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The Royal Barge–Built in 1732 for Frederick, Prince of Wales  The Royal Barge is a clinker-built open rowing boat. The prow, stern and rail are carved and gilded with the royal coat of arms and Prince of Wales feathers among riotous sea-creatures, swags and Vitruvian scrolls. The State House, surmounted by a crown, is fitted with upholstered seating, carpet and painted ceiling. The barge is accompanied by 24 oars. The Royal barge was built in 1732 for Frederick, Prince of Wales by the shipwright John Hall to a design by the architect William Kent. The work was supervised by Lord Baltimore, the Prince’s friend and adviser. The original intention was to launch the barge on the Prince’s birthday in January 1732, but in fact the bill for £1,002 9s 1d from John Hall was not submitted until July of that year. The full list of workmen includes James Richards, the sculptor and carver who succeeded Grinling Gibbons as Master Carver to the Crown, and Paul Petit, the gild

littlelimpstiff14u2 : Robert Sijka  photographs Maine Coon cats and makes them look like majestic mythical beasts The man who takes these glorious photos is Robert Sijka . “My passions are cats and photography, I do my best to combine these two things as well as possible,” he shares on his website . Oh, he did an excellent job. Each of these cats I would follow to the end of the world. I would battle dragons and go on dangerous quests against mythical monsters… if these cats told me to do so. They’re… magical. Interview with Robert Sijka Thanks Design you trust

Nightscape Paintings by Stephen Fox Stephen Fox  (born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1957) is a veteran Photorealist painter whose work blurs the lines between the documentation of an observable place and the quiet filter of the artist’s sensibilities. I am primarily a painter of the contemporary nighttime landscape, places brought into a state of relative quiet as human activity diminishes and the bathing light of the sun is replaced by artificial lighting or the moon’s silver glow. In these familiar places gone partially dark and less observed, the landscape takes on some of the attributes of a theater set, certain objects or areas thrust into definition by the unintentional vagaries of interacting light sources. It is a world of light and shadow in constant movement, as something as brief as the passage of a car can suddenly transform a formless world into a living canvas of color and chiaroscuro, there for a few moments before receding into darkness once again.