Greisinger Museum

In a hole in the ground...in Switzerland in the Canton of Graubünden, Grisons, there is the only museum in the world which is solemnly dedicated to Middle-earth and J.R.R.Tolkien.

the biggest fun for me was to draw a Hobit-hole...but not from imagination...from nature...

On sunday I was visiting the Greisinger museum in Jenins which is truly mindblowing.
It is set in a real hobbit home, a mansion like Bag-End with a real oaken door, a front hall close to the design of Bilbo's home by John Howe, a room with a fire place and a study room.

Behind that the museum opens to a tour through many rooms of which each resembles a certain location from Tolkien's books like the mines of Moria, Edoras, the forest of Fangorn, Minas Tirith, the river Anduin (including the Argonath) and Mordor. The tour ends in the museum's club house which is (as you might guess) called "the Prancing Pony".

The collection is the most complete and encompassing of Tolkienia world wide including over 600 original paintings and drawings, over 3,500 books and uncountable objects connected to Tolkien and his works.

As an artist I mostly enjoyed to be given the opportunity to see the original works of many of my heroes in art real close. The collection contains artwork by Alan Lee, Ted Nasmith, Chris Achilleos, the brothers Hildebrandt, David Wenzel and Donato Giancola  just to name a few...

Among the books to me most impressive was the print of a handwritten and illustrated copy of the "Red Book of Westmarch" of which there do only exist four copies worldwide. Furthermore there are some very rare copies of first editions of the Hobbit, signed by Tolkien.

The collection contains the sculptures made after John Howe's illustrations, "Smaug the Golden" and "Eowyn and the Nazgul" and also some original props from the Peter Jackson films.

To put it shortly: the place is a blast for every Tolkien enthusiast and fan of fantastic fiction.

Official website

 Trailer on Youtube.

And if you want to know what happened to the Green Man, designed after a drawing of John Howe which decorated the main gate of St. Ursanne... well...visit the Greisinger Museum...

Trainstations in the south of Berlin

Two drawings of my favourite trainstations in Berlin:

The first one is the U-train station Dahlem Dorf, which is sited directly next to the open air-museum and ecological farm Domäne Dahlem, where old breeds of farm animals are kept and bred.

The other one is the S-train station Mexikoplatz. One of the few Art Noveau buildings in Berlin.

Visiting the Kupferstichkabinett

Last tuesday me and my fellow illustrator friends Heidi Kull and Miriam Häusler went on an educational excursion to the Kupferstichkabinett, the museum for drawing and prints at the Kulturforum at Potsdamer Platz.

we have been there!

We have been intensively "menzelling" again, as it is already called there, when I bring some friends to examine the original drawings of Adolf Menzel in the study room.

We had a look at the Menzel folders No 155 (portraits in Watercolour, Gouache and Pastells), No 149 (his very late and painterly pencildrawings from 1904/05) and the folder No 260, which contains exquisit figure studies done solemnly with a broad carpenter's pencil on pretty rough textured thick paper.

This study "NG 4/83" (preview from "art-trade.de") is to be found in the Menzel folder No 260.

 

The Vikings are in Berlin!

...and they anchored right across the Government Quarter at Schiffbauerdamm 19!

the "Havhingsten fra Glendalough"(sea stallion of Glendalough) in front of the trainstation Friedrichsstraße and the television tower

Still to be seen and to be visited till September 14th the "Havhingsten fra Glendalough" (Sea Stallion of Glendalough) accompanies the great viking exhibition at Martin Gropius Bau "Die Wikinger"; after the Ai Wei Wei exhibition "Evidence" and the "David Bowie in Berlin"-show to me the third great cultural highlight this year in Berlin.
Next to the largest Viking longboat  "Roskilde 6" (displayed in the ehibition) the "Sea Stallion of Glendalough" is a reconstruction of the second largest Viking boat ever found, the Skuldelev 2.
It is completely handcrafted with axes in the way the original boats were made and built out of oaken wood.
The building of the reconstruction took four years (from 2000 to 2004).
The original boat was built in 1042 close to Dublin in Glendalough.
In 2007 the longboat set out for it's longest voyage from Roskilde to Dublin via the Orkney isles and Scotland and back through the english channel.

Special thanks to Selina Ali and Katrine Volsing for their knowledgable explanation and guidance through the ship!
It was a wonderful experience to smell the tar and wood and feel the (alas..slightly) rocking planques underneath our feet, which left a yearning to learn more about the Viking culture.

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde offers e.G. living archaeology boat trips in originally reconstructed longboats out to the Roskilde fjord.

Here you can see a short video on Spiegel TV about the arrival of the Sea Stallion in Berlin.

Visiting details of the Sea Stallion in Berlin.

old mansion at Lietzensee

I had a funtime today with the local urban sketchers. We went drawing at the Lietzensee.

old mansion next to the hotel Seehof