Before settling on the final design for the Pitcaple stone I hoped to see the Bourtie petrosphere again, which I saw for the first time in Inverurie Museum, to breath in a little of its magic. As sadly this local museum was closed within the last months, it transpires the Bourtie example is now at Aberdeenshire Council Museum Headquarters in Mintlaw, and I just don't feel I have time to drive up there to see it. So I called the Aberdeen University Marischal Museum, which has been closed for a considerable time due to building refurbishment ( Fyfe Glenrock supplying the dressed stone for the renovation), and heard of the new Kings Museum on the High Street in Old Aberdeen which the curatorial assistant Soraya Kasim told me has a several petrospheres on display, and by co-incidence, a box of 12 sourced for a couple of visiting researchers.As the museum is open late on a Tuesday evening I managed to wing in past on the way back to my lodgings in town, and spent a delightful hour or so not only marvelling at the carved stone balls, but taking in a really engaging exhibition "Sounded Bodies" curated by students a post graduate course "Curating an Exhibition". Worth a visit.
The exhibition aside, I was reassured to note that all of the petrosphere designs were unique with geometric variations which may or may not have been intended at the outset of the carving process. We can only wonder.
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