Currently reading....'Anti Ugly'

   'Anti Ugly' is a collection of short essays - articles, really - written for 'Apollo' magazine by the architectural historian Gavin Stamp.  I first became aware of Gavin Stamp in the early Eighties via colour-supplement article on the 'Englishman's Room' - a selection of pieces from a book of the same name written by Alvilde Lees Milne, photographs by Derry Moore.  I regret that he (along with Brian Sewell and Vivienne Westwood) didn't lecture at 'The Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture' at least while I was there.*  He's also a good artist, producing pen and ink drawings with an Edwardian feel, which can't be bad.
   The title, (also the title of one of the essays), refers to a student led campaign in the sixties which ostensibly was concerned with quality of contemporary architecture but in fact only demonstrated outside modern Classical and traditional buildings.  This article and others importantly remind us of the damage to the built environment wrought by that almost manic love of the New, that love of Modernism and Modernity that seems (almost) to have saturated British life in the Post War years - what Christopher Brooker called 'Neophilia'.  The loses were great, the scars still born by our cities, and disproportionally by the communities those interventions were often designed to help.  It's hard to disagree with his opinions; he is rightly critical about the recent surfeit of monuments particularly in London, which are mostly of poor quality - he doesn't mention it but RAF monument in the National Arboretum is a real shocker. (It really is appalling.) He is also right to applaud the recent redevelopments of St Pancras and King's Cross stations in London.

Gavin Stamp's bright, cheerful yellow drawing room features in the latest post on the blog Bible of British Taste.  Here's a link

*We did ask our tutors to invite them, but nothing happened.  Looking back now, I realise I shouldn't have been surprised by the inertia, not only was the place seriously dysfunctional but our head of year disliked 'initiative'.

St Peter, Cambridge

     This the church of St Peter.  It stands adjacent to Kettle's Yard - in fact the house forms part of the boundary of the graveyard. Church and graveyard stand in the oldest part of Cambridge (Roman in origin) - though you wouldn't necessarily think so from the architecture, which appears mainly Victorian once you have crossed the Northampton St./ Chesterton St. junction.  Pockets, however, of the old urban fabric survive in and around Northampton St/ Pound Hill area.  Kettles' Yard and the adjacent church form one of these enclaves.  As you can see the church is very small - the process of historical change - but it probably was never that large to begin with.  It is now under the are of the Churches Conservation Trust.  And they keep it very well.

     The CCT tend to simplify the interiors, enhancing their sense of the numinous and deepening their antiquity.  Note the Norman period font decorated with Mermen.

     Beside the altar is this - the ledger stone for Jim Ede.  Exquisite lettering.

Kettle's Yard Part II

     Kettle's Yard stands as a monument to the High-mindedness of a lot of 19th and 20th century British intellectual life.  I suppose it had its origins in the Evangelical Revival in the early years of the 19th century, and in the Victorian ideal of the Gentleman.  It is to be found in the life and works of Thomas and Matthew Arnold, and in all those other intellectual dynasties that flow through British public life.  It's there in that Post-War Labour Government.  I see it too in the leadership of the Congress Party in India, such as Nehru and Krishna Menon.  I see it too in the character of  Stephen Lynn in Noel Coward & David Lean's film 'Brief Encounter'; effortlessly superior, clever, and above the physical and, indeed, emotional sides of life.  The sort of character you may find between the pages of a novel by C P Snow.  A rational human being, thanks to the developments of modern science and psychiatry. Its end was in the rise of Post War popular culture.  Thankfully Kettle's Yard displays more than just those attributes.  There is a poetic quality to the space and, on the afternoon we visited, the light.

   The downstairs living room.  The white walls, absence of mouldings, lack of curtains (grey venetian blinds instead) suggest modernism.  The furniture, the fireplace, bare boards and oriental rugs suggest some older aesthetic - part cottage, part gentry.  In fact there are no pieces of Modernist furniture - no steel, chrome, or black leather.   The furniture is mostly pre-industrial and English.  The 'feel' is very English all together.  It is understated if not frugal, though one is tempted to think that this 'look' is not cheap to achieve.

   The Dining alcove, Modernist or Arts and Crafts?  The detailing around the fireplace suggests the former.  Note the ceiling light in the alcove.  If I remember correctly this is the only one in this room; as I wrote in Part I, the Edes seemed averse to modern technology - the house was lit mainly with candles.

   Jim Ede's desk, barring the way to his bedroom.

   Jim Ede's bedroom.  There is a self-denying ordinance here.  Austerity.  One is tempted to say a denial of the carnal self.  Modernism might be successfully deployed to re-enforce that sense, and thereby becomes a series of styles to be used and combined around the house as needed.  The house has become monastery.  I would go so far a to say that Kettle's Yard was indeed a sort of secular monastery, if not church, dedicated to the propagation of a certain set of artistic values, with Jim Ede as both collector and curator acting as the High Priest of the Mysteries.  For in place of God there was Art.

   Another view of Jim Ede's bedroom.  A Neo-Georgian bay window with Modernist blinds.  The important thing here though is the grouping of objects and the objects themselves.  Firstly this low grouping is repeated three times in the house, and then the objects:  the pre-industrial furniture, the Modern art (I think that figurative art just predominates in Kettle's Yard), and the found things.  In assembling them thus he gave resonance to both furniture and found objects.  They become art.  In assembling natural objects as he did Jim Ede gave order to a Post Religious and Post Enlightenment world.

   Neo- Georgian detailing on the stairs, but the material (teak) and the open treads suggest Scandinavian Modernism. 

   The upstairs sitting room.  The alcove here provides a different sort of sustenance from the one below.  The chairs, though comfortable, are not for relaxation.  Again the solitary light fitting.  Perhaps because Mrs Ede's bedroom is the next room this room has a more 'femine' feel.

   Another view of the upstairs drawing room, with Mrs Ede's bedroom beyond. Note the repetition of low table and chair found earlier in Jim Ede's bedroom

   In the early 1970s Kettle's Yard was extended at one end, and apart from this one section where I took this picture this extension is currently closed for renovation.  The work, not by the original architect is completely Modernist, and although in sympathy is not entirely in keeping.

yet more re-decorating.....

     The saga drags on.  I take full responsibility.  I should have booked the painter and decorator much earlier.  The first floor is still topsy-turvy.  Though I have redecorated the bathroom, well almost.  The delay however has allowed me to take my time in choosing the colour for the walls in my bedroom, and to have a major crisis of confidence.  The visit to the bf's gave me an opportunity to get some tester pots at 'Cutlack's' in Ely - they stock Zoffany, Sanderson, Little Green, Fired Earth and Farrow and Ball.  And since I've been back I've been a busy boy.

  The print over the desk is a student work by the photographer, Rick Morris Pushinsky

     Currently my bedroom is painted in Sanderson Spectrum - Bronze Olive Lt (walls) and Cameo White (everything else).  I don't dislike the colour at all and I will keep the Cameo White (in fact I have extended its use to the whole house), however I feel the darkness of the walls contributes to the room, which faces west, getting so damn hot in summer.  A lighter colour is needed.  As of today the clear favourite is 'Scarab' by Fired Earth, with 'Mouse's Back', by Farrow and Ball a second.  I would have preferred to stay with Sanderson, to be consistent, but their browns contain too much green.

     A chaos of paint samples in the guest bedroom.

Kettle's Yard, Cambridge Part I

   Back from a few days away at the bf's.  Forgetting to take my camera with me I have no images of our rather damp day in London: no images of 'Simpson's Tavern' in the City of London where we had lunch, or of the uber cool Lamb's Conduit Street (obligatory visit to Ben Pentreath's shop just round the corner in Rugby St.), or 'Paxton and Whitfield' in Jermyn St..  Quite a crowded few hours!  However I did take my camera along with me the next day in Cambridge.

   I first went to Kettle's Yard as a teenager on a school trip to Cambridge, and like the city it is a place to which I return over and over again.  It has this power to constantly fascinate.  I won't bore you with the history of the place; you can easily find it online.  Sufficient enough for now to say it is the creation of a single agent: Jim Ede. Though I suppose his wife, Helen, must have had some input - surely?  Between 1958 and 1973 Jim Ede created and maintained this enchanting and curious place - a 'palace of art' in effect filled with early twentieth century English Modernism, but also part stately home, rustic farmhouse and, almost Cistercian, monastery.  The Edes had no television or radio and little electric light - they rose and retired to bed with the sun.  It is these contradictory aspects - these ambiguous attitudes to both Modernism and Modernity - that I wish to explore on my next post.

   Kettle's Yard from the east, along the path leading up past the later gallery (on left) from Castle St.  St Peter's churchyard is on the right.  The entrance to the house itself is further up the steps and under the dark weather boarding.

   Another view of the east side of Kettle's Yard from St Peter's churchyard.