Tag Archives: history

The Ancient History Of Blinds

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By Thomas Pretty

blinds2Blinds are prevalent throughout the modern world, used in the commercial world extensively and present in many homes. They are a practical and elegant form of window covering that gives the user ultimate control over the light being let into their interior; as such they also provide high levels of privacy. Blinds are available in a range of different styles from horizontal venetians to fabric roman shades and roller blinds that effectively block all light coming into a room. But where have blinds come from? What is the history of this variety of window covering?

Forms of blinds are evident in many civilizations throughout the evolution of the world. It is understandable that the more modern varieties do not resemble these early blinds in form, but in function the similarities are startling. Desert civilisations are believed to have used wetted cloth to cover their windows. Fundamentally these kept out the fierce heat of the desert sun; the reason they were wetted was in order to cool the warm air being passed into the home and to keep the sand out. Essentially this method of window covering acts much like the air conditioning units we use today.

blinds1The use of blinds in desert civilizations was eventually passed onto one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known; Ancient Egypt. As with many items in this civilization reeds were used in manufacture. Reeds were laid in to mats and then hung over windows. These reed mats could be raised and lowered when necessary and resemble the modern roller blinds used today, it is even possible to pick up reed window coverings today, standing testament to practicality of this type of blind.

It was not just the ancient Egyptians however that were using a type of blind for window coverings. As with many inventions attributed to the western world the ancient Chinese can lay claim to some of the earliest blind varieties. In China instead of reeds an equally prevalent natural material was used in the manufacturing of blinds, bamboo. These window covering were controlled in much the same way as their reed counterparts and in many parts of Asia are still used today. Bamboo has also become an increasing popular material in interior design during modern times.

blinds3The Romans also developed a form of window covering that differed somewhat from reed and bamboo varieties. Roman shades, popular today in many homes are constructed using fabric and organised into overlapping slats, today they epitomise Mediterranean styling and are still frequently used in many countries across southern Europe.

This article has only touched upon the history of blinds and has predominantly focused on their development in ancient times. Today this heritage is plain to see with all of the varieties discussed above still available to the buyer today, naturally material and manufacturing processes have evolved with the times but modern variants fundamentally carry out the same purpose as their ancient ancestors.

Thomas Pretty is an expert in the field of interior design and studies the use of blinds in some ancient civilizations.

The hazards of imagining countries

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Nomadic tribes move independently of each other and occasionally come together to interact through trade, war, sport, cultural exchange, intermarriage, murder etc.

In the dense jungles of South America and Africa and Asia, the boundaries formed by geographical features such as ridges and valleys are all it takes to keep two nomadic cultures apart in language and traditions, until they either form non-nomadic civilizations or continue to roam independently of their neighbors. Then there is fate. One tribe may come into contact with, and survive contact with, outsiders and end up with new lifestyles and technology such as outboard motors and clothing, whereas their immediate neighbors may escape detection for decades afterwards.

Tribes evolve into societies and eventually countries. We have seen it in today’s Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and surrounding areas and due to the fact that so many people have been exposed to the Old Testament of the Bible, and therefore have some awareness of nations and ethnic groups of the last two or three thousand years, it is easy to see how more modern politics and assumed differences can evolve into borders drawn on the map.

If just one or two things had happened differently in history, the map of the Middle-East might be totally different, because in all that famous history, recorded in the world’s best selling loosely-historical book, there were only a few hundred or a couple of thousand people involved in most of those old conflicts.

If you have a chance to find a map of the region that is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, a map made in the early or mid 19th century, you will see numerous regions defined by the make-up of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and their leaders of those days.

Today in the United Nations, you will never see little signs naming Tribes of the Turkmens, Buhara, Pamir, Darwaz, Roshan, Shignan, Badakhshan, Kunduz, Khulm. Chitral, Maimana, Herat, Kafiristan, Dir, Kohistan, Svat, Buner, Shinaki, Punjab and more.

But these were names of regions, if not countries, on the maps of the day. Most are now either part of Pakistan or Afghanistan. The people of these regions are not necessarily Afghanis or Pakistanis, but the modern map tells them that’s what they are.

There are seven main ethnic groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and many more obscure groups, some extremely small and hardly known to this day.

And a failure to understand who these people are, who they were, where they came from and where they live now, means that occupying armies really do not have any clear idea who they are defending or who they are trying to kill.

Add the complication of different religions, most of which are opposing or slightly differing views from within the Islamic umbrella, and the complications deepen.

Shift West a few miles and look at Iraq. Like Pakistan, it is a modern country created not very long ago by outsiders. (The British, if you want to name names). Until the start of the current war, it held it’s violence and hate simmering below the surface, united by the common fear of their evil national dictator. But how many of those who voted to approve the invasion of Iraq had even a glimmer of understanding about the basic differences between the various peoples in the region? How many even knew anything about Sunni’s Shi’ites and Kurds, as they stood on the floor of the House and painted a picture of Iraqis cheering for parading American liberators marching triumphantly into Baghdad a few weeks after the Air Force blew it to bits for the good of the people.

Perhaps it is too late to swap the Iraq on the map for numerous ethnic regions, and too late to swap the Pakistan and Afghanistan of today into the little countries and regions that existed before. But on the other hand, perhaps these people can never be unified into countries. The very model of a country may not be applicable to people such as these. They remain tribal and separate, in culture and language.

Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all examples of relatively new countries, each with their own set of problems. Without ever understanding much about the people within, outside military forces jump in to help, and end up killing or displacing thousands and thousands of people either directly or indirectly

Surely a little research would be advisable?

Errol Flynn’s Barnes Period

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By Ajax Bardrick

BARNES` LOST HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION UNCOVERED

A handful of sparkling stardust from the glamour of old Hollywood fell on an obscure corner of South West London this week with the solution of an enduring mystery of the film actor Errol Flynn`s early life in the district.

Flynn was the biggest star in Hollywood in the late 1930s and early 1940s, achieving fame through films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Sea Hawk, which made him the heroic swashbuckling buccaneer of Hollywood`s golden age. However, 10 years before his arrival in Hollywood he had been Leslie Flynn, a wayward 14 year old from the other side of the world in Australia who had shipped over to London with his father dragging him along to the capital on some business that he had to conduct there, wondering what he was to do with the boy who found himself being transported from the exotic surroundings of his childhood years on the shore of Tasmania, with the roar of the sea where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet coming off of the South Pole, to board in a small shambolic boys` private school in the Putney district, which he described as drab, grey and grim looking. It has been known for a number of years since the publication of his autobiography My Wicked Wicked Ways, shortly before his early death from exhaustion in 1959, that the silver screen star had spent a part of his youth in a school in the locality which he called ‘South-West London College’, but its actual location was obscured by his siting it ‘off Putney Common`, with the vague location as ‘somewhere between Putney & Hammersmith.’

The puzzle as to its location has defied writers and historians studying the screen actor`s origins before he tore a blaze across the Hollywood firmament, leading some to speculate as to whether it existed at all as Flynn described it, but it has now been solved by a dusty half-forgotten old trade directory from the mid 1920s stored at the Wandsworth Borough Archive on Lavender Hill during research into the star`s early years. In the frail pages of an obscure small business circular called the ‘Wandsworth Directory 1925’, listed in between ‘Sanitary Engineers’ and ‘Servants` Registry Offices’ under ‘Scholastic’ was found an entry for ‘South West London College (Mr. E.H. Burbidge, Principal), No. 99-101 Castelnau’, confirming the veracity of Flynn`s account and locating the long gone school amidst a line of regency villas on the road leading up on to Hammersmith Bridge.

Although expressing no other feelings in retrospect than the misery of his time at the school which he said were two of the most dismal years of his life, he devoted several pages of his autobiography to provide a carefully drawn portrait of it, describing how its cheerlessness was indicated by window-ledges lined with empty flowerpots and matched by the meagre fare at meal times, and how the boys were crammed into the dormitories for want of space. He also left vivid portraits of the staff such as the Headmaster, Mr. Burbidge: … old, fat and terrifying and glaring at you like a toad; and another teacher who had: sloppy clothes and a kipper-footed gait and spent most of his time stalking the school`s better looking boys (who were in turn anxious to stay one step ahead of him) with an ominous intent and a lecherous smile, who would leave the school`s employment under a cloud after having shown an unhealthy interest in the boys in the school`s cricket team for reasons other than cricket. Flynn further described parading from Barnes across the bleak wasteland of Barnes Common into Putney and through its streets as the boys went off to church each Sunday in a 2 by 2 column, creating a colourful sight in their uniforms of striped trousers and blazer, with straw boaters for the Summer months being replaced with top hats in the Winter; and also the subsequent loneliness that he experienced in a strange place far from home when finding himself discarded by his parents and left in the school alone with all of the other boys having departed for the holidays, and he found himself with nothing to do but wander around its empty class-rooms; and how this abandonment and the resentment that it caused would mark his character in his future passage through the world.

He left the school after 2 years in 1925, and headed back to Australia and a subsequent meteoric future that awaited him of fame and wealth at the summit of Hollywood before he would burn out in a self-destructive pursuance of sensual excess; but the building, which today makes two private houses, that encompassed South West London College remains with its own memory of its role in the life of one of cinema`s icons.

Ajax Bardrick,
London, 14.Oct.2008

The Power of Jade

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By Raymond J G Wells

Jade is a thoroughly intriguing stone! For centuries it has preoccupied peoples of all races and cultures and from prehistoric times until today it has been held in great reverence for practical, aesthetic, mythological and commercial reasons.

It was mined and carved by the earliest civilizations such as the Maoris of New Zealand, the ancient Aztecs, the Mayans and the Chinese. As far back as the 10th century the Turks believed it helped to ensure victory in battle.

However, although Jade is a significant stone in many areas of the world, it has been the Chinese who over long centuries have perfected the craftsmanship of this fascinating precious living stone. Indeed, the preoccupation of the Chinese with Jade dates back to the Neolithic period during which items made of jade were buried with the dead. The Neolithic Chinese believed that the stone had the power to preserve the dead body.
Yu, a Chinese character with a connotation of ‘jewel’ or ‘treasure’, is the Chinese equivalent for ‘Jade’ in English. To the Chinese, however, Yu does not refer to one specific substance but to a wide range of minerals that are usually distinguished by elements of hardness, strength and translucence. As such, although technically the term ‘jade’ refers only to the two materials jadeite and nephrite, many Chinese would consider carvings made from jade simulants as equal and precious parts of a jade collection.

Jade simulants are natural gem minerals, glass or plastic substitutes that appear to have some of the visual characteristics as jade but lack jade’s unique optical, physical and chemical properties, and include minerals such as aventurine, jasper, cornelian and rose quartz.
Green is the most popular jade color and the most prized jade is the “Imperial” or “Old Mine Jade”. Jade dealers only employ the term “Imperial” for the most translucent and richest color of emerald green. The term “Old Mine Jade” refers to the first mining site in the Kachin Hills of Myanmar, which has long since been exhausted.
What is Good Jade?

Judging what is good jade can be a subjective affair. A lot of experience is required. Every collector has different taste and different ideas of what to look for in a piece of jade, but there are some basic guidelines to follow.

Jade is translucent and not transparent like glass. Opacity in fact lowers its quality. Cracks and the presence of impurities further reduce its value. However the beauty of a piece of jade will be enhanced if there is a small flaw somewhere, just as, it is said, a gentleman with a little fault is more interesting than one without.

The essential value of jade is its beauty which ultimately depends on factors such as color and tone; shape, size and dimension; translucency and clarity, polish, texture and finish. No one piece of jade is ever the same as another, it has a quality character and hue of its own.

The Power of Jade

Jade is the second most important material after bronze in the history of Chinese culture, and the belief in its magical powers is very evident in Chinese mythology, religion, philosophy, folklore and social life.

Protection
It is believed that jade can protect one from evil and bring good luck. People have been said to escape accidents because they had a piece of jade on them. In some these cases, the jade piece broke, leaving the person unharmed.

Healing
Jade is frequently used in Chinese alchemy and medicine. The Chinese believe jade has the ability to confer immortality, eradicate shortness of breath and thirst, as well as improve the health of the heart, kidneys, lungs and throat. Some people believe that scars on the face and body can be removed if constantly rubbed with a piece of white jade.

Comforter to the Dead
Jade articles have been used by both the living and the dead. “The living wear jade as a symbol of their moral integrity, and jade accompanies the deceased to comfort their souls.” Sacrificial utensils made of jade were used for offerings to ancestors and in ceremonial respect to the gods of heaven and earth.

Jewelry
Jade is a favorite material used for jewelry such as necklaces, rings, earrings, bracelets, combs and hairpins, and is also often set in walking sticks, caps and sashes.

Practical use
Jade has also been used to make practical items like brush holders, water cups, armrests and brush washers.

Symbol of Nobility
Jade was frequently worn by the nobility as a sign of their office and authority. In early times, jade axes and spades were carried by the nobility, and these later evolved into Gui – an elongated jade tablet. The emperor would also dispatch an official with a jade “tablet of authority” to proclaim the task assigned to him.

There you have it. A round-up of the remarkable Jade which the Chinese believe not only dispels illness but brings good fortune and wards off evil. Isn’t it about time you bought yourself some Jade!

Copyright 2000 Raymond Wells

Raymond Wells is a British born economist and writer currently living and working in Malaysia. He has numerous writing credits in both print and electronic magazines. Among the former are articles in Day and Night, Trailfinder, Southern Scribe, Writer’s Forum, International Living, Changi, Far East Traveler and Home and Country. He has written for e-zines such as Tempo, Worldwide Freelance Writer, Zinos, Writers Mirror, BootsnAllcom and now for the-vu.