It would be fair to suggest that the antiques trade has never been more alive and buoyant. With the television full of shows like Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Roadtrip, Flog it and various shows about upcycling antiques and furniture it might be hard to ignore. But at the back of my mind is the dark future for the trade – it comes from housing and education.
Richard Bawden – Sitting Room of his Home, 1997
The housing problem today for antiques is, large furniture doesn’t sell, because people are living in smaller houses than they were. When it comes to the young people who would be the target demographic for buying antiques, most of them have small flats and houses they rent in the major cities. Cambridge, where I am from has this issue. One of the biggest dooms for renters is that many landlords now charge tenants for the damage to the walls of putting up pictures, so it isn’t uncommon to walk into someone’s flat and see there are no pictures on the walls at all.
David Gentleman – Illustration from Elizabeth Kendall’s Home from Home, 1962
I also find that books are the possessions of people I feel more affiliated with. In the days when I would date, a good test would be to see if they looked upon my book collection with horror or joy. To some people owning books is a waste of space; or they flaunt an education or social aspiration. Maybe it looked obsessive. A lot of the novels I had bought for the dust jackets because I liked the artists at that time.
My Bookcase.
When it comes to education I am less informed to make the argument, I can only go on my own education, artistically. That was when we were only taught about Pop Art and Impressionism. To me then, they were exciting movements but it doesn’t do much to teach people about craft. Our ceramics classes were about making hideous slab work boxes with wonky sides. We were never told about the ideals of pottery or the movement in studio pottery. I would have been more engaged if the ideals of Japanese craftsmanship were told to us, but I feel my education was a matter of ticking boxes in the curriculum with teachers who were not engaged. I am happy to report my latter education was much more interactive.
The Study of Peter Parker – World Book Day, 7 March, 2019
But as a reader of this blog I want to know if you too are worried about what will happen to the world of studio pottery, paintings… Will John Lewis and Ikea furniture rule the homes as much as they currently rule the landfill. These questions are all selfish really. I am asking ‘who will care for the things I care for’.
Kettles Yard, the House of Jim Ede.
The only antidote to my moral in Cambridge is to visit the house of Kettles Yard and avoid the gallery area. It’s a beautiful home with function and full of art. My friend’s homes are similar, and the more cluttered it is the more I admire them if it is full of items they have collected or love. As film sets go I always admired the sets of The Servant. A mixture of hip modern items and Georgian charm.
David Gentleman – Illustration from Elizabeth Kendall’s Home from Home, 1962
In her single most important act of patronage, Queen Elizabeth commissioned a series of watercolour views of Windsor Castle from John Piper during the Second World War. They were intended to serve as a record of the Castle in case it was damaged by enemy bombs. The result was a virtuoso performance of topographical draughtsmanship. The dark storm clouds in these watercolours are a dramatic backdrop to the pale grey stone of the Castle and they also give a powerful sense of threat from the skies. Piper sought out dramatic vistas in the Castle, such as the view of the Round Tower sketched from the roof of St George’s Chapel, down the sharp perspective of the Albert Memorial Chapel roof. †
Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery had already started up the Recording Britain scheme in 1939 and it became a reality in 1940. The idea was to both keep artists in work during war-time but use them to record Britain at that moment. Artists would be given funds to go out and paint scenes they thought relevant and under threat. It was the fear that not only German forces and bombs might change the country but also the vast mechanisation of the 1930s would mean that even things like mills and windmills could be seen as endangered. John Piper was also working for Recording Britain when the Windsor commission came in.
John Piper – Windsor Town from the Castle, 1940-1941
It was due to the bombing and blitz of London that John Piper was invited to paint views of Windsor Castle in late 1940. Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) was worried part of the castle might be destroyed by the German bombing and thought it would be good to have some modern views painted of the grounds. In George III’s reign Paul Sandby painted many views of the Castle that are now in the Royal Collection.
John Piper – Windsor Town, Railway, Curfew Tower and Horseshoe Cloister, 1940-1941
Kenneth Clark’s opinion was sought (he was the surveyor of the King’s pictures) on who might be a good artist to take on the task and John Piper’s name came up. Some of Piper’s work from the Recording Britain was on show at the National Gallery in late 1940 as the moving of the permanent collection of pictures had begun and many of the galleries were empty, so they were filled with the art from war artists and the recording Britain exhibitions.
John Piper – The North Terrace and Brunswick Tower, 1940-1941
Piper spent many months drawing and painting views from sketches he had made and when he presented the works they were not met with favour. The first set of works are detailed and have a marvellous observation to them but the colours chosen are muted under gloomy skies.
The queen extended the commission and asked Piper to paint some springtime views. Clark wrote to the Queen:
“I have told Piper he must try a spring day and conquer his passion for putting grey architecture against black skies” ‡
John Piper – The Middle Ward, 1940-1941
But it sounds like John Piper ignored the advice or thought it might ruin the series of works if some suddenly became bright. When the second commission was complete his style had not changed and the sky was still dark. This might have been why the Queen was disappointed with the work and what made the King speak out in such a famous way.
When the Queen saw them she made some appreciative comments, but King George VI looked at them in silence for some time before remarking, ‘You seem to have had very bad luck with your weather, Mr Piper’ †
John Piper – The Round Tower from the roof of St George’s Chapel, 1940-1941
John Piper – The North Terrace and Winchester Tower, 1940-1941
John Piper – The Quadrangle from Engine Court, 1940-1941
John Piper – Windsor Castle Courtyard from the Round Tower, 1940-1941
John Piper – Windsor Castle Courtyard and the Round Tower, 1940-1941
John Piper – Windsor Castle, Study of The Round Tower, 1940-1941
John Piper – Windsor Castle, The Round Tower, 1940-1941
John Piper – Gothic Ruin, 1940-1941
The painting of the Royal Adelaide is not part of the commision but likely where Piper stayed at the time. Being interested in architecture and abstraction it is a perfect subject for him.
John Piper – Royal Adelaide: A Simonds House, Windsor, 1940
The Royal Adelaide Hotel today
Below is one of the Penguin Prints. It was a scheme that ran from 1948 – 1952 when the lack of demand killed it off. They were rather dubious quality lithographs of famous works selected by Kenneth Clark. Piper’s was the third in the series.
John Piper – Windsor Castle, Penguin Print #3, 1948
Osbert Lancaster – Mr Piper Enjoying his usual luck with the weather
† Richard Harries – The Image of Christ in Modern Art, 2013
‡ William Shawcross – Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, 2009
Above is a famous photograph of the Queen on her Coronation day. Though I don’t have a strong affection for the royals I do enjoy propaganda and symbolism and they are all in use in this wonderful photograph.
It is worth looking at one of the components that makes up the photograph and that is the dress. The dress was designed by Norman Hartnell, above is his original design for the dress.
The much celebrated British designer, Norman Hartnell, has been synonymous with elegance and glamour since the 1930s. As the royal dressmaker to the Queen, he was naturally the first choice to design H. M.’s dress for the big day in 1953.
Cecil Beaton was one of the most famous photographers of the day and his contacts with the fashion world and talent for both candid and formal photographs.
Cecil Beaton by Cecil Beaton, c1930
Cecil Beaton attended the ceremony, along with 8,000 other guests. He sat in a balcony close to the pipes of the great organ, recording his impression of the glorious pageant in animated prose and black ink sketches. After the ceremony he returned to the Palace to make final preparations for the official portrait sitting. †
Below are other variations of the same photo session and various tinted photos.
Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies in Waiting preparing her clothing for the photograph.
A contact sheet of final and edited proofs of the Coronation Day.
Green Line Bus Advert with Ravilious’s Suburban Home Wood-engraving, 1935
Some time ago I was looking at all the Ravilious wood engravings and their links to each other for a book called Ravilious Recycled. I still haven’t finished the book but in doing it I have made a few discoveries that would add to what is known about the work of Eric Ravilious.
One is a design for the Green Line, the ‘Suburban Home’ with the silhouette of a man in top hat and umbrella standing in the doorway. The house turns out to be the Old Vicarage in Castle Hedingham, the same in the background of Vicarage in Winter, 1935. The steps, the ionic colonnaded door and the window above all say so – it isn’t a fact I have seen in print before and a genuine discovery by myself.
Eric Ravilious – Suburban Home, 1935
The advert was much smaller in printed size when in the newspapers than the other ‘banner’ like designs London Transport made around Ravilious blocks. It was not used on the Country Walks books. Nearby Greys Hall, in Sible Hedingham also became famous by proxy when used by illustrators Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone as the inspiration of Hell Hall in The Hundred and One Dalmatians.
The Old Vicarage, Castle Hedingham today.
In the memoir of Ravilious by Helen Binyon she writes of when Eric and Tirzah came to Castle Hedingham they didn’t know anyone in the village but soon befriended the Vicar and his wife, Rev. Guy and Evelyn Hepher.
The first time that Eric called at their large Georgian vicarage, he found the vicar having a bonfire of the temperance hymn books inherited from his predecessor – an activity that Eric certainly approved of. The vicarage was too large and uncomfortable to be easily run, but it afforded a refuge to the Raviliouses one very cold Christmas when all their pipes had frozen up. ‡
It was the same Christmas period in 1935 that Ravilious painted Vicarage in Winter below.
Eric Ravilious – Vicarage in Winter, 1935
Ravilious would go on to use Castle Hedingham for inspiration, as can be found in the Vicarage in Winter watercolour, started in the Winter of 1935. Tirzah writes in her diary that Eric’s paint had frozen on the brush and some days later Eric wrote to Helen Binyon
The snow picture is finished and not bad – rather pretty but so was the thing, like a Christmas card. ‡
The Old Vicarage, Castle Hedingham today.
This watercolour takes us back to the Green Line illustrations and in 1936 Ravilious used the cottage to the right in Vicarage in Winter for one of his wood-engravings for London Transport. According to Barry Kitts
Ravilious has transformed the slates on the Essex cottage – into thatch. †
The Vicarage can be seen from behind with the same greenhouse as in the painting still standing today.
The block shows a woman cutting the hedge by the path leading up to a V shaped Sussex style stile. It is the shape of the wall to the left of the engraving and the hedge in Vicarage in Winter that bind them together as the same location.
Eric Ravilious – Cutting the Hedge, 1935
In Castle Hedingham I found the lane from Cutting
the Hedge. Looking at the watercolour Vicarage In Winter
I just went to about the same view point and found it on
a village footpath. The photograph (below) shows the same
stepped wall. The house Pottery Cottage has had a lot
of work and is just recognisable. If Vicarage In Winter
were painted today it would be covered in various states
of mid century architecture. It’s a joy to stand on the spot of location and see the work of art before you.
Cutting the Hedge’s view today.
The Lane was named after Castle Hedingham Ware, potted by Edward Bingham between 1864 and 1901.
Eric Ravilious – Kynoch Press Block 121, 1932 and the original woodblock.
The V Stile also appeared in the Kynoch Press Notebook for 1933. The stile is on the page for the 8th May but its technical name is Block 121. The Notebook has 42 engraved vignettes of rural life.
Eric Ravilious – Cutting the Hedge, 1935
Below is the press advert, the text in the advert talks of the clean breeze of the downs.
Eric Ravilious – Cutting the Hedge as part of a Green Line Advert, 1936
† Ravilious – Engravings by Jeremy Greenwood, Wood Lea Press, 2008. ‡ Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist by Helen Binyon, Lutterworth Press, 1983
Nevinson caused a sensation with his one man exhibition of war paintings in 1916. The images presented the modern age’s first industrialized war, often in bold modernistic style derived from Futurism, and the pictures all sold. †
Nevinson’s artistic legacy in Britain had been established by his two exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in 1916 and 1918. It was his work during this time, documenting the First World War that gave him some fame. The works at this time being a mixture of abstraction and futurism. When he first went to New York, it was as a war hero, a survivor and documenter of war in a bold new ‘futurist’ way.
Nevinson was invited to New York in 1919 by David Keppel of the print publishers Frederick Keppel and Co, to exhibit his War prints. Manhattan’s architecture inspired him, not only by the sheer beauty of its skyscrapers. ♣
Nevinson made two trips to New York, the first in 1919 and again the following year. His first visit was to attend the exhibition of his war etchings and lithographs. This first exhibition held at Keppel and Co was a great success and the catalogue came with an introduction by the well known American critic and connoisseur Albert Gallatin.
It would have been during this first trip that Nevinson started a whole series of new works based on New York City. Many of these works were made from sketches and studies he made from the first trip, but were sold during his second. Many of the works are harder to date, a lot of the works are considered 1919/1920 but many of the dates rely on the year they were sold, not the year they were made. The process of lithography and etchings needed to be made in the studio later, some were sold at an exhibition in 1921. It is likely that many of the works that are etchings where also made into oil paintings(The Great White Way, Three AM), but their location is currently a mystery.
C.R.W Nevinson – Temples of New York, 1919 (Etching)
C.R.W Nevinson – The Statue of Liberty from the Railroad Club, 1919 (Oil)
C.R.W Nevinson – New York, Night, 1919 (Oil)
The print below ‘Looking down Wall Street’ has a view of the Brooklyn Bridge in the top left corner, though only 30 something years old at the time, the bridge and its size were still a marvel of engineering.
C.R.W Nevinson – Looking Down into Wall Street, 1919 (Lithograph)
He was clearly captivated by the city, compared to the London of the 1920s it must have been something, the skyscrapers of the time in New York would have been the Woolworth Building (60 stories) and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower (50 stories), but most of the ‘skyscrapers’ of the early 1920s peaked around 30 stories tall. London didn’t start building above 20 stories until the 1960s. Nevinson is quoted below:
‘New York, being the Venice of this epoch, has triumphed, thanks to its engineers and architects, as successfully as the Venetians did in their time.. Where the Venetian drove stakes into his sandbanks to overcome nature, the American has pegged his city to the sky. No sight can be more exhilarating and beautiful than this triumph of man. ♥
C.R.W Nevinson – The Great White Way, 1920 (Lithograph)
Between the New York exhibitions of 1919 and October 1920 Nevinson exhibited in the Senefelder Club – Leicester Galleries in February 1920 and also at the Manchester City Art Gallery in July 1920. The Great White Way was shown first at the Senefelder Club and Three AM shown first at Manchester.
C.R.W Nevinson – Three A.M. – A Corner by Madison Square at Night. 1920 (Etching)
C.R.W Nevinson – Looking through Brooklyn Bridge, 1920 (Etching)
His second exhibition held at the Bourgeois Gallery was much larger, with a series of paintings and etchings of New York that failed to capture the attention of the public. The press were kind but the works did not sell well and there is little reporting of the second exhibition in comparison to the first. Nevinson hired a cuttings agency to collect all items about him that featured in the press.
Below is an extract from the New York Herald, 24th October, 1920.
“Art,” says Mr. Nevinson, “triumphs in utility, and the most beautiful products of the modern world are a Rolls-Royce car and a skyscraper. They have been built for strict utility; their lines are perfect and they must appeal to the genuine artist. New York will be remembered for its introduction of the architecture of the skyscraper long after its people have been forgotten for other things.“ ◊
New York should like Mr. Nevinson and his work, for surely he is her friend. No native could ever idealize America’s greatest city more than this foreigner. ◊
C.R.W Nevinson – Under Brooklyn Bridge, 1920 (Etching)
Here I start to look at the station and railway pictures. Here is a photograph of the Fulton Street Station and the Elevated railway. Railways like this started in London but were built of bricks with viaduct structures. In New York, the buildings were made of iron girders and so the railways were bridged with girders.
In a wonderful bit of research I found a photograph of the station at the intersection of Greenwich Street in Manhattan. When the railway line was taken down the World Trade Centre was built just to the left of this photograph.
Greenwich and Fulton Streets, 1914
The photograph shows the same view only 4 years before Nevinson stood in the same spot. Being able to pinpoint the location of the station has helped with the location of other works too.
C.R.W Nevinson – Third Avenue, Elevated Railway, 1920 (Drawing)
C.R.W Nevinson – Third Avenue, Elevated Railway, 1920 (Oil)
Critics have suggested that the almost Monet style of the oil painting Third Avenue, Elevated Railway is down to it being painted on the spot and not in Nevinson’s studio. The etching that would have been made later still has some of the free feeling that the painting has and is more pictorial and more photo accurate than many of his pictures are.
C.R.W Nevinson – Under the Elevated, 1921 (Etching)
C.R.W Nevinson – New York: An Abstraction, 1921 (Etching)
C.R.W Nevinson – Fulton Station of 3rd Ave El, c1950
With the help of the drawing above and finding the location we can see that Nevinson was working in this part of New York on many views. The photo above is the same view as the etching above and the painting below. You can look at the metal fire escapes on either side of the buildings and find they match up. It is the view from the very end of the platform of the Fulton station. The skyscrapers become a theatrical fantasy.
C.R.W Nevinson – The Soul of the Soulless City, Previously known as New York – an Abstraction ,1920 (Oil)
The poor reception of this exhibition may have accelerated Nevinson’s disaffection with the city. His growing embitterment is perhaps reflected by the change of title. Originally exhibited in 1920 at the Bourgeois Galleries, ‘New York, as New York – an Abstraction’, it was re-titled ‘The Soul of the Soulless City’ in the Faculty of Arts Exhibition, Grosvenor House, London, in 1925 probably at Nevinson’s instigation. ♦
C.R.W Nevinson – Looking Down on Downtown, 1920 (Oil)
C.R.W Nevinson – New York, Night, 1920 (Mezzotint)
† Michael Walsh – A Dilemma of English Modernism: Visual and Verbal Politics in the Life and Work of C. R. W. Nevinson (1889-1946), 2007
♣ C.R.W. Nevinson 1889 – 1946 Retrospective Exhibition Of Paintings, Drawings And Prints: Kettle’s Yard Gallery 1988
♥ David Cohen – C.R.W. Nevinson, The Twentieth Century, p46, 1999.
◊ New York Herald, 24th October, 1920.
♦ Tate, London, T07448.
Paul Nash’s book ‘Places – 7 Prints’ has some curious works you might think were only made for the book. It is a rare book to find, being printed in 255 editions (55 of those a folio copy).
Many of the woodcuts also came with a poem following them. It was 1922 and a great time for poetry; it was just after the First World War and the Georgian Poets series of books published by Edward Marsh were popular. I can’t help but feel personally that Nash was only interested in poetry because Marsh made it fashionable and he was also a great patron of young artists. Marsh did go on to buy one of the pictures in this post, Tench Pond in a Gale in 1922 (Before the war Marsh wanted to publish a book of young artists work called Georgian Drawings, it never happened).
The cover features a woodcut ‘Meeting Place’ of two naked swimmers by a tree lined pond, printed in 1922.
Paul Nash – Meeting Place, 1922 (Woodblock)
Rather like what I have found with Eric Ravilious, many works are recycled from a sketch, to a woodcut and then a painting. It is all part of a long process – one at the time that would be new, ‘commercial art’ and in tow, printmaking; by this I mean that a woodblock printed book is more ‘mass production’ in the same way a limited edition print of 250 is.
It is nice to pin the location down to reality. The pond was in the garden of Claud Lovat Fraser’s parents’ home at Buntingford, Hertfordshire.
In preparation for the oil Nash wrote to the present works first owner, Desmond Coke, requesting ‘The Chestnut Waters I really do want photographed very badly because I am doing a large painting of that design for the show.’. †
He wrote again to Coke stating that the oil ‘is the best of the lot and nearest to being an achievement I think’ †
Paul Nash – Chestnut Waters, 1923 (Oil)
A year before the oil was made, Nash made a watercolour of the same location. What I always took to be a tree in the middle of the woodcut, appears in the Oil and watercolour to be heavy branches, laden down over the pond and the reflections. I rather think the oil painting is lovely in that Cézanne cubist style of colour shading light-to-dark. But the watercolour to me has a lightness more like a cathedral interior.
Paul Nash – Chestnut Waters, 1922 (Watercolour)
Below is an undated landscape in the Fitzwilliam, from what I can tell of the notes it is the back of another painting and so, likely unfinished. We can never say it is a relation of the paintings above, but there is a squared off pond lined with trees and could well be the plein air version made in the garden before working ‘Chestnut Waters’ up in his studio.
Paul Nash – Landscape, The Fitzwilliam Museum
The year before in Iden, Sussex, Nash drew one of his more famous works, Tench Pond in a Gale (Below). Is it a painting that puts to use all Nash’s wonderful skills of drawing trees but gives them a drama and movement unlike his other works.
Paul Nash – Tench Pond in a Gale, 1921–2
Below is another woodcut from the 7 Places book. Not unlike the Tench Pond in a Gale picture, but not like it enough either.
Paul Nash – Black Poplar Pond, 1922
Most of the illustrations in 7 Places came with a poem by Nash. The poems here are not amazing and may be why they have been forgotten.
Paul Nash – Black Poplar Pond Black Poplars shudder in the sun. Erect or slanting, their whorled shafts project a glinting shower into the crowded scaffolding of trees. Blunt shards of pine absorb the falling beams which polished leaf and rounded bole reflect in myriad facets of fierce light. With height of noon floods of cool wind pass over the fields, shattering quiet. The corn stalks bend, boughs swing their burdens to and fro. Dark waters image changes in grimace. The choir of leaves opens its song.
Ponds were clearly an inspiration to Nash in his 7 Places, there are many examples of pond works from 1921 – 1922. The one below is a wonderful example with the textures in his trees.
Paul Nash – Landscape in pale tones, 1921
Paul Nash – Garden Pond, 1922
Paul Nash – Garden Pond With silence force the sun hurles down light, With no disturbance, with no sound it falls upon the trees, the grass, the waters of the pond. Noiselessly, without movement, light mutilates the trees, the grass, beats upon the waters. No tumult comes. There is no cry, no moan. The leaves glitter, the grass is shining, the waters flash in the still pond.
Paul Nash – Garden Pond, 1st Proof with studies to the sides, 1922
Paul Nash – Dark Lake, 1922
Paul Nash – Dark Lake In a black pine wood is a lake, an inscrutable, dark face, staring up at the sun or into the moon’s face or at the stars peering down. Above, the pines in tall columns and mighty domes and great arches stand nearly motionless. At the water’s edge rushes and irises mass their slender swords. The grey teeth of an old fence look ghostly against dark waters. Beyond a platform jutting out, a woman, naked gleams in this shadowy place.
Paul Nash – Winter, 1922
Paul Nash – Pond in the Fields, 1927
Paul Nash – Study for Paths into the wood, 1922
Above is a drawing dated 1921, dedicated to William Rothenstein from Paul Nash as a Christmas card in 1923.
Being the drawing that would have been used to carve a woodcut, the woodcut is in reverse and printed below. The figure is harder to see below in the woodcut.
Paul Nash lived in Flat 176, Queen Alexandra Mansions between 1914 and 1936. It belonged to Margaret Odeh before then, he married her and moved in. I would guess he moved out in 1936 because his view of St Pancras Hotel was gone due to the construction of St Pancras Town Hall, later known as Camden Town Hall on Euston Road, designed by A. J. Thomas. In the photographs below you can see Margret and Paul’s view disappearing with the scaffolding and construction.
Paul Nash – St Pancras, London, 1932
Paul Nash – St Pancras, London, 1932
The Nash’s lived on the 5th floor and this is the view from their window looking out. It is level with the top of the council offices.
And below is the site as it looks today but would have also looked in 1936 when complete.
Andrew Cusack – St Pancras and Camden Town Hall, 2017
Below are the happier times for the Nash’s when they had a view and Paul was able to paint from his window various flower paintings using the same jug.
Paul Nash – St Pancras Lilies, 1927
Paul Nash – St Pancras, London, 1927
I show below the process of buildings that faced the midlands hotel. First is Titford and Co – Funeral Furniture, Coffin Makers and undertakers – 131 Judd Street.
St Pancras Railway Station, April 1899
Here you see the buildings and gardens gone and the plot of land with signage that Nash would translate in his Nortern Adventure Picture.
St Pancras, London, 1925
Rather like Eric Ravilious at this time, Paul Nash became inspired by the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico. He translated the signage of construction seen above by the fence into the image below.
Paul Nash, Northern Adventure, 1929.
The painting below is more in Nash style, less abstract but it uses most of the hotel’s arched doors and windows, a favourite motif of de Chirico. The billboards have signage on them so I suppose this is the later image. The name ‘Nostalgic Landscape’ likely noting the view, now lost.
Paul Nash – Nostalgic Landscape, St. Pancras Station, 1929
The image below Dead Spring is said to be a reaction against the artist’s father dying.
February 1929 Nash’s father died. Margaret Nash told Bertram that ‘nothing in their whole married life so profoundly affected her husband as his father’s death’ †
I don’t know I know if I buy into that idea that the painting conveys this. I think it is likely a protest putting the building site and his newly found style to good use. It is also said that the plant is dead, but the plant isn’t dead as it is in flower. I think it’s the landscape that is now dead, not the plant. The geometrical tools and rulers, the type a builder would use, and the features that make me think the outside is the dead world, while poking fun at the technique of de Chirico. They appear in the photo at the bottom of this post.
Paul Nash – Dead Spring, 1929
Paul Nash – St Pancras, London, 1932
Helen Muspratt – Paul Nash, 1932
† Paul Nash, paintings and watercolours, p23, 1975
It is always hard to say what the joy is in studio pottery, but I think it is knowing that it is crafted and made rather than mass produced in a factory. There has always been a tradition of decorated slipware in pottery as other than paintings, carvings in churches and textile embroidery there were few opportunities to ever see any decoration on items. If you did, it was normally because you too had money.
Thomas Toft – Staffordshire Slipware Dish, c1670-90
After the fashions of early slipware and large decorated chargers came the smaller refined pots that the public would buy in the Victorian periods. This followed the social change of home ownership and so factories had new markets to cater for. This is the time when Royal Doulton and Brannam Pottery both stopped making sewage pipes and chimney pots and started to make domestic kitchenware and vases.
Arthur Bamkin for Charles Brannam – Sgraffito Cup, 1898
After the fashions of early slipware and large decorated chargers came the smaller refined pots that the public would buy in the Victorian periods. This followed the social change of home ownership and so factories had new markets to cater for. This is the time when companies like Royal Doulton and Brannam Pottery both stopped making sewage pipes and chimney pots and started to make domestic kitchenware and vases.
Robert Wallace for Martin Brothers – Double Sided Face Jug, 1901
The Martin Brothers whose large birds command such high prices also demand a mention for they were the blurred line of Doulton’s factory made designs and Brannam Pottery’s craft. They created vases with bold and bright decoration before going into a series of ceramics with natural earthy tones. The most interesting thing about them is that they can be incredibly surreal, and, well, tacky. Some are beautiful, but I thought it was good to show some early surrealism.
Joseon Dynasty Moon Jar, 18c.
The moon Jar above is the most famous example of Bernard Leach’s effect on British Crafts. He bought the jar while out in the East and brought it back to Britain and when he died he left to Lucie Rie, who in-turn left it to the British Museum.
Bernard Leach was raised in the days of the British Empire. His father worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and as a child he was based in Hong Kong and in Japan before returning to Britain to attend schooling. He attended the Slade for a time and then the London School of Art in Kensington where he was taught etching by Frank Brangwyn. Leach was at this time very fond of Etching and returned to Japan with the intention of teaching it to the Japanese.
Bernard Leach – A London Scene (Etching), 1908-9. (Leach-Redgrave Restrike)
While in Japan Leach became obsessed by the craft of pottery and took lessons with Urano Shigekichi. After learning the industry for a year he set up his own pottery in Japan before moving to China. He exhibited his works and this lead to the introduction to Shōji Hamada.
Bernard Leach – Leaping Fish Vase, c1965
Hamada was deeply impressed by a Tokyo exhibition of ceramic art by Bernard Leach, who was then staying with Yanagi Sōetsu, and wrote to Leach seeking an introduction. The two found much in common and became good friends, so much so that Hamada asked and was granted permission to accompany Leach to England in 1920 when the latter decided to return and establish a pottery there.
Edgar Skinner – a friend of Leach’s father introduced him to the St. Ives Guild of Handicrafts which was supported by local wealthy philanthropist called Francis Horne who lived at Tremorna in Carbis Bay. She offered him a capital loan of £2500 to set up his pottery with Hamada and also an assured income of £250 for 3 years.
The Leach Pottery was founded and over the next ten years they would experiment with the clays, slips and glazes in the UK and different woods to burn in the kilns. In 1923 Michael Cardew joined the pottery and left some years later to found Winchcombe Pottery.
The Leach Pottery took on various students to work there: Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie, Norah Braden, Charlotte Epton and Dorothy Kemp. It was not the only pottery but I think it is honest to say the Leach pottery and the skills learnt in Asia have made him important. His influence would go on when there was a serge in home pottery in the 1960s and people copied his designs and used his glaze recipes.
Charlotte Epton – Jar and Lid, c1930
The other pottery that helped the surge of British Studio Pottery would be at Dartington Hall. Bernard Leach helped set up the pottery in the late 1920s. He recommended Sylvia Fox-Strangeways who was the first potter at Dartington. She was joined by Marianne De Trey who would later run it and education pupils.
Many other potters were forging the way in Studio Pottery in the interwar years: William Staite Murray, Dora Billington, Lucie Rie, Ursula Mommens, Ray Finch and Hans Coper. But to list the styles they made, the shapes of pots and their individual glazes would make this post too long
In the 1960s and 70s in the UK there was a boom in the amount of small potteries. Some looked back at the methods of making pottery in the Leach-Asian tradition, some went on to make domestic wear, others just experimented with styles. There are so many wonderful potters from all over Britain and their decorations and ways of potting are all so different. To collect it now doesn’t have to be expensive as some galleries would have you believe and I have been both collecting and selling pots in Cambridge for years.
Peter C Arnold for Alderney Pottery – Pot and Lid, c1970
I don’t know if the modern potters would call it their moment of postmodernism, but there are many craftsmen out there who are experimenting with the size and form of things. Below is plate by Dylan Bowen who has an amazing eye for almost careless slip designs.
Dylan Bowen – Plate, c2015
Now some potters make record amounts at auction and museums have exhibitions of their pottery, like Kettle’s Yard with Jennifer Lee. In the 1990s David Bowie invested in the Leaping Fish Vase by Bernard Leach and in the sale of his collection of art it broke the record for a Leach work at £32,500.
Robin Darwin – Near Dedham, Suffolk, 1956, Government Art Collection
Sir Robert Vere “Robin” Darwin KCB CBE RA RSA PRWA NEAC has more names and honours to his name than you would think possible, so why isn’t he better known?
He was the son of the golf writer Bernard Darwin and his wife the engraver Elinor Monsell. His aunts were Gwen Ravarat and Margaret Keynes. One of his sisters was the potter Ursula Mommens who married and divorced Julian Trevelyan before Mary Fedden. He was a great-grandson of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Robin was both an artist and an educator.
Robin Darwin – The Thames at Kew, Oliver’s Island, 1954
Robin started off at Eton and then went on to the Slade art school, under Henry Tonks he lasted only a term. When the Second World War came he found himself as an artistic administrator in the Camouflage unit under the Ministry of Home Security in Leamington Spa designing things from inflatable rubber tanks to working out how to disguise large factories from the air with trees and their shadows. He went back to teach art at Eton and there set up the school’s famous ceramics department.
Robin Darwin – Suffolk Landscape, c1935
He then moved on to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in 1945, looking at the post-war reconstruction of London. Then he was appointed education officer in the newly formed Council of Industrial Design. It was under the Board of Trade and a propaganda unit for British Design. Under the leadership of Gordon Russell and Paul Reilly it became the Design Council.
Robin Darwin – The Wittenham Clumps
He was also involved with the Festival of Britain but he is now famous for being the rector of the Royal College of Art from 1948 until 1971.
Through his reforming leadership of the Royal College of Art, Robin Darwin had an enormous impact on C20 art and design. As a subsequent Rector of the RCA, Sir Christopher Frayling, points out in his introduction to this first biography of Charles Darwin’s great-grandson, Darwin’s influence at the College has lasted for over sixty years, far longer than the Bauhaus existed (thirteen years) or Black Mountain College’s celebrated twenty-year heyday.
Thorpeness is a curious place on the Suffolk coastline. Between Aldeburgh and Sizewell, it is a toytown. There are some old properties in the village but many of them are 20th century.
In 1910, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie, a Scottish barrister who had made his money building railways around the world, increased the family’s local estates to cover the entire area from north of Aldeburgh to past Sizewell, up the coast and inland to Aldringham and Leiston.
Most of this land was used for farming, but Ogilvie developed Thorpeness into a private fantasy holiday village, to which he invited his friends’ and colleagues’ families during the summer months. A country club with tennis courts, a swimming pool, a golf course and clubhouse, and many holiday homes, were built in Jacobean and Tudor Revival styles. Thorpeness railway station, provided by the Great Eastern Railway to serve what was expected to be an expanding resort, was opened a few days before the outbreak of World War I. It was little used, except by golfers, and closed in 1966.
For three generations Thorpeness remained mostly in the private ownership of the Ogilvie family, with houses only being sold from the estate to friends as holiday homes. In 1972, Alexander Stuart Ogilvie, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie’s grandson, died on the Thorpeness Golf Course. Many of the houses and the golf course and country club had to be sold to pay death duties.
In many ways Thorpeness reminds me of Frinton-On-Sea, a protective elite of housing owners, but Frinton (though also hellish) has some fantastic art deco properties. Thorpeness is a poorly maintained theme park of some strange Tudor England. It reminded me of the home-made houses for tri-ang train sets and early dolls houses.
Tri-ang dollhouses #93
While walking around I kept thinking of the quote below by Linda Smith on golf courses vs the countryside. To me Thorpeness is fake architecture vs historical homes.
People say ‘it’s out in the countryside’, a golf course is not the countryside – it’s the countryside tidied up, it’s the countryside for people who wished the countryside had wipe clean surfaces, it’s the countryside for people whose gardens are full of conifer and heather.
