Monthly Archives for March 2009

Stonehenge Under Glass

terrarium-1

photo and mini-replica from dewgardencrafts on Etsy, with permission

It’s like a little herd of Stonehenge on a hill! You can almost imagine tiny mysterious druids that only come out when you’re not around and put up megaliths. Awesome! This item threatens the Taipei Stonehenge sculpture‘s claim to the Cutest Stonehenge title.

terrarium-23The terrarium in the photo above, sadly, has been sold. The one to the left, however, is still for sale on Etsy, “the place to buy and sell things handmade”, as are others, including the less poetic but intriguingly-named Butt Crack Terrarium . . . Oops! We’re too easily distracted. Let’s stick with Stonehenge replicas and let others blog the butt cracks!

These mossy models are in some ways preferable to many of the more complete and accurate small replicas. The moss implies the charm of the landscape, the essential Stonehenge factor so often overlooked by replica makers, especially those on the left side of the Atlantic. As much as it has been co-opted by astronomers, Stonehenge wasn’t just about the sky–at least that’s our opinion, if we’re allowed one.

And now we have some scoring to do. Score: 6 druids. It may not be accurate, but gosh darn it, we like it, and we can do whatever we want. It’s our blog!

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PeopleHenge

Spring is coming. Sunny days and green fields are perfect for forming trilithons of people–circles of them, preferably. (Hint: use skinny people for lintels!) Greens at universities are perfect for this kind of nonsense. We’d love to post a photo of you and your friends doing a live henge. Go!

MagicHenge, the Gathering

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photo by David Morgan-Mar, aka dmmaus

We know– a bunch of you are saying, “OMG, lame!” But the connections between Wizards of the Coast, makers of the game Magic: the Gathering, and Stonehenge are real, if subtle. A post coming up in a few days will point up an aspect of that.

A henge of Magic card boxes appealed to us because games like Magic feed off the mystique of icons like Stonehenge. What, in a sense, has more real mana than the lurking stone beast of Salisbury Plain? There is a hopeful feeling here, as if this were an effort to bring to life the fantasies depicted on the cards!

This is not the first time we have mentioned and posted photos from the Thinghenge pool on Flickr. We are grateful to Mr. Morgan-Mar, the visionary behind its creation. It is not Flickr’s only such pool, and we will tell you what the other is when we remember it ourselves . . .

Score? We can only give this 4½ druids as a Stonehenge replica but there is a lot of blue mana in those lintels and uprights!

Stonehenge in Treave, Cornwall

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photo by Alan S., with permission

This height-challenged Stonehenge replica is one of several replicas of British megalithic antiquities built by a rather eccentric woman who ran the local holiday cottages in Treave.  What a relief to learn that she did not add any Easter Island heads! She wanted to make the circle larger, but couldn’t get planning permissions. Fortunately, in Wiltshire the original Stonehenge was grandfathered in.

The woman who built this circle was a dowser but when the Cornish Earth Mysteries Group visited in 2000, we’re told they got very bad vibes out of it. There’s not much to it—a ring with a few lintels. Score: 5½, almost a 6. Cornwall is full of real megaliths. What inspires people with the urge to henge? We at Clonehenge hope they don’t find the cure too soon!

[more photos of this replica can be seen here]

Chocolate Henge and the Lizard People, Just as We Suspected!

sacrfice

henge and photos by Jeremy Dennis, with permission

Another foodhenge–some chocolate to fortify you for the work week to come. This one was created by Jeremy Dennis–not one you know, but the female cartoonist in the U.K. She certainly seems to have a twisted enough sensibility to belong on Clonehenge!

chocohengeShe calls the above photo a bloody sacrifice (as in the PeepHenge photo* we mentioned before). It is clear to the practised eye, however, that we’re looking at a healing, in keeping with the new thought about Stonehenge’s purpose as a sort of lithic Lourdes.

skateboardsProof of this appears in the photo on the left, in which we see the subject from the slab in the first photo skateboarding happily around the left-hand caramel coconut sweet. Tellingly, there is no blood on the altar stone. These rasta druid skater dinos aren’t killers. They just want to work on their ollies and add to their tricktionaries!

Those who want to know more about this henge can see it here. As for scoring, well, we must say there’s something brilliant about this while also a little discomfiting, but that’s not always a bad thing in art. Score: 6½ druids. Skate on, dudes!

* see the gruesome last photo on this page. Viewer discretion is advised!

World Park Stonehenge, Beijing

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photo by Apple de la Vega, with permission

No, we haven’t changed our name to Girls N Trilithons, (or I Can Haz Stonehenge, or F*** You, Henges, or Replica Overload). Once in a while, something more universally appealing than a Stonehenge replica is bound to find its way into a picture we post. We can relate to the enthusiasm these girls show. Another replica in China–it’s exciting!

This one is at the World Park in Beijing, which is much like the Window of the World Park in Shenzhen, except the Stonehenge in Beijing isn’t quite as good.

world-park-stonehengeThe exciting thing is that you can see the Eiffel Tower behind it. The stones, however, do not have the lichen-like patina we were so impressed with in Shenzhen, and they are squarish. As usual in these cases, no attempt at bluestones or other details of the original. Score: 7 druids. We’re starting to think we should organise Stonehenge tours of Asia!

second photo by Merritt Wilson, with permission

Earthwood Trilithon, West Chazy, New York

autumn-trilithon

photos from Rob Roy of the Earthwood Building School, by permission

In accordance with Henginess Rule number 4, we are once more posting a simple trilithon. But what an illustrious group of megalithic engineers contributed to its making! We’ve mentioned Pavel Pavel here before, but others prominent in the megalith moving movement were present also. [See this link].

trilithon-buildingThe uprights had been erected and deeply anchored in previous years, so at the International Megalithic Conference in August 2007, the job was to top them with the lintel. Two different methods were used in an effort to compare them, as is described on the page linked above. This is how to build your own ancient wonder!

snow-trilithonThe result is outstanding. What a great thing to have in one’s garden! We might wish the stones were more naturally-shaped so that it resembled Stonehenge more and a torii gate less. But the torii gate’s symbolism of passing from the sacred into the profane or vice versa is not irrelevant to the psychological power of the trilithon.

Score: 5½ druids. Not a Stonehenge replica in full, but a nice gesture to the original builders!

Anyone who would like to read a very informative article by Rob Roy on the process of this trilithon’s building, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will send it to you.

Build Your Own Ancient Wonder (Or Can You?)

ancient-wonder

photo from a promotional website

A busy evening and a short post. We walked into a bookstore recently and saw this on a shelf. After a wry laugh, we picked it up and looked it over. Judging from the pictures, we have come to the conclusion that this is a rewrap of the little 7-druid kit we posted back on November 20, 2008. The boost in price is due to the inclusion of a beautifully illustrated book and the packaging for kids.  (Beware: we’re pretty sure, although not certain, that the book attributes the building of Stonehenge to druids. Aaaaargh!)

Anyway, our message to you is not to fall for the different-looking packaging. If it’s just the Stonehenge model you want, you can get it for less money by buying the smaller item. Score: No change in druids for the original model–still 7. Unfortunately the lovely art is balanced out by the tiresome assertions of druid-building. Don’t people know that’s like saying the Romans built the pyramids?!

We won’t even go into the question of whether anyone today can actually build an ancient anything . . . *sigh*

Butterhenge, Chicago

butterhenge

installation and photo by David Prince, with permission

Some days you just feel like a foodhenge! Luckily we’ve run across a few good ones lately. Butterhenges are not an uncommon form, what with the rectangular prism shapes that butter comes in, and its presence in most homes, including those where alcohol is also present. But this is no ordinary butterhenge, standing in the grasses of a Chicago park!

The artist, David Prince, sent an explanation that is too long to quote in its entirety, but he says the sculptural work tries to relate the experiences of daily life to the larger histories of prehistoric, geologic, and cosmic time. “I’m also interested in exploring time as something that can appear linear, cyclical, and disjointed. . .Butterhenge is a humorous investigation into these scales of time.”  He goes on to say, “I chose Stonehenge because of its relationship to butter in shape, and also its history as an archeological artifact, and its longer history as a part of a geologic process. In relating these two objects the results are comical, but hopefully lead to questions about what it means to pass through a human life on a human scale , and to question what it means for humans to fit into a larger scope of history.”

Fair enough. Probably that’s what a lot of these replicas are hinting at, although most builders never put it that way, even to themselves. It’s what makes this Clonehenge idea funny.  Score: 6½ druids. The words and the grass swayed us!

Challenge to readers: We would love to see a butter Stonehenge replica in which the butter was sculpted into Stonehenge-like shapes. See your henge featured on the prestigious Clonehenge blog! 😉