Own work: The Temple of Bacchus, Stowe

     Of late I've been rather interested in garden structures, such as follies and banqueting houses, and, slightly tangential, to that the influence English garden structures, such as those by Vanbrugh and Kent had on French Neo-classicists such as Claude-Nicholas Ledoux.  I'm particularly drawn to the over-scaled and dramatic architecture of Sir John Vanbrugh.

     Here is my interpretation of a now lost building by Vanbrugh - The Temple of Bacchus that once stood in the gardens at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire.  It was built in 1719 for Viscount Cobham and survived until the 1920s when it was demolished for the school chapel designed by Sir Robert Lorimer.  I accidentally discovered a photographic illustration of the temple in a book in the horticultural library at Aberglasney.  It was my first I encounter with the building and I was very intrigued - it had drama and heft.  A quality of presence and mystery.  It was, I thought, a suitable subject for a painting, but could find very few other illustrations of the temple, and those were of poor quality or too small.  However I wasn't to be deterred, and so here then, based on those meagre resources, is my evocation of a lost part of our architectural history, our patrimony.  Mixed media, 23 x 46 cms.

An Evening with the CBSO

 Back to Birmingham this week to see family and attend a concert by the CBSO.  It was my first experience of the orchestra playing live and in person, and it was quite the event.  The conductor was maestro Kazuki Yamada and he certainly is a showman.  It was obvious that the concert going public of the city have taken him to their hearts.  There is a real rapport between them.  
    The concert consisted of four pieces: Ravel's 'Mother Goose Suite', Mozart's Piano Concert no.27 - soloist Paul Lewis; and, after the interval, the luscious late Romanticism of 'La Nuit et L'Amour' by Augusta Holmes, and 'Pictures at an Exhibition' by Mussorsgky, arranged by Sir Henry Wood.  The latter was remarkable in its 'piss and vinegar'.  A much more emotional, even irrational, interpretation of Mussorgsky's original piano score than Ravel's more famous arrangement.

Tair Trysor Pontypridd

      The Eisteddfod was our first visit to Pontypridd and we were were rather pleasantly surprised.  By no means as dour as expected.  The site of the Eisteddfod, Ynysangharad War Memorial Park, was trim, well maintained with carpet bedding, lido, bandstand, and a smart bowls club. All a proper municipal park should be. It contains the memorial to Evan James and his son James, residents of Pontypridd, who between them wrote 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau', 'Land of my Fathers'.  

     Pontypridd stands at the point where the river Rhondda joins the Taff, making it an important road and rail junction in the South Wales Valleys.  There are, of course, some issues as with any town this size: the road system is understandably intrusive, and disruptive to the urban fabric; the shopping area was, sadly like many, a bit rundown.  In the last few years quite a bit of redevelopment has taken place in the town centre.  I don't rate the architectural quality of what has been done but it has, amongst other things, opened the main shopping street to the river Taff, and that is a good thing.  This part of the development, replacing the 1960s Taff Vale Shopping Centre, consists of three separate buildings: a public library, and two office blocks, one of which houses 'Transport for Wales'.  I had to smile seeing the 'T' logo of Transport for Wales on the roof of the building as it reminded me of the vast illuminated 'T's that decorated the corner of roof of 'Fordson Community Singery' in Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'.  On what floor, I wonder, do the orgies take place?

     Architecturally though, Pontypridd, an essentially Victorian town, has three treasures.  The first is the famous and quite extraordinary 'Old Bridge', a breath-taking leap of stone over the churning waters of the river Taff.  It was completed in 1756, on the fourth attempt.  It is the work of William Edwards (1719-1789), autodidact, engineer, architect and Methodist minister.  I have talked about him before, briefly, in my post about that wonderful bridge by the falls at Cenarth built by his son David.  The Cenarth bridge looks quite traditional compared to this daring design. Strangely enough it looks a bit like a Late Roman/Byzantine bridge, such as the Karamagara in Asia Minor.  Or one of those bridges erected under the Ottoman Empire.  The likeness must be purely coincidental. 

      For the first fifty years or so after opening the 'Old Bridge' stood in open country.  However by the beginning of the 20th century the town had grown rich enough to call in a London based architect, the admirable Henry Hare, to design the new council offices, and a rather wonderful job he made of it.  Stylistically it almost defies categorisation.  Most likely historians will refer to a building of this type as 'Edwardian' or 'Free Style'.  It owes a debt to both Richard Norman Shaw and the Arts and Crafts movement.  As with any building of that period it is exquisitely detailed - the result, I believe, of drawing out the details full scale.  The slate roof is beautifully graded - a delight.  The sculpture is by J D Forsyth.  As you can see below the building does suffer, however, from being on a busy junction.

     Sadly, I have no images of the third treasure to offer you, and it was not at all obvious to us from the street.  It was only when we entered what we thought was just a bakers (we were after the chicken pies), that the full, busy (if not chaotic) splendour was revealed.  This is the 'The Prince's Café', a virtually intact Art Deco bakers, café and grill room.  You will have to believe me when I tell you the place is a delight.  Or go there yourself.

The National Eisteddfod

     Earlier this week we took the train to Pontypridd in the South Wales Valleys and the National Eisteddfod.  It is the most important arts festival in Wales, and with the Royal Welsh Show the main social event of the Principality. It is a great pity that BBCR3 does not broadcast annually from the Eisteddfod.  It really should as the standard of performers, as we can testify, is excellent.

     The Eisteddfod is a moveable feast, having a different venue each year.  In recent years it has become the custom to divide the Eisteddfod site into a number of Maes (fields) A - D.  We spent our time in Maes A, the outer court of the Temple, the Court of the Gentiles. To be honest I felt somewhat underwhelmed by it all. After a hour and a half I felt ready to leave.  It wasn't that I can speak very little Welsh; this was south Wales and there were at times very few Welsh speakers to be herd; so much so that at one point seeing a rather nice vintage car parked in the middle of the Maes the bf (who has the Welsh) quipped 'Spot a Welsh speaker and win a car!' Only it all felt a little purposeless. There were plenty of exhibitors, such as the National Museum of Wales, the Senedd, and WNO and the NOW, but they were unvisited; the staff sitting around idly browsing their phones. 'Y Lle Celf' - the pavilion of the fine & applied arts - could, at first sight, be described as perfunctory.  However I don't think that would be entirely fair.

     The crepuscular heart of the Eisteddfod is the Pafiliwn, part concert hall and part Telesterion, the Holy of Holies, where the main competitions and the majority of ceremonies take place.  Perhaps it best thought of as a ship's engine deep in the dark and unseen hold of the ship generating meaning and purpose.  It could also be thought of as a womb.  For some reason it was placed - fenced in - at the very southern apex of the site right beside the the noisy A470.  The result was a continual hum of traffic that really wasn't satisfactory for the audience or fair to the performers.
     I've chosen my words deliberately because, like all Arts festivals, the Eisteddfod is a sort of 'Mystery religion' - a secular version of Eleusis.*  'Spilt religion' made visible.  After all it has its own vestments and rituals - initiations and such, and most likely its own taboos.  The speaking of English upon the main stage is perhaps one such.  Certainly as we entered the inner enclosure there was sense of something set apart, that we stood in the presence of something important.  A small but telling point here is the almost total lack of signage; we had no idea where the entrance to the actual Pafiliwn was; perhaps it was sort of knowledge that was whispered to the initiate only.  Oddly, standing in front of that large, blank and somewhat aloof structure I was put in mind of the Kotai Jingu shrine at Ise Jingu in Japan, the holiest site in the nation.  An extreme comparison perhaps.  Rather, it is the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.

     In the end we both agreed we preferred the Royal Welsh Show.  As you may already be able to tell, I certainly felt an ambiguity about the Eisteddfod. Perhaps I shall return, bearing in my mind the secret of a successful visit is to decide what to watch in the Pafiliwn and build your day around that, otherwise it just becomes aimless wandering.  I may even submit a painting or two and see how I get along.

* I think there is tendency in arts festivals towards 'in' and 'out' groups.  It is probably inevitable. I can imagine that this was true of The Aldeburgh Festival in the Britten/Pears years.

Glynn Boyd Harte in Cloudesley Square

    In my review of Gavin Stamp's book 'Interwar' I talked briefly about how in the 1970s & 80s the Art Workers Guild (you've seen it plenty of times on this blog) was one of the centres of London Bohemia.  It must have been a heady mix, what with critics, artists and architects all rubbing shoulders under the stern gaze of their illustrious predecessors. Glynn Boyd Harte (1948-2003) artist, aesthete, dandy - was one of the 'movers and shakers' in that world.  He was, to quote his Telegraph obituary, 'The most curious and flamboyant figures on the London social scene'.  Picante and fascinating.

    The Guild, in Queen Square, became the backdrop to some of his successful antics; for it was there in all that august company, like a trout rising to the fly, he turned impresario: writing, directing and producing fetes, pantomimes and revues.  He wrote songs and performed them with Celia Stothard and Ian Archie Beck under the name 'Les Freres Pervert'.  Unsurprisingly, he could be quite outrageous.  There is the story that he once went that bit too far at a party at the w London home of architect & writer Roderick Gradidge - hardly a shrinking violet himself - with the result of a major rift between Boyd Harte and Gavin Stamp.  One, I think, that was not healed when Boyd Harte died at the age of 55 from leukaemia.

     The following images are of an article published in World of Interiors and dating from 1984, written by Ros Byam Shaw with photography by Tom Leighton.  The photograph at the top of this post shows the Boyd Hartes, looking like left over hippies, standing outside their newly bought house in the 1970s.  The place, in Islington's Cloudesley Square, was then a near wreck, but over some ten years the BHs restored the house as near to its original state.  The basement dining room could have been created yesterday.