Pleased to be Blease

Yesterday one of the blogs I follow (H is for Home) had an interview with a designer called Jane Blease.

Walnut brooches by Jane Blease (used with permission)

As I'm a Jane and Blease is one of our family names, I paid special attention. Perhaps we're related? I like Jane's cool designs and her use of some interesting materials, including recycled early plastics:

Vintage imitation tortoiseshell lampshade by Jane Blease (used with permission)

Jane's website showcases all her designs.
     When I looked online for Jane, I immediately found a rash of other Bleases. I'd always thought the name was very unusual and, historically, in my immediate family, we always said it in a slightly funny voice. Now Bleases were coming at me from every angle and there seemed to be a preponderance of highly creative Bleases.

Print by Gillian Blease (used with permission)

Gillian Blease is a wonderful illustrator who does a lot of work for the Guardian and masses of other publications. Then there was Matt Blease, another fantastic illustrator and designer:

Matt Blease illustration (used with permission)

I also found Joan Blease, a photographer, Jenna Blease, a dancer, Tracy Blease, a jewelry designer, and Adam Blease, an actor.
     I wonder whether we are all distantly related? I got in touch with Jane, Gillian and Matt to ask them if I could reproduce some of their work. They all replied in a most friendly way and I felt very buoyed up by the idea of a great diaspora of creative Bleases.
     My Mum (Audrey Carr) was also highly creative:

This is her painting of the top of Lombards Wynd in Richmond (Yorkshire). This was the way down to my old school near the river.

This is another of hers, a pastel, of the field just along from our old house in Richmond.
     In her email to me, Gillian told me that the name Blease means a 'bright and shining light' -- the light that falls on hillsides between clouds. How beautiful! And I especially love that sort of light. Indeed there is a Blease Fell in the Lake District, on Blencathra:

Photo by Ian Capper, Wiki Commons

In my online investigations, I also found alternative meanings for Blease. It's a flaming torch, a 'blaze'. And, fascinatingly, it's a corruption of Blaise, from St Blaise, derived from an old Roman family name indicating a defect of some kind, usually of speech or gait (from the Latin 'blaesus', meaning stammering, and/or the Greek 'blaisos', meaning bow-legged). St Blaise was martyred in Armenia in 316AD. He is the patron saint of wool carders because he was 'carded to death' -- my mind flinches from imagining that.
     I don't actually know much about the Blease side of my family, going back. My grandmother had remarried by the time I was born. But I'm certainly looking on the name with renewed affection now. Long may the Bleases flourish!