Please forgive my month-long sabbatical! I'm afraid that without the pressure of my weekly deadline, I have slacked off sadly.
But here's a nice item to start up again with.
Photographer Jim Graham's book on Mr. Stewart's Cheshire Foxhounds, entitled Bound to the Country, has just been released. It's wonderful. Jim has been photographing the horses, hounds and humans of the Hunt for 30 years, and this is a compilation of his work. I recognized many of the scenes of the Unionville countryside and had fun seeing photos of friends and neighbors, some of them, like Nancy Hannum, Gerry Hoover and Dr. Ramsay Buchanan, who are no longer with us.
I showed the book to a friend who used to foxhunt with Cheshire and she immediately recognized many of the riders, even if they were in a far-off group shot and barely distinguishable from the rest.
"How on earth can you tell that's her?!" I asked, astonished at her practiced eye.
"That's just they way she sits on a horse," my friend explained. She even could identify many of the horses, by name, owner and behavioral peculiarity ("He would never pick his head up!").
The photos of the energetic hounds are marvelous. I smiled at the shots of the hounds flying over fences, tucking into their food trough, or just sharing some love with the huntsman.
It's a gorgeous and timeless book. It's available for purchase at the Brandywine River Museum and the Trail Creek Outfitters store in Kennett Square, or you can order online from Cheshire Editions (cheshireeditions.com).
