About Me
An Arts in London Catalogue
really go places even while staying home
Places of Interest
This page lists many London Parks, National Trust Houses, Online Art Collections & other miscellaneous places we think might be of interest to an Arts student
The Beginning
At a 2016 Staff Conference, The Library Team met up with The Arts Team. The Arts Team expressed a wish for a directory of venues - Art Galleries etc. To fulfill this wish the Library Team created this web site.
From Galleries, Exhibitions,
Museums, Places of Interest, Libraries, Events came the acronym GEMPLE. As it rhymed with temple, sounded like 'gem pool', it seemed an apt name for a treasure trove of data to dip into and retrieve a blessed pearl or two! In 2018, as we had created a catalogue, we added 'CAT' and registered our web address www.gemple-cat.co.uk.
John Ruskin infamously dismissed the art historian Anna Jameson as 'knowing as much of art as the cat'.
Gemple-Cat smiles. After all, if you don't know you can find out. That is what this web site is about - helping you to find out. For a student curiosity is a valuable quality, as well as being a useful and natural characteristic of the cat too, of course.
An extract from 'Secrets for Higher Success' by the American Philosopher and Author Vernon Howard, illustrates one particular artist's curiosity:
Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous English portrait painter, had a special secret which contributed to his success. It enabled him to create masterpieces such as 'Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse.' The secret was simple but extremely practical. Reynolds made a deep and persistent study of the great masters of the past. For example, he traveled to Rome, Genoa and Florence to study the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. No detail was overlooked, no question remained unanswered. Coloring and style, shading and brushing, all fell under his mental microscope. Upon discovering a new idea or a superior technique, Reynolds applied them to his own paintings. By this procedure he turned the skills of others into his own skills.
A New Word for the Dictionary?
Gempler - jem-pool-er (noun). 1 One who dips into a pool of information in order to seek and pull out items of knowledge worth treasuring (gems); one surfing the net, browsing a book, or generally looking for works of art that inspire: often one with an aim to create and reveal an art work (a gem) of their own. 2 One who treasures unique words and pools them together into a lexicon, or a treasure chest of a book (a particular instance being Robert Macfarne's Landmarks, 2015).
[Origin; art, craft, fashion and design, and other students at what was then the Kensington & Chelsea College (Morley in 2020), searching the website called www.gemple-cat.co.uk 2019]
Thank you for dipping into gemple
The Stars
"Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars." Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, 1986
Of the College Library bright lights that helped gather information and launch GEMPLE-CAT , Jules Emmerson, Estefan Ayim, Scott Smith, L.A Campbell and Camille Foncel were its shining stars. Our thanks go to Nigel Garrigan (College Estates Manager) for backing the project - clearly an investor as bright as Vesta. Some of our stars have now moved on but we do have a new star, Stefania San Romerio.
'...fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' Julius Caersar 1.2 140, William Shakespeare
- Peter Russell, Librarian
(Star sign Gem-in-i)
Metaphorically, philosophically, there is a gem in all of us. We just have to see and be rid of the fakes we falsely treasure in order to reveal those real gems. As this dialogue between an art dealer, holding an artwork he'd hope to have authenticated by Pablo Picasso, might be said to imply:
'It's a fake,' said Picasso.
'But it bears your signature!' protested the art dealer.
'It's a fake by me,' came Picasso's reply.
We define our site as being:
A Catalogue of Gems - A Pool with Pearls
Given what Picasso has said, our statement may need to be qualified a little. Sometimes a pearl does turn out to be paste or a pebble, a painting a pastiche. However, as librarians our aim is simply to gather the details and make them available as best we can. Nonetheless, we still feel sure you will find a real gem, a perfect pearl, in our collection. Perhaps such as the Picasso below, or better still within yourself:
This 'within yourself' acknowledges the fact of how a person can be touched, moved, influenced by art. Just as a person can be by nature - maybe when sitting on a sea shore surveying the stars. This being so, we decided to created another motto for Gemple-Cat:
A Catalogue of Gems - A Pool with Pirrs
A pirr is a Shetlandic word meaning 'a light breath of wind, such as will make a cat's paw on the water'. See Robert Macfarne's book Landmarks.
What with Gemple sounding much like gentle and a gem-pool too, we thought 'a pool with pirrs' an apt description for our catalogue which may well touch, move, influence as it informs.
Macfarne tells us of the wonderful words used to describe and to distinguish the different natural water-land features of the country-side; of a grimmer, a glumag, a mardle, a swidge, a stank or a Twire. He says, 'Open water offered a glass into which one peered to see local miracle and revelation' (P.96). We agree, and we think much the same about this our Arts pool. However, being virtual, we are more like a cat with a map to the taps than a genuine glass of water. The real water will be for you to discover and taste when you go out to see those art works for yourself - and then go on to reveal real gems of your own.