Georgian Plastic

I've recently been on a couple of high-speed trips to Dublin (no, not hen parties, don't press that charge at my door) and found these charming little animals outside the Natural History Museum.

Anyone with any affection for Edinburgh and a soul this side of beatification will envy Dublin its deliciously smooth-running tram system (just don't say the word 'tram' in Edinburgh at present, certainly not with a smile on your face), but that aside, Dublin is a city which reached its zenith in Georgian times and is therefore packed with beautiful Georgian architecture, grand but well-proportioned, with broad streets and open squares. Here's a link to the very active Irish Georgian Society, who also try to protect the many lovely Georgian country houses which have survived the many depredations of the last hundred years.

http://www.igs.ie/

However, I'm not sure what they might have to say about the doorways that someone pointed out to me. Dublin is very and rightly proud of its quality and variety of Georgian doorways with their furniture, but the ones below are on an old hospital in the process of being refurbished. They are sticky-backed plastic! an industrial version of that stuff with which we were encouraged to cover our school books. The whole pattern of moulding, lion's head knocker, and even the accumulated inner city dust under the lintel, is all printed on. Each is a different colour and has a different number: on the purple one below, you'll see the printed handle to one side, but the actual handle poking through a specially-cut hole through the edge of the printed letterbox!