Kettle's Yard

       I spent today with my friend Penny.  We ended up at that unique Cambridge cultural institution Kettle's Yard.  The house there is a remarkable ensemble of art, sculpture and interior space.  The guiding spirit was Jim Ede who, with his wife Helen, owned the house between 1956 and 1973 when the couple moved to Edinburgh. In 1966 it was bequeathed to the University of Cambridge.  The first part of the house was created from a terrace of four cottages with the help of the Neo-Georgian architect Winton Aldridge; the less domestic extension was created in 1970 by Leslie Martin.

     This my third post on an interior I find deeply enchanting.

 

Ian Hamilton Finlay at Kettle's Yard

   It's been a funny month; there have been the odd occasions when I thought I'd never get to the end it seemed to drag so, other times when I've felt very well.  I've had a mad-ish day in London, taking in five exhibitions, shopped for a sofa and used my RA friend card for the first time, as well as afternoon tea in 'Maison Bertaux' in Greek Street.  London energizes me somehow.  For the record the exhibitions were:  Moroni (again) and Charles Stewart at the RA, Maggi Hambling and Peder Balke at The National, and Tudor Royal Portraits at the NPG.  I think, if I were to choose one of them to return to, it would be the last, the Tudor portraits. Something deeply satisfying about them.
   And then last week I spent a few days with the bf.  On Thursday I dragged him to Kettle's Yard to an exhibition of work by Ian Hamilton Finlay from the collection of Professor Stephen Bann, a leading expert on Finlay's work.  It turns out that Finlay and Jim Ede, the creative force behind Kettle's Yard - curator/collector as creative artist - had corresponded for a number of years.  Ede had even bought a piece or two from Finlay, and Finlay had carved a pebble with a sort of backhanded compliment about Kettle's Yard being the 'Louvre of the pebble'.  An ambiguous relationship then.
I first came across the work of Finlay in the 1987 exhibition 'Real Architecture' which was held at The Building Centre Gallery in Store St., London.  He was there because of his transformation of his Scottish garden on the western edge of the Pentland Hills into 'Little Sparta' - a landscape garden inspired by Classical myth and the eighteenth century landscape tradition.  This re-ordering of nature, which continued from 1978 until his death and created one of the most challenging and intellectual gardens in Britain, was represented at Kettle's Yard by the showing of a documentary.  Could it, I wonder be categorised as radically conservative work?  Either way it can be seen as highly innovative.
And perhaps that ambiguity is at the core of Finlay's work.  He was part poet, part typographer, sculptor, conceptual artist and part gardener.  Modernist and Classicist.  A Janus figure.  He started as a writer and became interested in Concrete Poetry, where the placing of the poem on the paper, or whatever media, is as important as the words themselves.  And it was, obviously, with the these early works where the exhibition began.  As we progressed other interests showed themselves: there were some beautifully drawn boats in the form of prints.  Other, sinister, machines appeared too: tanks and battleships.  A lot of this work had been printed by the two presses Finlay ran in his life - the Wild Flounder Press and The Wild Hawthorn Press - the latter still going.  As I have already mentioned Finlay was a Classicist.  He had a perennial interest in the myths and philosophy of Antiquity, and in his later work this becomes more apparent, though with it's referencing of the French Revolution and the Nazi period this later work can be unsettling.  Both regimes were haunted by Antiquity, as perhaps has all Western Culture.  Europe, it could be argued, has been in a post-colonial state for the last fifteen hundred years. (And I think it can be argued that this also applies to the Middle East, though to a lesser degree.)  Perhaps that is one of Finlay's themes: how we are haunted by the Classical past.  The giants on whose shoulders we perch.  And I suppose it is the Classicism and the quality of the typography that interested me most, and although the bf hated it, I would certainly buy a print or two should I be fortunate enough to have the spare cash.

   And afterwards a few minutes in the Cistercian austerity of Kettle's Yard house.

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.

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.