Musings

Aside

Redefining Handmade?

I nipped out of the studio yesterday to catch the Craft: Redefining Handmade trade show for 2015. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done any trade shows due to some not inconsiderable exhibition fatigue on my part and having too many other things going on, so it seemed high time to go and get myself back in the swing by visiting.

This is the second year of Craft which started in 2014 as a kind offshoot of the Top Drawer / Home trade show. Last year this triumvirate of trade shows was held at the doomed Art Deco sprawl that was the Earls Court Exhibition Centre which is currently being demolished for yet another London ‘quarter’ to be built in its place. Last year the Craft show had been wedged between a pretty awful Top Drawer fashion section and the more exciting Home show. It felt a bit of a hotchpotch and not terribly inspiring, but it was the first attempt by Piyush Suri of Handmade in Britain at putting on a Clarion show.

So I wasn’t expecting too much when I popped in but in its new location in Olympia, Craft seemed a much more confident show. Clarion had assigned it a reasonable space upstairs off the balcony area and it felt intimate without being overwhelming. By contrast Home, the affiliated trade show located downstairs in the main space, felt characterless and corporate and there were some makers there who were probably kicking themselves that they hadn’t switched to Craft.

However I would take issue with Craft‘s flyline – ‘Redefining Handmade’…. unless Piyush is intending to redefine handmade as things made to look like everything else! Three exceptions to this were the work of two makers I know and one I don’t but I like.

The first, Mia Sarosi, was one of our artists for Designed | Crafted and makes porcelain pieces. Her newest work is an exploration of the assumptions of the making process. For example, she deliberately works with over-soft clay to produce tactile, undulating surfaces on which to paint her designs. It was good to catch up with Mia and find out how successful the show had already been for her.

The second, Nicholas Collins, was a glass artist that I was with at Central Saint Martins ten years ago, whom I haven’t seen since, so we had a lot of catching up to do! However Nick’s work preceded him as I’d admired his sleek monochrome pieces online. Seeing them in real life was even better, and his newest piece literally appeared to vibrate with energy and had the same curious optical effect as a Bridget Riley.

Fanny Shorter

And after all that understated monochrome, I got my colour shot from the stand by Fanny Shorter. She’s not a designer I had known about, but I loved her stuff and reading more about her on her website, I could see why – her cushions, prints and homewares are clearly influenced by her very English upbringing and childhood visits to the V&A and the Natural History Museum. The Arts and Crafts influence that I love is clearly there but done in a vibrantly contemporary style.

I was more impressed with Craft: Redefining Handmade that I thought I’d be, so I think I’ll be a new recruit for next year.

Aside

Christmas Baubles

Last weekend we put up our Christmas tree. I thought I’d leave my family with some festive frivolity before heading off to West Dean for the week, so I booked them a session to blow glass Christmas baubles with Michael Ruh, our neighbour and local glass blower.

Michael’s studio is a lovely space in a warren of studios down a little blink-and-you’d-miss-it alley between an Indian takeaway and a bookies in Tulse Hill. We were welcomed by Michael’s wife Natascha who showed us the three options for the glass baubles – a spiral, a speckled or a colour field bauble. They would be blown from glass that had been rolled in granular glass frit which would give them their colour. My son chose a silvery yellow and blue for a spiral bauble and my husband chose an reddish orange and white frit for what I realised, resignedly, was going to be an Arsenal-themed bauble.

Image: MichaelRuh.com
Image: MichaelRuh.com

Then Michael demonstrated how he gathered the glass from the furnace, trimming it with shears, shaping it with a block and beginning to blow air into it to trap a bubble inside the glass. More heating in the furnace and then the hot gather of glass was rolled in the frit before being heated again to melt it in.

Isaac blowing glassThen came the fun part where Michael got each of them to stand on a raised platform ready to blow down the blowpipe while Michael’s assistant shaped the growing bubble of glass in a mold.The bubble was tapped off and a hanging loop was fashioned from a blob of viscous glass placed on top. The finished bauble was marked up with an identifying number and placed in a kiln for annealing over the next 24 hours.

I left my son with instructions to pick up the baubles from Natascha while I was away and I loved seeing the results.

OurBaubles

Aside

Outsparkled

I was thrilled to receive an invitation to arrange a private viewing of Andrew Logan’s fabulous glass work at his home-studio-shop in Bermondsey. We have been visiting his Glasshouse for over ten years now and it will be very sad to see him leave when he goes off to India, as the gorgeous old warehouse-style building will be depressingly be knocked down to clear way for an apartment block.

Anyway there’s no room for depression when looking at Andrew’s joyful, colourful work and I brought three of my Teepee Glass friends who love his work as much as me.

We spent a delicious Saturday afternoon having a private tour of the gallery and house where all manner of wonderful glass artworks were displayed. Colour, mirror, glitter and glass were abundant and after some time we noticed there was also a rather large Christmas tree…. only in Andrew Logan’s place could a fifteen foot Christmas tree be outsparkled by its surroundings!

Portraits of famous friends were everywhere – both in bust form and as flat two-dimensional mirrored faces – and in the midst of a fantastic pearled statue group I spotted a stunning self portrait in cast glass.

But a lot of our time was taken just staring at the hundreds of sparkly jewellery pieces – the smallest pieces, but the only ones which were just about in our price range. And sure enough, two of our group could not resist buying a ring and a brooch, which we took to the Horseshoe pub across the road afterwards to marvel at and admire.

Andrew Logan’s Glasshouse will be opening to private groups of 4-6 people until January – I urge you to get in touch with them if you want to experience this spectacle before it is gone forever.

Aside

A Clean Weekend Away

No dirty weekend for us! We picked Bath to visit last weekend to celebrate my birthday, and between the Roman Baths and a morning spent in the modern day thermae spa, we came back sparkling clean.

Arriving on Friday afternoon by train at Brunel’s Bath Spa station, we went to find our digs. We were staying in a fantastic apartment in a converted schoolhouse right in the centre of Bath. There were lots of stairs to climb but the view across the rooftops was worth it. And being just minutes, and in some cases just seconds, from the sights, the bars, restaurants and shops was a luxury that made the most of our time away.

So we still had time for a little sight seeing and we started with the closest and most obvious attraction, the Roman Baths. The operatic voice of a singer in the square outside floated down as the warmth from the natural waters rose, and there was a lovely sense of quiet, despite the inevitable handful of tourists having their photos taken with a Centurion and a Roman lady. I was glad that we had arrived too late to get into the adjoining Pump Rooms so we managed to avoid the obligatory tasting of the Spa waters, which I remember as tasting foul from a visit twenty years ago.

Instead we did a bit of window shopping… I am not a natural shopper but it was all so calm and unbusy, I was rather enjoying trying on a few outfits. Dinner had been booked at Clayton’s Kitchen at the Porter which was an exceptional meal -the best meal I’ve had in ages in relaxed surroundings and with excellent service – so we indulgently went back there for breakfast the next morning.

 

Quiet Street

But somehow Bath had been transformed overnight. From our Friday evening impressions of the Spa town with its calm and elegant streets clad in honey coloured Bath stone, we found ourselves in a busy tangle of alleys and lanes bustling with tourists and street performers.

 

Photo: Phillip Edwards Photography

We ducked into the Thermae Bath Spa for some respite. I had been imagining it as a quiet sanctuary-like day spa, but in fact it seemed more like a modern day version of the Roman Baths, a busy place where people came to socialise in the thermal waters. The rooftop pool literally could not have fit more people in it, but it was rather nice to be engulfed in the warm waters outdoors on an October morning, imagining the bathers as Roman citizens.

Refreshed, we walked up away from the shopping crowds and up to the Circus and the Royal Crescent, to admire the sweeping Georgian architecture of John Wood the Younger, and the lovely views down through Victoria Park. We grabbed a sandwich and went to sit down by Bath Abbey, where the queues for the Roman Baths now stretched around the block, and a non stop stream of buskers kept everyone entertained.

The crowds did not stop inside the Abbey where we enjoyed the exquisite fan vaulting on the ceiling but, rather incongruously, an enormous and chaotic cake sale was happening on the ground. I am the first person to scoff a cake at any opportunity and subsequently feel guilty, but this time not one item along that aisle full of confection actually tempted me – they all looked rubbish! Instead my latent religious guilt compelled me to buy one to aid their fundraising efforts, and I ate it as we walked along the winding River Avon and across the Pulteney Bridge.

We walked along Great Pulteney Street which, at 1000ft long and 100ft wide, is the widest and grandest road of Bath and I could picture those Georgian ladies perambulating up that wide boulevard in their enormous frocks. However it was only built as a façade and subsequent developers acquired the plots and filled in the structure behind, and I loved the idea that each interior would be laid out differently despite the uniform frontage.

At the end of the street is the Holburne Museum, home to the collection of fine and decorative arts by Sir William Holburne. Paintings by Zoffany and Gainsborough hung upstairs while downstairs we picked our way through a diverse collection of silverware, porcelain, miniature cameos, silver gilt spoons and fine furniture. We had been recommended to stop for a cup of tea at the modern extension at the back of the museum which looked out onto the Sydney Gardens, the only remaining pleasure gardens in the country.

Sunday morning saw a walk through Bath’s cobbled streets to meet family friends for breakfast at Raymond Blanc’s brasserie at the Francis Hotel in Queen Square. We just had time to visit the elegant Assembly Rooms with its fabulous chandeliers and its Fashion Museum in the basement, before saying goodbye to our lovely apartment and jumping on the train back to London.

For more pictures of our trip see my Pinterest Travel snaps page

Aside

A Break in the Weather

I spent a wonderful day yesterday with a drawing group in a beautiful garden and nursery near Lewes. We were planning on sketching outside all day and despite overnight rain, the morning light on the drive down was very promising. By the time I arrived, the gardens were bathed in a gorgeous autumnal light and we were rather pleased with ourselves for having chosen the perfect day for it.

Marchants Nursery and Garden in Laughton, East Sussex, is one of the leading small nurseries in the country attached to a beautifully kept garden with stunning views of the South Downs. Owned by Lucy Goffin – one of the ladies in the drawing group – and her husband Graham Gough, the garden at Marchants was the perfect spot to sketch and paint.

At every turn there were plants and flowers, creating a maze like walk through the centre of the gardens, paths lined with planting and a general movement down the garden leading visitors towards a large pond at the end of the plot. Everything was well kept without being fussy, and you could tell that this was a garden created with love. Further up towards the house, one got a longer vista across the gardens and beyond. After a morning’s work we came back together inside. As if by magic, another fantastic spread was created from dishes brought by various members of the group and we had our post lunch cups of tea from the balcony outside the lovely first floor studio.

Of course with eight creative women involved, lunch and a cup of tea is no quick affair! Those of us who hadn’t seen Lucy’s studio were curious, and Lucy obliged by inviting us in to see the studio and her work. She is a textile artist and she draws greatly on the nature surrounding her, with plants from her garden often being depicted in her textiles designs. It was all so inspiring, let alone the incredible views across the South Downs from her balcony. But alas the afternoon felt as though it was already half gone, before we got back to work, and far too soon I had to jump back in the car to make my way back to London for an evening lecture. And so I left Marchants at about 4 o’clock, marvelling that I had spent an entire October day in lovely autumnal sunshine in barely more than a thin jacket.

And then the heavens opened! The two photographs above were taken 20 minutes apart! I had left myself enough time to get back on a good day, but I’d forgotten the Friday afternoon traffic and I certainly had not counted on such appalling weather conditions that the A22 was literally turned into a river. That, plus the typical English signposting which sent me twice around a standstill traffic jam on the East Grinstead ringroad before I realised I would have to retrace my steps back. After two hours in the car, I had gone only 35 miles of my journey and had practically given up on getting back in time for the lecture which was to start in 45 minutes.

But driving through Sevenoaks I had an inspired moment! I parked in the station car park, jumped on the first train to London Bridge (which thankfully turned out to be the fast train), had a couple of crowded tube rides in London rush hour and then sprinted from Holborn tube to make it just in time to Queen Square to grab a glass of wine and a seat for the lecture.

And I am so glad I made the effort, as the lecture was superb. Dr Nicola Gordon Bowe spoke with verve and passion about one of my all time stained glass favourites, Harry Clarke. He was a remarkable Arts and Crafts artist working in Dublin from about 1910. He produced book illustrations and taught graphics at the Dublin School of Art, but it is his idiosyncratic stained glass for which he is remembered best. He was prolific and produced an unbelievable number of outstanding works during his relatively short career which was cut short by his early death in 1931 from – what sounded like – over work.

After the lecture, we were so excited to have the opportunity to look closely at a Harry Clarke glass panel, which demonstrated his unbelievable, almost microscopic, painting technique. There is always more to find in Harry Clarke’s work – little faces, small details, tiny inscriptions and his almost hidden signature. I think his work is also strangely timeless – it has an Arts and Crafts sensibility but it looks like it could have been created by a modern master. Even better, I love that his work also often looks like it could have been painted by a woman – it has such a feminine aesthetic and the decorative detail is mindblowing. But, as we found out, he also had a taste for sauciness in some of his pieces and the good citizens of Dublin were affronted on more than one occasion by his depictions in glass.

We stayed for a meal at the Art Workers’ Guild and I was delighted to spot an Angie Lewin print on the walls – someone else whose work has lovely decorative detail and is also an old friend from my Central Saint Martins days. We were chatting away and ended up being the last people out of the building. On my way back to the tube I remembered with a sinking heart that I’d have to train it back out to Sevenoaks before making the long midnight drive back home.

Aside

The Treasures of Decorex

I wasn’t relishing the journey to get to Decorex 2014. It’s former location in the grounds of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea was minutes from my old flat, but Syon Park for goodness sake?! But a remarkably smooth journey – involving three trains and a (complimentary) coach ride – later and I found myself standing outside a rather bleak looking tent in a bleak field on a bleak day, looking forward to seeing the treasures inside.

The entrance to the show lead visitors past a series of eight contemporary vignettes based on scenes from The Rake’s Progress by Hogarth. It was an odd conceit, the point of which wasn’t clear until I looked it up later on the Decorex website and discovered there was an association with the Sir John Soane’s Museum. However the realisation of these concepts was little contrived and seemed little more than an opportunity for some product placement.

Photo: Schon Magazine Issue 24, styling by Huma Humayun’

The one set that caught my eye was The Orgy by Russell Sage (above left), though perhaps for the wrong reason. It reminded me of my friend Huma Humayun’s styling on the After Hours shoot for Schon magazine (above right), but where Huma’s styling was considered and artful, I thought Sage’s interpretation of the brothel scene just looked like the pile of clothes on my bedroom floor before I put the washing on!

 

Photo: flairfairy.blogspot.uk

However once inside I was more impressed with the exhibitors’ stands. My favourite was the Vessel Gallery stand which displayed a gorgeous collection of various glass pieces, including my friend Brett Manley’s fabulous cast glass mirror (detail, above). Brett’s work has always drawn inspiration from many different sources, but her hexagonal mirror is quite clearly the culmination of her work casting glass from ornate picture frames, something that she started in 2010 for our show ‘Era’ at the Cochrane Gallery.

Photo: Erykah Isaak

My eye was of course trained for other makers that I know, so I was thrilled to see a beautiful display of glass pendants in various shades and shapes from Michael Ruh at the Design Nation stand and I couldn’t miss Eryka Isaak who filled 10 square metres with her huge glass bowls with a tough industrial edge.

Image: talkcontract.contractdesign.com
Image: talkcontract.contractdesign.com

Most spectacular was Christoper Jenner‘s Cloud installation made from his blown glass ‘Urbem’ lights (above) which, as Christopher himself explained to us, were inspired by the meeting of craft and technology in 19th century street lighting in Milan. My glass radar had quite clearly been switched on as I noticed the same lighting in use on the Lapicida stand.

Studio Lucid

Finally another favourite from the show appeared to be lighting of some sort from Studio Lucid but hung like a sculptural installation within its own little walled off section at the end of the Heathfield & Co stand. I stood for a few minutes trying to work it out but, because of the wall, I was as invisible to the stand holders as they were to me and no one came to relieve me of my confusion… perhaps a lesson that though the stands rightly should look beautiful, practicality has its place too?

Aside

Malteser

I’ve just got back from a lovely week in sun-dried Malta to return to a rain-drenched Britain and despite the quite obvious contrasts in our climates, my first impression of the country was actually the noticeable similarities rather than the differences. Malta gained independence from the UK in 1964 but the British influence is still evident everywhere right down to the three pin plugs and the cars driving on the left. The Maltese language is a curious mixture of both Italian and Arabic influences, and it is the only historically Semitic language spoken in Europe so though it uses a Latin alphabet it includes modified letters. However everyone that we spoke to could speak perfect English, being as it is the other official language of Malta.

At only 120 square miles, the island is pretty tiny so we spent our week traversing back and forth on the Arriva-style buses, taking in the country. We took refuge from the sun in the shady maze-like streets of Mdina, the ancient walled city which was the old capital of the country. This is where St Paul the Apostle was said to have lived after being shipwrecked on the island, and its history stretches back 4000 years. Nowadays Mdina is home to just 300 inhabitants, and though you can find numerous private palaces, museums and a magnificent Cathedral within the medieval grid of narrow sandstone streets, one overwhelmingly feels the truth in its colloquial name – ‘The Silent City’. It felt like the highest point in Malta and, sipping cappuccinos on a museum cafe terrace, we were afforded an amazing view right across the flat landscape towards the northeastern coast.

We stayed in a gorgeous apartment in Spinola Bay, a picturesque harbour on the lively St Julian’s coastline. We looked out from our balcony each day to sight of the fishing boats bobbing in the early morning waters and the committed joggers getting in their exercise along the seafront before the sun got too hot. Curving round and out towards the laidback restaurant terraces and the lavish art hotel on the other side of Spinola Bay, the inlet reached its apogee at a busy roundabout marked by a contemporary sculpture. Richard England’s creamy white stone sculpture spells out the word LOVE twice over, but it has apparently antagonised locals that its letters are upside down.

Photo: www.globetrottergirls.com

On our first day’s exploratory walks in the area, we passed the love sculpture at 3pm when its intention was entirely obvious as there was a perfect shadow cast upon the pavement. But every time I returned to take another photograph, the sun was too high or too low to recreate the word against the ground. Perhaps it was the suggestion of the fleeting nature of love which was what had prompted local criticism? As if to counteract this interpretation the more romantic pairs of passers-by have started to mimic the Parisian habit of the Pont de l’Archevêché by attaching love-locks bearing their initials and tossing the key into the blue waters of the Mediterranean to declare their eternal love. We tried to follow this amorous tradition but, in typical Brit-style, logistics came before romance and the acquisition of a spare padlock seemed too much of a challenge!

Photo: www.britannica.com/

On our penultimate day we visited Valletta, the capital city which I had glimpsed many times from across the bay. The St John Co-Cathedral in the center of the city looked austere from outside, but rather took our breath away once inside. Every single surface was decorated in the most extravagant Baroque pattern and imagery, apparently added many years after the building of the church in the late 16th century. The lustrous gold surfaces on every decorative motif seemed to reflect the heat of the day which entered with the sweaty waves of tourists. Fans had been set up in the space but to little effect, and with the clutter of people and the clatter of cameras and audio guides, it was a relief to climb the stone steps up to a cooler inner room. I turned a corner and there, facing each other from either end of this sanctum, were two world-famous Caravaggio paintings: The Beheading of St John the Baptist and St Jerome Writing. Many years ago I did my degree in history of art at the Courtauld Institute, and I probably should have known about Caravaggio’s history in Malta but these extraordinary paintings came as a complete surprise. We sat quietly and enjoyed the chiaroscuro effects as we underwent our own form of chiaruscuro with our hot flushed faces cooling to a more normal skin tone colour in the dark of the church.

Photo: www.stjohnscocathedral.com
Photo: www.stjohnscocathedral.com

See further travel photos here

Aside

Garden of Delights

Yesterday I spent a nightmare three hour journey driving down to Surrey – getting lost, missing my turns in all the road rebuilding, and getting caught on big roads going in completely the wrong direction. My route was so convoluted, I actually manged to cover four different counties and I almost made it to the south coast!

So after all the frustration of a hot, sticky journey which was about twice as long as it needed to be, it was heavenly to finally reach my destination, the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden. Tucked away in a quiet pocket of Surrey, this is a lush oasis of a garden with plenty of peaceful, shady spots to sit and take in the scenery. Dotted about the ten acres of landscaped garden are a changing collection of  contemporary sculptures.


I was there to meet a group of like-minded artists and garden designers and spend a day drawing and sketching. Organised by landscape designer Annie Guilfoyle, the day was a perfect opportunity to connect with other creatives and it was wonderful to get back into drawing, something of which I don’t do enough.

We had the entire garden to ourselves and Hannah herself came out intermittently to admire the work going on and give the odd word of advice. An impromptu picnic for lunch turned into a veritable feast as each member of the group unpacked more and more food, but the bonhomie over lunch was a good social recharging before the quiet calm of the afternoon sketching session.

 

The garden truly was the perfect setting for a perfect day…. right up to the miserable prospect of the long drive home.

Gallery

An i-Lumen-ating experience

I had an odd experience last Friday. I had spent the day at a Business Club run by The Design Trust in a lovely sunny conference centre in Bloomsbury. We had been in the main meeting room all morning, then served lunch in the garden courtyard and attended a seminar in another side room, with the gentle sounds of the general public in the cafe at the front of the building.

Walking back towards the exit at the end of the day, I noticed some small stained glass windows dotted down the corridor. “That’s odd!” I thought… the stained glass was backwards, so I was looking at it the wrong way from the corridor, which meant that the front view was on the other side of the wall. As I followed the corridor down to investigate what was on the other side I was envisioning another meeting space. And then I turned the corner to discover that the cafe was in fact just the front end of a chapel! A chapel within a contemporary conference building? Surprising.

On speaking to the cafe manager, the penny dropped. Lumen was in fact a Church which had been redesigned in 2009 with dwindling congregation numbers in mind and thus rebuilt with the religious space being only one relatively small part of a larger multiple use centre.

Quite apart from being a beautifully designed space, it struck me that if I could spend a day in the building without actually realising it was a church, then the Lumen brand offers a challenging model for religious architecture in the 21st century.