Autumnal re-runs: A trip to New Ravenna
This post ran originally on 8 January 2010 and it recounts a trip I took to New Ravenna Mosaics about a month prior. I ran a post this week about some new stuff New Ravenna's been working on and it reminded me again how impressed I was by my experiences as their guest last year.
Through Flickr
Across the Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis, MD sits the Delmarva Peninsula, so named for the 3 states that divide it. There's the entire of Delaware at the japanese aspect. It's flanked through Maryland to the west and the bottom 70 or so miles of that spit of land make up Virginia's Eastern Shore.
Through Flickr
US 13 runs down the backbone of the Eastern Shore and to force south on it is to depart in the back of the tempo and the hassles inherent in dwelling in the relaxation of the northeastern US. The miles skip wide expanses of fertile fields dotted with pine and o.K.Flatwoods. Ocassional, orderly towns come into sight and there may be a Spartan efficiency to them.
It's clear that for a whole lot of those towns, their satisfactory years are behind them. There's no actual sense of loss it's comfortably obvious although. History runs very deep at the Eastern Shore, and that sort of history leaves a humans with the steely solve that even though the best instances are in the beyond, they will come again.
About two-thirds of the way down the peninsula sits the town of Exmore, VA; and in what was once an Arrow shirt factory, New Ravenna Mosaics and Stone creates some of the most beautiful work in glass and stone available anywhere.
New Ravenna Mosaics and Stone is the largest organization in Northhampton County. The 100 people who arrive at that old shirt manufacturing facility each morning are artisans in each feel of the phrase and their administrative center is an atelier a good deal more than something that could be called a manufacturing facility.
Sara Stanley Baldwin founded New Ravenna in 1991. She started as an artist with a passionate vision to convey splendor to the world via the medium of stone tesserae. That imaginative and prescient still burns as brightly as ever and her enthusiasm, her love, for the medium infuses the whole thing about New Ravenna.
While it is genuine that New Ravenna utilizes an excellent assortment of water jets, tumblers and moist saws; at the cease of the day they invent their art the manner mosaicists continually have. Someone considers a piece of stone, cuts it into the form she needs after which sets it in vicinity. Repeat 10,000 times.
19 years in the past, New Ravenna started out out as a lady with a vision. 19 years later, New Ravenna is one hundred people with a shared imaginative and prescient.
Look through their entire collection on their website and follow New Ravenna's latest developments through Sara Balwin's blog . Oh, and if you ever find yourself in Exmore, VA; stop in for a visit. If you can't make it to Exmore, you can find a bit of New Ravenna's Exmore at distributors far and wide.