Mary B
@beesincampanula.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1.7K following 670 posts
I should have been a pair of ragged claws… Reads 📚Writes 📚Haunts museums, art galleries, ancient sites, woodland and marshes. #amquerying
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beesincampanula.bsky.social
If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor,
What a bonfire my letters would make.
Spike Milligan
A path in a birch wood strewn with autumn leaves
Reposted by Mary B
drnwillburger.bsky.social
....featuring this motif beyond their practical role as garment fasteners.

Found in Rottweil, dating 2nd/3rd century AD

On display at Dominikanermuseum Rottweil.
🧵2/2
Reposted by Mary B
drnwillburger.bsky.social
A Roman fibula shaped like a panther with a human rider on its back, crafted in bronze with colorful enamel inlay.
Panthers were linked to the god Dionysus/Bacchus, often depicted as his favored mounts, suggesting a symbolic or protective function for fibulae ...🧵1/2

📷 me

🏺 #archaeology
Roman bronze fibula shaped like a panther with a human rider on its back. The panther’s body features small enamel inlays, and the piece rests on display in a museum case.
Reposted by Mary B
hookland.bsky.social
Goodnight from Edgar Bord, looking forward to committing some serious sin ahead of tomorrow’s tide-washing mass. Goodnight from those squatting Coreham’s derelict Roxy Cinema, unaware in sleep of the tuts and swooping torch beam of its phantom usherette. Goodnight from Hookland.
Reposted by Mary B
hookland.bsky.social
If any publisher wants to publish this experiment light novel …
tomsbrown.bsky.social
In case people need something to look forward to, I have the honour of collaborating with @hookland.bsky.social on a light novel. Initial discussions began in a necropolis and then moved onto a pub. Will begin in earnest early 2026.
Creature formed of woven willow and hagstones. Fearful in appearance. Pencil drawing with some tones.
Reposted by Mary B
hookland.bsky.social
The year withers. Dead paths across the ghost soil are revealed. Colder magics rise. Our boots are muddied, we begin to breath like dragons. Our witcheries turn with the season and our ancestors talk a little louder. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky
Reposted by Mary B
richardmortimer.bsky.social
The Daily Jitka Hanzlova, The Albertina, Vienna
Reposted by Mary B
jillwhitelock.bsky.social
Autumn garden. Rudbeckia, Sun spurge, Viola ‘Honeybee’, Feverfew from @theul.bsky.social, Geranium, Mexican fleabane. #SixOnSaturday
Montage showing close-ups of Rudbeckia, Sun spurge, Viola ‘Honeybee’, Feverfew, a pink Geranium and Mexican fleabane.
Reposted by Mary B
bwallower.bsky.social
#CastleSaturday
15th C Aragonese Castle of Otranto: also title of 1st ever Gothic novel.

Horace Walpole's 1764 story played on medievalism + terror, generating a lasting tide of ghosts + ghouls.

He chose name as it was 'well sounding', not even aware of real castle on Puglian coast till 1786.
View of stone built 15th C Castle of Otranto with bridge leading over deep moat to gateway in wall. Huge round towers either side of bridge have bases slanting outwards into moat. Two round towers of Castle of Otranto, with bases sloping slightly outwards into moat. Only a few horizontal slit windows/openings penetrate the very solid stone walls.
Reposted by Mary B
paintingsoflondon.bsky.social
'Nocturne: Grey and Gold, Westminster Bridge' (1874) by James McNeill Whistler

(The Burrell Collection)
Reposted by Mary B
phewtus.bsky.social
Happy #PostboxSaturday from Kensington.
Reposted by Mary B
womensartbluesky.bsky.social
Tamara de Lempicka,
Blue Woman with a Guitar, 1929
Polish painter who created her work in an Art Deco style #womensart
Stylised painting of a white woman in a soft blue dress holding a round stringed instrument with a long neck on her lap and holding it as if playing
Reposted by Mary B
21rosa.bsky.social
""My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent"."

'A Case of Identity' in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"
(1892)
🎨 Edward Bawden (1984)
#BookWormSat
B&w linocut of Holmes (looking away from the viewer) and Watson in his bowler hat, staring straight at us
Reposted by Mary B
theghostmonk.bsky.social
OK, come on. How can you resist a book called 'Things With Claws'? 1961 Ballantine paperback anthology with a cover by the incomparable Richard Powers.
#BookWormSat #vintagepaperback #vintagepaperback
Reposted by Mary B
theghostmonk.bsky.social
It's extraordinary to think such a prescient story was written by such an author more than a century ago.
Reposted by Mary B
alisonfisk.bsky.social
Marvellous Minoan clay vessels made by creative potters on the island of Crete during the Aegean Bronze Age around 3,500 years ago! 🤩

Heraklion Archaeological Museum 📷 by me

#Archaeology
From the Aegean Bronze Age, Minoan clay vessels with black handpainted decoration.on a pale biscuity-coloured slip

Top left - clay flask decorated in Minoan ‘Marine Style’’ with an octopus with tentacles writhing around the body of the vase. Additional motifs such as seaweed and rocks represent the seabed. From Palaikastro, 1500-1450 BC

Top right - clay rhyton in the shape of a bull’s head. A rhyton is a type of pouring vessel used for filling cups or making liquid offerings. There is a pouring hole at the bull’s mouth. From Knossos Little Palace, 1450-1375 BC

Bottom left - Nautilus vessel - clay rhyton depicting the seabed with nautili, corals and seaweed. From Phaistos Palace, 1500-1450 BC

Bottom right - Basket shaped rhyton decorated with double-axe motif. There is a small pouring hole in one of the bottom corners. From Pseira, 1500-1450 BC
Reposted by Mary B
shoebillmansion.bsky.social
'He felt the words bubbling up from that hidden place, deep within, propelled by the accumulated pressure of enforced concealment... He realised with a thrill that the telling had finally arrived'

Jeremy Dyson, 'All in the telling' in: Never Trust A Rabbit
#BookWormSat
#ShortStories
Giant magnetic scrabble with wooden letter tiles, temporary public-art game on a wall in The Gate, Newcastle, April 2019. Someone has spelled out the words 'WE RIOT', with the V changed to a W using a black marker pen.
Reposted by Mary B
racheldeering.bsky.social
‘Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!’ ~
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings. #BookWormSat #Gothtober
🖼️ Rackham
An illustration by Arthur Rackham for Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart". It depicts the climax of the story, showing the narrator's confession to the murder of an old man. 
A frantic man, the narrator, is seen in the centre, looking terrified and clutching his head. He is standing on a floor with loose planks. 
Three police officers are standing around him. One of them holds a piece of a ladder or a chair. 
Beneath the floorboards, a dismembered body is visible. 
The narrator's expression and posture convey his distress as he believes he can hear the beating heart of the dead man, which ultimately leads him to confess his crime.
Reposted by Mary B
theotheralice.bsky.social
‘I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.’

📚Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of L.D.
🖼️ Boris Grigoriev

#BookWormSat #ShortStories
Portrait of Anna Akhmatova. She’s wearing a dark coat, red gloves, and glasses. She’s looking defiantly at the viewer.
Reposted by Mary B
mccartneyjoe.bsky.social
As if from an infinite distance, she heard the murmur of voices: “Harps a tanner.” “Heads a bob.” “For Christ's sake, keep back there, and give a fella a chance to toss the coins.” ~ The Star-Jazzer, published in The Green Crow (1958), Seán O'Casey.
#BookWormSat
Hardback cover for O'Casey's 'The Green Crow', plus contents page detail.
Reposted by Mary B
bookwormsat.bsky.social
‘How dare you, I repeat, In disregard of all decency, call me a goose?‘ ~ Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat and Other Short Stories.

@racheldeering.bsky.social here for the rest of a short story #BookWormSat
White goose portrait, head and shoulders, wearing a white shirt, navy blue cravat, turquoise waistcoat and red jacket, against a background of teal wallpaper with olive green drapery at the top, painting.
Reposted by Mary B
ghobubo.bsky.social
"A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray, and 4 times out of 5, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise."
What Stumped the Blue Jays
Mark Twain
#BookWormSat (short story)
Reposted by Mary B
theghostmonk.bsky.social
For #BookWormSat, here's a shelfie of vintage paperback and 1930s anthologies of short stories; most of which, of course, come under the ghost, strange, weird and creepy categories.
Most of them stumbled upon by luck, a few sought out. The 30s omnibuses have great charm and hide a few scarce nuggets
Reposted by Mary B
bookwormsat.bsky.social
'See! Sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws of the tender wolf.'
-Angela Carter

@signemaene.com welcomes you to #BookWormSat 's celebration of the short story! :-)

🎨Lucy Campbell
Artwork of a girl with long black hair embracing a wolf. Trees in the background. Blue, white colours.
Reposted by Mary B
signemaene.com
'The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.'
-Charlotte Perkins Gilman

🎨John White Alexander
#BookWormSat
Painting of a woman in a yellow dress standing in small rays of sunshine.