I’m becoming increasingly interested in Neolithic stone circles and burial chambers. I don’t know why but I find something about them compelling and mysterious. This summer I visited a number of recumbent stone circles in Aberdeenshire, and the burial sites of Newgrange, Knowth and Tara in Ireland. These are dated about 3200BC. There are exquisite spiral, concentric circle and cup motifs engraved into the stones encircling these sites. There is no definite explanation for this Neolithic art, but I find it bewitching that my forebears were drawing concentric circles long ago and I’m doing so in 2023.
Newgrange Neolithic Burial Site
I loved Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba Museum in Cologne when I visited in 2019. Zumthor used Petersen Bricks which are handmade in Denmark. Soon after, I was fortunate to hear Peter Zinck of Petersen Bricks discuss them at a conference on ‘Knowledge in Making’ at the V&A Museum. This summer, I arranged to meet Peter Zinck at the Petersen showroom/studio in Copenhagen to see these beautiful bricks and learn more about their making. They remind me of the early Persian bricks I saw in Iran in 2018 and Peter replied that these ancient ones had been an inspiration.