Abstract Thursday: Shapes

For the second day running I was lucky: firstly that I'd remembered to check the blip challenge theme before going for my morning walk, and secondly that I came across a suitable subject during the walk!

I spotted this sculpture as I walked and thought to myself, "How haven't I noticed that before?" (I've walked that way hundreds of times.) However on researching it I discovered that it's very new, having only been unveiled on 20th March.

I hope it's abstract enough to qualify for Ingeborg's Abstract challenge: it certainly has a wide variety of odd shapes in it.

If you're wondering what it is, it's a tribute by artist Andy Mayers to the "Geordie Lamp", designed in 1815 by George Stephenson of railway fame who lived very close to the sculpture in Dial Cottage. He designed the safety lamp at almost exactly the same time as Sir Humphry Davy invented the Davy lamp; even though Stephenson’s lamp was in some ways superior, Davy’s became the more widely-used, and there was a lot of controversy about whether one had copied from the other! Seemingly the scientific community sided with Davy, an eminent scientist, over Stephenson, who was from a much humbler background: therefore the Geordie Lamp only got used in the coalfields around Newcastle, including North Tyneside.

Apparently the sculpture is illuminated from inside, so I'll have to pop along in the dark sometime to blip it again.