I was searching through a pile of folders the other day, looking for something (which I didn’t find). But I came across these 2 drawings that John Renbourn sent me years ago (along with a book about Rumi). I’d forgotten all about them. The letter that came with them is in his usual inimitable style.
John went to art college before turning to music. He would often scribble sketches and cartoons on scraps of paper (including my notebooks) or draw little illustrations on postcards.
This was his version of the castello Barge we stayed in one time in Italy.
And this is a photo of the actual castello.
And John working at the table in the Castello's dining room.
Excerpt from Every Shade of Blue the memoir of our travels across Europe and the USA
We are in the dining-room of the castello in Barge, in the Piedmont area of northern Italy. There is a long wooden table in this room and I am sitting at one end and John is at the other. The sound of the river drifts in the open window and faint sounds of birds and the puffing and grunting of Il Legenda at work, composing ...
Well, in this very grand dining-room of the castello where we are staying, apart from the long table and the silky velvet-covered old chairs, there is a carved wooden dresser and other chairs, more ornate and less comfortable, with carved backs and those carved feet that I think are meant to resemble claws but look like four human toes, complete with toenails and the kind of ridges you get when you squash your toes against something.
*
So we have ended up in this rather tumbledown castle, with its dark wooden beams and its spiral staircase and its pleasantly faded grandeur. In the unoccupied rooms, huge tendrils of cobwebs are draped across corners of the ceilings. In the bedroom, just below the window, a huge fierce spider has taken up its abode and when I swept away a little of its web it waggled its legs at me most malevolently. Perhaps this was because it had just finished a massive meal of insect which I noticed squirming furiously at the web-corner yesterday. And which has now disappeared. The spider, truly, looks very big and fat now.
*
There was something quite distinctly magical about that castle. After a night when I simply could not sleep for no reason other than I felt wakeful, I got up and watched the sun come up, dark red against the greyish blue light of the sky, a soft sky and the soft colours of the pale blue and slightly yellowish rooftops. And the birds waking up and me sitting at the long wooden table with a soaked, unshiftable sense of peace.
This was his version of the castello Barge we stayed in one time in Italy.
 |
| Signed 'Pablo Radbone' |
And this is a photo of the actual castello.
And John working at the table in the Castello's dining room.
Excerpt from Every Shade of Blue the memoir of our travels across Europe and the USA
We are in the dining-room of the castello in Barge, in the Piedmont area of northern Italy. There is a long wooden table in this room and I am sitting at one end and John is at the other. The sound of the river drifts in the open window and faint sounds of birds and the puffing and grunting of Il Legenda at work, composing ...
Well, in this very grand dining-room of the castello where we are staying, apart from the long table and the silky velvet-covered old chairs, there is a carved wooden dresser and other chairs, more ornate and less comfortable, with carved backs and those carved feet that I think are meant to resemble claws but look like four human toes, complete with toenails and the kind of ridges you get when you squash your toes against something.
*
So we have ended up in this rather tumbledown castle, with its dark wooden beams and its spiral staircase and its pleasantly faded grandeur. In the unoccupied rooms, huge tendrils of cobwebs are draped across corners of the ceilings. In the bedroom, just below the window, a huge fierce spider has taken up its abode and when I swept away a little of its web it waggled its legs at me most malevolently. Perhaps this was because it had just finished a massive meal of insect which I noticed squirming furiously at the web-corner yesterday. And which has now disappeared. The spider, truly, looks very big and fat now.
*
There was something quite distinctly magical about that castle. After a night when I simply could not sleep for no reason other than I felt wakeful, I got up and watched the sun come up, dark red against the greyish blue light of the sky, a soft sky and the soft colours of the pale blue and slightly yellowish rooftops. And the birds waking up and me sitting at the long wooden table with a soaked, unshiftable sense of peace.
 |
| Sunrise over Barge seen from the castello |
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