Tag Archives for Jeremy Deller

Stonehenge Cake at Stonehenge! Centenary Day Has Arrived!

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From @EH_Stonehenge on Twitter:
“No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, there are two monuments at Stonehenge today. One is a giant cake fit for 2,500 hungry guests!

Look at this! (And yes, we include the obvious rain in that demand.) Look at the lichen on those lintels! Look at the shapes of those stones, including the little bumps and creases! The three-lintel stretch and Stone #56! This has to be the most accurate Stonehenge cake ever (and we’ve heard it includes spiced apple and blackberry cream, or similar. We will look into this and report back with corrections to that crucial information). And there it is, with Stonehenge in the background! *sigh* Perfection.

Not far away, at the Visitor Centre, Jeremy Deller’s inflatable bouncy Stonehenge is inflated and ready for bouncing. What a day for Stonehenge and English Heritage, yes, but more importantly, what a day for Stonehenge replicas! How we wish we were there, gentle readers.

Reason for the celebration? On this day, 100 years ago, Cecil and Mary Chubb gifted Stonehenge to the nation. It hasn’t been perfect. There is reason to doubt, as Mr. Tim Daw so eloquently makes the case. And the tunnel threat could soon ruin some important landscape around it, as prominent archaeologist and Stonehenge expert Michael Parker Pearson points out.

Still, we are a humble blog about Stonehenge replicas, sitting safely in the warm and dry an ocean away from the festivities and for now we are enjoying the clonehenges associated with this celebration! Congratulations to all, including everyone at English Heritage, and may Stonehenge continue to reign in the hearts and minds of people around the world!

(And inspire them to build more and better models of it!)

Kiss the stones for us!

“I can recognise every stone” A Stonehenge Expert Visits a Replica!

This is too good not to share. Watch and listen as Mike Pitts, archaeologist and self-proclaimed Stonehenge geek, has a look around Sacrilege, the inflatable bouncy Stonehenge, with its maker, artist Jeremy Deller. Mike Pitts recognises and discusses individual stones he knows from Stonehenge itself while enjoying his first-ever experience on a bouncy castle. Meanwhile children are bouncing and shouting all around them. We found this video utterly delightful!

You know you have made a top-notch Stonehenge replica when Mike Pitts goes out of his way to visit it and takes time to admire and point out characteristics he recognises from the original stones. Take note, hengers.

Bouncy Stonehenge: Nothing Less Than the Culmination of All of Human Endeavor!

Screen shot from this BBC video . Don’t not watch it!

All of our faithful readers know that we are quiet and moderate in speech. We avoid hyperbole even if it takes the strength of ten thousand atom bombs, because we know that hyperbole is the greatest threat the universe faces. So when we say that this bouncy castle Stonehenge built by Jeremy Deller is the ultimate culmination of the entire history of human civilisation, nay, of everything that has happened since the Big Bang, you know you can believe what we say and repeat it without fear of embarrassment.

A bouncy inflatable Stonehenge.  We have been calling for an inflatable Stonehenge since at least our second (or was it third?) Spinal Tap post, in October of 2009, and for a bouncy Stonehenge since the Irish bouncy dolmen post, in July of 2011. And it appears that the universe, or perhaps Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, was listening!

One man in the video is asked. “Is it art?’ and answers, “For me–aye.  It’s as good as it gets, isn’t it?” Another fellow says he would like one in his backyard and the BBC presenter asks, “You would like an inflatable Stonehenge in your backyard?” and the answer is, “Yes, I would. Yes. Who wouldn’t?” (Italics are ours.)

Those two men may never have read the Clonehenge blog, but they are honorary friends of Clonehenge and would be given full member privileges if they ever visited the Clonehenge Private Club and (mini) Golf Course. They understand true greatness when they see it. No wonder the world is going to end in 2012. Mankind can reach no greater height than this!

We are not told in this video where this Stonehenge is right now [we are now told it is Glasgow, which leaves more questions, like—why?], but apparently it will be traveling around the island of Great Britain during the Olympics. Happy to know that at least one interesting thing will be happening there in 2012! What a shame we can’t add this to our list of 72 Large Permanent Replicas, but that would require quite a lot of puncture repair kits!

Our hope is that eventually many of these bouncy Stonehenges will be made and placed in prominent places in cities, and backyards, around the world. Let’s hope they keep it to Stonehenge, though. No one wants a bouncy Rosslyn Chapel or a bouncy Angkor Watt, do we? ….

…. Or do we?! Hmmm. Taking comments on that.

At any rate, it is clear now that this is what English Heritage should have at the Visitor Centre, with smaller ones available in the gift shop. As to score, well, it seems obvious that out of a possible score of ten druids, this one goes to eleven. It’s one louder!

P.S.: Our thanks to the Mike Pitts Digging Deeper blog for giving us a mention. He says “Good places to start to see some of these are at Wikipedia and – best of all – Clonehenge.” We wish we were humble enough to say he is wrong.

And so until next time, Clonehengians, happy henging!