Designs

   I'm finding it hard to be creative at the moment.  I managed to wreck two pictures over the weekend when I couldn't leave well alone.  Family life - keeping an eye for two elderly and seriously ill relatives - saps all my strength.  The weather here doesn't help - what on earth happened to spring?  In an uncharitable mood I would liken the carer/cared-for relationship to be (almost) vampiric.  The whole thing, this stasis, while we wait for the inevitable, is deeply sad - depressing.  Literally.

   One of the projects on hold, on hold for far far too long, is a second novel.  (Working title: 'Somersby')  One of its aims is to champion English (if not British) Baroque architecture.  I have deep abiding love for the Baroque of these islands.  If Wren, Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, Archer etc aren't enough I've invented another.  Here is one of his designs (mine obviously).  It is for a pavilion in an English Landscape Park.  Originally it stood in a great Baroque garden.  A Baroque Garden, like all the others (and there were many) that was swept away in the craze for 'The Landscape Park'  There are very few Baroque gardens left in Britain now - I can think of one: Wrest Park.  There is another in Yorkshire the name of which escapes me.  Anyway here is my pavilion. It's meant to have a French influence.

'It was the Pavilion at Haltham further up the valley – gold and cream beneath the dark trees in the eternally silent park – that had first introduced them to the work of Somersby.  It was a piece of confectionery, fully, ripe-ly Baroque.  A piece of scenery by Bibiena perhaps, as though it had dropped from the Court Theatre at Drottingholm.

            They were all eighteen on their first visit.  It was early September 1982 the final year of school, and the world, their immediate world, seemed good after a period of turmoil.  There were three of them in ‘Mildred’, Con’s car, including Michael, although he and Sophie had, for the first time, broken up.  Lady Alkborough herself showed them round, and afterwards gave them tea in the Adam Library.  It was one of the first fruits of Conrad’s reconciliation with his father; the direct result of Major Webb’s introduction to Conrad of the Shell Guides and the work of John Piper.  And there among the coquillage of the Pavilion, she, who had a vague, unfocused love of architecture, became a convert to the Baroque: Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh Archer, Gibbs, Talman and Somersby.  Charismatic, enigmatic Somersby.  The Adam Library held no pleasure for her.

            And after all of that it seemed natural to her to make Somersby the subject of her Phd.  It was a kindness, a restitution and a thank-you."

Then follows a spoof entry in 'Pevsner'

*          ‘And so to the Park.  The extensive Baroque Gardens depicted by Kiff, were swept away by Capability Brown in 1754.  Of the Garden structures by Somersby little remains, the most important survival being the Pavilion, c 1704.  This is of national importance, one of the most continentally Baroque buildings in the country of its date.  The Pavilion itself is single story with attic.  Three arcaded bays on N and S, each divided by coupled Doric columns – the columns of the centre piece on the N. side (garden side) being replaced, as it were, with herms supporting a curved pediment looking very Dietterlin-esque.  Had Somersby access to German pattern books?  Alas too little is known of Somersby to be sure.   Shorter single bay ‘ends’ plainer.  Iron stone walls with carved detail in Barnack stone, along with lively sculptural panels by Edward Pearce.  Interior of three groined bays, lavishly decorated with stucco and shells, very French, see slate and marble floor of Versailles quality.  Of the other structures by Somersby that made the gardens famous throughout the British Isles nothing remains except a pair of gargantuan gate piers.’

                                                Sir Nikolas Pevsner, ‘The Buildings of England’ Northamptonshire'

   One of the characters (Con) is lucky enough to have been raised in a much older manor house (below).  I have given it an enclosed garden with gazebos.  I admit that it's a bit of William Morris type fantasy.  But why not?

 The Higher roof in the centre represents the original Medieval hall of the house.  The door is the original porch, incorporated into a Jacobean gallery. (I doubt that that sort of thing actually occurred in that manner)  The great bay window in the middle is mainly the work of the great Victorian Goth, G E Street.  The family who live in this house have always been High Church.

Both of these drawings was done on A4 narrow feint paper - from 'refill pads'.  Nothing fancy.  I invariably prefer it when designing.



Kersey Rood Screen

    My recent post on Kersey reminded me of a sketching trip there in the mid-nineties when I was working in Suffolk.  I've dug out the watercolour sketch in question from my 'archive'.  It shows part of the one the four (I think) remaining panels of the Rood Screen dado.  This panel represents the Holy and Victorious Martyr Edmund, King of East Anglia. 

    Before I launched this post I thought I'd better check the details in Munro Cautley.  H Munro Cautley (1876 - 1959) was an architect and historian.  His magnum opus is 'Suffolk Churches and Their Treasures', Norman Allard & Co, Ipswich, 1937 (2nd & 3rd editions: 1938 & 1954).  He was surveyor to the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.  Off the top of my head I could only think of two buildings by him:  Lloyd's Bank in Wisbeach (Cambs) and St Augustine of Hippo, Ipswich.  They both seem somehow at odds with a love of East Anglian Perp; the bank is rather good Neo-Georgian, the church monumental and perhaps a little heavy, but researching of  this post I've found plenty of other buildings by him, some I have known for years such as Lloyd's Bank in Cambridge.  I think you could say that his work is variable in quality.  There is a flickr page dedicated to him, and not surprisingly there's quite a lot about him on the Suffolk Churches website: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk
    Enough of that discursion.  Here is my watercolour drawing of Kersey Rood Screen:

And here are a couple of other drawings from that same sketch book I thought you might like:

Kersey Pottery

   One of my pleasures is Studio pottery.  To me there is something deeply satisfying about a well-made, hand-made pot.  It appeals on both a sensual and intellectual level.  Through it I feel a real connection with the Arts and Crafts movement.  I have  small collection of pots that I hope to display sometime on this blog.
As you will know from my last post the bf and I stopped off in Kersey on Friday.  What I didn't tell you is that we paid a visit to the Kersey Pottery.  Here is their website. The pottery and show-room are located just up from the ford that bisects the main street.  (I think it's The Street to the north of the ford and Church Street to the south, but I'm not sure.)  You turn through a gate and down a grassy track.  The pottery is on your left formed from an old stable.
   The show-room was looking a little bare. It turned out that the show-room is closing and the pottery re-locating to a nearby village.  If I remember rightly they will not be re-opening the show-room.  I feel quite sad about that.  I remember visiting the pottery when I lived near-by in Monks Eleigh in the mid nineties, when I was working on the completion of the Cathedral at Bury St Edmunds.
   Anyway the bf was feeling generous and bought me a small hexgonal vase.  It was a wonderful tactile quality to it.  I love the thick gloss glaze and the simple decoration. (I hope to post an image tomorrow.) It's tomorrow, and here is the vase.

 

 

I have also decided to change the way I present my favourite websites here.  There will now be a new section for Studio Pottery.  Enjoy.

Kersey and Lavenham

     What's this?  Twice in one day?  Just feeling a little bored, and a bit under the weather - the sniffles and a sore throat.  So why not? The other thing is...every time I go to the bf's I always find plenty cultural stuff to blog about, stuff that in the end just gets shunted to one side.  To give one, brief, example: on my previous visit we watched Michael Powell's last film, the infamous 'Peeping Tom'.  I've said nothing about it - yet.  Just not had the time.

     Friday was bitterly cold.  Even so we broke our return journey at Kersey and Lavenham.  Hardly the weather to stand about and take photos, but I felt obliged....

     Kersey is a small and definitely (and, I suspect, self-consciously) picturesque village nestling in a deep valley.  In the Late Middle Ages it grew rich on the wool trade.  Subsequent poverty was the preservative. What interested me on this visit was the increasingly bolder use of colour wash on the cottages.  One time the limewash would have been invariably white - at a push 'Suffolk pink'.  I don't know if these bolder colours are more authentic.  They are certainly attractive.  The pub exterior (not shown) still retains it's early-to-midcentury interpretation of 'Tudor' - that is 'black and white' and lanterns and scrolling ironwork.  I don't think it should be despised for that.

     The view down the main street, (The Street), of Kersey from the north, pink washed cottage in the background, ochre and rust closer.  Blue rubbish bins make a temporary and piquant contrast in colour.  Other properties still in white.

     The north end of the main street.  The colours on the house on the left are most effective.  I'm pleased that no attempt has been made to strip the plaster back to reveal the timber frame.  In most cases can it be justified?

  

   A view of 'Ancient Houses', Grade 1 listed.  Marvellous late Medieval bay windows.  Perhaps the the timbering on the nearest end of the house to the camera should have been left under its protective coat of plaster?

   A view of the main street on the way back to the car

   We also went to the church, but the interior was a real shocker, with a chaotic re-ordering.  The screen, which has some lovely medieval paintings on the dado was relegated to behind some chairs.  Shame.  From there we drove to Lavenham through remote back lanes.
   Lavenham is a large village, almost a small town.  And like Kersey it is self-conciously picturesque.  It reminds me somewhat of 'Tilling' in E F Benson's 'Mapp and Lucia' books.  Far too cold a day for much sight-seeing I was determined however to photograph a couple of things.

   This is my favourite building in Lavenham, the 'Little Hall Museum'.  It was originally built in the late 14c for the Caustons.  Between the two World Wars it was purchased and restored by twin brothers.  They filled it with their collection of Middle Eastern artefacts.  I should think that their restoration exaggerated the medieval/Gothic aspects of the building.  I find the 'repairs' to the leaded windows a bit suspect. The colour wash must be a more recent thing. Here is the website.  The museum is open from the end of March until the end of October.  On the left is the restaurant  - 'The Great House' - where our hosts treated us to a delicious lunch the day before.

     Finally in Lavenham I took a photo of this florist's - 'The Gardener's Home' on Water St.  They have lovely displays.  Quite my favourite shop in the village.

Weekend away

      I was lucky enough to have a long (I mean long) weekend away at the bf's.  This included a night with friends in Suffolk who live in a 16th century timber-framed house, which they are currently restoring. (They have finished the interior, including excavating a kitchen/dining room in the cellar, and are now working on the outside.)  Our hosts very kindly allowed me to take some photographs.  Unfortunately they were in the midst of 'spring-cleaning' so I was unable to photograph very much.  Here are the more presentable ones I hurriedly snapped on Friday morning.

Benedict of Nursia

     Good morning (bleary-eyed here).  Another bad night's sleep.  Possibly too much to worry about in my life.  My father is still ill.  My aunt is facing the future with cancer.  And I am their nearest relative....

     I thought I'd post this article I wrote a year or so ago and was not used.  Re-reading it it can get a bit strident, but I was striving to make a point abot Benedict and his world - he was not alone.  Arrogantly (?) I wanted to challenge the assumptions of the reader in the pew, and present a different perspective on Church history.  One not based on hundreds of years of 'propaganda'.  (Ask most people and I reckon they would still believe that Pope Gregory the Great invent Gregorian Chant.  He didn't.) Although I hadn't space to mention them in my article the real fathers of Western Monasticism were St Martin of Tours and St John Cassian.  Both of them worked in Gaul.
In my article I write that Benedict worked as part of a great network of Monasticism.  To give a further example: uniquely in Late Antiquity there were monasteries attached to the Great Basillicas in Rome, eg St Peter's.  I believe that the Monastic rules used there are still (?) unknown.  (There is no confirmed use of the Rule of St Benedict in Rome before the 10th century.)  Anyway the Liturgy of these Basilican monasteries formed the basis for the liturgical instructions of both the Regula Monasterium (Rule of St Benedict) and the 'Rule of the Master' - more of the latter in my article.  Not only that, Eastern forms underly and influence directly the rule and the liturgy it contains.

St Benedict of Nursia – July 11^th  

     We know so little of the life of St Benedict - Abbot of Monte Cassino and so-called ‘founder of Western Monasticism’ - that it would be possible to condense all that we can verify into one sentence; perhaps even leave a blank page for there is so little hard fact that some modern scholars have doubted his existence.  For another, the Rule for which Benedict is famous can merely ‘ascribed’ to an abbot called Benedict.  The problem is this: for the details of Benedict’s life we have to rely on Book 2 of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great – a text of doubtful authenticity – and there is little other evidence, even within the Rule itself, to corroborate Gregory’s story.

     According to the Dialogues (which gives no dates) Benedict was born in Nursia in modern Umbria, probably at the end of the fifth century.  Like many others in a civilization that was disintegrating, Benedict as a young man looked to the religious life for structure and purpose. He became a hermit.  His rigorous askesis earned him a reputation for holiness and as a result Benedict’s life became problematic. There was an unsuccessful time as abbot of a local monastery, from which he tried to return to the eremetic path, but like a guru in modern India, he drew followers, and they had to be organised into a community.  Worst of all Benedict attracted animosity, and it was this prolonged antagonism that eventually led him and a select number of followers to head south to the area between Rome and Naples, to a hill top above the city of Cassinum – Monte Cassino.  And it is for this new community that the Rule was compiled, and from which, according to the Dialogues, Benedict successfully converted the local population to Christianity. 

     This traditional view of Benedict as ‘pioneer’ monastic and evangelist – a latter-day Moses - is now largely discredited.  There was already a strong monastic tradition in Rome and across Italy.  Benedict worked within a network of ascetics and monasteries that spanned North Africa, Italy and southern Gaul, and further east to Egypt and Palestine.  The rule reflects this: influences include the rules of Pachomius, John Cassian , Augustine, and Caesarius.  The main source however is the Regula Magistri written some three decades earlier by an unknown abbot of an unknown southern Italian monastery.  Most scholars now accept that the most famous and spiritual chapters of Benedict’s rule are taken verbatim from the Regula.  

     So, how is that that Benedict, who died in obscurity sometime between 547 and 550, came to be regarded as the ‘Patriarch of Western Monasticism’?  There is the rule itself.  There is much to commend it: written in elegant clear Latin it is sensible and moderate in its demands on those who follow it.  The popularity too of the Dialogues helped spread the cultus of Benedict across Western Europe.  However the real impetus came with the rise of the Carolingian Empire.  The Emperors wanted religious conformity across the Empire, and this meant the Roman Rite and, thanks to another Benedict - Benedict of Aniane, Benedictine Monasticism; everything else was simply suppressed, sometimes by force.  Thanks to the zealousness of that second Benedict the Celtic, Gallican and Ambrosian monastic traditions within the Empire were destroyed.

Some more work

     I thought I'd share these ink and watercolour drawings I've been working on intermittently for the last few weeks.  They follow a sequence as I was trying different approaches to the image.  The germ of the idea was Samuel Palmer's 'Blacks' - a series of intense black and white 'watercolours' (mixed media - ink and watercolour, chalk, bodycolour).  Another influence was the 'imaginative' side of Neo-Romantics like Craxton and Minton.  These are certainly more about atmosphere than a desire for botanical accuracy. I'm not sure after a few weeks 'away' from them whether they are any good.  I must admit to a feeling of ambiguity towards them.



     The top image was first I worked on (from a sketch on a shopping list).   The lower image is full sized sketch based on the first and further ideas I played with in a note book.