Boxing Day and Oxwich Bay

Christmas was spent in Swansea.  Boxing Day afternoon and we had an itch to get out.  At my suggestion we went to Oxwich Bay on peninsular Gower.  It was wonderfully atmospheric and remote-feeling; thick scudding clouds and white crested waves - everything else a variation of slate grey.  The beach is wide and sweeping between two headlands jutting out into the Bristol Channel.  Very beautiful and, for such a overcast day, popular. It's even more popular in summer.  It attracts surfers; there are watersports shops and a rather classy looking restaurant, 'The Beach House' on the beach.  (Gower, especially The Mumbles, is a bit of a gastro hub these days.)  Behind the beach are great marshes, full of reeds and water, which only enhance the feeling of isolation.

 The western headland - at the foot of which is the tiny, blink-and-you-miss-it, village of Oxwich - is covered in thick woodland - a 'hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping [invisible] down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishing boat-bobbing sea.'  And there past the hotel (rather ugly) and up a muddy track is the tiny church of St Illutyd in its cramped and crowded churchyard - all whitewashed and snuggled into the damp hillside.  The wide eaves of the slate roof - which spoils the church by not being graded - gives the St Illutyd's a rather Late Victorian, or early twentieth century feel, when it is in fact very ancient.  The present church, which is Medieval, stands on the site of a 6th century monastic settlement.  A remarkable, haunting place.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing you all

a very 

Merry Christmas!

and a Happy New Year

Habitat 1978/79

     Back to another occasional series - vintage Habitat catalogues.  This one from the end of the 1970s.
     The cover is meshed in 'Chic Graphique', and it marks a change in Habitat style.  The room set is altogether smoother and slicker than had been the case before.  There is still texture but it isn't quite so important. Glossier if you will.  I always think that Habitat was always slightly aloof from the slicker elements of Post War design. It did indeed take on board certain elements, such as the International Modern and Art Deco/Art Deco revival that could be described as 'slick', (as I said before Habitat was incredibly eclectic in its inspiration), but Habitat, for me, seemed to exist in that hinter land between the Arts & Crafts and that highly textured Modernism that came in with the Maison Jaoul (Le Corbusier, 1954-56).  The image can be read as emblematic of a sea-change in general taste as interiors and objects have continued to grow (regrettably) sleeker, shinier and more generic still since then - and let's be honest duller and blander.  It's the difference, say, between Terence Conran's 'The House Book' of 1974 and 'The New House Book' of  1985.  This change can also be seen in an architectural work that was opened in the year of this catalogue, 1978, and has featured in this blog before, The Sainsbury's Centre for Visual Arts, at the University of East Anglia, Norwich.  There seems in general to have been a growing dislocation between the interior and its user; and the space, which is essentially private, has taken on some of the aspects of a public one.  There is a danger too, if it hasn't already happened, of the interior ceasing to be 'present' to its user.
     However some of the room sets in this catalogue still reflect that old and happier interest, such as the kitchen on the back cover.  I think colour and texture - pattern too - are due for a return.  I miss them.
     I love the graphic grid bedding - it's nice to see masculine bedding.  Reminds me of a tattershall check shirt. Oddly. Note also the splashy flowery design, the sort of thing that would become very popular, and that must owe something to Matisse.  What I haven't shown you is the Marimekko bedding on the next page which I hate.  Green with a thin white diagonal stripe. It has a harsh quality, that spawned far too many imitators.

It's still a small ambition to own a Chesterfield sofa.

House & Garden 1968 III Miss Pauline Vogelpoel at home

     Back to my occasional series taken from House & Garden, March 1968.  In this case the article, by Jesse Roberts, about the flat of Pauline Voegelpoel, then Organising Secretary to the Contemporary Art Society.  She raised in South Africa, was awarded an MBE in 1962, and occasionally pops up in Sir Roy Strong's published diaries - 'everything about Pauline Vogelpoel exudes style'.  Here are a couple of obituaries of this remarkable woman: The Independent and The Guardian
     Anyway the flat is wonderfully chic, I only wish there were more colour images judging by what that one glorious image.  What a wonderful room, and what a wonderful colour.  Just splendid.  The scene, I'd like think, of some literary/artistic salon.

Gunby Hall II: The Church of St Peter

     Beyond the Victorian shrubbery at the far end of the garden at Gunby Hall sits the parish church of St Peter - alone, it feels, among the great fields of pasture.  The village is nowhere to be seen.  In fact I don't think there's a village at all, just a few houses sitting uncomfortably along the very busy A158.
     St Peter's is a relatively small, aisleless Victorian church built 1868-70 by James Fowler of Louth, replacing an earlier Georgian structure.  A comfortable estate church, it has a porch to the south and vestry etc to the north.  James Fowler, 1828-92, was a prolific provincial architect, the restorer of many churches in the north of the county and builder also of churches at Binbrook, Hatton and Spridlington.  Perhaps his greatest work is the enormous church of St Swithun in Lincoln, built between 1869 and 1887 for the Lincoln industrialist Alfred Shuttleworth.

     Just as at St Swithun's the masonry at Gunby is hammer dressed.  The tower is perhaps the best feature: a good composition and a re-interpretation in the Early English style of a Lincolnshire Decorated Gothic tower - the kind of thing you will find at Silk Willoughby south of Sleaford.  The interior is maybe a little earth-bound but is well preserved Mid-Victorian - mildly Tractarian, with encaustic tiles etc. 

    Importantly, it is very well cared for, the interior not spoilt with a jostle of notice boards etc.  The care even extended to little springs of lavender on each pew (visible in the bottom image).

Gunby Hall I

     When I started this post it was what I though would be the first cold day of many, but it was not to be, the season has be very mild - there has, so far as I know, been only one frost. I certainly long for cold, crisp days of sharp, thin winter sunshine.

     Apologies for having posted anything for a while I've been busy doing other stuff, mainly redecorating.  It's turned cold here overnight.  The first really cold day of the season, an odd day to recall that summer day trip we made, our goal being the quietly beautiful Gunby Hall on the southern tip of the Lincolnshire Wolds.  Another essay in Lincolnshire brickwork.  Not that it was particularly summery weather.  Still it was wonderful to wander around the house and the simply stunning gardens.
     The house, which I'm sure somebody must have likened to a doll's house, dates from 1700 and was built for Sir William Massingberd.  The wing to the north is a sensitive late Victorian addition.  The original house is a tall and compact design - Pevsner rightly calls the design 'austere and puritanical'.  (Don't let that put you off.) It is a development of that sensible style of Belton, though the scale is smaller and consequently more domestic.  This is not the house of a 18th century grandee or national politician. As at Belton the decoration is concentrated in certain key places in this case the front door.  A little touch of the Baroque.  A touch of Baroque too in the round arched gate to the side of the house.  The textures of old brick, pantile and paving are lovely.
     The interior too is an absolute delight.  The scale is just right.  There is nothing outstanding in décor, architecture or art. There is, however, plenty of panelling painted in soft colours and off-whites, and old furniture.  Old rugs sprawl about the floors.  A comfortable place, with a sort of modesty to it I find utterly beguiling.  And, as regular readers will have realized, that is one of the unintended themes of this blog: the delight in the everyday and the obscure; and certainly Gunby is obscure, and it is perhaps its advantage that it stands far and remote in such a by-passed and overlooked county.
     To the north of the house is a charming 'cour d'offices': stables and other ancillary buildings.  It is later than the house and is a lovely space, almost collegiate in feel.  In fact there is a wonderful sense of calm to the whole complex, that has led some to believe that it was the inspiration for Tennyson's 'haunt of ancient peace'.  It was a favourite of the architectural historian, diarist and National Trust expert James Lees Milne, who left a sum on his will for the restoration of the library.
     My only complaint was the new 'open to roam' policy of the National Trust included the bedrooms. On my previous visits the house was still inhabited, and on my last visit there our party was shown round by the then tenant, and now to be allowed to wander around her bedroom didn't feel right somehow.

Own work - an arch from Alessandro Francini 'Architecture'

   Here's a recently completed work, adapted from an engraving in Alessandro Francini's 'Architecture', which I found in Mark Girouard's 'Robert Smythson & The Elizabethan Country House'.

Own work - Life Drawing XVII

   My first post in quite a while.  Apologies.  Here are my efforts from last week's life drawing class.  Quite a while since I was there last and it shows.