About Gemple-Cat
An Arts Directory Created For Students Really Going Places - even when staying at home!
This site was originally created, by librarians at the former Kensington & Chelsea College (KCC), to help inform and inspire Arts Students.
In February 2020 Kensington and Chelsea joined Westminster campus to become intergral parts of the new look Morley College. The three sites set as three jewels in the crown of one of London's most renown Adult Education establishments.
The Morley College was originally founded in the 1880s. Today it still offers a wonderful array of Arts, Fashion and Crafts courses and much more besides; with over 400 online courses too.
The Cullinan Diamond & A Student's Undiscovered Gem
It is known that the famous Cullinan diamond is only one half of the original stone. By studying the inner structure of this fabulous gem, scientists know that it has another half, undiscovered as yet.
A person's mind is like that. We need the mechanical part all right, for it releases us from consciously thinking about routine matters, like walking or dressing. But the other half, the creative part, is also necessary if we are to live more than a merely mechanical life. We must find and put to use the other half of our mental diamond.
Vernon Howard, Psycho-Pictography, p. 88
Gemstone Cleavage
The Three Gems of Morley College
Just as wood is easier to split with the grain than against it, gemstone cleavage is the tendency of certain crystals to break along definite plane surfaces. If there are planes in a crystal structure with relatively weak atomic bonds, the crystal is more likely to break along those planes. - www.gemsociety.org
In Amsterdam, on the 10th February 1908, the Cullinan Diamond itself was cleaved into three parts by Joseph Asscher.
In London, February 2020, as that rough diamond that was once known as Kensington & Chelsea College was cleaved, its two separated parts joined a third gem - Waterloo. This tripartite of campuses forming the new structure of one of the country's oldest Adult Education establishments The Morley College (founded 1880s).
Jewellery and Dance too are two of the many disciples studied at Morley College.
A Pool with Pearls
Our website name 'Gemple' rhymes with 'gem pool'. To highlight this play on words, we found a photograph of two fashion models - pearls posing in a pool - uploaded from the Unsplash website!
The picture brought to mind that beautiful melody called The Swan, from Carmel Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. Coincidently, with Morley College running Ballet courses as well as Fashion and Design, The English National Ballet School just so happens to share a building with the Morley College's Chelsea Campus in Hortensia Road, SW10, where many Fashion and Design courses also run.
ttps://www.morleycollege.ac.uk/
Silent Seeing
As librarians, we were looking on Unsplash for a figurehead for our website, we came across this photograph of a beautiful, quietly relaxed cat. It put us in mind of our students. As a student's interest in a subject evolves a quiet natural poise often goes along with it. As characterised by the cat, students often seem to embody the maxim 'from silent seeing comes natural knowing'.
Morley Collge also run a number of media and photography courses:
https://www.morleycollege.ac.uk/study-areas/digital-media-photography
Morley College is also the place for music, running a wide range of courses at its Waterloo campus. At the Kensington campus there is The Rhythm Studio partnership. So whether you stray, or better still make a direct aim to get into the music business, Morley College is the place to go -or the place to 'go cat go' as Elvis Presley once sang - even if you have to stay at home, there are online courses!
A poem by Charles Bukowski:
cats and people and you and me and everything
the Egyptians loved the cat were often entombed with it instead of the woman and never the dog
and now here the good people with the good eyes are very few
yet the fine cats with great style lounge about in the alleys of the universe.
about our argument tonight whatever it was about and no matter how unhappy it made us feel
remember that there is a cat somewhere adjusting to the space of itself with a delightful wonderment of easiness.
in other words magic persists without us no matter what we do against it.
and I would plunder and destroy the last chance of myself and of you
that this might continue.
there is no argument.
The Ancient Egyptians really liked cats. Local moggies had a fondness for killing poisonous snakes, which led them to be thought of as protectors of Egypt. The cult of the cat meant deities were pictured with cat heads, and pets were even mummified with their deceased masters to protect them in the afterlife. This beautiful bronze and gold sculpture is of the goddess Bastet, who was often depicted as a cat or with the head of one.
Extract from: https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/cat-art-london-paintings-galleries-a3997206.html