A Bear's Eye View of London

This might make you beary-eyed. Call me a silly old thing but I defy anyone not to go awwww at Misery Bear's trip to London care of the BBC.

A Remarkable Relationship in Paint

I have joined a lively group in London called Ladeez Do Comics to discuss the art of the graphic novel. Despite the name, the gender split is about 50/50 but it was ladies who started this, two formidable artists Nicola Streeten and Sarah Lightman. They nominate a book for reading and invite practitioners and publishers to talk to us each month - all very relaxed, friendly and stimulating. However, we shall soon be mumbling through woollen scarves as there's no heating as yet in our space off Brick Lane.

At our last meeting, we were hoping to meet an interesting Belgian artist, Dominique Goblet,but something prevented it at the last minute which was so maddening. But I've been alerted to a stunning project she pursued over 10 years with her daughter. Every week they drew each other until Nikita was 17 and needed her own space.

You really must look at some of the remarkable results here.

I confess x 7

Many thanks to my supportive and generous blogging chum little augury for nominating me as one of her seven 'Kreatives'. This chain reaction in our galaxy of the blog universe is about to go critical as we all cite each other. Just as I was about to nominate The Blue Remembered Hills, Blue asked if he could nominate me. ahhh. For this reason, and being the killjoy I tend to be, I am only playing half the game by not passing on the baton. Meanwhile, I've been scratching my head to find the seven least incriminating things to say about myself.


I keep buying classical white china urns on ebay. And had an expensive Fornasetti habit.



I once said to the Duke of Edinburgh ‘Sir, you must have the most superb upper body strength.’







I have a hideously addictive personality and have wasted many hours of my life playing computer games. I once made a list of ‘A Hundred Better Things to Do Than Play Snood’. I badly need to do that again.



My style icon remains Jacqueline Kennedy (as opposed to Jackie O) since I like structure.







I like cryptic crosswords
My favourite clue was HI JKLMNO (5 ) the answer being water (H20)
I’m probably a bit of a smartass.

Before I was married I worked in the English law courts as a shorthand writer (stenographer)
My worst moment was having to read back all the evidence of a young woman who had been sexually assaulted by her employer, an elderly optician. It was deeply embarrassing.


I tend to feel very uncomfortable around diagonal stripes. Love diamonds and trellis work.

Convalescing

Oh I spoke too soon. My last post mentioned convalescence and now I have had to take to my bed all this week with something approaching flu. The Swine Flu hotline told me in so many words to 'Stop making such a fuss and drink plenty'. I wish I could have languished in bed so stylishly but sadly the reality is more like this:






top: Image courtesy Slim Aarons' book Once Upon A Time

below: ©Rosie West

Why do I love this bedroom?

With each new edition of World of Interiors, I greedily turn the pages and end up feeling almost queasy from its rich array of visual delights. I regard the magazine as a dreamspace but sometimes it just does my head in. ‘ I want that, I’ll copy that, I’ll save up, I’ll buy a new house! An empty canvas to have my wicked way with.’



Today, the pepto-bismol pink of an armchair in a rigorously understated bedroom soothed my heartburn. I savour this bedroom in the Saarinen House on the Cranbook Campus in Michigan and I have had to analyse why.



It can be a spur to creativity to write down everything you love about an image, any image, and thus capture the elements you could make your own.



The first thing I love here is the dove grey paint on the walls, closet and beds. I use this a lot myself for its elegance, restraint and, actually, warmth. Unfortunately there’s not much restraint in my house so Finnish architect Elias Saarinen plays to my inner minimalist. I could never maintain the discipline of this room (let’s not talk about the single beds) but it resonates for me with a strange sense of comfort. Does it look like a sick-room, a place of convalescence to you? I think that’s it! I can hear the rustle of a nurse’s starched cambric dress, imagine the freshly made lemonade by the bedside, see my mother sitting on that armchair in a state of gentle concern.



To put it more formally the blend of Arts and Crafts, which was Saarinen’s background (the light fitting, the craftsmanship) and early 20th Century modernism
is for me a perfect blend of styles. There is a northern (Scandinavian) aesthetic here that reminds me of Swedish illustrator Carl Larssen’s family house and good manners, good housekeeping, stability. Well, perhaps those are the things I can take away from this image today?



To visit Saarinen House, ring 001 248 645 3300 or visit the website here


Image from World of Interiors November 2009

Five Minutes of Fame In The Background

About 18 months ago I worked on a film called The Other Man
starring Liam Neeson, Antonio Banderas and Laura Linney as a shoe designer. I provided lots of shoe drawings and sketchbooks for the set dressing. I wrote about it here a while ago, wondering if the film would hit the big screen. Now it has, phew!

I have gone over all images I could find of the film with a microscope and found evidence that I wasn't consigned to the cutting room floor after all. Don't laugh, here they are:



















The Shoe Shop wallpaper!



Artwork © Rosie West 2009

Trying to Capture the Spirit of the River

This is a detail of the painting I made from our Thames odyssey.
I am rather fond of cows at the water's edge. This may not be the last.


©Rosie West 09

Boxing Clever : The Most Famous Cat in Japan

Maru has already gone viral on You Tube but if you haven't already discovered this most nosy cat with a box fetish, do have a look. It's beautifully filmed in Japan. Check out Maru's many other performances and try not to laugh. Even if you're not a cat-person.









Thanks to Tony at The London Lifedrawing Society who recommended Maru to me last night at The Star of Bethnal Green, our Monday night venue.

Thames Odyssey I

We have just come ashore from our river odyssey. The Thames has many faces and many moods but was benign for us. I am now happily sifting through my photos and will have to restrain myself from boring the pants off everyone. Meanwhile I made a note of the best/daftest CarryOnBoating names:

WEE-KEN-DOFF

"HI! JACK"

NAUTI GIRL

SUITSUS

WATERTIGHT ALIBI

LAUGHING BUOY

Looks as if I'm dreaming of being Hepburn and Bogart in my very own African Queen. (Forgot to take the pearls off from the night before? One must have standards ha.)

Jolly Good Boating Weather I hope

I am not sure if anyone will notice if I disappear for a week but we're off boating on the River Thames. We set out from Wargrave (in whose churchyard Madame Tussaud is buried) and potter westwards to Lechlade where the Thames is first navigable. It's an open boat with canvas dodgers and, I confess, a diesel engine. I wish we were repeating our Three Men In A Boat style rowing adventure of a decade ago.



We shall pass gorgeous Cliveden House at Taplow which sits atop a 200ft cliff, its Italianate tower visible through the trees. Famous for entertaining the raffish 'Cliveden set' of the 20s and 30s and political heavyweights like Roosevelt and Churchill, it is probably best known as one of the settings for the Profumo Affair. Government Minister John Profumo, Call Girl Christine Keeler, Stephen Ward a society osteopath and Captain Ivanov a Soviet spy are all said to have frolicked in Bill Astor's swimming pool in the early 1960s ooh!! Cliveden is now a recherché hotel and we probably won't be, we definitely won't be smart enough to pop in.








There is a much quieter house almost at our destination which I can't wait to visit. It's Kelmscott Manor, chosen by William Morris as his summer home in 1871, signing a joint lease with pre- Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Now owned by The Society of Antiquaries, the house promises an outstanding collection of furniture, metalwork,textiles and ceramics associated with Morris and his contemporaries. There are "quaint garrets amongst great timbers of the roof where of old times the tillers and herdsmen slept"; also, beautiful gardens, with barns, dovecote, a meadow and stream.

KELMSCOTT MANOR. Watercolor [ca. 1905?] by Marie Spartali Stillman here

My illustration top © Rosie West

Paul Outerbridge: formal beauty

Images de Deauville c. 1936


"What makes a still life good instead of mediocre is the quality of vision and imagination employed by the photographer, and especially his reaction to his subject material"

Not only did American photographer Paul Outerbridge (1896-1958) have the vision and creativity of an artist, he was technically meticulous and imaginative.

Party Mask with Shells 1936

Outerbridge was at the height of his powers in the period between the two world wars and embraced the project of modernism with extraordinary diligence and elan. He had many friends in the avant-garde, including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Archipenko and Max Ernst and their influence is felt in his intense black and white images of everyday objects. They all have a sense of abstract and geometric design, a formal beauty and, frequently, a surreal quality.


Ide Collar 1922

The Ide Collar is perhaps the most iconic of his work. A brilliantly conceived advertisement, Marcel Duchamp tore it from the November 1922 issue of Vanity Fair and tacked it to his studio wall. To Duchamp it was a 'Ready Made' in his own tradition.

I am focusing on his colour photography because it has an exceptional quality of its own.



Chair with materials 1936


Not only did Outerbridge have state-of-the-art lighting equipment and legendary preparation for every shoot, he developed a method of printing that was terrifically complex and labour intensive. The tri-colour Carbro process used three separate glass plates for each image and involved precise timings and conditions. He wrote about it in a collection of essays entitled Photographing in Color [New York: Random House, 1940] and it wouldn't be for the faint-hearted.


Wallpaper Design 1936




Beach Equipment c 1936


It would be hard for digital photography, I imagine, to achieve this translucence.





Window with Plants c 1937

I cannot do justice here to Outerbridge's intellectual and creative instincts or put him more squarely in the context of his time. For a superb essay and many more stunning photographs I recommend the book that I have referred to. It is Paul Outerbridge by Elaine Dines-Cox with Carol McCusker pub. Taschen 1999 My copy has on the cover what I can only describe as an artistically soft-porn nude although he would have objected to that description.
I haven't mentioned his nudes. Blatantly erotic in soft lighting. Of their time?




Terrace c 1938





Father and Son in Kitchen 1941

Small is Beautiful : The Ashes

Is this the smallest sporting trophy in the world?



Victorious England captain Andrew Strauss holding a replica of the precious urn today. The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of international cricket's most celebrated rivalries and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in Australia and England. Don't ask me to explain the intricacies of Test match rules to my American pals (or even to some of my British ones) save to say that one match will last up to 5 days and may often end in a draw, sometimes occasioned by the intervention of rain.

The term 'Ashes' was first used after England lost to Australia - for the first time on home soil - at The Oval on 29th August 1882. A day later, the Sporting Times carried a mock obituary to English cricket which concluded that: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The concept caught the imagination of the sporting public. A few weeks later, an English team, captained by the Hon Ivo Bligh [later Lord Darnley], set off to tour Australia, with Bligh vowing to return with "the ashes"; his Australian counterpart, WL Murdoch, similarly vowed to defend them.


The velvet bag that originally held the urn




During that tour, Bligh and his players participated in a social match where he was presented with the small terracotta urn as a symbol of the ashes that he had travelled to Australia to regain. I was disappointed to find that it is only a myth that it contains the burnt remains of the bails that sit across the stumps forming the wicket. Well, to Bligh the urn was a personal gift and it stayed on his mantelpiece at Cobham Hall near Rochester, Kent until he died 43 years later. Then at his request it was bequeathed to the home of English cricket the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) and came to rest in their museum at the famous Lords ground.

In the 1990s, recognising the two teams' desire to compete for an actual trophy, MCC commissioned an urn-shaped Waterford Crystal trophy.



The new Waterford trophy dwarfs the original




Acknowledgments: Wikipedia and Lords

Esther Williams Does It For Me

When I reached a particular decade birthday, this was my wish - to be filmed swimming underwater in a sarong with a knife between my teeth. I could play the video on the tv instead of having a fish tank long into my old age.


I realised later that this insistent image of myself originated from the GIRL comic I loved as a kid. It was the one about the pearl diver who rescued the man with his foot stuck in a giant clam. Ok, so I'd leave out the heroics from my own film but, miserably enough, we never got round to making it. (Local swimming pool no good; South Seas good. South Seas out of the question.)



Imagine my joy when I discovered this medley of Esther Williams watery feats of grace and daring. It is all my fantasies rolled into one. For it, I must thank the deliciously eclectic blog Uma foca em Galápagos(click) with whom I share a love of glamorous vintage bathing costumes(click).

[Does anyone have the same problem/know why links don't show up in a different colour? For me, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't]

Air de Fête

Marie Daage Decoration - Creation sur Porcelaine Paris makes my pulse quicken. Many generations of the Daage family were painters of fine Limoges porcelain and Marie studied at the Louvre. Her heritage and education emerge in her ability to mix the traditional and the chic with great distinction. The sublime colour palettes, the circus stripes, the illustrative lightness of touch all give the work, in Marie Daage's own words, an air de fête

Drifting through her beautiful website in a kind of reverie, it occurred to me that you really should be properly dressed to appreciate these gorgeous things...












































Look at her achingly beautiful colour chart with names like coq de roch, absinthe, vert flamboyant, mandarine and bleu ardoise.

Smidgens of Family Wisdom

Last summer we were in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina and were introduced to Ferrell and Becky Shuford by our amazing hosts, Hugh and Bambi MacRae. As we spent most of the holiday swimming, it was a treat to be invited for a sail on the Shuford’s yacht. Hugh had told me that he wasn’t sure how old Becky was but she seemed extraordinarily youthful and this I can confirm. She is also very pretty. (Ferrell, you’re not so bad yourself!)
[Photo by Freda]





As I relaxed in the cockpit with the sun on my face and the salt breeze in my hair, Becky was all over the boat trimming the sails, keeping us ship shape. The Shufords spent many years ocean racing and she was a formidable foredeck hand.

Now as a grandmother, Becky has looked back over a fulfilling family life and pulled together a number of threads that are important to her in Smidgens – Bits & Pieces of a Southern Family’s Life. I have just received my copy.

Woven into anecdotes from her life is her gentle faith-based philosophy, advice on a happy marriage (‘share domestic tasks’), bringing up children, running a household and, most importantly, her love of entertaining.



Isn’t this picture great of her as a newly wed/novice cook and I love the anecdote about inviting her brother and his wife for an evening meal. Working full-time as a teacher she decided on a simple supper of her mother’s wonderful vichyssoise, hot herb bread and, wait for it, prune cake. Becky only found out years later why her brother turned down a second helping of soup. He was waiting for the entrée. It made them both laugh.

Since then her entertaining became more varied, more appropriate to family high days and holidays and more sophisticated.




Her formal table setting






I have been drooling over the good old-fashioned recipes and there are dozens of them. But let’s have that Vichyssoise:

4 leeks or 1 ½ cup chopped onion
3 cups peeled chopped potatoes
3 cups strained chicken stock or 3 bouillon cubes dissolved in 3 cups water
3 tablespoons Chicken fat, butter or margarine
1 cup milk
1 cup cream
1 tsp salt
About 1 tsp white pepper

Chop washed leeks and about 3 inches of their green tops into small pieces. Boil leeks and potatoes in stock from which fat has been skimmed until very tender (about 40 mins). Without draining, blend until smooth. Add fat, cream, milk, salt and pepper. Reheat in top of double boiler to blend flavors.

Vichyssoise should be thicker than the average cream soup and served thoroughly chilled, garnished with minced chives. In winter you may choose to serve hot, garnished with paprika.
Serves 6







One of the reasons I love the book's cover is the washing line! Since I don't own a tumble drier it gladdens my heart to see a line full of clothes billowing in the wind. It also appeals to my inner Mrs. Tiggywinkle: I mostly love doing the laundry. It is about my only domestic accomplishment. For that reason I was ecstatic that in her chapter on ironing, Becky described the production of a fragrant, pressed masterpiece of a shirt on a hanger. It had been washed, liquid starched (yes!) line dried, sprinkled with water and then rolled into a ball to allow an even dampness for pressing. Yes, again! Call me old-fashioned but that's how I do it (when I'm in the mood).

Smidgens is privately published and edited by Ferrell Shuford MD who admits that helping his wife put this book together has been one of the greatest sources of pleasure since his retirement.
To order a copy for $25 (including shipping in the USA) contact Boatshu Publisher, 2602 Oleander Drive, Wilmington, NC 28403-4037

LEAVES FROM MY SKETCHBOOK

All images © Rosie West

Drink du jour chez moi

A glug of dark rum, the juice of a whole lime*, ice cubes and fiery ginger beer. Or ginger ale perhaps. Oh yes, and fresh mint.
For some reason this is known in our house as a Virgin's Thighs even though there aren't any round here.

* that's for quite a big glass. I admit it.
Picture by © Me

Taking the Liberty: Grayson Perry fabric

Dropped into one of London's most distinguished shops yesterday. Liberty is a refined independently-minded department store on Regent Street, born out of the Arts & Crafts movement. Tana lawn, a finely woven but crisp cotton dress fabric, is Liberty's most iconic product loved by many generations. Here are some familiar designs from the Liberty archive. Remember that they are scaled for a little dress or a man's tie.



Betsy created in 1933

Wiltshire 1933


Phoebe 1966

Thorpe 1968




Ideal for children's clothes and big girls' blouses ha, I mean for men and women, crafts people, quilt makers.. it's quite simply divine.




Imagine my surprise and delight to find that they have commissioned designs by Grayson Perry in a new promotion called Prints Charming. He is joined by other renowned artists and designers and you can see the products on the Liberty website (Click here).



I like the way Perry subverts the traditional innocence of Liberty print



I had to buy the minimum 30cm of each fabric to show you. The colour isn't quite right here; think more greeny yellow and a warmer blue. The 'conversation' of this print is an apocalyptic landscape of a polluted world inhabited by our children. A grim fairytale indeed.




Both designs come in at least four colourways and retail at around £19 a metre.

The Transvestite Artist and The Harley Salesman

At a party near The British Museum last night. Someone asked artist Grayson Perry(en homme in white trousers) about the motor bike embroidered on his t-shirt. This prompted him to tell a good story about the US Ambassador's 4th July party last year. I remember him looking deliciously out of place on the crowded lawn of Winfield House in a girl's satin party dress, frilly white socks and white mary janes.




Perry told us, delightedly, that he met the head of Harley Davidson distribution (Europe) who was totally baffled to find himself discussing the merits of their very latest model with this outrageously infantile transvestite. We don't think the Harley man was aware that Grayson Perry wore a similar outfit the night he won the prestigious Turner prize for contemporary art in 2003.

He has said that the art world was more shocked by his pottery (usually demoted to 'craft' ) than by his dressing up.

The pots are rich with imageryfull of stylistic and cultural references. His is a dystopic vision: a kind of obsessive teenage compulsion with the perverse, the unspeakable and the insistent concerns (by his own admission) of an angry working class man who was excited by the idea of subverting night-school pottery classes .




Two Children Born on the Same Day
1996, Earthenware
42 x 30 x 30 cm from www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk






from www.edgill.co.uk



G P's textile works are sometimes overlooked. I find these more compelling than the earthenware. Well, his very dressing-up is a textile narrative about gender identity, repression and the right to self-expression. But look closely at the detail of those nursery-style dresses and you will find a perverse iconography.



courtesy artnet.com



Grayson Perry, like many transvetite men, is married. His wife Phil is a psychotherapist and his daughter Florence is entirely at ease with her father's alter ego Claire. His 'autobiography' Portrait of The Artist as a Young Girl (written by Wendy Jones) is frank, direct, charming.
Rather like G P here talking to camera. Brilliant.






courtesy Telegraph Online

Back to the Harley Davidson. This suit of leathers was a present from his wife. GP designed it himself, inspired by the Cerne Giant hill carving.

Model Style: The Shrimp

Jean Shrimpton, arguably the first supermodel and the face of Swinging London in the 60s is my all-time favourite. Her wide eyes, retroussé nose and adorable mouth gave her an ingenue quality that chimed perfectly with the new youth-centred decade.









Her predecessors like Fiona Campbell-Walter and Barbara Goalen had an hauteur that suited the haute couture of the 1950s. The contrast could not have been more marked.








In 1965 when she was 22, Shrimpton gained worldwide publicity for a reason that seems extraordinary today. At the races in Australia for the Melbourne Cup, the social and fashion event of the year, she was roundly condemned for wearing a dress 4 inches above her knee. The conservative racegoers of Melbourne were outraged but probably minded most that she had bare legs, no hat, no gloves.











However, the immediate legacy of "The Miniskirt Affair" was to make skirt lengths a media barometer of The Permissive Society and they came to be a key imageof the decade, alongside the Pill and long hair for men. Jean also reckons that her Melbourne misadventure directly inspired leading British designer Mary Quant, who began creating even shorter miniskirts. In Australia too it became a cause celebre and inspired young women here to take up the new fashion, accompanied by predictable media consternation.


This quote from www.milesago.com








She dutifully complied with the dress code the next day at the races





(Not sure where the mark on her skirt came from.. it surely wasn't there at the time)





Jean Shrimpton's career was virtually launched by high-octane cockney snapper David Bailey to whom she became engaged. Through his lens she developed an aura that was partly her own beauty and charm, partly the spirit of the times.








She just looked great in Breton hats.. it must be the full mouth and the good jawline that balanced the picture. This style conjured an air of innocence






whilst she is far more knowing here







and terrifically demure there






It's hard to believe that this is the same model




as this












Post Bailey there was something going on with cockney filmstar heartthrob Terence Stamp.
Anyone who had lusted after him as Sgt Troy in Far From The Madding Crowd would have been unbearably jealous.










I would hazard a guess that her school chums were fairly envious of her career too.

Oi Punk! Toothpaste Girls In Town

I wrote here about my niece Julia (in the white shades) who is a member of the sensational girl band Las Kellies from Argentina. The world tour included Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and most recently here in London at The Urban Bar in Whitechapel and Trinity Church in Bristol. Their indie punk sound and cheerleading style guarantees a reaction which manifests itself in dancing .. even in Paris which is some kind of a record. I saw them dressed as cave girls with papier maché bones in their hair, but I *love* the toothpaste look.

*Interior Design* note : The Kellies' number OLD MAN features a very moving tablescape in this Video

This is a drawing I did of Julia when we were on holiday in June in France

Here is one of her drawings from her UGLY BUNNY oeuvre

Credit: Toothpaste girls from http://www.flickr.com/photos/obenson

Tower Bridge Nightmare Jump

I am one of those people who can't go near a platform's edge or a precipice without toying with the idea of being pushed or tripping or jumping into the abyss. Similarly, when driving over Tower Bridge, I just can't help wondering whether it might just open and if I've just got enough speed j u s t to make it over..



Well here is someone who must have contemplated it with a certain degree of precision. After months of secret planning, Australian motorcross star Robbie Maddison bridged the gap at three in the morning of 13th July. He was allowed very little time to perform the stunt -well it was over in the death-defying blink of an eye - and there was no prior publicity. Consequently very few spectators saw this extraordinary moment (of madness) but it was expertly documented as you will see.









I forgot to tell you he'd include a backflip





Look No Hands! omigod






Interesting architecture (I can't look)






Phew





See the heart-stopping footage here.


All images and video courtesy Sky News

Dancing In The Aisles

Two million people have watched this You tube video so that may include you. But if you haven't seen this unorthodox opening to a Minnesota wedding join in the fun now. Shocking, irreverent, touching, life-affirming.. ? Whaddya think?

The Cloud Collector's Handbook

From puffs of cotton wool to noctilucent strands of reflected colour in the dusky heavens, this beautiful little film will transport you skywards. Just look up here.


Sounds like I'm turning into the National Geographic magazine but now I am on the subject find the most sublime, dreadful, surreal and surprising clouds you'll ever encounter here from which my rare cloud image comes. It is called cirrus Kelvin-Helmholtz.


You can get this on Amazon or via The Guardian.

Thanks to The Guardian Online and Cool Pictures/Cool Stuff

R I P Henry Allingham

Henry Allingham, the World's oldest man at 113, died this morning. We were hoping to see him last week at a Buckingham Palace Garden Party to mark the Centenary of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm which Henry joined in 1915. He was not well enough to attend but I talked to Dennis and Brenda Goodwin his greatest friends and supporters who would have brought him to the event.

They have looked after all the veterans of World War I and helped to give them the recognition they deserve, a marvellous achievement that deserves our gratitude. They will be devastated by the loss of an inspiring and gracious old gentleman and I want to send them my condolences here. I have written about Henry Allingham here
and the BBC has marked his death here with a poignant video of his life and times. You can see Dennis and Brenda at his side, accompanying him, pushing his wheelchair, making his public appearances possible.

Farewell Henry - you embodied the stoicism and sacrifice of all our servicemen and the Nation mourns your passing.