This stone cannon ball was fired by the English at the siege of Boulogne in 1544. It was returned to England by the people of Boulogne as a gesture of friendship in 1976.
The spirit of entente cordiale in Folkestone ???
Reply
Author Archives: yamey
The station where Gandhi landed in England in 1931
WHEN MAHATMA GANDHI came to England in 1931, he disembarked at Folkestone in Kent. In those days there boats docked alongside a pier, and then boarded trains at a station on the pier. The pier has long since ceased to be used to service cross channel and other passenger boats, but it and the station have been preserved and converted into a tasteful leisure amenity.
A more detailed history of the pier and its station is available here: https://gujarat-travels.com/2021/10/24/where-mahatma-gandhi-set-foot-in-england-in-1931/
A bird of the sea on wheels in Folkestone
THE MOBILE GULL APPRECIATION UNIT was created by Mark Dion in 2008 for the 2008 Creative Folkestone Triennial. On wheels, this enormous model of a seagull can be towed to different locations. The seagull can be entered and is used by people trying to persuade viewers to understand and appreciate gulls, which are often regarded as pests. Personally, I have nothing against these creatures.
Folkestone in Kent has become a town filled with art works. Every 3 years it hold an art festival, the Folkestone Triennale. This year it began two days ago. This is one of the permanent works.
Information for the servants of the house
NEXT TO THE KITCHEN in our family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb, there was a wood framed bell board. It consisted of a set of circular windows, each labelled with the name of a room in the house. There was an old bell button in my bedroom. If you pressed it, a pendulum hanging behind the circular window labelled for my room would begin to swing in the bell board. Had we had domestic servants, a servant would have heard the bell ring, then looked at the bell board to see which room’s pendulum was swinging, and then attend to whomever was in that particular room.
I was reminded of this antiquated bit of domestic equipment when I saw a similar one at Ightam Mote, a lovely old mansion owned by the National Trust.
Our house was built in 1908. This was during the era when these bell boards were popular. Although we did not have servants at home, earlier occupants most probably did.
When our daughter was much younger, she had an elderly babysitter called Bridie. Before WW2, Bridie worked as a domestic servant at a house in Golders Green. She told us that she had to wear uniforms: one during the daytime, and a different one in the evenings. I never asked her, but I would not have been surprised if that house in Golders Green also had a bell board.
My wife remembered that her family home in Kolkata had a similar bell board. There were servants in the house, but to discourage laziness, her parents had the bell in her bedroom inactivated.
A drop in the ocean
Just as many associate Spain with sunshine, plenty of folk think of rain when they consider England. Yet, ironically, there is currently a shortage of water in the country. This is partly because there has been insufficient rainfall and also because for years, governments have neglected maintaining reservoirs and other water sources and water companies have been prioritising profit over provision of water to their customers.
So when it rained today after many weeks of dry weather, we breathed a sigh of relief. But this will be short-lived, because what fell today was literally a drop in the ocean.
A rebel at London’s Royal College of Art
THE CARTWRIGHT HALL Art Gallery in Bradford has a collection of paintings by David Hockney (born 1937), some of which he did when he was as young as 16. These early paintings, though not as adventurous as his later work, show that even as a teenager, he was a skilled artist. He studied art at Bradford College of Art. Then, between 1959 and 1962, he continued his studies at London’s Royal College of Art (‘RCA’). It was after his arrival in London that Hockney began experimenting with new ways of expression in painting. Apparently, he was not an ideal student in the eyes of the RCA. For example, he did not attend lectures and did not do the prescribed coursework. Yet, he created numerous paintings that are evidence of his skilful breaking away from conventional painting. Today, we caught the last day of an exhibition of the paintings he did between 1959 and 1963. It was held at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Gallery in Mayfair’s Bury Street.
The gallery’s website explained:
“Exhibited together for the first time, these early paintings embellished with love hearts, graphic text, suggestive shapes and depictions of friends and lovers reveal David Hockney’s precocious talent during the most formative chapter of his career.
In 1959, Hockney moved from Bradford to begin his studies at the Royal College of Art, London, where he was determined to experience the capital’s postwar bohemian culture as well as absorb the modern and contemporary art in its museums and galleries. The exhibition focuses on this period before Hockney relocated to the United States at the end of 1963 and reveals his discovery of an unmistakably personal style of painting that would establish him as the most important artist of his generation.”
It was exciting to view the images he created during this important period of his artistic development. However, for a while the RCA failed to appreciate him, and for a while threatened not to award him his degree. An article in Wikipedia revealed:
“When the RCA said it would not let him graduate if he did not complete an assignment of a life drawing of a live model in 1962, Hockney painted ‘Life Painting for a Diploma’ in protest. He had refused to write an essay required for the final examination and said that he should be assessed solely on his artworks. Recognising his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its regulations and awarded him a diploma.”
An etching in the exhibition, “The Diploma”, created in 1962, reflects Hockney’s protestation. Since graduating from the RCA, Hockney has been given awards by many prestigious institutions, and was made a Royal Academician.
Having seen his earliest known works in Bradford, the works done while at the RCA, and later creations, it is easy to understand why Hockney is now regarded as an artist of the highest calibre.
Can can
Some call them tins
Others prefer to name them cans
They are trash anyway
Portrayed between lives in a Mayfair art gallery
FRANCESCO CLEMENTE IS an artist born in Naples (Italy) in 1952. Since 1973, he has been visiting India regularly, and has worked there. He has developed a great interest in Asian religions including Hinduism and Buddhism. The 8 paintings in his exhibition, which is showing at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in Mayfair’s Dover Street until 27 September 2025, are evidence of Clemente’s interest in these belief systems.
The exhibition is called “Francesco Clemente: Self-Portraits in the Bardo”. The Bardo in the title is a concept of Tibetan Buddhism. It is the state of consciousness during the period between death and rebirth. The artist is depicted in the forefront of each picture. Behind them are fantastic depictions of both the peaceful and the angry deities that are believed to inhabit the Bardo. Whereas Clemente paints himself mainly in shades of grey, the deities are painted in vivid reds, yellows, and black. The artist insisted that the gallery walls be painted purple. This makes these vibrant paintings look even more dramatic.
Hung in a lovely large room with a patterned stucco ceiling, this small exhibition is definitely worth seeing.
An artist who loved Gujarat (in western India)
THERE IS A SUPERB collection of modern art from south Asia, which is being exhibited at Phillips auction house in London’s Berkely Square until 31 July 2025. Amongst the artworks on display are several paintings by the late Maqbool Fida Husain. As you can read in the following excerpt from my book about the first journey I made to Gujarat in western India in 2018, the Husain was keen on the area. We were in Ahmedabad when we stumbled across a restaurant called Lucky.
Now read on …
“We ate lunch at Lucky, an unusual restaurant near our hotel. This vegetarian eatery is divided into two sections: one serving sandwiches and Punjabi-style dishes, the other serving mainly south Indian dishes. In one of them, we noticed a framed painting by the famous Indian painter MF Husain (1915-2011), who was born in a Bohri Muslim family in Maharastra. He often travelled to Gujarat to paint. The picture in Lucky, and the place is truly lucky to have it, is a gift which the artist presented in 2004. This was the second original work by Hussain that we had seen in a restaurant. Earlier, we had seen a sketch by him in Bombay’s Noor Mohammadi Hotel, which serves Bohri dishes. When Hussain’s art works began to offend the extremist nationalist sentiments of some Hindus in India and they threatened his life, he felt forced to exile himself. He lived the last few years of his life in the Gulf States and the UK.
The curious thing about Lucky is not the MF Hussain painting, but its location in a disused Muslim cemetery. Its chairs and tables are placed between unmarked Muslim gravestones, painted green and surrounded by low metal railings painted white. The manager thought that these graves were over 300 years old. In addition to the graves, the thick trunk of a tree grows through the middle of the restaurant. The food and service are both good in this busy but peculiar place.”
You can read about my first trip to Gujarat and the two former Portuguese colonies, Daman and Diu, in my paperback book “Travels through Gujarat, Daman, and Diu” (https://www.amazon.co.uk/TRAVELS-THROUGH-GUJARAT-DAMAN-DIU/dp/0244407983) and the kindle version “Travelling through Gujarat, Daman, and Diu” (https://www.amazon.co.uk/TRAVELLING-THROUGH-GUJARAT-DAMAN-DIU-ebook/dp/B07GLWZPHD/)
A club where ladies met in Mayfair (London)
NUMBER 35 DOVER Street in London’s Mayfair houses an art gallery on its ground and first floors. The hallway, where a concierge sits behind a desk has four old stained-glass windows, each of them depicting a lady. They look like Pre-Raphaelite images. The marble floor of the lift is inlaid with brass letters, spelling the word ‘Empress’.
Between 1898 and 1955, number 35 Dover Street was the clubhouse of a women’s club, the Empress Club, which was founded in 1897. It was not the only women’s club in the area (Albemarle Street, Dover Street and Grafton Street), which because of the presence of several clubs for women was known popularly as ‘Petticoat Alley’. A website about the lost clubs of London (https://clubland.substack.com/p/lost-clubs-the-empress-club-1897) has a page detailing the history of the Empress Club. In late Victorian and Edwardian times, it was Mayfair’s leading women’s social club. Its members were mostly from aristocratic families. The feminist activist Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was a member.
The Empress Club began to decline slowly after WW1. During WW2, its members raised money and collected goods for the troops. In 1941, the club was badly damaged during the Blitz. Although attempts were made to revive the club in 1949, it could only stagger on unsteadily. It became a centre for illegal gambling, and was subject to a police raid in 1955. The website noted:
“In 1955, the Club was raided under the Betting Act, and nine men were arrested for illegal gambling on the premises, including popular comedian Tommy Knox of the ‘Crazy Gang’, who was remanded in custody. Knox was bound over to keep the peace, and the Club’s owners, Empress (Berkeley Square) Hotels, were fined £75. In the aftermath of the raid, and a wave of negative publicity portraying the Club in a seedy light, it dissolved later that year, and the building was sold off.”
In 2022, the building, which was designed by the architects John Thomas Wimperis & William Henry Arber, who were best known for building theatres, was completely refurbished. The people responsible for the refurbishment were architectural interior designer Maison Arabella and Orbit Architects. The gallery, which is housed within it is Lévy Gorvy Dayan, which is currently showing an excellent exhibition about which I will write soon.
yamey 