Tag Archives: blogging

Blowing in Bermondsey

Posted on by
Reply

IT IS UNNECESSARY to travel from London to Venice to see masterpieces of glass bowing. You need only make your way to Bermondsey Street in south London where you will find London Glassblowing. It is both a gallery and workshop set up by Peter Layton, who is now over 80 years old and still creating beautiful artefacts. Layton was born in Prague and grew up in England. After studying ceramics at London’s Central School of Art and Design, he taught ceramics at the University of Iowa in the USA. It was there that he discovered glass blowing and took to it. When he returned to England in 1976, he established his London Glassblowing in London. It has been located at its present address for about 15 years. Before that, he was in Leather Yard. Apart from creating works of art in glass, he also teaches and mentors other glass blowers.

Whenever we visit Bermondsey Street, we make a point of visiting Layton’s establishment. Always the works on display are both beautiful and highly inventive. Occasionally, if we reach the place at the right time, we can watch glass blowers at work in the invariably hot workshop behind the gallery. Unlike the workshops we have visited on the island of Murano (near Venice), the works produced in Bermondsey Street – both sculptural and functional – are tastefully contemporary and often avant-garde.

Anselm Kiefer at the White Cube in Bermondsey

Posted on by
Reply

TODAY, I MADE MY second visit to the Anselm Kiefer exhibition, which is on at the Bermondsey White Cube gallery until the 20th of August 2023. I was pleased to visit it again because after my first visit, I left it feeling oppressed and somewhat depressed. This might be what the artist (born at the end of WW2 in Germany) intended when he created the extraordinary series of scenes of dereliction and decay on show in Bermondsey. My second visit (on the 15th of August 2023) left me with a slightly more favourable impression, but my opinion that the artist has depicted an image of a world of confusion, conflict, and decay, remains unchanged.

The works, which are distributed in several rooms and the central corridor of the gallery, are, so I read in an information sheet, Kiefer’s reactions to, and representation of, a novel by James Joyce – “Finnegan’s Wake”. The artist has written short quotations from the book on many of the items that together make up the amazing art installations. As I have not read the book, I cannot comment on the appropriateness of what he has created.

In one room of the gallery, there are mainly huge paintings, which I found attractive. On close examination, one can see that the paint has been applied to that it is far from flat. The three-dimensional surfaces create interesting illusions, which change according to from where you view the pictures.

Another room has a huge pile of sand littered with discarded, corroded supermarket trolleys – an impressive but sad sight. In yet another room, most of the floor is covered with barbed wire and huge pieces of concrete – the ruins of a large building. As a friend of ours said, it looked as if it had been imported straight from a bombsite in Ukraine.

Would I recommend visiting this exhibition? It is certainly inappropriate for people who suffer from claustrophobia or depression. However, if you are of an adventurous frame of mind, do head for this show before it ends.

A movable gallows in Rutland

Posted on by
Reply

IN YEARS GONE BY, punishment by hanging was not a rare occurrence. The museum in Oakham, the capital of Rutland county, includes amongst its exhibits a mobile gibbet. This apparatus for hanging criminals is one of the few surviving movable gibbets (gallows) in Britain. When needed, it was moved from village to village. Unfortunately, it was designed badly. It had insufficient drop. This meant that the victim was strangled but not killed. I do not know what method was used to ‘finish off’ the unfortunate victims.

Impressions of India in preparation

Posted on by
Reply

At the moment, I am preoccupied with carrying out the final editing of my latest book, which I have described briefly below. When I publish it, which I hope will be soon, I will post more about it here in my blog and elsewhere.

A lock made by Hitler; Bollywood encounters; jackals on the golf course; teamakers and politicians; banyans and monkeys; Gandhi’s optician; coracles and crocodiles; and Denmark in India: these are just a few of the topics covered in Adam Yamey’s collection of 101 intriguing vignettes of life in India. This book with illustrations is the author’s love letter to India, a country he has been visiting frequently for almost 30 years.

So many horse shoes on the wall in Oakham Castle

Posted on by
Reply

WHEN I WAS a child, I used to enjoy leafing through a book filled with black and white photographs of places in all the counties of England. One of them that stuck in my mind was of a wall covered with large horseshoes. It was only today (the 11th of August 2023) that I saw this wall in ‘real life’. It is in the great hall of Oakham Castle in England’s smallest county – Rutland. The hall, a fine example of Norman architecture, was built between about 1180 and 1190 for one of William the Conqueror’s grandsons – Walkelin de Ferrers. The name ‘Ferrers’ is related to the French word for iron and the English word ‘farrier’, who applies shoes to horse’s hooves.

The Ferrers family held Oakham for about 130 years. It might have been during that time, or certainly by the early 16th century that a curious tradition was established. It was decreed that every peer of the realm who visits Oakham for the first time must donate a horseshoe to the lord of the manor. That tradition is continued even today. Some 245 larger than life horseshoes have been donated to Oakham and many of them can be seen within the great hall. It is likely that others were donated, and subsequently lost. Most of the horseshoes on display bear the names of the donors and the date when they were donated – that is, the year the donor first visited Oakham.

Three of the horseshoes all bear the date 1921, which was when their donors (the future King Edward VIII, the future King George VI, and Princess Mary – daughter of King George V) all visited Rutland as part of a hunting party.  Also in 1921, Oakham was visited by Frederick Rudolph Lambart, 10th Earl of Cavan. In 1917, he took command of the British forces in Italy. His horseshoe is mounted on a wooden board. It surrounds a real horseshoe, which had once been worn by an Austrian pony, which he captured after a raid on enemy trenches in Asiago. Another visitor to Oakham was William Edwardes, 3rd Baron of Kensington, after whom Edwardes Square (in Kensington) was named. He visited in 1855. One could continue, but I will not because the biographies of the illustrious donors are too numerous to describe in this short essay.

Another special feature of the great hall is that it is still a working Crown Court. It is used occasionally. Of all the Crown Courts in England, this has remained housed in its original building longer than any others in the country.

Apart from the fascinating great hall, the tiny town of Oakham has many other interesting things to see including a market cross, a fine museum, a gothic parish church, and Oakham School (founded 1584). However, the hall full of horseshoes is by far the most interesting thing to visit. I was pleased to see it even if so many decades have elapsed since I saw a photograph of it during my childhood.

Was she truly naked in her horse?

Posted on by
Reply

LADY GODIVA WHO died sometime in the second half of the 11th century (AD), has often been depicted by artists as riding nude through the city of Coventry. She was an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat, who was married to Leofric Earl of Mercia.

According to legend, she made her famous horse ride through Coventry to protest against excessive taxation that her husband had imposed on the people.

Most artists have portrayed her as being totally nude, thus producing images or sculptures with some pornographic content.

The Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry has a small gallery dedicated to Godiva. Most of the artworks on display show her without any clothing. However, one painting shows her on her horse but wearing plain, unrevealing simple garments. This is most likely how Lady Godiva was dressed on her ride. The reason is that penitents used to wear unadorned undergarments when processing in public. It is most likely that Godiva, who would have normally worn fancy clothing and jewellery, rode through the city devoid of these trappings of wealth and position – this would have been described as ‘naked’.

Our short visit to the Godiva exhibit was most interesting because it opened our eyes to another interpretation of Lady Godiva and her protest.

Barbie and Bhabhi in Coventry

Posted on by
Reply

WE HAD TICKETS to watch the new “Barbie” film yesterday (the 7th of August 2023) at 5.50 pm at the Gate Cinema in Notting Hill Gate. We watched the advertisements and then the trailers for forthcoming films. Halfway through the trailers, emergency lights were switched on, the soundtrack disappeared, and the pictures being projected shrunk in size. There had been a power failure, and everyone was asked to leave after having been given complimentary tickets for a future screening of any film. We left without watching “Barbie”.

The next day, we travelled to Coventry to see the cathedral and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum. At the Herbert, we saw several excellently curated exhibitions. They were far better than many we have seen in London in recent months. They were imaginatively and intelligently conceived, as well as being superbly displayed.

One of these shows was called “Divided Selves”. In simple terms, it consist of mostly recent works of art by various artists, which deal with conflicts between different groups of people all over the world.

One of the exhibits is by an artist and filmmaker Hetain Patel. Part of the artwork are three sets of plastic dolls. Each doll is contained in a cardboard box with a transparent plastic window, just like the containers in which dolls are often sold. One pair of dolls was labelled ‘Bhai anmonthshi’, Bhabhi means sister-in- law in Hindustani and Bhai means brother.

We missed Barbie yesterday, but seeing Bhabhi today almost made up for not seeing the film.

Why are Hunt and Keene together in Shepherds Bush?

Posted on by
Reply

I FIRST CAME ACROSS the critic, writer, and poet Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) when I was collecting information for my book about Hampstead. For some years, Hunt lived in a house in Hampstead’s Vale of Health. Amongst the many noteworthy people who visited him there regularly were the poets Shelley and Keats. Later, when I was writing my book about west London, I found out that Hunt had resided in Edward’s Square, Kensington. He had also lived in Chelsea. Until today (the 7th of August 2023), I had never seen a memorial to Hunt.  Today, I spotted one, a carved stone plaque, high up on the wall of the Bush Theatre that faces Pennard Road (in Shepherds Bush).

The theatre is housed in what was formerly one of several libraries established by the newspaper entrepreneur and philanthropist John Passmore-Edwards (1823-1911). The library building was built in 1895 and its external features are well-preserved. The theatre moved into it in 2011.

Hunt is not the only person commemorated on the plaque. Below his name is that of the artist Charles Keene (1823-1891).  In his book “A Few Footprints”, Passmore-Edwards wrote (in 1906) that he placed memorials of illustrious people in places near where they died:

“I have placed medallions of Charles Lamb and John Keats in the Public Library, Edmonton; of Sir Henry Austin Layard and Sir William Molesworth in the Public Library, Borough Road ; and of Leigh Hunt in the Public Library, Shepherd’s Bush…

… Mr. A. E. Fletcher, who unveiled the memorial medallion of Leigh Hunt at the Shepherd’s Bush Public Library, said: ” Let us remember Shelley’s fine description of Leigh Hunt as one of the happy souls who are the salt of the earth.’ We have learnt enough to admire him for his genius and his marvellous industry, to honour him for his fearless outspokenness and courageous sacrifice for principle, and to love him for his splendid faith in humanity and his buoyant optimism””

However, Passmore-Edwards makes no mention of Keene.

The plaque was probably affixed to the library when it was built. But why the two names are on the same plaque is a bit of a mystery to me. The only possible connection, which makes sense in the light of what Passmore-Edwards wrote, is that both men died reasonably close to Shepherds Bush.