These are the workings from a five day course in anatomical life drawing with Stuart Elliot. The course was just the tip of the iceberg. The more we learned, the more it became clear how vast the subject of anatomy was. The more we looked at the skeleton, the more complex it showed itself to be. And this was without the addition of the muscles, of weight and movement!

>>Click on image to go to Flickr album

The thresher or thrasher machine uses its drums and shakers to separate grains from the stalks and the husks. In other words, it separates the wheat from the chaff.

Threshing was done by hand for thousands of years before the machine was invented. The wheat sheaves were laid on the ground and  beaten with flails. The remnants were then thrown into the air from baskets to separate the loosened chaff from the grain. This was slow, hard work. It kept a great number of people in work.

So when the threshing machine was invented and came into use in the 18th century, it was seen as a threat to the livelihoods of the agricultural workers. In Kent and Sussex, and later as far as the Midlands, farm workers set out the destroy the machines. These riots were called the Swing Riots and part of the anti-machinery Luddite movement.

The first threshers were set in the barn. But when a horse or engine could be used to power the machine, it meant that the thresher could be taken into the fields.

There is a film listed on the BFI website of a threshing machine>>

Jean Francois Millet: The Winnower

The rain comes down on festival goers at Vintage Goodwood. The three day event celebrated fashions, music and design of the 1940s through to the 1980s.

Camping and light mud clashed with sculpted hair dos, evening frocks, suits and stillettos.

Looking around, I thought the 1940s Land Girl style was a clever choice of outfit as it was designed to be worn in the countryside and in changeable weather.

During a day out walking in the Kent countryside, we came across  Eagle Heights Wildlife Park. Within a moment, I found myself watching a display of eagles, storks and a cheetah against the backdrop of wheat fields and villages.

After the visit, which involved looking at many eagles, owls, snakes, lizards and porcupines, we walked across the fields in the evening sun to find the train station. The howls and barks of the pack of Arctic huskies rose up in the air behind us.

For more on animals, see categories >>

The lightweight, blue and red airmail envelope is hardly used anymore, replaced by the sending of emails which is quicker, cheaper and easier than posting a letter. It is set still more firmly in the past with it’s Woolworths branding and price tag.

For more on packaging, see categories >>

Smoke houses in Hastings on the South Coast of England and in Mallaig on the West Coast of Scotland.

The New Decor exhibition is on at the Hayward Gallery. In the show, sculptures and installations ‘take interior design as a point of departure’.  German artist Nicola Werners has made a perspex bench which encases a row of boulders, each a different rock. She has also made an edition of ‘Rock Dispensers’.

A dispenser is rather mundane. I imagine a metal serviette dispenser. The pebbles are multi-coloured and created from unimaginable geological processes. The joke is that the rocks hardly need stacking and dispensing.