Own Work: The Rustiche of Sebastiano Serlio II

   My journey through the 'Rustiche' of the 'Extrordinario libro' of Serlio continues with this design in the Tuscan order.

Own Work - Life Drawing XX

   Just one image to share with you today, as for the final class of the term we had a single, two hour, pose - with, thankfully, a long break half-way.  Coloured pencil on cartridge paper, if you're wondering about the media.

'John Fowler, Prince of Decorators'

   Perhaps because I'm about to embark on a major redecoration of my house, but my passion for Interior Design has burst back into life and it has expressed itself, naturally enough for me, in book buying. A just over a week ago a hardback edition of book 'John Fowler, Prince of Decorators', by Martin Wood arrived.  It is a sumptuous thing, full of beautiful photography.  Full too of ideas.

   John Beresford Fowler, 1906-1977, was the leading traditional interior decorator for about fifty years in the mid-century.  That doesn't mean that he was not innovative; the 'Country House Style' that seems so much a permanent part of the English scene is largely his development. Honed over a number of years it didn't reach its maturity until the 1950s, though he started his career in the early 1930s. His professional career was dominated (possibly too strong a word but they were both so very important in the formation of his taste and decorating style) by two women, Sibyl Colefax and Nancy Lancaster.  It was with the later he created what has often been called one of the finest rooms in London: the Yellow Room at Colefax and Fowler.  His work was, unsurprisingly, by and large domestic. In addition to any number of private clients he worked on a number of schemes for The National Trust.  Rarely did he do anything of a public or monumental nature apart from the odd commission for a select number of Oxbridge colleges.  If the photographs in the book are any to go by this was a shame.  His knowledge was vast and intuitive, and, I think, seldom wrong.

   John talked about 'humble elegance', and perhaps of all his work it was most on display in the home and garden he created at 'The Hunting Lodge' a remarkable early 18th century building - Neo-Jacobean - an eye catcher that originally formed part of the landscaping at Dogmersfield Park.  He bought it in 1947 rescuing from near neglect, furnishing it in exquisite taste and laying out a superb garden with a great lawn flanked by lines of pleached hornbeam leading down to a lake.  (I don't think that he, or David Hicks (more anon) for that matter, is given enough credit as a garden designer.) It continued as his weekend retreat until his death when it was bequeathed it to the National Trust.  The current tenant is Nicky Haslam.

   Although John was heavily influenced by eighteenth century and early nineteenth English taste (no William Morris fabric visible in this book) to be honest Fowler's taste isn't quite mine, and very often it is just too fussy for me.  I think my taste is just that little bit more severe, and that is often the benefit of having a book like this; it hones one's own taste.

John Fowler, Prince of Decorators

Author: Martin Wood
Pub:      Frances Lincoln Ltd, London, 2007

Own Work: The Rustiche of Sebastiano Serlio I

   I have returned to the 'Extraordinario Libro di Architettura' of Sebastiano Serlio (Giouambattista & Marchio Sessa, Venice, 1560).  Here is the first arch of the section 'Rustiche' section.  It is the entrance to 'Le Grand Ferrare' - the urban palace that Serlio built in Fontainebleau for the Papal Legate to the French court the Cardinal of Ferrara, Ippolito d'Este, between 1541 and 1548. There are thirty designs in the 'Rustiche' and another twenty in the following 'Dilicate'.  I have decided to paint all thirty of the 'Rustiche'.  Luckily I have done some of them already.

Own Work - Life Drawing IXX

    Thursday's class - three twenty minutes poses followed, after a break, by a pose lasting an hour.

Birmingham II Buildings

     The cathedral sits on Colmore Row, and in and around that street are a number of exuberant Victorian and Edwardian buildings - mainly banks and other institutions.  The majority are classical. The one exception in the my selection is the quite strange and enigmatic 'Eagle Insurance Buildings' , 1899-1900, by the extreme Arts & Crafts practitioner William Lethaby (1857-1931).  It has gilded bronze doors and is fenced about with an obscure, almost occult symbolism. 

     It shouldn't be forgotten that Birmingham was one of the centres of Art & Crafts production and patronage in Britain with its own traditions, producing architects like the brilliant W H Bidlake, and painters such as Henry Payne and Joseph Southall as well as numerous artist/artisans in the applied arts.  Of the buildings I photographed the only other one I have been able to identify and accredit a designer with any certainty is The Joint Stock Bank in Temple Row West by J A Chatwin, who I mentioned in my last post.  A slightly odd design, which on the ground floor seems to have been influenced by C R Cockerell's design for the Old Schools Quadrangle in Cambridge.  It was originally was intended to be a library; it is now a pub. 
     The twentieth century was not kind to cities like Birmingham - the best description of that long painful process is, paradoxically, in 'Scottish Architecture' by Miles Glendinning and Aonghus MacKechnie (Thames & Hudson, 2004). What they say about Scottish cities can readily be applied to cities in England and Wales.   The havoc wrought in Birmingham was very great, and this area is probably the best place to get a feeling of what the centre of the city looked like in late nineteenth century when Birmingham was at its zenith as a manufacturing centre - and claimed, like Glasgow and Dublin, to be the Second City of the Empire.
     Finally a brief word on one of those things that makes Birmingham unique - the very beautiful Victorian street signage you can find in the older parts of the city.  Cast iron I suspect.

Birmingham I - St Philip's Cathedral

   To Birmingham Monday, to brilliant sunshine, a deep azure sky, and St Philip's Cathedral. This church, externally perhaps the grandest in the city, is the work of Thomas Archer (1668-1743).  It was consecrated in 1714, although according to Anthony New in 'A Guide to the Cathedrals of Britain' (Constable, 1980) work continued until, at least, 1725.  It became the cathedral for the new diocese of Birmingham only in 1905.

   It is a beautiful, monumental thing, its beauty enhanced by the use of the fine grained local sandstone.  It is also one of the most Baroque buildings in the country - some the detailing is very idiosyncratic and none the worse for that.  Of all the native Baroque architects such as Hawksmoor, Wren and Vanbrugh, Archer was the most influenced by the continental style, and this is reflected in St Philips, combining that with the native tradition as developed by Wren. In 1884 the chancel was enlarged by the local architect J A Chatwin, - the great-grandfather of the English novelist Bruce Chatwin - and he worked with incredible tact and sympathy, so much so that I doubt the many passers-by or visitors would realize what was done.  Like a good many Georgian churches the plan reflects the then interest within Anglicanism in the Patristic church.  St Philip's is essentially a basilica with vestries - in origin the 'Prothesis' and the 'Diakonion', also known as pastophoria - flanking the central apse on the pattern of the architecture of the Early Church.  (I wrote that last week and have since found out that I was mistaken: the present vestries were constructed by Chatwin out of the aisles - either by chance or design he reflected both the Early Christian model and its revival in the Georgian period!  Both Hawksmoor's St Alphege, Greenwich and Christchurch, Spitalfields reflect this interest in the planning of Early Christian churches.) 

   The interior is calm and serene; there are number of wall memorials (some of the placed on the piers to the detriment of the architecture), but the treasures of this church are the original altar rails by the Derbyshire smith Robert Bakewell and the four great stained glass windows by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, who was baptised in the church and lived as a child in the nearby Bennets Hill.

Own work: Life Drawing IXX

   After a hiatus of some five weeks I returned to the Life Drawing studio last Thursday and here are my efforts.