The English Woman's House

   It's been a long while since I posted my article on the two books 'The Englishman's Garden' & 'The Englishwoman's Garden', edited by Alvilde Lees Milne, (the complex, if not at times downright difficult, wife of James Lees Milne), and Rosemary Verrey the famous gardener. 2014 in fact.  Since then I've kept a look out for other books by Alvilde and - having parted ways with Rosemary Verrey - her new collaborator, the photographer Derry Moore.  I was delighted therefore, sometime before Christmas to come across 'The Englishwoman's House' which was published in 1984, Collins, London.  The format, a good one, remained the same as the previous books:  short pieces by each home owner accompanied by Derry Moore's photographs, introduction by Alvilde and foreword by well known commentator in this case HRH Princess Michael of Kent.

   A mixed bag of interiors they are - most conventional upper-class trad, but none the worse for that I feel.  A lot of them were still 'Sixties' in feel - lots, still, of seagrass squares for instance - though you won't find any Op-art. The sitting room of Laura Ashley is a fine example of that; with its spare use of Victoriana it fits almost neatly into the sort of interior examined by Mary Gilliatt in her magisterial, and 'SomethingoftheChameleon' favourite, 'English Style' of 1967.  Another interior that stood out for me was the Salisbury home of Janet Stone, the widow of the remarkable Reynolds Stone.  Remarkable too in her own right was Janet Stone, as a new book of her photographs shows.  Imagine the sheer joy of a sitting room lined with paintings of Welsh mountains by John Piper. I call that bliss.

 Laura Ashley's Welsh home

Barbara Cartland's home in, I think, Hertfordshire.  'Sixties' taste.

Diana Cage in Cumbria

Love those pale blue walls in the hall

With Janet Stone in Salisbury

Another beautiful shade of blue

Own work: Life Drawing LII

   A bit of trepidation here in posting these two drawings as both are in a medium I haven't for years - and I mean lots of years - oil pastel.  Both, like the curate's egg, are good in parts.  Time, I think, to study Degas.

A walk around Bewdley II

   This second of these blogposts on Bewdley concentrates on the buildings in and around the High St perhaps the finest streetscape in the town. The parish church - provincial Baroque and none the worse for that - dates from 1745-8 and is by Edward and Thomas Woodward of Chipping Camden in Gloucestershire. The west tower is however earlier, dating from the end of the previous century.  In fact there is quite a bit of Baroque detailing in the town, as there is downstream in Worcester.  I'm not sure why but the West Midlands does seem to be a centre of the English Baroque.

   On Sunday afternoon we drove into Birmingham and to the southern suburb of King's Norton where there are further relatives. The late Medieval tower on the parish church is a particularly fine design constructed from local sandstone. Around it are a few ancient buildings, the whole group looking a little out of place, but welcome, amongst suburbia.

A walk around Bewdley I

   To the West Midlands at the weekend and a visit to family in Bewdley, Worcestershire, a small town nestling (mainly) on the east bank of the river Severn.  A popular resort for day-trippers from Birmingham and the Black Country.  Its heyday seems to have been in the Late Middle Ages: Leyland wrote of the town that it 'glittereth, being all of new buildings'. The prosperity continued, modestly, until the Industrial Revolution, when it got over taken by its neighbours such as Kidderminster.

   The old town in a tight network of narrow, mainly Georgian, streets squeezed between the river and steep hills immediately to the west. The result is delightful and very picturesque, but traffic is an issue.  Flooding too is a danger for home owners on the two quays that run north and south of the bridge. Pevsner considered it the most perfect of all Georgian small towns in Worcestershire. The bridge, which is suitably both sturdy and elegant, is by Thomas Telford 1795-8. It cost £9,000.

Own work: The Rustiche of Sebastiano Serlio XVIII

   After a considerable break I have returned to a on-going project of mine: a re-interpretation of the thirty designs that make up the 'Rustiche' in the 'Extraordinario Libro di Architettura' of Sebastiano Serlio.  Here then, for your delectation and delight, is arch XVIII.

Own work: Life Drawing LI

   The usual two hour long poses last week.  Pencil crayon on a rough-ish cartridge paper.

Own work: Another Collage

     The second of my recent experiments with collage.:  ink, watercolour and wax pastel background, 'homemade' marbled paper, news print and magazine photos, watercolour paper (trees).