was minted in the final years of her reign (1592-1595). This specimen is from the Hunterian collection.

One of my paint swatches is crying.

Sunt lacrimæ rērum — “Tears are the nature of things.” (Virgil)

Reader card renewed for the first time after the hack. Nice to be back!

NEW ESSAY — In the 17th century, emanating from Antwerp, a new genre of artwork came on the scene: paintings of paintings, works populated by a lush array of meta-images. Thea Applebaum Licht charts the course of this alluring aesthetic tradition: publicdomainreview.org/essay/cabinets…

On the streets of Lichfield, rival gangs spray their tags with impunity. You don't want to be a Garrickboi caught on the turf of the Erasmus Darwin House (and 18th century herb garden).

Bought some Alizarin red when I was in London on Tuesday. Exciting times!

New episode of the podcast just out. Waldemar solves the mystery of Bosch’s masterpiece, I wonder why a gold toilet is worth $12m, and we explore what made Hans Holbein so brilliant with Elizabeth Goldring.

Been giving a variety of different techniques a go including painting with salty water and using wax resist.