'English Style'

      This book, 'English Style', is to be found nestling in the bibliography at the back of Ben Pentreath's wonderful first book 'English Decoration'.  Although keeping a lazy eye out for other books on the list, I always felt a certain reticence about buying this book.  I think I may have been put off by the images of the book on line, but I must say in the flesh this book is in many ways superb, a real delight.  The photography, by Ken Kirkwood is absolutely spot-on.  There are interiors by likes of David Hicks, Bernard Nevil, Charles Beresford Clarke, and Terence Conran. If I was feeling particularly cynical (which I often am these days) I might say the usual suspects.  Certainly if, like me you have a (small) library of this sort of book, then you can guarantee that certain people, and certain properties, such as The Temple at Stoke-By-Nayland, will reappear with pleasant regularity.  To leaven things there are, however, some new names to conjure with: Priscilla Conran, Piers Gough, Brian Henderson, Lesley Astaire, Tricia Guild, and Susan Collier (of Collier Campbell).  I could go on.  Anyway, in all there are some 58 entries or short chapters - short on text, but rich in photography.  In addition there is both a Forward by Terence Conran and a Preface by Fiona MacCarthy. Both are good, but the latter steals the prize. Although this is a book essentially about the English house, the net is cast wide enough to include a gypsy caravan and a narrow boat. (They are, it has to be remarked, the only working class interiors.) In addition there is even, perhaps oddly, one garden.  The result is an eclectic, seemingly encyclopedic book.  Regardless of any claim to the latter, it is certainly an embarrassment of riches, happily swinging between austerity of Minimalism and over abundant bricolage.  Minimalism apart this is essentially a conservative book, rather like Habitat (for all its vaunted Modernism).  As the Introduction points out the short efflorescence of the Sixties - in its wilder moments - had little lasting influence on English style.  There are no inflatable Italian furniture or Pop Art graphics on view here, and I see nothing necessarily wrong with that.  Not only is there an almost innate conservatism on display but also a certain seriousness, that I suspect could verge on the high minded.  An at times distant echo of 17th century Puritanism, perhaps.

     'English Style', not to be confused with that excellent book of the same name by Mary Gilliatt and Michael Boys*, was first published in the US by Clarkson N Potter Inc of New York, and then in Britain by Thames & Hudson in 1984.  It is the work of Suzanne Slesin and Stafford Cliff, who was also designer.  The former an American, the latter from Australia.

     Slesin, a grand step-daughter of Helena Rubinstein, is a prolific writer on matters of style and design: she worked at the New York Times as both writer and editor, and is currently design editor of Conde Nast House and Garden, and Editor-in-chief of Homestyle. Among her books is a biography of Helena Rubinstein: 'Over the Top: Helena Rubinstein: Extraordinary Style, Beauty, Art, Fashion and Design'.

     Cliff, as you may well remember from an earlier posts, was the designer of 'The House Book' of 1972 and the Creative Director of the Habitat catalogues in the 1970s.  At time of publication he was 'Creative Director' of the Conran Group, and was the 'Project Consultant' of 'Terence Conran's New House Book' New House Book' of 1985.  Slezin contributed the chapter 'One Room Living', Susan Collier 'A Sure Sense of Style'.  Stafford and Slesin subsequently worked together they worked on a number of books: 'French Style'. 'Greek Style', 'Indian Style', and 'Grimsby Style'.

     So far so good.

     However I have a number of reservations about this book, which in 1984 was subject to a scornful and dismissive review in the December edition of the 'World of Interiors', some less trivial than others.  Firstly the design.  On the whole it is very good.  I particularly like the use of a different textured paper for the 'supporting cast' - the introduction, the 'Catalogue of Sources', and the Index, etc.  There is a logic to it.  However the last two pages of the Introduction are in the same glossy paper as the 'main feature'.  A small point, I know, but some consistency would be preferable.  I suspect a technical explanation, which is fair enough.

     My main reservation however lies with the text of the Introduction and its ambition - and, indeed, the ambition of the whole book.  I realise that all books of this sort are subjective in their choices - the omitted (alas, no Angus McBean) are perhaps as telling as the included - but the authors go further than usual by attempting to cement Habitat and the whole Conran phenomenon in the mainstream of British art and design, as inheritors of the 'great tradition'. There are two problems with this; firstly the writers are too close (being part of the Conran cohort) to be completely objective; and secondly, and I think, shamefully, there is an attempt to do this by denigrating the opposition ie Laura Ashley.  A tame academic from the RCA is even brought in at this point like a hired assassin to wield the knife.  And that, to me at least, all seems a bit unnecessary.  

     Truth is, I suspect, that 'English Style' is in all but name a Conran production - at least a half a dozen of the interiors catalogued here are owned by people closely connected to TC, including the home, 'Old House, Informal Mix', of one of the photographers who worked on the 1985 Habitat catalogue - same furniture in the same positions in both publications etc.  

      The result then is not what you might call objective however it is a thing of beauty, and utility.  A very useful visual and historical reference to an eclectic period in British interior design.

     

* Little in the way of inflatable furniture etc. there either.

       

     

Birmingham

       Just a few images - quite disparate - from our recent trip to Birmingham.  Our first port-of-call was the Bennets Hill area - Regency and lavish Victorian banks. The area was laid out in the 1827 on the site, I believe, of a mansion and large garden.  Of the banks, the best are the National Provincial Bank, 1869, by John Gibson - it's the one with the ingenious  entrance in the curved corner - and, opposite, the Midland Bank, 1830, by Rickman & Hutchinson.  Both are now pubs.

     After a quick return to the hotel with our shopping haul we headed off to St Martin-in-the-Bullring before meeting family, before the concert, in Waterstone's cafe, in a building designed, I think, by J J Burnet and partners.  We then walked up to the Museum and Art Gallery along New St.  As Pevnser and Wedgewood remarked in the Warwickshire edition of The Buildings of England, 'this street has lost its best buildings.'  Indeed it has. Gone are King Edward's School by Barry, 1838; Royal Birmingham Society of Arts of 1829, Rickman & Hutchinson; The Exchange by Edward Holmes, 1863-5.  The 'greasy till' has triumphed.  It is, however, not as downright ugly and dirty as Corporation St.
      Our visit timed with the partial re-opening of the City Museum and Art Gallery.  It was good to be back, BUT I think we all felt that it had been ideologically captured and that we preferred it as it had been.  Afterwards we popped into the Art College and the Midland Institute: the former band box smart, the letter somewhat tired.

     

       On our second and final morning in the city we walked the short distance up to the n end of Corporation St, that rather cack-handed attempt at a Parisian boulevard.  It was where, in 2023, we caught the bus to Lichfield.  Though work has been completed on the Victoria Law Courts things have not improved; they may in fact have worsened.  A glance at the images below will show shrubbery sprouting from gables of the court building, and the buildings on either side of the street to the n are in a very bad way.  On the w side 187 - 203* seemed to have been completely abandoned; on the e the former Methodist Central Hall awaits conversion to a hotel.  Like the Victoria Law Courts opposite, it is faced with red terracotta in a style, here, somewhere between English Perpendicular Gothic and Art Nouveau. It too is in a sorry state.  Vandalism and neglect are exacting a heave price with windows smashed, graffiti, etc.  There are Art Nouveau shop fronts all along the Corporation St facade.  All are at risk.  Sometimes it strikes me that Birmingham City Council are at war not only with the city's past but with very people they represent.
       I wanted a second look at that fascinating building, the Victoria Law Courts (Aston Webb & Ingress Bell, 1887-91) - particularly the side and rear facades.  Considerable more utilitarian than the main facade they are handled with consummate skill; the rear facade is an object lesson how to design a building on a hillside.  I think the Newton St facade is by another, later architect - severe when compared to the other parts of the building, but done in a good, sturdy yeoman Arts and Crafts manner with good detailing; the roof is marvelous with dormer windows and graded slates. In all a building I rather like, but in a sense it is a failure in the same way that G E Street's Royal Courts of Justice are; neither of them have quiet enough heft. One feels that a 19th century French architect trained in the Beaux Arts tradition (for all its faults) would instinctively know how to handle the situation. The courts just seem more suited to a County town than a great city like Birmingham.

     We wandered towards the RC cathedral through what was once the Gun Quarter but all is now Ichabod.

*  Coleridge Chambers, 1898, by John W Allen and Ruskin Buildings, 1900, by Ewen & J Alfred Harper. 

St Edmund, King & Martyr

    Exult, O Holy church of the English nation; behold unto thee is given to praise Edmund, the illustrious king and most invincible martyr, who, triumphing over the prince of this world, most victoriously ascended unto Heaven.

     Today is the feast day of St Edmund, King of East Anglia, martyred this day in c869 AD.  I'm not quite sure where the text quoted above comes from, but I think it may be from a Sarum Antiphoner. In the Middle Ages Edmund was one of those saints, along with St George and St Gregory the Great, associated with the realm of England.  His cult was deeply popular; there are some 78 churches dedicated to him in England with, unsurprisingly, the majority being in East Anglia and Essex.   He is also depicted on the Wilton Diptych. Apparently (according to wiki) it wasn't until the Tudor period that St George became the sole patron Saint of the nation.

'L'Armée des Ombres'

        

     'Tragedy is the immediacy of death you get in the underworld and or at a peculiar time such as war. The characters of  'L'Armée des Ombres' are tragic characters; you know it from the very beginning.'

     Following my review of Jean-Pierre Melville's film 'Le Cercle Rouge' it may come as no surprise to find out that I have begun working my way through his work.  Yesterday I watched 'L'Armée des Ombres' of 1969.  And what a profoundly moving cinematic experience it was, so much so that in the middle of the night I feel compelled to put down my thoughts in this short review.  It isn't hyperbole to say I don't think I've encountered a film of such artistic and emotional heft in quite a while and I'm not at all ashamed to add that at the end I was in tears.

     'L'Armée des Ombres', based on the Joseph Kessel's semi autobiographical novel of the same name, is the story of a Resistance cell operating in France during the German occupation of the country in WWII.  It is a grim and bitter business, at once heroic and ruthless.  One feels that Melville, who himself fought in the Resistance, poured so much of his own experience into this film; and it is that, along with Melville's great artistic and technical skills, that make this film so compelling.  Much credit is also due to the cinematographer Pierre Lhomme and composer Eric Demarsan for a score of such poignancy.
     I won't spoil the ending except to say that something occurs that is quite exceptional in film making.  I really cannot recommend this film highly enough.

L'Armee des Ombres

1969

Director                 Jean-Pierre Melville
Cinematogrpahy  Pierre Lhomme
Producer               Robert Dorffmann

St Mary the Virgin, Tenby

      A welcome return to Tenby. A glorious day full of sunshine, and serenity.  The ancient streets of the tightly-packed town centre had a sense of all pervading calm, rather like a cathedral close or an Oxbridge college.

     St Mary's church sits at the centre of the old town, on what is likely to be an ancient site.  It is mainly a Late Medieval structure - a rebuilding and enlarging of the original of which only the tower, tall and gaunt, really survives.  Its stands, unusually on the s side of the chancel. The equally gaunt spire, based on that in Bridgewater, Somerset, is Late Medieval.  St Mary's is a large church for Medieval Wales, built with mercantile wealth.  Rubble masonry w Bath Stone (?) details.  Apart from tower, Perpendicular Gothic throughout.  Nave and aisles and very long chancel with n chapel (St Nicholas/Aisle of the grace of the Holy Rood), and tower and large chapel to the s (St Thomas, tho' the Inventory of the Ancient Monuments of Wales (1911) calls it 'St Anne's chapel').  Porches to s & n of nave. N porch Victorian.  Large, cruciform w porch demolished in 1817.  Ruins of former College of Priests to w of church.

     The interior is vast, spacious and on Thursday afternoon  filled with the clear, slanting light of approaching winter. The overall effect in the nave is rather like a hall-church.  Nave has original wooden wagon roof, like a wooden barrel vault - aisles open wooden roofs, Victorian by the look of it.  The church was restored twice in the 19th century: 1862-66 & 1885. The s aisle is exceptionally large, nearly as wide as nave and n aisle combined.  Somerset type piers are short and widely spaced.  (n & s arcades are of different design; the s has foliage capitals, the n none.)
     The chancel has a tiny clearstory, somehow squeezed between wall and wagon roof.  The latter is quite the design with a series of large figures of angels along the base. High Altar raised high on steps; below is the crypt chapel of Jesus.  The n & s chancel chapels are trapezoid in shape, tapering to the east - Aisle of the Grace of the Holy Rood noticeably so. Both have wagon roofs which have been repainted. 

     All the wood work has been limed. The church rich in monuments and memorials. 

     Geraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales, scholar and writer, was rector here in the early 13th century.

Own work: The Banqueting House, Studley Royal

      So, The Banqueting House at Studley Royal, in N Yorkshire, that remarkable water garden that also includes the ruined Fountains Abbey with its purlieus. I have been to the Abbey, as a teenager, but not the garden.  The Banqueting House is thought to be a design by Colen Campbell, built by the mason Thomas Buck between 1728 and 1732.  Rather Baroque, all things considered.  Mixed media, 56 x 36 cms on 300gsm watercolour paper.

'Le Cercle Rouge'

     Siddatha Gautama, the Buddha, drew a circle with a piece of red chalk and said: "When men, even unknowingly, are to meet one day, whatever may befall each, whatever the diverging paths, on the said day, they will inevitably come together in the red circle."

     For my birthday present this year the bf has gone and bought me the box set of the films of the French auteur Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973).  A name associated with the French New Wave and Neo-Noir.  His work is heavily indebted to the Hollywood gangster movies on the 30s & 40s.

     So the other night I watched, for the first time, what is probably Melville's best work, for which he also wrote the script, 'Le Cercle Rouge' of 1970, a thriller - 'un film policier' as Melville himself described it - set in a contemporaneous France; the action moving slowly through a wintery nation from Marseilles, to Burgundy, and then on to Paris.  In places there is snow on the ground.  The film starts as a double manhunt: Corey (Alain Delon) is being pursued by organised crime; Vogel (a feral-looking Gian Maria Volonté) by the police under the command of  Le Commissaire Mattai, played by Andre Bourvil (aka 'Bourvil') in his penultimate film role.  That parallelism of the hunters is, I think, important here. By chance, or the hand of fate, the lives of these two criminal fugitives cross and the film begins its metamorphosis into a 'heist movie'.  In Paris Corey and Vogel are joined by the former police officer Jansen (Yves Montand) an expert marksman.  There is a sense in which in which the three criminal protagonists un-self themselves: Corey on release discards the photos of his former lover, Vogel sheds his handcuffs and escapes the police in dramatic fashion; and in perhaps one of the most striking scenes in the whole film Jansen goes 'cold turkey' and finds new purpose.  As one critic has said they become 'new men', sort of floating untethered figures, without apparent ties of family or past.  Apart from a cursory glance at the menage of Corey and Vogel in Paris, the only domesticity we witness is that of Commisssaire Mattai, who has a small apartment on the entresol, or mezzanine, of a typically 19th century Parisian apartment block.  Otherwise there is nothing superfluous, little in the way of score and as I have noted little or no back-story; for instance we have no idea as to the reason for Corey's imprisonment or why Vogel was been taken to Paris by the police.  Both are unimportant in the economy of the narrative. The result is an unusually spare film; cinema in a particularly 'pure' form.

      'Le Cercle Rouge' is also a film of immaculate stylishness. One feels, for instance, that there is hardly a shot that hasn't been considered deeply, and carefully.  Over all, colours are muted; greys and blues predominate and red is rarely used and then its presence on the screen is parsimonious.  Paradoxically, this limited palette does not (always) produce drabness - there is a constant intensity of vision.  Perhaps in this controlled use of colour there is a nod towards the colour films of Alfred Hitchcock.  The interiors - those created for the film - are of a high level of sophistication. Dress is fastidious. Suit and tie, trench coat are the order here - the influence of Hollywood.  Perhaps they should be seen as a uniform or the equivalent to the suit of armour. Credit must be given here to the Production Designer Theobald Meurisse, Set Decorator Pierre Charon, and the cinematographer Henri Decaë. 

     The French writer (and friend of Melville) Philip Labro wrote with an enviable and great stylishness of the Melvillian aesthetic thus: "Melvillian is what is told in the night, in the blue of the night, between men of law and men of disorder, through looks and gestures, betrayals and friendships given without words, in an icy luxury that does not exclude tenderness, or in a grayish anonymity which does not reject poetry."

     One way of understanding the narrative structure film is as a game of chess between the gang and the authorities - it may be purely coincidental but as Delon leaves a billiard hall in Marseilles, where, incidentally, he has given a couple of goons a good going over, he passes a sign that reads "Cercle Phoceen d'Echecs".  What are to make of this? Is this the only time that the word 'Cercle' appears in the film?

    Melville fought with the Resistance during WWII, adopting 'Melville' as his nom de guerre in honour of Hermann Melville.  He said of that time: "The best years of my life were the war years. When courage was a virtue.  I'm ashamed of it, but I liked the war. The rare moment in a man's life when one encounters virtue.  It's the career officers who do not hesitate, sometimes, to confront unlawfulness in order to save their honour." I believe he felt the lack of purpose in those Post War years - the 'Trentes Glorieuses'.  (Is there anything in the fact that this film appears to end of that period?) And there is too an echo of that purposelessness in the character of Jansen, the lost former police man, heavily dependent on drugs/alcohol. There is a sense in which Melville's films are not only a way of dealing with those war time experiences; but partly, one supposes, of re-living those years if only in a vicarious manner.

     This film is about masculinity and is concerned almost entirely with the realm of men.  (No woman speaks, or even holds the screen for very long.)  Melville is clearly fascinated about the 'hero' - the trope, or even archetype, of the solitary man without past or even, perhaps, future who acts in a manner beyond the ordinary. Oddly, perhaps, he makes Corey, the career criminal, the repository of the heroic. Ultimately, this film, a lament of sorts, is not only about the death of the hero but the end of the heroic as a phenomenon destroyed by the mundane little police man with the pet cats.

*  It was watching Bourvil in 'La Grande Vadrouille' (1966) playing opposite Louis de Funez and Terry Thomas that inspired this discovery of Melville.

**  "Est Melvillien ce qui se conte dans la nuit, dans le bleu de la nuit, entre hommes de loi et hommes de désordre, à coups de regards et de gestes, de trahisons et d'amitiés données sans paroles, dans un luxe glacé qui n'exclut pas la tendresse, ou dans un anonymat grisâtre qui ne rejette pas la poésie."

Le Cercle Rouge

1970

Director                 Jean-Pierre Melville
Cinematogrpahy  Henri Decaë
Producer               Robert Dorffmann