Jeremy Speck Original Prints 'extra'

Samuel Palmer

2011-11-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

Just finished Rachel Campell-Johnston's biography of Samuel Palmer, Mysterious Wisdom. A fairly breezy read with very little real insight into his work (which is odd from an art critic), and a glaring cock-up when she confuses engraving with etching. However, it reads well and gives a well-rounded view of Palmer, and is at times very moving.

New print: Exeter

2011-11-14T04:13:00.000-08:00

Busy thinking about the new print, which needs to be ready and framed in time for the Exeter themed exhibition organised by Double Elephant Print Workshop at the Phoenix in, er, Exeter. In order to give it that unmistakable Exeter theme I need to include some reference to the cathedral, and taking my cue from my all-time hero Ben Nicholson I thought I would also include a little Devon flag. However, the immediate problem is rendering the cathedral tower (left) into a linocut in the same style as the rest of the print.....watch this space.

Exeter Open Studios 2011

2011-11-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

Well that's it for another year, and my first Exeter Open Studios in my own studio (left) was a great success, with alot of interest, many encouraging comments and some serious buyers: so a very big thank you to all that came and an even bigger thank you to those who bought. Now I have to sort out the framing requests.

Waterstones display

2011-11-08T07:30:00.001-08:00

Just taken my Waterstones display down, which was well worth doing as it brought in some sales for Exeter Open Studios. Interesting times for Waterstones and their (on the whole) less than inspiring staff.

New series of still lifes

2011-11-08T03:08:00.001-08:00

It has been a while since my last post, and I have moved away from my Bridget Riley phase, and pure abstraction in general. Contrary to what you may intuitively think I find the pure abstracts far more difficult than the more representational work: it is easy to see when you have it wrong but far more difficult to see when it is right, and endlessly moving shapes about starts to mess with your head after a while.

Anyway, after revealing my two new still lifes, Manda's Mug (the print is inspired by a painting by Manda Beeching) and Fig and Jug (left) at this years Exeter Open Studios and finding that they were very well received (3 sales of Manda and 2 of Fig) I have decided to do at least 3 more. Not only that, they are rather fun to make. So it is less Ben Nicholson and more Winifred from here on in!

I hope to document the process of creation of the next one (provisionally entitled Exeter) as I go along, so watch this space.

2011-02-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

New work in progress...

2011-02-21T05:29:00.001-08:00

Someone wanted to see how my prints take shape, so until I get round to documenting the whole process here is the final stage to my last print.

Here the final plate is inked up. As there is now more backing plate than image plate it is impossible to keep the ink off the plate.

As this would be picked up by the paper (which I don't want) I cut out a template that blocks the inky backing plate, leaving only the image plate.

The final image on the drying rack next to one waiting to be finished.

The plate can now be binned.

Finished work.

Edgar Hubert

2011-02-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

Another great but obscure British 20th century abstract artist.

Composition May, 1943

Simon Starling

2011-02-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

Simon Starling (great name) is at Tate St Ives, which got me thinking about his wonderful reworking of Henry Moore's Warrior with Shield (1953-54), Infestation Piece (Musseled Moore). Starling made a metal replica of Moore's Warrior, then submerged it in Lake Ontario until it was nicely covered with Zebra Mussels.

John Wells & Francis Davison

2011-02-08T03:36:00.000-08:00

Another couple of great lower league British artists. Francis Davison seems an odd fish, but his paper collages are things of great beauty.

Francis Davison Brilliant yellow and dark green, John Wells Composition

Michael Canney

2011-02-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

Michael Canney, a great unsung British Modernist, and a growing influence on my work. Check out this website for more info and images.

Lanyon at Tate St. Ives

2011-02-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

Walter Benjamin claimed that in the age of mechanical reproduction original art loses its aura, whether this is true or not (the aura of the Mona Lisa does not seem to have diminished after how many countless postcard sales), the one thing that reproduction does deny is a work of arts sheer physicality, and this certainly applies to the work of Peter Lanyon.
Lanyon, the only native born member of the so-called St Ives group, is long overdue a retrospective at Tate St Ives as he is surely the closest Britain has ever come to having a home-grown abstract expressionist painter to rival those from across the Atlantic.
Lanyon was a difficult character, and managed to fall out with almost everyone within the claustrophobic atmosphere of the St Ives art-world (he reportedly made a habit of urinating against Ben Nicholson’s wall on his way back from the pub in the hope it may eventually cause his house to collapse). However, his commitment to his art was immense, and all the clichés we associate with Pollock et al were just as true of Lanyon.
Lanyon was primarily a painter of landscape, figures appear as an afterthought, mere ghostly forms coalescing out of the black lines and abstract shapes that define his mid period work. The earliest work represented here illustrates his huge debt to Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson, the formers constructions taught Lanyon about representing space and gave him a lifelong attachment to making these “experiments in space”, both as an end in themselves and as 3D studies for later paintings. Nicholson’s influence is more problematic, as they are very different painters with very different agendas. Nicholson was a self-styled internationalist and Lanyon was a died-in-the-wool Cornishman. The Yellow Runner (1946) and Landscape with Cup (1946) both have the tell-tale Nicholson motifs of faux naïf horse and cup, enclosed by ovals in clearly defined landscapes, but these objects soon disappear in Prelude and Generation (1947) replaced by swooping oval forms enclosing other organic shapes. These heavily worked pieces lack vitality and it is plain to see that Lanyon is struggling to express the depth of his feeling about the landscape with this mannered style.
It is with Trevalgan (1951) that Lanyon hits his stride, with a powerful and confident use of colour and form: ovals and lines defining field formations that are almost map like. These are deeply personal evocations of the Cornish landscape. With the hindsight of his later work you are tempted to call them ‘land-bound’, almost subterranean in their earthiness.
Portleven (1951), below, is Lanyon’s multi dimensional breakthrough work (painted in 4 hours after Lanyon destroyed the much laboured over first version), a view of the Cornish coastal village as seen from a variety of viewpoints, almost a two-dimensional construction on canvas.
Lanyon’s most powerful (and perhaps best known) work, St Just (1953) is the painting where Lanyon shakes off his influences. Much has been written about this work, especially in relation to Lanyon’s feeling for all things Cornish. It is almost a riposte to those modernist interlopers of St Ives busy painting and carving tasteful pieces that float above the world. Lanyon’s work maybe abstract but it is as powerful an evocation of place as anything Constable painted. In St Just we have a mineshaft running down the centre of the painting topped by barbed wire (Lanyon also stressed this could also be seen as a crucifix, although this interpretation seems more like an afterthought). This is a great physical painting, greens and yellows and blacks are smeared and scraped and drawn on with real vigour and strength. It is earthy and heartfelt, and you do not doubt that Lanyon really laboured over it. Lanyon certainly felt guilt that his family had played a part in imposing these awful working conditions on the Cornish tin miners, and painted St Just as a form of memorial. St. Just bristles with energy and tension, and to see it in the flesh is a powerful experience.
Away from his beloved Cornwall, Lanyon struggled, and the Italian paintings Primavera and Saracinesco (1953) are not successful: the lighter mood and colours lack the tension of the Cornish works and although accomplished, they veer towards the decorative.
In 1959 Lanyon took up gliding, a natural progression as his 1956 work High Ground seems to lift the viewer into the sky. Lanyon’s paintings are now transformed, gone are the heavy abstract expressionist landscapes, replaced by a lightness of touch. They are now all swoops and arcs and large patches of pure space. Lanyon is now painting air (his very own Constable cloud studies). If the Met Office had a favourite painter it would surely be Lanyon. This is made explicit in Thermal (1960), where Lanyon has left the ground completely and paints with a palette of blues and whites.
This is Lanyon’s most successful period: the confidence and scale of his work is extremely impressive and his colour palette is assured. However, the art world was moving inexorably on and the influence of Pop Art starts to show in Lanyon’s work from 1963. Lanyon’s colours are flatter and now appear in isolation, gone are the subtle gradations and textures, replaced by areas of pure red and blue. These later works seem to be striving to be more playful, in the spirit of Pop, but Lanyon is at his best when a self consciously serious painter and these later works are not wholly successful. Lanyon died in 1964, the result of complications following a gliding accident. Like all painters who die mid-career there is speculation about where Lanyon would have ended up had he lived and worked to a ripe old age. As this exhibition makes clear it is an intriguing question as his work tracks all the major developments in British art that were occurring in his lifetime.

Nathan Carter

2009-09-23T09:11:00.001-07:00

Don't know anything about this artist, don't really want to, enough to know that his work is utterly fantastic. Shapes, colours and wonderful titles. This piece is ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE BARENTS SEA WHERE DID ALL THESE BIRDS COME FROM?, 2007. Why of course it is, it couldn't be anything else, could it?

Peter Green

2009-09-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

A quick look at St. Judes Gallery website reveals that the brilliant printmaker Peter Green has an exhibition in the offing, with some stunning new work. The Peter Green print that hangs above my living room fireplace, Red Night Fantasy, remains my favourite artwork on display in my house (my own work included). The enigmatic shapes and organic forms bristle with energy and seem to be in constant tension against each other, an impression emphasised by the muted colours and clever overprinting. The new works seem even more arresting, reminiscent of the surrealism of de Chirico and Paul Nash: vaguely recognisable shapes and forms that leave you intrigued and unsettled. These are works that you never tire of losing yourself in, and when I sell some work I shall be buying one, hopefully Shore forms (illustrated). Simply stunning.

Ib Geertsen

2009-06-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ib Geertsen created art that "was what it was", wonderfully vibrant and playful abstracts that contained no message other than the pure aesthetic. Geertsen's work was unknown to me until his death a couple of weeks ago, and I would love to have had the opportunity to see the exhibition at the Rocket Gallery (another marvellous recent find). A painter, printer, sculpture and, rather wonderfully, a designer of children's play areas. It seems that Ib Geertsen also planned his work by cutting out and arranging pieces of paper, so I am in good company. Anyhow, check out the Rocket Galleries exhibition pages for his work. Fab.

Accidental image

2009-06-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Most of my abstract linocuts are conceived using collaged paper before they take shape as prints. Coloured paper shapes are repeatedly arranged over time until an image takes shape that I am happy with. The only problem with this technique is that it can lead to images that are too rigid or stylized. The image on the left started out in the same way. However, after arranging all the collaged paper I accidentally knocked the paper they were resting on and the whole image was knocked to one side (see right), resulting in the pieces overlapping. After my initial cursing I saw that the resulting image was stronger than the original and used this instead as the template for the print.

Nicholson at Tate St. Ives

2009-03-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to Tate St. Ives to see the Ben Nicholson exhibition (probably the last large exhibition of his work for quite a while) and it was as good as I expected, if only because it was so beautifully free of people, which is really the only way to contemplate Nicholson's white reliefs. Derided as being "mere decoration" by his critics, the white reliefs can be said to be the very apotheosis of modernism: paintings, sculptures and architectural statements. However, they are not cold remote objects due to one fundamental reason: they are made by hand. Not only that, but they were (for the most part) made from one piece of board that was laboriously scraped into shape using an endless supply of razor blades, and it is this dedication and commitment that makes them strangely romantic objects, for all their white sterility.

Leaving aside the fact that Nicholson couldn't paint animals, and his Alfred Wallis ships now look a little twee, his still life paintings are a wonderful English cubism with domestic items arranged on a kitchen table, usually mugs, jugs and vases (left, 1954). Many critics point to Nicholson's mother's remark that when she heard "art talk" she would escape to scrub the kitchen table as an insipiration behind his "scrubbed" reliefs, but the same could be said of his still lifes: intense studies of domestic items on a well scrubbed kitchen table.

The later paintings in the exhibition reflect Nicholson's success, as they become larger and bolder, losing some of their understated intensity.

2009-01-28T06:15:00.000-08:00

From February 28th until March 29th, the National Printmaking Festival 2009, organised by the Gloucestershire Printmaking Cooperative, is taking place in Stroud. I only mention this because my print Boplicity is going to be 'representing' me as a member of the Double Elephant Print Workshop (along with the work of four other members). The catalogue is testament to how many incredibly impressive printmakers are out there, and looking through it made me wonder if I was a worthy exhibitor (you can access it online)! If you are anywhere near Stroud in March, check it out, and hey, why not defy the economic climate and blow some cash (preferably on Boplicity!)

Nicholson, Hepworth and Moore in Norwich

2009-01-28T06:04:00.000-08:00

Here's another exhibition I will struggle to get to and will have to make-do with the catalogue: Moore, Hepworth, Nicholon: A Nest of Gentle Artists in the 1930s. An odd subtitle, taken from Herbert Read, but if the exhibition is as good as previous ones at the Castle Museum in Norwich, it should be worth a visit (although a bad exhibition with the work of these three is worth a visit).

Why Norwich? Well, the rather tenuous link is that they all took a holiday together (with others) to Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast, where Hepworth and Nicholson fell in love on their second visit.

Victor Pasmore (1908 - 1998)

2008-09-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

I have just taken delivery of Norbert Lynton's 1992 monograph on Victor Pasmore, and a lovely book it is too. Pasmore was largely self taught, having to spend ten years working for the London county council (as it was then), refusing promotion so he could dedicate enough time to painting. Pasmore's plunge into abstraction in the late forties and early fifties was described by Herbert Read as the most revolutionary event in post-war British art (bearing in mind that the war had only finished 5 years before, this was probably not as big a claim as it now sounds).
There is a beautiful balance to all Pasmore's abstract work; space, movement, tension and colour all effortlessly balanced. As William Packer puts it in his Financial Times obituary: "vaguely organic forms held in check and judicious tension by more stable elements - as it were, water flowing round a rock, a crowd through a railway station".
Pasmore's legacy is not an easy one, and his role as "consultant director of urban design" in the development of Peterlee gave him the opportunity to turn his constructivist theories into a concrete reality with The Pavilion (known locally as "the Pivvy"). Now seen by many as part of the Brutalist legacy, The Pavilion, although still standing, has been knocked about in an attempt to make it less vandal friendly. Turned down for Grade II listing in 1998, it languishes as a monument to more optimistic times. Pasmore himself decided to move to a nice old house in Malta, where he continued to paint until his death in 1998, aged 89.

Roger Hilton in Cambridge

2008-08-14T06:23:00.001-07:00

This looks like a corkingly good exhibition, and one that I will struggle to get to but anyone with an interest in British twentieth century art should make a beeline to Kettle's Yard for the Roger Hilton exhibition. As The Guardian states, Hilton was "one of the very best" of the last century, and this show has some of his very best work, a view shared by John Russell Taylor's excellent review in The Times. Hilton's work rewards revisiting, as you uncover hidden wit and depth in his joyful canvases of pure colour and movement: just being around Hilton's work makes me want to leap about in the spirit of his famous Oi Yoi Yoi. Not only that, you can chill out in probably the most divine house interior in the country, checking out the work of Hilton's forerunner, Ben Nicholson.

Abstract ah um

2008-07-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

In an idle moment, probably in the early hours whilst trying to get baby Betsy to sleep, I was pondering what the first work of abstract art that I remember seeing was, and in a flash it came to me: the cover artwork of my father's copy of Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet (left).

In fact, further pondering led me to the conclusion that my recent series of Jazz inspired prints have their ultimate roots in this very piece of work. Further investigation revealed that the man responsible for this whole chain of events is a S. Neil Fujita.

It seems that Fujita got the gig of producing the cover art through being the Director of Design and Packaging at Columbia Records between 1952 and 1957 (Time Out was released in 1959). Fujita is also responsible for the cover art of Mingus Ah Um, (also released 1959), (right). Incidentally, Fujita also designed the original 1969 cover for The Godfather by Mario Puzo, a typeface that is reflected in the design for his own autobiography, Mouth of Reddish Water. Read an excellent interview with the man himself at Waxing Chromatic.

Ancient Landscapes / Pastoral Visions at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath

2008-07-08T09:12:00.001-07:00

What's this? Another exhibition on the neo-romantics? Relatively hot-the-heels of the Pallant House exhibition Poets in the Landscape, the Victoria Gallery in Bath is putting on Ancient Landscapes / Pastoral Visions in two parts, with part one starting on July 26 and part two on 13 September. Despite a pretty atrocious title (do we need that ugly 'slash'?) the show looks to be a thorough overview of the romantic landscape painters from Palmer through to the Brotherhood of Ruralists. In fact it is worth a visit if only to see Nash's Landscape of the Megaliths (left).

Ben Nicholson at Abbot Hall Gallery, Kendal

2008-07-08T09:03:00.001-07:00

Now here's an exhibition worth getting a wee bit excited about (although not so excited that I am willing to travel the length of the country), A Continuous Line: Ben Nicholson in England, just opened at the Abbot Hall Gallery in Kendal, Cumbria. As the site states, this is the first major Nicholson exhibition in the UK for 14 years, and will focus on his years in Britain from 1922 to 1958 (after which he decamped to Switzerland).
However, if you can't make it to Kendal you can catch the show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, and then at Tate St. Ives in 2009.

2012: the year we will have sold our soul

2008-06-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

As the dreary march towards the beacon of sporting legacy that is the London 2012 Olympics trudges forever closer, and contractors and consultants get inexorably richer at the expense of the taxpayer, here is a masterful piece of writing by London's greatest modern chronicler Iain Sinclair in the latest London Review of Books. Also, as a reluctant allotmenteer, I am keeping a close eye on the valiant struggle by the Manor Garden Allotments Society as they stand up for their 100 year old patch. Also of interest is Games Monitor: debunking Olympics myths. Photo from ninebelow, on Flickr group London 2012.

Trainspotter? No, drainspotter actually.

2008-06-17T03:44:00.000-07:00

Ever hungry to feed an autistic need to spot and document I have stumbled across the perfect pastime: drainspotting. While psychogeographing through the urban landscape you can plot your route by (photographically) collecting manhole covers. As these sites show, there are some real treasures to found underfoot wherever your travels take you. I will now judge a city and a culture by how well it satisfies the drainage aesthetic. The manhole cover on the left is in Germany by the way.
Sewers of the World Unite, Covers to Discover & Drainspotting.

2008-05-12T03:27:00.000-07:00

I am getting quite excited about my new series of prints, of which the work illustrated, Boplicity, is the first. Inspired in part by the prints of the great Peter Green OBE, whose work Red Night Fantasy, hangs above the fireplace in my studio. These prints (of which I hope to complete at least five) will concentrate on recurring shapes in three or four powerful colours, one of which will be either gold or silver.

2008-04-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

Around this time of year I find myself strangely addicted to the World Snooker Championships. Having on occasion failed miserably at playing the game on a full size table the ability of these incongruously dressed men never fails to astonish me. Not only that, ever since I read that Ben Nicholson and Paul Nash would skip classes at the Slade to play Billiards (the forerunner to the modern game of snooker) I have also come to appreciate its peculiarly modernist aesthetic.

"Although I was not conscious of it at the time, I think that the billiard-balls, so cleanly geometrical in form and so ringingly clear in colour, against the matt-green of the baize, must have appealed to my aesthetic sense.." Ben Nicholson quoted in Sarah Jane Checkland (2000) Ben Nicholson: the vicious circles of his life and art. John Murray, London, p.21.

In praise of wasteland

2008-04-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

Having recently been to view the shiny redevelopment plans for my town I noticed that they are planning to "develop" one of my favourite patches of wasteland into some sort of 'wildlife' area. Represented on the planning map by a pond and a nice circular path, presumably so the new inhabitants of the nearby apartments can enjoy a late evening stroll walking their dog. Something they would be unwilling (and unable) to do if they left the site in its scruffy and hazardous state (concealed shopping trolleys and broken glass litter the area). Unfortunately however, the local wildlife love this urban scruff, and is a favourite spot for flocks of House Sparrows, Goldfinches, Chiffchaffs and Sedge Warblers.

As the Field Studies Council points out "Where such sites are waiting for redevelopment they may be 'tidied up' to try and enhance their amenity value for people, but unfortunately in such a way that is detrimental to wildlife."

This sort of "bastard countryside" (Victor Hugo's apt description of the city edgelands) is the re-colonization of the industrial by a ponderous and feckless nature, and is the very antithesis of the tidy 'nature park' with its waymarked, colour-coded footpaths and 'information points'. For the very epitome of this tension see the rapid destruction of the Lea Valley by the Olympic 2012 behemoth, and its documentation by Stephen Gill.
Surely we can spare a small pocket of land for nature to do with it what it will?

Fieldfare

2007-11-30T05:19:00.000-08:00

It is not often I wake up with a mission in mind, but this morning I decided that I needed to herald winter in by seeking out the one bird that for me confirms the season: the Fieldfare Turdus pilaris. Described aptly by the Birds of the Western Palearctic (BWP) as a "rakish" bird, the Fieldfare is the aristocrat of the Thrushes (although its tendency to roam in packs would perhaps contradict this). Chaucer's 'frosty feldefares' are, for most of us in the UK, winter visitors from the frosty north, although they do occasionally breed in the Highlands.

Meaning, from the Anglo-Saxon felde-fare, a traveller over the fields, the Fieldfare, like many birds, has a host of local names throughout the land: a Feltiflier to the Scots, a Velverd to the people of Wiltshire, and a Storm Bird to those from Norfolk, with the Welsh name picking up on its noisy calls: they call it socen llwyd, which means 'grey pig'.

A resplendent coat of many hues, chestnut back, speckles on a soft beige breast with a slate grey head and black tail, the Fieldfare stands proud, no more so than when it is perched in a wind blown tree in November with its kin, and its cousin, the Redwing.

Fieldfares, and Redwings seem to leave as quickly as they arrive, once April is here these handsome thrushes beat their way back to northern skies. As John Clare wrote, Fieldfares "come and go on winters chilling wing / And seem to share no sympathy with Spring", March in The Shepherd's Calendar.

Turning the Pages

2007-11-28T02:39:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the closest any of us will ever come to some of the first editions and manuscripts that shape our culture is through the marvel that is Turning the Pages (TTP). Conceived by The British Library way back in 1996, and brought to reality in partnership with Armadillo New Media Communications, TTP produces an impressive digital facsimile, enabling libraries and museums to display the contents of valuable books and manuscripts.

Currently being used by The British Library, The Royal Society, The Wellcome Collection, National Library of Medicine (US)

Who cares how it works, it just does. My personal favourites are Robert Hooke's Micrographia (for the famous Flea etching, above), Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica (and you thought Gunther von Hagens was an original), the Lindisfarne Gospels, Sherborne Missal, Blake's notebook (all British Library) and the, frankly, intriguing Wellcome Apocalypse (check out the blue g-string, above). In fact they are all wonderful, enjoy!

William Blake and relief etching

2007-11-28T01:17:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday William Blake, 250 today. Although most famous for having his poem Jerusalem misinterpreted as a jingoistic anthem for public schoolboys, Blake's biggest contribution to printmaking methods was his invention of relief etching. This technique was supposedly revealed to Blake by the spirit of his dead brother, who Blake had adored, although it also had great practical benefits to Blake as it enabled him to paint his images directly on to the plate using etch resistant varnish. The acid would therefore eat away at the areas he did not want printing, as opposed to intaglio etching where the etched lines are the areas to be printed. The only real obstacle was to then reverse all the images and words on the plate; although his training as an engraver would have made this process second nature.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite. This I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid." The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Blake's new method was first used around 1788 in the first of his 'illuminated books' All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion. His first illuminated book of poems, Songs of Innocence appeared in 1789 with much of the hand colouring and printing carried out by his wife Catherine. The books were then mostly sold by Blake directly to collectors. Blake's other Illuminated Books include The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Milton, Jerusalem and Visions of the Daughters of Albion.

The Great Naturalists

2007-11-27T04:02:00.000-08:00

Thames & Hudson continue to impress with their art books, and out in time for Christmas is this marvellous collection of biography and illustration of the great naturalists from Theophrastus to Darwin and Russell Wallace. My only complaint is that they chose to illustrate the cover with an Audubon instead of a less well known image (from, say, Catesby). Interestingly, the image used, Audubon's Flamingo, is actually inaccurate in that the Flamingo's pose would be impossible to achieve in real life. Audubon's aim to paint all his bird's life size meant that he had to squeeze his flamingo into this odd position. It has also been pointed out that no flamingo in the wild would ever achieve such a flaming pink as this individual (although it's colleague in the background is a healthier hue).

The Word from Wormingford

2007-11-16T06:47:00.000-08:00

If there is such a thing as a modern sage, then we must surely look no further than the understated pastoral colossus that is Ronald Blythe. Even leaving aside Akenfield, that magnificent hymn to a changing rural land and people-scape, anyone familiar with his wonderful column in the Church Times, Word from Wormingford, will be left bathed in a warm glow of poetry and wisdom.

As much sermon as country diary, Word from Wormingford draws not only on Blythe's immense "book learning" (he was a Reference Librarian at Colchester Library, later editor of Penguin Classics), but, more importantly, on his deep experience and love of people and nature. In fact, it is his ability to see everything as nature, to draw on the "connectedness" of all living things and the places they inhabit that lifts Word from Wormingford into the realm of poetry, and Blythe into the role of Poet-Seer. Almost every sentence is a call to contemplation of the world around us:

"Waiting is a kind of involuntary study. On the station platform, I study the painted iron flowers planted there in 1860. At the bus stop, I study the wild flowers pushing through the lawnmower’s stripes." Church Times, Issue 7549.

Ben Nicholson Prints 1928-1968

2007-11-10T10:13:00.000-08:00

The Alan Cristea Gallery is currently showing the largest retrospective exhibition of Ben Nicholson's prints ever mounted. Nicholson made prints throughout his career, from linocuts in his early days, through drypoint, and finally etchings (with only one woodcut, Abstract 1934, below, Tate Gallery). It is an intriguing exhibition, and one (probably) for the Nicholson and/or print purist. Most of the work has come from a private collection, with some early linocuts on loan from Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, such as the marvellous Head of 1933 and Profiles of the same year. Interestingly, a version of the 1938 linocut on the left (which is actually my version, as this is a linocut I did for a cover for the catalogue) is also displayed, but it is an earlier, less worked version from 1937. They even display the two lino plates used to produce the Princess textile design, complete with the original pattern still visible on the uncut sections of lino which illustrates how new the medium was in terms of producing art.

What is particularly fascinating about Nicholson's approach to printmaking is his lack of any rigid structure in how the medium is to be treated: edition sizes are random or non existent; linocut lines are painted over (the Foxy and Frankie series are a case in point) ; etchings are handcoloured or given a grey wash; old etching plates are reused, and best of all, the physical plates are trapeziums (see Siena, 1968, left, Tate Gallery)
Nicholson's etchings are not technically proficient (edges are not filed, plates are sometimes grubby), but then anyone who would use this argument against them misses the point: the imperfection is integral to the work itself. Like his drawings they display an unerring ability to find a balance between representation and abstraction with a magical economy of 'line'. This economy is further enhanced when he hand colours a small section, turning a flat image into something with great depth.

Endpapers

2007-10-31T04:26:00.000-07:00

The distant, and mostly poor relation of the book cover, endpapers are something of a lost art in the world of modern mass market publishing. Technically they fulfill the utilitarian role of hiding the messy binding of the hardback covers. However, in many cases the endpapers themselves were of a high artistic quality and it is always worth exploring what lurks beneath the faded covers of those tatty volumes in second-hand bookstores.
Of particular interest to me are the 20th century patterned papers by artist-designers such as Ravilious (see Everyman), Bawden, Piper, Sutherland and Nash (see illustration right, Crocus 1925). As well as these luminaries, other less well known designers were producing exceptional work in a variety of techniques: an example of which would be the marbled paper of Tirzah Garwood Ravilious. Also, if you have a selection of old Ladybird books in the attic, you can use the endpapers to date them. For some other fine examples of endpapers take a peek at Drawger, and Penguin Book's Blog, also Persephone Books, although their 'what women want' justification is a tad odd.

2007-10-17T04:13:00.000-07:00

Published in 2001, Christopher Woodward's In Ruins has for me become one of those books that I feel a yearning to reread at least once every year. Effortlessly beautiful prose that seamlessly stitches the closing scenes of Planet of the Apes ("Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!") to the competition that led to the magnificent poem Ozymandias ("My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"), Woodward's book explores the enduring appeal of ruins through a myriad sequence of anecdote, history, literature and art. I defy anyone to read the sequence that describes the variety of plant life found in the Colosseum in the 19th century and the explanation of how it may have got there without being moved. This is history writing at it's very best: encapsulating a whole era and civilisation with one perceptive and inciteful connection.

What does the modern tourist see when he or she walks around the sand blasted, health and safety roped modern 'ruin' equipped with their audioguide? History repackaged, cleaned up, preserved in an archaeological limbo. When Paul Nash stumbled across the fallen stones of Avebury he made a visceral connection with the place, a connection you would struggle to make in the Avebury of today (the stones are now upright, tidied up, spic & span), they are (horror of horrors) 'educational'. Woodward's contention is that ruins are organic, living things, they are fleeting and should be allowed to decay. Let the Colosseums of yesterday become the building stones of today, enjoy them while you can, but let them grow old (dis)gracefully.

New Exhibitions

2007-09-18T22:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of interesting exhibitions are looming on the horizon: Kenneth and Mary Martin at Tate St. Ives, and the Queen Mother's collection at Norwich Castle Museum & Gallery, both opening on the 6 October. The Norwich exhibition will include (according to their rather dreadful website), work by John Piper, presumably the series of paintings commissioned of Windsor Castle produced between 1941-1944. With dark and brooding skies above Windsor, Piper painted the mood of the country as well as the buildings, although King George VI failed to appreciate the artistic license, remarking that Piper must have had "very bad luck with the weather". Also on at the same time is the touring Tate Britain exhibition of the work of Prunella Clough. Clough, along with John Minton and Keith Vaughan, was one of the generation of British painters to follow Piper, Sutherland and Moore. Taught by Ceri Richards and Henry Moore at the Chelsea Scool of Art (and later by Victor Pasmore at Camberwell), her mature style reflected figurative cubist influences filtered through a post-war industrial palette of brown and grey. These paintings of east coast fishermen, lorry drivers and road workers are highly stylized, and unrecognisable as individual subjects (in this they are similar, but very different in intent, to Vaughan's male nudes). Like many Clough moved into pure abstration in the 1960s, and her later work is more dynamic, although her palette never moved out of the early industrial hues.

Sources & Links
Richard Cork, National Treasure, New Statesman, 18 August 2003.

Prunella Clough, Tate Britain

The Twentieth Century Society

2007-09-18T04:40:00.000-07:00

Known previously as the Thirties Society, and set up to campaign for buildings post 1914 (where the Victorian Society draws it's line), the Twentieth Century Society has triumphed a much maligned era in British building. Currently being castigated for recommending the listing of Plymouth's (rather marvellous) Civic Centre, (see illustration) the Society also works to save those objects and buildings which are now seen as icons of Britishness, such as the Giles Gilbert Scott red telephone boxes. In fact, the Society is currently raising awareness of, and trying to get listed status for, the 1968 K8 telephone box (a less immediately lovable, but just as iconic box for anyone with strong memories of the 1970s). This Society is a must for anyone with a serious interest in modernism, in all it's glories (and ugliness), and is a snip at £35 a year.
Sources
Twentieth Century Society http://www.c20society.org.uk/index.html

J & G Meakin

2007-09-16T07:28:00.000-07:00

A J & G Meakin Galaxy coffee pot next to my print 9 Circles Green, with the great Ben Nicholson (Humphrey Spender, circa 1935, National Portrait Gallery) lurking in the background, (sorry, I've no idea where the incense burner fits in to this composition).
J & G Meakin were prolific producers of cheap(ish) tableware from the 1950's onwards, joining forces with Midwinters in 1968 until being taken over by the Wedgewood Group in the 1970s. The coffee pot illustrated is of the Studio style, and is available in a large range of decorative designs, the more common being Sunflower, Maori, Aztec, Poppy, Lotus and Galaxy. Not as popular, or as expensive, as some (such as Midwinter's Stylecraft) due to their more kitsch 1970s designs and availability on the market (everybodies auntie/grandparent seems to have had a set tucked away somewhere) they still represent a great period in British tableware design, and a great opportunity for collectors.
Sources
Stoke-on-line
The Potteries website

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

2007-09-05T06:14:00.000-07:00

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer."

Dylan Thomas, 1937.

This poem was to inspire Ceri Richards' Cycle of Nature series, as well as directly inspiring many paintings and lithographs of the same title (illustration, lithograph from Poetry London, Sept-Oct ,1947). As well as other locations, versions are in the Tate, and the Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea. The 1947 lithographs for Poetry London (3 in total) were to initiate a lifelong passion for Thomas's work (although they only met once, in 1953, the year of Thomas' death). Richards' work can be seen as a barometer of european art influences of the day: moving from the neo-romantic influences of Sutherland to the continental styles of Matisse, and in particular, Picasso. Even his subject matter was similar, with his Rape of the Sabines, Richards was mining a seam that Picasso had explored with his Vollard Suite in the 1930s.

To my mind, one of the strongest set of works that Richards produced were his 'pictorial relief constructions', abstracted portraits of costermongers (always of great fascination to Richards) and others in a whole variety of materials such as rope, wood, metal and other everyday objects (illustration, Two Females, 1937-38, Tate Gallery)

Sources

A. D. F. Jenkins, (2004), ‘Richards, Ceri Giraldus (1903–1971)’, rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005

The genius of Dai Greatcoat

2007-09-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

How many people who gaze up at the magnificent lettering on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre think of the great painter-poet David Jones? I guess not many. In fact they all should, as the lettering is based upon the unique and wonderful 'inscriptions': those "words painted on paper" (Peter Levi, The Times) that Jones produced late in his career (see illustration, Exiit Edictum, 1949, Tate Gallery).

Jones was born in Brockley, Kent, in 1895 to a Welsh father and an English mother (whose own father was Italian). This Welsh-Cockney heritage served Jones well, and can be seen in his 1937 poem-cum-memoir of his time in the trenches In Parenthesis, which was much admired by T.S.Eliot.

Unable to get into the Artists' Rifles, Jones enlisted in the Welch fusiliers on the 2nd January 1915. Wounded in 1916 and invalided home, he missed the carnage of the Passchendaele offensive by a few weeks. Jones, like Edward Thomas and Ivor Gurney, found great companionship and humanity in the company of regular soldiers during the Great War: as his Times obituary states, the "comradeship of his section, platoon, and company had a value for him apart from anything that came later". Whereas for Gurney the war crippled him mentally, for Jones it was as much a "flaming light as a shadow" (Times). As Peter Levi states "The fulcrum of his morality was the decency of the infantrymen of 1914".

A painter of ethereal beauty and an engraver of powerful simplicity (see his Ancient Mariner series at High Cross House, for instance) Jones was a unique artist, almost a twentieth century Blake in the strength of his religious and artistic scope and vision. Although playing apprentice to Eric Gill in the early years, and following Gill's artist's colony from Ditchling to Capel-y-Ffin (and having been briefly engaged to Gills's daughter Petra), Jones ' style was less rooted in the medieval than Gill's. Gill presented himself, and was, a craftsman, producing most of his public work to commission, and his private work mostly concerned with his twin passions of Roman Catholicism and sex. Jones created from his imagination, drawing on myth & folklore, personal experience and a fine sense of light and colour to produce multi-layered modern works of art, such as the sublime Aphrodite in Aulis of 1941.

Sources

Levi, Peter, (2006) ‘Jones, (Walter) David Michael (1895–1974)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press; online edn, May 2006

Rothenstein, John (1956) Modern English Painters: volune II. Lewis to Moore. Macdonald and Janes, London.

High Cross House, Dartington

2007-08-30T04:05:00.000-07:00

After many failed attempts in the past (not open at the weekend) we finally managed to take a trip to visit High Cross House on the Dartington Hall Estate, a short(ish) riverside walk from Totnes Railway Station, to introduce Betsy (aged 5 weeks) to the delights of Modernism.

Built between 1931 and 1932 to strict International Modernist criteria by New York based architect Williams Lescaze, High Cross House was to house the Headmaster (William Burnlee Curry) of Dartington Hall's progressive new school (he had previously been Headmaster at Oak Lane County Day School, Philadelphia, the building that had made Lescaze's reputation in the US). Originally designed to be constructed of reinforced concrete, this proved beyond the local builders (Stavertons), and it was eventually built of brick cavity walls with steel beams for cantilevers and wide spans. Like Kettle's Yard, the interior is a "lived in" space where you can sit in a classic Wassily (Model B3) chair, and admire a fine selection of artwork by, amongst others, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Cecil Collins, and David Jones.

Sources

Cherry, Bridget and Nikolaus Pevsner (1989). The Buildings of England, Devon. Second Edition. Penguin. pp. 316-317.

High Cross House information leaflet. Dartington Hall Estate.

The marmalade megaliths

2007-08-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

What do Seville and Avebury have in common? Marmalade of course. Alexander Keiller, heir to a great marmalade fortune (as in Keillor's marmalade of Dundee), is the reason why the West Kennet Avenue series of stones at Avebury are now standing. Introduced to archeaology by his second wife, Keillor excavated and re-erected the West Kennet Avenue in the late 1930s, buying up land in and around the village.
Paul Nash, another 'discoverer' of the stones in the 1930's, was less impressed by Keillor's re-erection, claiming that it had robbed the site of its presence and power. Another critic derided it as "megalithic landscape gardening". When Nash found the site:
"the great stones were in their wild state, so to speak. Some were half covered by the grass, others stood up in cornfields or were entangled and overgrown in the copses, some were buried under the turf. But they were wonderful and disquieting, and as I saw them then, I shall always remember them. Very soon afterwards the big work of reinstating the Circles and Avenues began, so that to a great extent that primal magic of the stones’ appearance was lost." Paul Nash, (1951) Fertile Image, London, p.11
Revisiting the site in 1938, Nash reiterates his stance:
"Avebury may rise again under the tireless hand of Mr. Keiller, but it will be an archaeological monument, as dead as a mammoth skeleton in the Natural History Museum. When I stumbled over the sarsens in the shaggy autumn grass and saw the unexpected megaliths reared up among the corn stooks, Avebury was still alive." Paul Nash, ‘Landscape of the Megaliths’, Art and Education, March 1939, p.8.

Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means

2007-08-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Coming soon to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter is what promises to be a top notch exhibition of the graphic work of the great Abram Games, brought to you by the Design Museum.
Born Abram Gamse in 1914 in Whitechapel Games was a largely self taught designer. He rose to prominence as a freelance designer in the late 'thirties, and after designing a poster for the Royal Armoured Corp in 1941 (illustrated) was appointed the official war poster designer (1942-6). Not all of his over 100 designes were approved of by the establishment, and Games' socialist sympathies can be seen in some (infuriating Churchill in the process).
Games' design philosophy was "maximum meaning, minimum means".
Source
Allan Livingston and Isabella Livingston, 'Games, Abrams (1914-1996)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Design Museum, London.

Keith Vaughan

2007-08-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

Since visiting the excellent retrospective at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath back in February, the life and work of Keith Vaughan has increasingly intrigued me. Caught between the death of the neo-romantic movement and the birth of Pop Art (he was friends with John Minton, and later David Hockney, amongst others); tortured by loneliness and his homosexuality, Vaughan cuts a tragic figure, committing suicide in 1977. Heavily influenced by Sutherland and later de Stael, Vaughan slowly moved away from his early neo-romantic style to the more abstract, yet he could never free himself from the human (mostly male) figure. Deeply atmospheric, usually solitary, and always vulnerable, it is hard not to see Vaughan's figures as self portraits.

However, Vaughan was never the archetypal 'struggling artist', at least financially. Largely self-taught, and always wracked with self-doubt, his work sold well, teaching at the Slade and in the US. However, it is Vaughan's personal life, illustrated through his published journals, that show his inner struggle with both his art and his sexuality.

"During the day, after the normal clerical and domestic chores, I go through the movements of painting, but without much zest or conviction. My mind easily wanders to other things (usually sexual). This distresses me less than it did."

The Journals of Keith Vaughan, 1967-1977

After an operation left him impotent in 1975, the final straw came with the death of his mother in 1976. They had not enjoyed a good relationship, and Vaughan's response to the news was "relief that a useless life has ceased". However, when Vaughan read the letter that accompanied her will, where she wrote "Goodbye darling - you have been the greatest joy to me ", he broke down, feeling "absolutely no desire to be alive".

Sources:

Keith Vaughan: figure and abstract. Victoria Art Gallery, Bath. 2007

Malcolm Yorke, (2001), The Spirit of Place: nine neo-romantic artists and their times. Taurus.

Anyone seen a Pyrrhula pyrrhula?

2007-07-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

Arguably the handsomest bird in the land is the male Bullfinch. Although historically rare in the west of the country, it does seem to be getting scarcer nationwide. The Common Bird Census indicates that the decline between 1968 and 1991 has been 75% on farmland and 47% in woodland, with a breeding population now of under 200,000.

The Bullfinch has never been a popular bird with fruit growers due to it's voracious spring appetite for tree buds: a flock of Bullfinches can strip an orchard in no time with a single adult removing 30 or more buds a minute. Indeed, as recently as 1996 a licence to kill Bullfinches was issued to commercial fruit growers in Kent. A Biodiversity Action Plan has been drawn up to (attempt) to arrest this decline.

Sources

Species Action Plan for Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) UK Biodiversity Action Plan http://www.ukbap.org.uk/UKPlans.aspx?ID=542#1

RSPB Birdguide http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/b/bullfinch/

Birds of Britain http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/bullfinch.asp

Ben Nicholson's White Reliefs: British Modernism's finest hour

2007-07-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

It has been claimed that Ben Nicholson's "eureka" moment came when he was carving into a piece of lino: the realisation that the carved lino was the art, (not a mere printing plate) coupled with the fact that he had Barbara Hepworth's chisels readily at hand, meant that Nicholson could start to create the greatest Modernist art to come out of Great Britain.
Whatever the origins, Nicholson's early works were certainly not original, abstract painted reliefs were being produced in the early 1920s by such artists as Erich Buchholz, and Nicholson's greatest influence at this time, Jean (Hans) Arp. The idea of entirely white painted reliefs could be seen as an inevitable result of the influences that were flooding in from modernist Europe: 'whiteness' was everywhere, from Brancusi's white studio to the groundbreaking architecture of Corbusier. White was the colour of Modernism, and Ben Nicholson was not the only member of the family to succumb: 'Kit' Nicholson, Ben's younger brother, was to design the modernist Gliding Club in Dunstable in 1934.
The white reliefs are physical, sculptural objects, and need to be seen as such. To attempt to analyze them as paintings is unrewarding and ultimately fruitless. They explore planes and depth, and come to life with the play of light across their surface. In this regard they are decorative pieces to be lived with, to be contemplated in all light conditions and seasons. They do not sit easily in the artificial environment of the gallery (in much the same way that Barbara Hepworth's work benefits so much from her garden).
Nicholson's early reliefs continue until 1939, almost stopping when he and Barbara Hepworth move to St. Ives. Here he introduces colour back into his work, which, although predominantly two dimensional still explores issues of depth, planes, and intersecting geometrical shapes. It is only when he finally tires of the in-fighting and strained relations of St. Ives and moves to Switzerland that the reliefs return, some painted white but most subtly coloured. Indeed, even some of his etchings and drawings are now 'relief' (such as 1967 (Pisa as intended)). By now Nicholson was mostly carving hardboard, which is extremely tough, and it is a measure of his mental strength and dedication to his vision (not to mention physical robustness), that he laboriously carved his reliefs using razor blades in order to achieve the exact depth and precision, getting through hundreds at the completion of a piece. As he stated in a letter to Herbert Read (quoted in Khoroche):
"The patience to use a razor blade is NOTHING, the passion to achieve an end by whatever means that is the point"
In 1982, the white relief reaches its natural conclusion at Sutton Place in Guildford, where a marble relief wall is constructed, now known as the Nicholson Wall.

Sources:
Sarah Jane Checkland (2000) Ben Nicholson: the viciosu circles of his life and art. John Murray, London.
Peter Khoroche (2002) Ben Nicholson: drawings and painted reliefs. Lund Humphries, London.
Norbert Lynton (1993) Ben Nicholson. Phaidon, London.

Illustration:
1934 (Relief). Oil on carved board, 71.8 x 96.5 cm., Tate Gallery

Corbels on display at Mary Redcliffe, Bristol

2007-07-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

"architect by training, a painter by inclination and a photographer by necessity"

2007-07-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

This is how the great English photographer Edwin Smith (1912-1971) described himself. Relatively ignored in his own day, and described in his Times obituary by John Hadfield as "likely to command increasing attention when some of his currently famous contemporaries are forgotten", Smith is now getting some well deserved attention (see the excellent Evocations of Place: the photography of Edwin Smith).
In an age when photography was not seen as a branch of the arts, Smith was a reluctant photographer: even stating on his marriage certificate that his occupation was 'painter', which in a way it was, as he painted everyday, as well as producing high quality woodcuts and endpaper designs. However, Smith was more than a mere jobbing camareaman: whether in Ashington, London or photographing parish churches, Smith's camera captured the essential 'genius loci' of place, infusing his photographs with a richness of tone rarely seen in black and white images. You can also see in Smith's photographs both a timelessness and a shift into post-war modernity in much the same way as in the paintings of Nash, Piper and the Neo-Romantics.
Smith, and his second wife Olive Cook, moved to Saffron Walden in the 1960s where they were part of the artistic circle that had formed around Edward Bawden (who shared with Smith a love of cats). After Smiths death in 1971, Olive Cook was a great champion for her husband's art, and was instrumental in establishing the marvellous Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden. She also gave one of Smith's cameras to James Ravilious, whose own work echoes the sensitivity and subtleties of Edwin Smith's.

Sources:
Robert Elwall (2007) Evocations of Place: the photography of Edwin Smith, Merrell, London
Marina Vaizey (May 2006) 'Smith, Edwin George Herbert (1912-1971)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; Online edn.
John Hadfield (4 Jan. 1972) 'Mr Edwin Smith Painter and Photographer', (Obituaries), The Times, London, p. 12

In praise of the inventor of Linoleum

2007-07-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

Frederick Edward Walton, born sometime before 1834, was the inventor of linoleum, that versatile floor covering now, probably, better known as a printing medium. Like many inventions, Walton discovered linoleum by accident. While attempting to develop a quick drying paint for use in the manufacture of oilcloth (another utilitarian product undergoing a retro design renaissance) Walton noticed that the skin that formed on an open tin of paint had a consistency akin to rubber. This was oxidized linseed oil, and by 1860 Walton had patented a process that enabled him to expose linseed oil to air on a commercial scale. The search for a durable floor covering had been going on for a few years, and there were many early products, such as Kamptulicon, a rubber and cork based covering. Walton substituted the rubber with his oxidized linseed oil, mixed it with cork and resin, mounted it on hessian, and linoleum was born. Linoleum (from linum, linen thread, and oleum, oil) made it's first appearance in 1863, and was patented in 1864. The Linoleum Manufacturing Company was started, a printing factory in Staines converted, and a showroom opened at 67 Newgate Street, London. The "warm, soft and durable" linoleum was advertised at railway stations, and sales started to grow, spreading from domestic interiors to offices and hospitals. In 1872 Walton set up the American Linoleum Company (originally named the Joseph Wild Co.) on the western shore of Staten Island in a town that was dubbed Linoleumville. When the company moved to Philadelphia the citizens of Linoleumville, rather miserably, renamed it Travis. Walton's patent for linoleum ran out in 1877, and despite his attempts to retain exclusive use of the name, in 1878 the High Court ruled that 'linoleum' was the name of a material, not the name of a product of one company. This resulted in rival companies, such as Nairns of Kirkcaldy selling their own linoleums. In fact Kirkcaldy (the town where Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations) became the world centre of linoleum production, with six manufacturers in the town. In 1930 the Linoleum Manufacturing Company amalgamated with Barry, Ostlere and Shepherd to become Barry and Staines Linoleum Company (later Barry Staines), and at it's height, they employed around 350 people in Staines, making it the towns largest employer, churning out 3,200 sq. yards of 'Staines Lino' each week by 1956. The site of the factory is now a shopping centre, after the company relocated to Scotland in the early 1970s, with the only evidence of the factory's existence a statue of two men carrying a roll of linoleum (see illustration). Walton went on to register 88 patents, most of which involved oxidized linseed oil. One of them was a method of embossing fabrics for wall and ceiling coverings, and was marketed as Lincrusta-Walton. Incidentally, Anaglypta , which was invented by a Walton employee, Thomas Palmer, had been rejected by Walton as he saw it as a direct competitor to Lincrusta, so Palmer set up on his own. After retiring to Nice in the 1920s he wrote The Infancy and Development of Linoleum Floorcloth (1925), painted watercolours and read poetry. He was killed in a car accident on 16 May 1928, aged 94, and was buried in La Caucada Cemetery.

Five reasons to love Kettle's Yard

2007-05-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

1. It's free. Open every day except Monday, all you need to do is give the rope a tug and a door to a more peaceful, aesthetic world will open.
2. Ben Nicholson. Nowhere else will you be able to see so many masterpieces by Ben Nicholson in such perfect surroundings.
3. You can actually sit on the furniture. No comfy chairs with ropes across them: sit and idle away a few minutes to a couple of hours in the most serene house in Cambridge.
4. David Jones's Vexilla Regis, 1948.
5. 'Jim' Ede. A man who understood the importance of context, light and space.

The Target Collection, Holburne Museum of Art, Bath

2005-11-22T03:37:00.000-08:00

Modern British Pictures from the Target Collection, at Holburne Museum of Art, Bath, 4th October - 18th December, 2005. Excellent collection of twentieth century British art. Highlights include the Christopher Wood's serene Treboul (1930), Keith Vaughan's Piper influenced The Rectory Garden of 1948 , and The Burning Aviary, (1943).

Powell at the Wallace Collection

2005-11-04T03:26:00.000-08:00

Exhibition of art and other stuff relating to the work of the master of the never-ending sentence, Anthony Powell, at The Wallace Collection. "He was bald but seemed to be bearing up well." Afternoon Men

Midsummer Marriage at the Royal Opera House

2005-10-31T03:23:00.000-08:00

The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for Tippett's Midsummer Marriage. Lyrically daft, musically brilliant. Not quite as bad as Robert Thicknesse, The Times, would have you believe: yes, at little short of four hours it is a "story going nowhere very, very slowly", and the chorus do indeed look like they are on a "middle-aged Hampstead Heath community picnic", but it is hard to see how it could have broken out of the straight-jacket of Tippett's libretto. All that Jung-meets-Eliot filtered through a Powell and Pressburger sensibility is tiresome and dated (as preposterous as a tweed clad Prince Charles quoting Laurens van der Post), and at times you wished they were singing in German (at least it might then have sounded profound), but surely this work is worthy of a revival in that it connects us to an age when post-war English art was manfully struggling to fuse it's English idyll romanticism to a modernist style. Tom Service veers too far in the opposite direction in The Guardian, giving little more than a summary of the opera.

Samuel Palmer at the British Museum

2005-10-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Samuel Palmer at the British Museum, 21 October - 21 January. Andrew Motion is impressed with Samuel Palmer's "longing for transfiguration with a deep human involvement with life-things. Work-things. Ecology-things." An "exhilarating vision of archaic beauty" according to Simon Jenkins, also in The Guardian. "A joy from start to finish" is the verdict of Richard Dorment in The Daily Telegraph. See works by Palmer, Edward Calvert and Blake's beautiful Virgil's Pastoral engravings at the (relatively) new Corners of Paradise gallery at the V & A. Also be sure to visit the exquisite collection of neo-romantic prints in the Spirit of Place gallery next door. Spirit of Place is also the title of an excellent book on the Neo-Romantic movement in British art in the 1920's and 30's by Malcolm Yorke. Occasionally to be found in remainder bookshops.

Munch at the Royal Academy

2005-10-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

Edvard Munch at the Royal Academy. Mixed exhibition of Munch's obsession with portraying his angst on canvas. A subject made cliched by a billion reproductions of The Scream. In fact the scream followed me around the exhibition in the form of a small child. Of particular interst were the early works, especially the woodcuts (Self portrait facing left) and lithographs. The later work, with a similar palette to Bloomsbury (Matisse filtered through the long northern European winters) is a relief if only because you leave the familiar Munch behind. The overiding impression of the later work is that he is painting portraits, not self-portraits: the dishevelled, bearded man on the canvas in front of you is more a stranger to Munch than the self confident early portraits of the ambitious young painter.
Illustration:
Anxiety, woodcut, 1896.

Twentieth Century British Art at the Fine Art Society

2005-10-14T02:44:00.000-07:00

Fine Art Society, New Bond Street. The Twentieth Century exhibition of British art. Some outstanding work on display, with the pick of the bunch being Sutherland's later Picton, Ben Nicholson's linocut textile Princess, linocut Abstract with a Red Circle (right), David Jones' Sheep and Birds in the Park, as well as Ravilious and Paul Nash. Of particular interest to me was seeing another version of Edward Bawden's huge linocut Brighton Pier, this version (1957) differs slightly from the one at the Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden (1977), although I don't know if it is of the same series as the one at the V & A. Also impressed by the work on show of John Cecil Stephenson (Funghi, 1933).

My Name is Rachel Corrie at the Royal Court

2005-10-13T02:34:00.000-07:00

My Name is Rachel Corrie, Royal Court Theatre. Uncomfortable viewing, especially given the location of the Royal Court in Sloane Square where Corrie look-a-like gap year students traipse from one overpriced designer shop to another. Whatever your political position there is no doubting Corrie's humanity and her powerful writing, brought to life through a tour-de-force perfomance by Megan Dodds. Also see.

Elisabeth Frink at Sherborne House

2005-10-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

Elisabeth Frink, Sherborne House. Interesting exhibition of Frink's graphic work. Outstanding screenprints of green men (left), horses and heads. The looseness of the drawn line and the colouring, as well as the monumental size of the stylised heads is both disconcerting and impressive.