What else are friends for?

I spoke to an old friend today who observed that my blog was getting 'drippy'. Not quite Jam & Jerusalem yet (that's the mantra of the Women's Institute. Jelly & Jerusalem, for my US chums, sounds even better.) But cats! And teddies, oh please! I might tell you, thank you very much, that that teddy was faintly subversive and disrespectful towards pigeons.

I so wish I had thought of the self-satirising strapline of Rurritable "Another Wimpy Cat-Blogger". Here is a man hewing out a rustic life in North Carolina or is it Virginia, somewhere like that, spewing out the most elegantly foul-mouthed political rants and wrestling with the egos of a couple of independently-minded mules with super-sized pizzles. So try out Rurritable for some more muscular animal fun and some of the best writing around. And I forgot to say he's an artist. Blimey.

The Blues and the Pinks

I'm the sort of person who doesn't know whether it's Monday or Thursday and then it turns out to be Wednesday. But this weekend I became painfully aware that it had started with Friday the 13th. My son's girlfriend had her handbag (with most of her life in it) stolen in the pub; the rains came and the roof leaked into one of the bedrooms; my other house guest has been chasing up her mobile possibly left in a taxi. It's been a surreal couple of days of drifting through a sense of helplessness and anxiety and doing damage control in the attic. But worse things happen at sea, I know.

So to cheer myself up I have found Julie Garland's Trolley Song from the 1944 film Meet Me In St Louis. I love that woman in the green with the pink buttons and the whole thing puts me in a candy-coloured mood.

Top Image from http://www.cloudcuckooland.biz

Lady Diana Cooper and Me

Thursday night was the National Maritime Museum's Sea Words dinner held at the Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich (London). Husband and wife team Libby Purves and Paul Heiney, both marvellous writers and broadcasters, are at the helm of this delightful event where invited guests read sad, funny, serious and jolly poetry and prose on a maritime theme. There are sea songs too, like the heartbreaking 'Tom Bowling' and the pretty 'Lass Who Loved A Sailor'.

My husband, a naval man, read 'Putting to Sea' by Joseph Conrad and 'Casabianca', more popularly known as 'The Boy Who Stood on the Burning Deck' which always makes me cry. 'Sea Fever', by John Masefield my favourite poem from childhood was read by 17- year old Mike Perham, who returned this August from his solo circumnavigation of the globe. Handsome, urbane and incredibly funny Jeremy Nicholas did 'A Wobbly Walrus' by J. Prelutsky and brought the house down with Harris's attempted rendition of HMS Pinafore from 'Three Men in a Boat' by Jerome K Jerome. There was so much more I could mention but perhaps the highlight of the evening was John Julius Norwich furiously declaiming 'A Dirty Night on the Fastnet Rock' penned by a 12-year old boy in the 19th Century. As he said himself, it could never have been written by a 16-year old, say, because of its innocent use of absurd grandiose language. It was hilarious in its self-importance and wildly imagined images of the storm.

As many people will know, John Julius Norwich, now 80, is the son of fabled 20th Century aristocratic beauty, wit and socialite Lady Diana Cooper. I had a chance to ask him about her and she was, he said, the most wonderful mother with a huge sense of fun. He particularly remembered her collecting him from school in a cream convertible car and how they had chased fire engines. I think I might have done that myself but not in such style. John Julius is totally charming and still produces his annual anthology of favourite writing 'Christmas Crackers'.

Finally, I did manage to tell him that Lady Diana Cooper was my role model for wearing yachting caps.

Lady Diana Cooper

And Me - rowing the Thames earlier this century

Top image: courtesy The Peak of Chic

Below: from A Chequered Past by Peter Schlesinger

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.