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Ceilings with perforations in the home of William Morris

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THE RED HOUSE in south-east London’s Bexley Heath was the only residence that William Morris (1834-1896) owned, rather than rented. The architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) designed it in a style that resembled that of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which only became prevalent in the last quarter of the 19th century. It was completed in 1860, before Morris began his now famous decorative arts company (in 1861). The house is now maintained by the National Trust, which organises guided tours though its interior. The visitor gets to see art and furniture created by Morris, his wife Jane, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.

Amongst the many interesting things that the guide pointed out, one feature particularly intrigued me. That is, many of the ceilings in the house can be seen to have numerous tiny holes or perforations. If you look closely, these holes are not random, but are arranged in patterns. These patterns vary from room to room. In the large entrance hallway, which contains a couple of door panels with paintings by Morris, the ceiling is now painted white, but the perforations are arranged in a discernible pattern.

Other ceilings not only have these perforations, but are also covered with colourful hand-painted patterns. Apparently, these were painted by friends of William and Jane Morris. They used to be invited as house guests, fed, and lodged, and then expected to climb on ladders to paint patterns on the ceilings. If you look at these patterned ceilings carefully, you will notice that the painted shapes correspond to the patterns of tiny holes that perforate the ceiling panels. This is no accidental coincidence. Before the ceiling panels were installed, the perforations were made using pieces of wood in which nails had been arranged to create the pattern required for a particular ceiling. The panels were then pressed with these beds of nails to produce the desired pattern on the panels. The perforations helped the painters to create the designs that Morris had chosen for them. Although at first sight, the ceilings look as if the patterns  were mass produced, careful examination reveals that the hand painted elements of each design are not precisely identical. The painters probably tried to reproduce the elements of the designs accurately, but being hand-painted rather than mechanically reproduced, tiny differences can be discerned. This is what Morris wanted: his ideal was old-fashioned craftsmanship rather than industrial mass-production.

While showing us the ceiling above the stairwell, our guide pointed out something that Morris might not have wanted. Hidden behind a beam, and quite difficult to see, there is what we now call a ‘smiley face’ instead of an element of the pattern seen on the rest of the ceiling. It might possibly have been put there by one of his unpaid friends, who was getting bored.

The Red House, which is now embedded in the aesthetically unexciting suburban sprawl of south-east London, was once in open countryside. It is well worth visiting this place, which is one of the earliest examples of what was later to become known as the Arts and Crafts style, but you do need to book your tour in advance.

Architecture in London and an ancestral place in Bavaria

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FACING THE CHINESE embassy in London’s Portland Place, there is an imposing Art Deco edifice standing on a corner plot. It is the home of the Royal Institute of British Architects (‘RIBA’). We visited the place in August 2024 to view a small exhibition called “Raise the Roof: Building for Change”. Amongst other things, it explores the role of British architects, such as Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, in enforcing the image of British imperialism during the 1930s in South Africa and India. After viewing this, we wandered around the RIBA building, which, as was explained in the exhibition, contains materials collected from the Empire as well as images depicting the arrogantly supposed superiority of the British colonisers over the colonised.

The building contains various informative panels, which explain aspects of its history. It was constructed between 1932 and 1934. The architect George Grey Wornum (1888-1957), who was born in London, designed the RIBA building.

In one of the meeting halls, there is an elegant carved wooden screen, The Dominion Screen, which was carved in Quebec pine and designed by the artist Denis Dunlop (1892-1959). It contains vignettes of life in five former British possessions (only 4 of which were Dominions): Australia, South Africa, India, Canada, and New Zealand. It was paid for by William Lewis Gerstle (1868-1947), who was born in San Francisco (USA). His daughter, Miriam (1898-1989) married George Grey Wornum in 1923. She was a designer. Seeing the name Gerstle on the information panel next to the screen rang a bell in my mind.

There was an extensive Gerstle family living in the Bavarian town of Ichenhausen (near Günzburg) during the 19th century. I knew this because when researching my mother’s family, I took a great interest in this small town. It was where two of her ancestors were born. At least one of their relatives married a Gerstle from Ichenhausen. I wondered whether Miriam Gerstle’s family were originally from Ichenhausen.

When I got home, I did a little research on the Internet, and soon discovered that Miriam’s father, William, was the son of Lewis Gerstle, who was born in Ichenhausen in 1824. He died in San Francisco in 1892 (www.geni.com/people/Lewis-Gerstle/6000000008091395228). Like many Jewish people from Ichenhausen, he left the small town to seek his fortune elsewhere – in his case, in the USA. He arrived in California in 1850. During this period, many other members of his family migrated to the USA (see: www.angelfire.com/ab7/yamey/ICH.html). Many members of my mother’s family (descendants of Jakob Seligmann [1775-1843] and Moses Wimpfheimer [born 1784] of Ichenhausen) did the same thing; they went to larger German cities, such as Augsburg, to the USA, to France, and to South Africa, where my mother was born.

It turns out that Miriam Wornum is my fourth cousin twice removed!

I am pleased that after so many years of having passed the RIBA building, we finally got to see its interior, which, incidentally, is open to the public. It is a fine example of the architecture that was fashionable in the 1930s. What I had not expected was to discover that its architect was married to a lady whose ancestors were born in the same small German town as those of my mother.

Paintings and the Olympic Games in Paris in Cambridge

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MY INTEREST IN the Olympic Games is limited, but that did not stop me from visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where an exhibition is being held to celebrate the 1924 Olympic Games, which were held in Paris. The exhibition, “Paris 1924: Sport, Art, and the Body”, is on until the 3rd of November 2024. Paris was, and still is, an appropriate place to hold the Olympic Games, because the man who revived this ancient Greek festival of sport, Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937), was born in that city. The exhibition is well laid-out. Naturally, it contains many items of interest to enthusiasts of sport and the Olympic Games. Most of these are relevant to the 1924 Paris event, which was held only 10 years after the outbreak of WW1. The exhibits which interested me most were some of the paintings.

The Paris Olympics of 1924 took place during an exciting era of artistic experimentation and development. Most of the paintings in the exhibition provide evidence of that exciting period of twentieth century art. There is a painting of a gymnast by the German artist George Grosz (1893-1959), which was painted in about 1922. Works by the Italian Futurists Gino Severini (1883-1966), Enzo Benedetti (1905-1993), and Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), figure in the exhibition. There is also a painting by Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957), who was a brother of the famous poet William Butler Yeats. An interesting almost Cubist painting of a tennis player caught my eye. It was created in 1917 by an artist I had not heard of: André Lhote (1885-1962). A modernistic portrayal of a female runner by Willi Baumeister (1889-1955) fitted in well with the theme of the exhibition.

The paintings and sculptures chosen for the show were what made the exhibition enjoyable for me. One painting amongst them was for me the greatest surprise. It is a huge portrait depicting the face of the tennis player Mrs Helen Wills Moody (1905-1998), created in pastels in 1930. She had won two gold medals in the Olympics of 1924. I do not know why, but it was with great surprise that I saw that the artist was the Mexican Diego Riviera (1886-1957). Although the portrait is large, I had always associated Riviera with huge murals, rather than portraits and smaller paintings, of which, I have recently discovered, he created many.

I am pleased that I have seen the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam not because it has increased my interest in the Olympic Games, but because it included some fine paintings, which I had not seen before.

Discovering the versatility and creativity of an artist born in Lancashire

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UNTIL AUGUST 2024 when I visited Salford, I believed that there was little that excited me about the work of the artist Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887-1976). My first impression of this artist was back in the 1970s and ‘80s, when reproductions (posters) of his paintings of industrial landscapes crowded with stick-like depictions of people were popular items in print shops of the Athena chain. I liked the pictures, but there seemed to be little variety amongst the paintings that were reproduced for sale.

My appreciation of Lowry’s art was not improved after seeing a special exhibition of his paintings held at Tate Britain in 2013. The paintings were badly displayed. There were too many of them crowded on to the walls of the galleries. They were so densely packed into the gallery that they were difficult to examine carefully. As far as I can remember, there was little difference between the subject matter depicted in the paintings. Most of them were of the kind that I had seen reproduced in the Athena shops. I came away from the exhibition neither being impressed by it nor having gained more admiration for Lowry.

So, in August 2024 when we headed for The Lowry, a modernistic cultural centre at Salford Quays in Greater Manchester, which contains a collection of artworks by Lowry, my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened. The Lowry itself is a successfully adventurous example of modern architecture, which is well worth seeing. It contains a gallery devoted to the works of LS Lowry. Our visit to this gallery, which contains about 400 of his artworks, was, as the saying goes, ‘mind-blowing’. First of all, in comparison with the 2013 exhibition at the Tate, the works of art are extremely well displayed. Secondly, and more importantly, what we saw completely changed my mind about Lowry’s works.

Although there were several of Lowry’s works in the style favoured by customers of Athena’s outlets, these wonderful pictures were outnumbered by other images which demonstrate Lowry’s versatility as an artist. Lowry painted many faces and portraits, all of which convey the personalities of the people portrayed and the artist’s sometimes quirky or humorous perceptions. There are numerous images – both sketches and paintings – of ships. There are evocative landscapes devoid of people. Most surprising to me, are his paintings of seascapes, which are so brilliant that they put Lowry alongside Turner in his ability to capture the sea on canvas. Apart from paintings, there are numerous sketches and ‘doodles’ on display, each one of which demonstrates Lowry’s skill as a draughtsman.

The immense variety of what is on display in the gallery in The Lowry demonstrates the amazing diversity of LS Lowry’s depictions of life in Lancashire and elsewhere. The exhibition at Salford Quays opened my eyes to his brilliance, and now I realise how wrong I was when I came to a judgement of his talents before having discovered how wide a range of art he created so skilfully.

A metaphor for studying at the University of Cambridge ?

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This photograph shows a cow grazing in a meadow in Cambridge (UK). Behind the animal, you can see the world famous perpendicular gothic chapel of Kings College – part of the University of Cambridge.

I posted this picture on Facebook. A few hours later, one of my friends added the witty comment:

“In one end and out the other…“

A stone with Chinese characters in a garden in Cambridge

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WHEN RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861-1941) visited China in 1924, he gave a series of lectures in English, which were translated for the Chinese audiences by the talented young poet Xu Zhimo (1897-1931).  During a visit to Cambridge (UK) in August 2024, in several shop windows I noticed a book called “Xu Zhimo Cambridge & China” by Zilan Wang. Even though Cambridge has many students and tourists from China, I wondered about it.

Xu Zhimo was born in Haining (China). He studied law in Beijing, then in 1918 travelled to the USA, where he studied for, and was awarded a degree at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. After starting a degree at Columbia University in New York City, he left the USA because he could no longer stand the place. He then travelled to the UK, where he first studied at the London School of Economics, and then at Kings College, Cambridge. It was in Cambridge that he became deeply attracted to poetry, and began writing it. In 1922, he returned to China, where he became an important figure in China’s modern poetry movement. He was a believer in ‘art for art’s sake’ rather than the (Chinese) Communists’ belief that art should serve politics.

When Tagore came to China, the country was in turmoil: there was fighting between rival warlords and the risk of an invasion by the Japanese was great. Xu Zhimo served as one of his oral interpreters, translating Rabindranath’s romantic (English) language into vernacular Chinese.  Tagore did not rate his visit to China a great success. He was met with some hostility as Huan Zhao explained in the introduction to an article entitled “Interpreting for Tagore in 1920s China: a study from the perspective of Said’s traveling theory” (Perspectives, Volume 29, 2021 – Issue 4):

“During Tagore’s visit, his initial perceptions of welcome were transformed dramatically into a feeling of rejection, resulting in an unpleasant sojourn. After forty-odd days, Tagore left China, disconsolate, with his mission unaccomplished. Exactly what happened remains unclear. The introductory flyleaf of Talks in China claims his poor reception had much to do with ‘organized hostility from the members of the Communist Party and was labeled as a reactionary and ideologically dangerous.’ Others maintain that Xu, as Tagore’s interpreter, should shoulder much of the responsibility for the visit’s outcome – that Xu’s efforts to enhance his own fame while welcoming Tagore effaced Tagore’s purposes and ideas”

And in the author’s conclusion, the following was written:

“In 1920s China, Tagore’s lectures and Xu’s interpretations faced strong resistance from Chinese intellectuals who sought radical social reform. This resistance interrupted Tagore’s visit and inflicted lasting anguish on his interpreter Xu Zhimo. Although challenged by critics, Tagore’s lectures continued to influence Chinese philosophers, thanks in large part to Xu’s unyielding efforts to expand and explain Tagore’s lectures.”

Xu Zhimo was killed in an air crash in November 1931.

On our recent visit to Kings College in Cambridge, we stopped to look at a large stone on which Chinese writing characters are inscribed. We had passed it on previous visits to the city, but had not investigated it. This time, we noticed a short path leading from the stone into a circular enclosure surrounded bushes and trees. The path is lined with rectangular paving stones on which some lines of a poem by Xu Zhimo is carved. Alternate stones are in Chinese, the others are in English. The words are from Xu’s poem “再别康桥” (Zài Bié Kāngqiáo, which means ‘Taking Leave of Cambridge once more”), which he wrote in 1928.  The enclosed area has a small bench upon which we sat, watching a continuous stream of Chinese people visiting the memorial, stopping to look at it respectfully.

Georgian lamps in images of Manchester by LS Lowry

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THE ARTIST LS LOWRY (1887-1976) often gives prominence to street lamps in his paintings and drawings. In a few of his pictures, he includes overthrow lamps. These are lamps held by semicircular cast iron hoops above gateways or entrances.

An overthrow lamp drawn by Lowry

In his book “Lowry’s Lamps”, Richard Mayson noted that overthrow lamps were Georgian in origin and are more likely to be found in front of elegant houses Bath or London than in Manchester, where Lowry created most of his compositions. Manchester did not have many of these smart dwellings. The few examples of this kind of lamp in Manchester were usually to be found at public spaces, such as parks and cemeteries.

Mayson noted that Kensington Square in London is rich in these lamps. Today, I visited the Square, and found that what he wrote is accurate. By the way, his book is an excellent appreciation of Lowry and his work.

History scratched in stone in a village in Hertfordshire

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HISTORY SCRATCHED ON A WALL IN HERTFORDSHIRE

I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT this before, but because I found it so interesting I will write about it again. In August 2024, we revisited the picturesque village of Ashwell in Hertfordshire on our way between London and Cambridge. Apart from being an extremely attractive place, its parish church of St Mary ccontains an intriguing image scratched into the internal surface of the north wall of the bell tower.

The image is a drawing of London’s old St Paul’s Cathedral, which was destroyed during the Great Fire of London (1666). By comparing this picture with other pre-1666 drawings of the old cathedral, it can be seen to be an accurate depiction of the long since destroyed edifice. It is likely that the drawing in Ashwell was scratched into the wall sometime before 1930s, when the old cathedral was modified by Inigo Jones.

Above the image of the old cathedral, there are some inscriptions recoding plagues that occurred during the 14th century, including what is known as the Black Death.

Apart from the drawing and the inscriptions described above, the church contains a few other inscriptions, which have been partially deciphered.

For the information of those visiting the church, it is near to Day’s bakery, where delicious snacks can be purchased. The village also contains a small museum, part of which is housed in a half-timbered building. However, for me, the highlight of the village is the drawing of old St Paul’s Cathedral in the church.

A visitor from Persia in a house in Sussex

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PETWORTH HOUSE IN West Sussex is a huge palace maintained by the National Trust. It contains an unbelievably remarkable collection of old master paintings, including many by Joshua Reynolds, JMW Turner, and Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641). The paintings and many sculptures were collected by the 3rd Earl of Egremont, George O’Brien Wyndham (1751–1837), who was a patron of JMW Turner and John Constable, both of whom were regular visitors at Petworth House. When we visited the house in August (2024), we saw the paintings by Turner, but did not notice any by Constable. A full list of the paintings in Petworth is listed at: www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_sum_of_all_paintings/Collection/Petworth_House .

While viewing the overwhelmingly splendid artworks at Petworth, a pair of paintings by Van Dyck intrigued me. Painted in 1622, one depicts Sir Robert Shirley (1581-1628), and the other his wife Lady Theresia Shirley (1589-1668). They are fine portraits, but what interested me was the lives of these two people.

The Safavid dynasty ruled Persia from 1501 until 1736. In 1598, Robert Shirley travelled to Safavid Persia with his brother Anthony to train the Shah’s army in the military techniques used by the English army. It is not clear who put the idea of visiting Persia into the minds of the Shirleys. One suggestion is that it was mooted by the Venetians. The modernisation of the military supervised by the Shirley brothers improved the fighting ability of the Persian army to such an extent that they were able to score a great victory in a war between the Safavids and their Ottoman neighbours in 1612.  After Anthony left Persia (in about 1600), Robert stayed behind with 14 other Englishmen. In 1607, he married Sampsonia, whose portrait by Van Dyck hangs in Petworth. She was a Christian lady born into the Circassian nobility of Safavid Persia. After being baptised, she added the name Teresia to her own name, and became known as Lady Teresia Sampsonia Shirley.

The Safavid Shah Abbas (ruled 1587-1629) sent Robert to England in 1608 to encourage King James I to join a confederacy against the Ottoman Empire. While in Europe, Robert visited other rulers for the same reason. Between 1609 and 1613, he lived in Spain. His wife travelled from Persia to join him there.  Between 1613 and 1615, Robert was back in Persia. Then, he returned to Europe, and resided in Spain.

It was in Rome in 1622 that Van Dyck painted the portraits of Sir Robert and Lady Teresia now hanging in Petworth. They were dressed in lavish Persian clothes. It has been suggested that these ‘exotic’ outfits attracted Van Dyck, but by 1622 this couple were already sufficiently celebrated to be worthy of the artist’s attention regardless of how they were attired.  

Shirley’s final visit to Persia was in 1627, when he accompanied Sir Dodmore Cotton – England’s first ambassador to Persia. However, soon after arriving there, he died in Qazvin (now in northwest Iran). His wife took his remains to Rome in 1658. She retired to a convent in that city, and lived there until her death.

I have discussed only two of the multitude of paintings at Petworth. Most of the others we saw there were not only by great masters, but also worthy of study. Although the design of the rooms in Petworth is not as spectacular as in many other stately homes, the collection within it deserves a leisurely visit. And as there is so much to see in the way of artworks, the visitor should plan to spend several hours there. We were there for three hours and that was hardly long enough.