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.
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