There is an essential difference between a labyrinth and a maze. Even good dictionaries ignore the difference but historians and fans of such intricately woven webs of pathways will be quite passionate about the definitions. Here you have it in a nutshell.
Maze: "With a history stretching back to the late Middle Ages, puzzle mazes, like labyrinths,
were simple at first, then underwent periods of rapid development. Developed initially
from medieval labyrinth designs, the earliest mazes in the gardens and palaces of
Europe were designed by rearranging the walls of a labyrinth to create a pathway
with choices; often including a number of dead-ends."
Labyrinth: "Popular consensus also indicates that labyrinths have one pathway that leads inexorably
from the entrance to the goal, albeit often by the most complex and winding of routes.
These unicursal designs have been known as labyrinths for thousands of years, and
to qualify as a labyrinth, a design should have but one path.
Below is the famous Labyrinth of Ravenna - try it, you won't get lost but come out where you started!
One could say that LIFE is most probably not so much a labyrinth but a very extended maze
through which we wander and attempt to find the best route to take.
Although most certainly not the shortest or the sweetest, the most
rewarding one will be the one opening up new horizons and adventures,
acquiring friends and wisdom. Dead-ends of mazes are no dead-ends for me
- they were choices of paths and directions, turning into chances to
pick up new experiences on the way there and back, looking at the other
side of what we think we already know!
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| Gillian Hill: Felted and Embroidered Collar |
I always loved wandering through unfamiliar towns and cities, listening
to the new sounds, the language, the bird songs, looking at the gardens,
the houses, the people - with interest and curiosity. On one of those
walks through the town of Clitheroe (UK) I chanced upon a house with a
sign in the window, that this bookstore was closing down.
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| Gillian Hill: Felted and Embroidered Collar |
I always loved wandering through unfamiliar towns and cities, listening to the new sounds, the language, the bird songs, looking at the gardens, the houses, the people - with interest and curiosity. On one of those walks through the town of Clitheroe (UK) I chanced upon a house with a sign in the window, that this bookstore was closing down. While I was standing there a lady (Gillian Hill) arrived and smilingly invited me in. I gladly followed and this truly must have been a short stretch of a maze turning into a labyrinth: I just knew I had been looking for a place like that and had finally found it.
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| Gillian Hill: Felted and Embroidered Collar |
Please read the article in the
Burnley Express, relating the story of Gordon and Gillian Hill:
Gordon and Gillian Hill had run a bookstore, an "Aladdin's cave of rare and elusive volumes". But not only that! The upstaires textile art gallery held further treasures - truly a dreamlike combination of literature and textile crafts. Their life history is a-maze-ing, the door to one career closing, another opening, making decisions along the way, based on their success as booksellers and textile craft work.
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| Gillian Hill: Felted and Embroidered Collar |
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I was lucky to have met that lovely couple before
they closed their shop, and I wished I could have invested heavily in
all of their treasures just to be able to look at them every day. I
bought a few books and the above really beautiful felted and embroidered
collar made by Gillian Hill. If you are interested in purchasing it,
please contact me. The proceeds will go to charity:
Spinal Research Center. And please don't forget to enroll in
Wings for Life World Run on 4 May, 2014 - wherever you are!
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| Gillian Hill - Felted and Embroidered Collar |
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