London

     To London just over a week ago and a rare evening of social whirl.  I've decided that social events are like buses - nothing comes along for ages (I mean months) and then two invitations arrive for events on the same evening. It's a nice problem to have. In all a chance to renew old friendships and make new ones.

      First, then, to 'Robert Kime' in Ebury St., Chelsea, and a celebration of Stamps and Stamps' gorgeous new book 'Style and Sensibility' (Rizzoli New York). A chance to to meet, alas briefly, one half of a very talented duo, the charming Kate Stamps who responsible for the beautiful photography in the book. Stamps and Stamps, I should add, are a husband and wife team of architect and interior designer based in California.  The Robert Kime showroom/shop makes a delightful location for an event such as this (I was particularly taken with the courtyard garden).

      Then a dash across town by tube (uncomfortably hot, that) to the Arts Workers Guild in Queen Square and the Traditional Architects Group Summer Party. 

     Oh, I forgot to mention I took in an exhibition too. 'Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece' at The British Museum. Not that good. Nice stuff but somehow underwhelming.

God Save the Queen! Platinum Jubilee pt 3

     Well, the Jubilee is over, but time, I hope, for one last hurrah - albeit a small but delightful one! This letterpress poster is the co-operation of the equally wonderful Tinsmiths and Talley Printers, both denizens of Ledbury in Herefordshire.

God Save the Queen! Platinum Jubilee pt 2

     Another Jubilee delight for you! This time a delightful, rather spiffing poster from the good folk of Cambridge Imprint. God Save the Queen!

God Save the Queen! Platinum Jubilee pt1

     Just had to have this! Perhaps one of the best designed the new commemorative items issued for this remarkable Jubilee - yes, I know I am biased! And it is a snip too. God Save the Queen!

London I: pop-up at Pentreath and Hall.

     I can't believe that is over a fortnight now since I returned from two weeks in London, where I had the good fortune to host a pop-up exhibition of my artwork at Pentreath and Hall. Rather invigorating being back in the capital. Here are some photos of the event. 

     Before opening up of a morning I took the opportunity to explore Bloomsbury. As you can imagine I ate out a lot. So what would I recommend in Bloomsbury? The best food I ate was a lunch at Noble Rot, the wine bar in Lambs Conduit St, for food and atmosphere 'Ciao Bella' also in Lambs Conduit St. - a really vibrant 'old school' Italian restaurant. Good fish & chips at North Sea Fish in Leigh St, good pizza at Franco Manco by Russell St tube. I enjoyed the food at Hare & Tortoise in the Brunswick Centre, but the restaurant is impossibly noisy. I also went to a Greek restaurant, which shall be nameless: the food was good but the service was lamentable.

Exhibition

     I'm very pleased, excited and not a little daunted (not to mentioned honoured!) to be finally exhibiting this year at my friend Ben Pentreath's shop 'Pentreath and Hall' in Rugby St., which he runs with Bridie Hall. 

     As you may be aware we have all been labouring under a little local difficulty and this exhibition had originally been planned for last year. 'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/ Gang aft a-gley.' Anyway this will be my first solo exhibition in London and will run from 6th September until the 17th - so just under two months away. Do please pop-in to say 'hello' if you're passing!

St Michael and All Angels, Ledbury

     Two weeks ago now and on the way to family in Worcestershire we made a breakfast stop in Ledbury, Herefordshire.  I hadn't been there for years and I was eager for a return visit to the parish church of St Michael and all Angels, a large town church of warmest sandstone, vibrant in the sparkling winter sunshine. So much more noticeably colder than Swansea, with a heavy, lingering frost on the churchyard grass.

     St Michael's is reached from the High St by the almost improbably picturesque Church Lane - a fitting lead up to a church that is rich in texture and is architecturally complex and varied.  Quite my sort of place.  So where to begin, when stepping through the fine churchyard gates and you are met with such a competition of interest with all the elements begging for your attention - detached bell tower, north transept, two storey porch and west front with a great Norman west door embedded in its midst? I made for the north transept which I had completely forgotten about until I saw it illustrated in a book by Basil Clarke and John Betjeman.  It was so intriguing and so beautiful I had to return one day.  It took two years from buying the book in a second-hand bookshop in Cromer to make the journey. It did not disappoint at all.  It is an exquisite piece of architecture.  Early decorated, with vast windows encrusted with a plethora of ballflower ornament, a Herefordshire/Worcestershire speciality. Think sleigh bells! I particularly loved the small, richly detailed doorway poking its head into one of the windows in the west wall. In all exceptional. And so then to the rest of the church.  The chancel is Norman, but the nave is Decorated Gothic, though not as elaborate in style as the N transept.  Workman like, I'd say, but far from unattractive.

   The aisle windows are exceptionally tall, because the vast interior, all reddy-brown for the walls have at one time been stripped of plaster, is a hall-church of sorts with nave and aisles are equal height separated by thin arcades of octagonal piers (the work of two separate building campaigns by the look of it) giving a great sense of space and height (there is no clerestory).  The chancel though retains its original Norman arcades and now function-less circular clerestory windows. The three parallel roofs are open and a little dark it has to be said, but the interior is rich in civic and funerary trumpery.  We would have lingered but the there was a meeting getting underway in the Lady Chapel so I felt unable to fully explore the east end.  Still, it is an excuse to return.

     Ledbury is a beautiful place with a mixture of sandstone, warm red brick and half timbering.  I love the architecture and the urbanism of these west Midlands market towns. Apart from architecture the shopping in Ledbury is exceptional for a town of its size.  On the east side of the High St are a number of yards and alleys that contain some fantastic shops, one of which, Tinsmiths, I have to confess, was, after reading about it on my friend Ben Pentreath's blog, another reason for my visit.

Grongar Hill I

'Grongar Hill invites my song'

John Dyer

'Romantic art is the result of a vision that can see in things something significant beyond ordinary significance; something that for a moment seems to contain the whole world and when the moment is passed carries over some comment on life or experience beside the comment on appearances.'

John Piper

     Last week was spent in south-west Wales staying with the bf in the Infernal City.  Monday was wonderfully spring like, if a little chill at times.  We drove north on a return (3rd) visit to Llandeilo and then down the beautiful valley of the Towy - the ancient heartland of the kingdom of Deheubarth - a sort of literary and artistic pilgrimage for me.  Llandeilo, as I must have said before on this blog, is a wonderful little town, built high above the river at a point where the valley narrows.  A strategic point then.  A place of royal and religious authority, where in the 6th century St Teilo established a clas, a type of monastic settlement, on the site now occupied by the parish church.  It would be nice to think that the large oval graveyard perpetuates the shape of the original monastic enclosure.  Anyway it is always a pleasure to explore Llandeilo with its nest of winding narrow streets and alleyways.  There are fortunately a number of old shop fronts and still proper shops including two butchers. The best streetscape is Kings St where Georgian and Victorian buildings overlook the churchyard.

     Then on, westward, down the Towy valley to the village of Llangathen and Aberglasney, the wonderful old manor house and garden and the goal of my secular pilgrimage. I'm not at all sure how the geology works but the north side of the middle Towy valley is quite complex with a ridge of hills rising up on the edge of the valley side, like a broken palisade.  Aberglasney nestles in a fold between two of those hills, Bryn Castell-Gwrychion to the east and Grongar hill to the west. From the gardens there are delicious glimspses down between trees onto the wide floodplain of the river. The valley sides opposite are thick with woods. The gardens themselves are really delightful with plenty of the sort of formal gardening I like - the Cloister garden is very rare and could be Jacobean - with contrasting areas of informality including a sort of Sacro Bosco limping down the valley side.  All in all pretty much perfect.  A place where sensibility and imagination take wing.  It is not surprising then that the Towy valley and in particular Grongar Hill have inspired a continual stream of artists particularly those associated with the Picturesque and Romantic movements.
     In the 17th century Aberglasney was the home of John Dyer, the poet and artist.  He is particularly remembered for his long lyric poem 'Grongar Hill' (1720).  A minor poem by a minor writer, yes, but not without importance for 'Grongar Hill' marks a turn in English literature towards Romanticism. John Piper, the twentieth century Neo-romantic painter, said it was: 'one of the best purely topographical poems in existence [ ] I have loved the poem ever since I first read it, and I return to it whenever I feel depressed about the countryside getting spoilt.'  In later life Dyer took up Holy Orders and ended up as parish priest in Conningsby, in this my own dear county.  I've wondered what he felt about living amidst the looming flats of the Lincolnshire fens.  William Gilpin visited the Towy valley, and wrote briefly about it in 'Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales. etc. relative to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770'.  Turner, Pocock, Rooker and others followed.
     It continued to attract artists into the 20th century too. I'm lucky enough to own a small lithograph by John Piper. (I think you can guess where this is leading.)  Nothing grand, just a small, open edition illustration using merely four colours that, I think, was made by the Curwen Press to illustrate John Betjeman's anthology 'English, Scottish and Welsh Landscape Verse' (1944). It is, if you haven't already realized, of Grongar Hill, and I love it dearly. Dark, brooding and fraught with significance. Hence my pilgrimage. Piper in fact made four images of Grongar Hill, including an oil painting dating from the early forties, and the last, a present to Albert Hecht the frame maker, dating from the early eighties.