dutch door press

After buying one of their prints the good folks, (Xoxo, Anna & Mara) at 'dutch door press' send me regular updates and news.  They are a letterpress studio based in San Francisco, and produce some really lovely work.  Their last missive contained these images of their latest creation - a  magnificent, (if not monumental) linocut.....

 

It's great to see them bouncing back after the fire which caused so much damage to their studio back in December.  You can read more about the fire and their continuing work on their blog, and purchase their work at their Etsy shop. 

Alan Sorrell Part II 'Roman Britain'

   This was one of the books illustrated by Alan Sorrell that I came across in our local library as a child.

More snow and a work in progress

       Fresh snow here.....this is this morning's pile of the white stuff.

 

 

      I thought I'd post this watercolour drawing of a Coptic ivory I made in the week, even if it didn't go quite to plan.  As you can see it went 'Pete Tong' (= wrong) in the bottom third (over worked), but the rest of it was quite good.  Apart from the watercolour the drawing was done with a cheap ballpoint pen over pencil, with wax pastel used for the highlights.

 

Work in progress

   I thought I'd share this.  Inspired by the work of two of my favourite contemporary artists EdKluz and Mark Hearld I've been experimenting with collage.  I hope you like it.

Reading

   It has been a time for tackling novels, novels half started and then put down for some reason.  Over the weekend I finally completed reading 'The Silmarillion' - J R R Tolkien - and picked up 'Unconditional Surrender' - Evelyn Waugh. 

Alan Sorrell Part I

    A month ago (can it really be as long as that?) Ben Pentreath on his blog 'Inspirations' shared his discovery of the work of illustrator and author Rena Gardiner.  Reading about Rena's work my mind turned to one of my favourite illustrators: Alan Sorrell.  I first discovered his work as a child, firstly I suppose in our local library, and then on our annual holiday in Scotland where I found his work on postcards and in the guides available at Ancient Monuments: St Andrews Cathedral and Priory; Dryburgh, Melrose and Jedburgh Abbeys.  A subsequent holiday in Wales brought further examples of his work.

    Alan Sorrell (1904 - 1974) trained firstly at Southend School of Art and then, after two years as a commercial artist, at the Royal College of Art.  His contemporaries there included Bawden.  During WWII he served as an Official War Artist with the RAF.  His is mainly remembered today for the beautiful drawings he produced re-constructing ancient sites - this side of his work was the result of a chance meeting with Kathleen Kenyon, 'the most influential female archaeologist of the 20th century', in 1938.  Some of these were produced for the Ministry of Works, others as book illustrations, such as the series produced for The Lutterworth Press in the early 1960s - 'Prehistoric Britain', 'Roman Britain', 'Saxon England', 'Norman Britain' and 'Medieval Britain'.  Although Alan Sorrell illustrated every one in the series, each book had a different author.  In 'Roman Towns in Britain' he wrote the text as well as drew the illustrations (published posthumously by Batsford 1976).  He also produced a number of murals, including one for the Festival of Britain.
   
    Alan Sorrell's work is deeply atmospheric, evocative.  Neo-romantic.  The skies scowl with rain clouds.  Wind whips the smoke.  People gather in groups; they hurry to a race track in Roman Wroxeter; they flee a smoking Roman villa that is being sacked by Saxon raiders.  People shop, they listen to speeches and watch jugglers.  His pictures are more than mere re-constructions - they live.

    There will be an exhibition of Alan Sorrell's work later this year at the Sir John Soane's Museum (October 25th 2013 - January 45th 2014)

Roman Towns in Britain

Looking somewhat tatty.  As a child I bought, or was bought, this book in 'Bertram A Watts' - the bookshop in Sherringham, north Norfolk.  A visit to family in Norfolk would invariably conclude in Sherringham with a walk along the 'prom' and a visit to the bookshop.

   The quayside, London.  The stream to the left is the Walbrook

     Venta Icenorum, from the air

     The Balkerne Gate, Colchester

   The Forum, St Albans

   The Baths, Wroxeter

Andrew Lambirth

(This was meant to be today's post but I was distracted by the snow.)

    Andrew Lambirth, art critic for 'The Spectator', wrote an interesting comment piece in yesterday's 'Sunday Telegraph' entitled 'Brilliant, beautiful and British - and not on view' (Here is a link).  I was left thinking about how we construct narratives of Art History.  I suspect that there is still thought to be a lot credibility in what could be described as a 'Whig History' of art.  (Whig history was a British concept that saw History, and especially British history, as an arc of continuous political and cultural advancement.)  Analogous to that, one starts with the art of Primitive peoples and ends with...well, the Enlightenment, I suppose.  At least with the Enlightenment belief that it could be understood what constituted, say, the perfect composition in painting or the ground plan of a hospital and applied.  They had it all worked out.  All that any artist or architect had to do was simply repeat.  It was in its way 'The End of History'.  This was obviously misconceived.  Nineteenth century Academicism is not the pinnacle of  Western or any other Art, any more than that produced in the Early Middle Ages is the nadir - as my history teacher taught.  I digress.  What I am trying to suggest is that for various reasons there is still felt be a need to see in Art History a clear linear narrative process, and a belief that contemporary Modernism is the natural outcome of that process.  (The only difference with the old Enlightenment/Whig narrative is the de-coupling of any ideas of 'progress'.  Though that notion was certainly evident in some forms of early Modernism.  I am thinking here mainly of architecture.)  You may not like it, but you have to put up with it.  It is the 'Zeitgeist'.
    Many good artists and architects have been 'demoted' by this concept.  They are either irrelevant to the Historical process, or are seen solely as agents of change - just signposts to an New Age with little intrinsic value of their own.  They have become 'means' and not 'ends' in themselves.  Those twentieth artists which I love, such as Piper and the other Neo-Romantics, as well as their contemporary followers are largely ignored by the media and critics because they don't fit in to that narrative.
    Andrew Lambirth is right to point out that we live in age of pluralism.  Art History is full of subtleties and contracdictions.  It is not a clear linear narrative.  It is shame that this is not often acknowledged.

Snow

 

I woke up to an inch (maybe) of snow.  Granular stuff, that was like polished ivory and very, very slippery in places where it had been compressed by traffic.  Braving a bitter easterly I took the opportunity to take some photographs.

The Garden 

The Park

This former farmhouse lies in the midst of the park, surrounded by tall, thick hedge of privet.  It is built of the local limestone and has a heavy roof of limestone slates known as 'Collyweston slate'. Perfection

A Textile Design

   I found this fabric design yesterday in Stamford.  It's called 'Spring Morn' a furnishing textile produced by Heal's, London.  It's obviously post-War.  I suspect it dates from the 1950s, and it's rather charming.   I have no idea of the size of the repeat.  It was designed by James Wade - a name new to me.  A quick 'google' failed to find out very much, if not anything at all, about him.

Designs 2

   A cold and deeply foggy day here.  Fog all day.  Stamford market was less than its busy self.
   After my post yesterday I found a further two sketches relating to my putative second novel. I've scanned them and here they are:

Please ignore the 'extra' structure on the right of the sketch, it's just the entrance façade.  I posted a version of that yesterday.

   Sketch plans of the ground and first floors (ground floor on the right).  By the way DINP refers to Dining Parlour....if you're interested.

Designs

   I'm finding it hard to be creative at the moment.  I managed to wreck two pictures over the weekend when I couldn't leave well alone.  Family life - keeping an eye for two elderly and seriously ill relatives - saps all my strength.  The weather here doesn't help - what on earth happened to spring?  In an uncharitable mood I would liken the carer/cared-for relationship to be (almost) vampiric.  The whole thing, this stasis, while we wait for the inevitable, is deeply sad - depressing.  Literally.

   One of the projects on hold, on hold for far far too long, is a second novel.  (Working title: 'Somersby')  One of its aims is to champion English (if not British) Baroque architecture.  I have deep abiding love for the Baroque of these islands.  If Wren, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, Archer etc aren't enough I've invented another.  Here is one of his designs (mine obviously).  It is for a pavilion in an English Landscape Park.  Originally it stood in a great Baroque garden.  A Baroque Garden, like all the others (and there were many) that was swept away in the craze for 'The Landscape Park'  There are very few Baroque gardens left in Britain now - I can think of one: Wrest Park.  There is another in Yorkshire the name of which escapes me.  Anyway here is my pavilion. It's meant to have a French influence.

'It was the Pavilion at Haltham further up the valley – gold and cream beneath the dark trees in the eternally silent park – that had first introduced them to the work of Somersby.  It was a piece of confectionery, fully, ripe-ly Baroque.  A piece of scenery by Bibiena perhaps, as though it had dropped from the Court Theatre at Drottingholm.

            They were all eighteen on their first visit.  It was early September 1982 the final year of school, and the world, their immediate world, seemed good after a period of turmoil.  There were three of them in ‘Mildred’, Con’s car, including Michael, although he and Sophie had, for the first time, broken up.  Lady Alkborough herself showed them round, and afterwards gave them tea in the Adam Library.  It was one of the first fruits of Conrad’s reconciliation with his father; the direct result of Major Webb’s introduction to Conrad of the Shell Guides and the work of John Piper.  And there among the coquillage of the Pavilion, she, who had a vague, unfocused love of architecture, became a convert to the Baroque: Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh Archer, Gibbs, Talman and Somersby.  Charismatic, enigmatic Somersby.  The Adam Library held no pleasure for her.

            And after all of that it seemed natural to her to make Somersby the subject of her Phd.  It was a kindness, a restitution and a thank-you."

Then follows a spoof entry in 'Pevsner'

*          ‘And so to the Park.  The extensive Baroque Gardens depicted by Kiff, were swept away by Capability Brown in 1754.  Of the Garden structures by Somersby little remains, the most important survival being the Pavilion, c 1704.  This is of national importance, one of the most continentally Baroque buildings in the country of its date.  The Pavilion itself is single story with attic.  Three arcaded bays on N and S, each divided by coupled Doric columns – the columns of the centre piece on the N. side (garden side) being replaced, as it were, with herms supporting a curved pediment looking very Dietterlin-esque.  Had Somersby access to German pattern books?  Alas too little is known of Somersby to be sure.   Shorter single bay ‘ends’ plainer.  Iron stone walls with carved detail in Barnack stone, along with lively sculptural panels by Edward Pearce.  Interior of three groined bays, lavishly decorated with stucco and shells, very French, see slate and marble floor of Versailles quality.  Of the other structures by Somersby that made the gardens famous throughout the British Isles nothing remains except a pair of gargantuan gate piers.’

                                                Sir Nikolas Pevsner, ‘The Buildings of England’ Northamptonshire'

   One of the characters (Con) is lucky enough to have been raised in a much older manor house (below).  I have given it an enclosed garden with gazebos.  I admit that it's a bit of William Morris type fantasy.  But why not?

 The Higher roof in the centre represents the original Medieval hall of the house.  The door is the original porch, incorporated into a Jacobean gallery. (I doubt that that sort of thing actually occurred in that manner)  The great bay window in the middle is mainly the work of the great Victorian Goth, G E Street.  The family who live in this house have always been High Church.

Both of these drawings was done on A4 narrow feint paper - from 'refill pads'.  Nothing fancy.  I invariably prefer it when designing.



Kersey Rood Screen

    My recent post on Kersey reminded me of a sketching trip there in the mid-nineties when I was working in Suffolk.  I've dug out the watercolour sketch in question from my 'archive'.  It shows part of the one the four (I think) remaining panels of the Rood Screen dado.  This panel represents the Holy and Victorious Martyr Edmund, King of East Anglia. 

    Before I launched this post I thought I'd better check the details in Munro Cautley.  H Munro Cautley (1876 - 1959) was an architect and historian.  His magnum opus is 'Suffolk Churches and Their Treasures', Norman Allard & Co, Ipswich, 1937 (2nd & 3rd editions: 1938 & 1954).  He was surveyor to the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.  Off the top of my head I could only think of two buildings by him:  Lloyd's Bank in Wisbeach (Cambs) and St Augustine of Hippo, Ipswich.  They both seem somehow at odds with a love of East Anglian Perp; the bank is rather good Neo-Georgian, the church monumental and perhaps a little heavy, but researching of  this post I've found plenty of other buildings by him, some I have known for years such as Lloyd's Bank in Cambridge.  I think you could say that his work is variable in quality.  There is a flickr page dedicated to him, and not surprisingly there's quite a lot about him on the Suffolk Churches website: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk
    Enough of that discursion.  Here is my watercolour drawing of Kersey Rood Screen:

And here are a couple of other drawings from that same sketch book I thought you might like: