Still looking at ancient artifacts in the Royal Ontario Museum. Doesn't this look like metal? It's ceramic, made in two moulds (British spelling, in Canada) and then the two halves were stuck together. I did manage to get the ID info, which says this was made in Egypt between 150 BCE and 50 CE.
So many different techniques, all in use so long ago. These two have some very perfect surface-design circles. I'm not thinking even a person with a lot of experience and a very steady hand can hand-draw one perfect circle after another. If a pot is centered on a horizontal wheel, a person with a steady hand and a brush (full of wet iron oxide, perhaps) can spin the wheel (and hence the pot) and draw circles.
I have no evidence that this is what they did here, but I suspect it is. Over and over and over and over.....
Something much less elaborate than we've been looking at. I like the shape.
Yet another technique. Paint a pot all over with a dark slip (slip is clay so wet it is liquid). Let the dark slip dry. Perhaps burnish the black slip with a smooth stone? Then scratch through the dark slip to expose a paler body underneath......
Glass. The iridescence is the result of decay from humidity variations and acidic soils, when glass is buried for a long time.
Always boggled by the amount and variety of very fragile ancient artifacts that survive.
Something much newer. First nations art -- bead work. "Probably a form pre-dating European contact." "Typical of Anishinaabe openwork designs." "Collected around 1890."
Fancy stone decorating a staircase.
From the Pacific northwest. So tall they live in the center of a staircase. Which is really cool, because you can see them from different heights and different angles. These are here with the permission of those whose ancestors made them. Taking their rightful place in the collection of art belonging to their modern-day nation.
I wonder about the meaning of the rectangular marks down the center of the face.
More things from recent-ish times. Silver. Designed by Johan Rohde, about 1920. Made by Georg Jensen workshops.
Plastic tote bag designed by Peter Max.
The barely-legible ID info in the background says these are made from urea thiourea formaldehyde. I wondered if this is Bakelite. I think it's not, but similar.
The natural history parts of the museum were full of screaming children.
We paid extra to see a special exhibit on blue whales. Hardly any screaming children down there.
Shame on us. Shame, shame, shame. We prance around, patting ourselves on our backs, telling each other that we are the pinnacle of creation, when the truth is that we are the nemesis of creation.
Blue whales died, perhaps because of climate change?, when the water they inhabited suddenly froze. Some skeletons ended up on shore, where they could be conserved. I believe this is one of them.
We are looking at it nearly head on. The big rounded bones are jaw bones (which do not meet in the middle). Blue whales are really very big.
There was discussion of what it the biggest animal ever. It depends on how you measure. The longest? The tallest? The heaviest? These models are visible in the lower right quadrant above. A blue whale (so why is it brown, I wonder), and what I believe is the largest dino we currently know. The dino is taller, but not as heavy as the whale. (Thinking "tall" is really not a salient characteristic of a marine animal.........)
And the longest is a worm.
Really, really, REALLY wish scientists, and those who report science, would be more cautious with their language. Why not say "The longest animal that ever lived, as far as we know in 2017."???? Then, when someone finds a bigger one, you didn't turn yourself into a liar.....................
(Especially when the critter in question is a worm! Not very many fossilized worms exist, and to find a complete worm fossil, longer than 180 feet? That seems vanishingly unlikely to me. But the fact that we have found no such fossil does not Not NOT ***NOT*** indicate [let alone prove!!!!!!!!!!!] that there never was one........................ Argh.)
There was lots of interesting info about blue whales. Their hearts are about the size of a Smart car. We got to listen to some of the sounds they deliberately produce. I'm glad we saw the exhibit, and sorry those whales died.
Back in the hotel. Near the bank of elevators closest to our room was this bunch of pay phones. I don't know when I'd last seen a pay phone before this, and to see a whole bunch together? A really long time. So many things going out of use in our lifetimes..................
Going out in search of dinner. Flowers along the street.
I kept thinking we were in Chicago. Chicago is a big city. We get there by train. There are lots of flowers planted along the streets in places where tourists go. There is a very big lake all along one side of the city.
To add to my confusion, on Instagram I follow a bunch of people who sketch. The Urban Sketchers hold a large get-together-with-classes every year, and in 2017, the big international get-together was ... in Chicago. While we were in Toronto. So I was seeing tons of sketches of Chicago while we were in Toronto.......... (It was the first time the big sketchy conference was in a place I knew. I loved seeing familiar Chicago things through the eye and pens/paints of artists I admire.)
We happened by the dog park/fountain again. All the dogs inside the lowest level are pugs.
This does not look like Chicago. No needle tower in Chicago. (That is the train station in the lower left.)
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