Papery Purple...

The days, weeks and months are sliding past and I seem to be tracking the passing time through the municipal flower beds that I peer out on during my routine car drive to work - from the primroses, daffodils and now the bright, bold tulips....

And of course, there is always the garden centre which brings another layer to this floral calendar. The purple flowers drew in me, as ever,  especially with their papery petals and spindly stamens, even when they are spent and beginning to droop.

And for those not fully in bloom, the hairy buds seem to be covered with fibrous Mulberry paper...

And nestling inside is the central mound of pistils that looks like the compound eye of some strange insect, staring out at us!

Full-blown Tulips in Their Finery...

 

The dazzling tulips had long been full-blown by the time I got to see them. Their elegant, fading petals had been buffeted by gusts of wind typical of early Spring and curled, shrivelled and twisted by the sun. Nevertheless, all this seemed to add to their beauty...

The colours were still vivid and the flowers appeared ever-larger, a burst of flaming petals that resembled flounces of Asian silk...

Kelmscott House...

Kelmscott House

An armoury of weapons against the weariness of life; such was the metaphor used by William Morris to describe the ideal book. How weary would he feel today, if he could merely glimpse our present society? He who fought for ‘beauty accessible for all’ in a world where art, design, form and content would together embellish and enhance the life of all social classes, what would he say? 

                                      

This great man, born into Victorian England (1834-1896), battled for reform against the social hardship, material poverty and cultural and spiritual impoverishment that arose as dehumanizing externalities from the great industrial and technological advances that marked Queen Victoria’s reign. For him, these wrongs could be largely redressed by the arts in their purest form, created and crafted by human hands to serve the people, far from the enslavement of industrial-scale manufacturing and consumption. 

I love the man standing proud up on the roof to watch the race!

It seems to me that the only thing clutched in a human hand today is some smart device that saps away our attention span and real-life exchanges so that we depend on it for every conceivable form of social validation, stimulation and even self-identity. Any kind of creative process is now readily handed over to some labour and time-saving AI app, freeing us to indulge ourselves in something supposedly more meaningful and worthwhile. But with our curiosity, focus and general interest in the world in front of us in real-time shot to pieces, what is there left that has genuine enduring meaning and actual worth in our lives? 

The Morris & Burne-Jones families - 1874

As for the social aspect of social media, do we truly have better relations today than in the past? Is communication better, even if the means to communicate have undeniably been facilitated beyond expectation? For all that we have gained, I think we have given up far more, imperceptible aspects of normal life that have been lost, and that loss will only become apparent once the ugliness and emptiness have taken a firm grip on so many areas of life these days. 

Edward Burne-Jones & William Morris

Visiting Kelmscott House, Morris’s final home, set by the Thames in the Hammersmith district, is an antidote to all that ugliness around us in the present. Although probably best known for his aesthetic vision and Art & Crafts decorative art – especially the Strawberry Thief motif – Morris was also a writer, poet, printer and socialist and, for his last 18 years, this house was where he pursued and developed this amalgam of interests. 

For Morris, art was the expression of Man’s joy in labour, a devotion of which the worker had been robbed due to the industrial capitalism that drove Victorian England. As the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood before him, Morris was driven by a quasi-religious vision of artistic creation in Medieval times – prior to 16th century Renaissance art. Just how ‘joyful’ the creative process actually was for the average Medieval craftsman is questionable, but it can probably be safely assumed to differ with Morris’s notion!

Nevertheless, the purity of Medievel art with its breathtaking realism and stunning detail rendered in vibrant, bright colours inspired Morris just as it had his Pre-Raphaelite brothers. For Morris, however, this inspiration was more than purely aesthetic, it was social too and it is interesting - and perhaps not entirely surprising - to learn that he had initially wished to join the clergy before devoting himself to art and design and specifically the Arts & Crafts Movement. By the time Morris and his family – wife Jane and their two daughters, Jenny and May – had settled in Kelmscott House, the decorative arts firm Morris & Co was fully established, having taken over from the initial business Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co had set up in 1861 with artists including Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 

Before moving into the Thames-side house, Morris expressed the intention to ‘make it beautiful with a touch of my art’, giving it the name Kelmscott House in honour of Kelmscott Manor House, his idyllic Cotswold retreat which had inspired a number of his famous designs, notably the Strawberry Thief! The interiors were duly transformed in line with Morris’s aesthetic vision, but it was clear that the home was to be more than a mere family residence, decorated to his personal taste.

 Indeed, Kelmscott House would become the place where designs and projects were brought to life through experimentation in craftsmanship and social thought carried out by Morris, his daughters and visitors; artists and social activists alike. The house became the physical expression and catalyst for Morris’s philosophy, to create a world of beauty and fairness ‘By people, for people’. 

His daughter May stated ‘Our home was a workshop of love; where art and life were inseparable’, having grown up in a unique universe, which was both rich and yet strangely pure, compared to stifling Victoriana homes with their predilection for clutter. Jane Morris, former muse and model to the Pre-Raphaelite artists, taught her daughters embroidery following traditional techniques and May proved to be so gifted that she was appointed head of the embroidery department at Morris & Co in 1885, at the age of 23, and herself designed the wallpaper design ‘Honeysuckle’. 

'Honeysuckle'

Prior to his Kelmscott years, Morris attempted to master the technique of hand-knitted carpets inspired by Persian rugs and large-scale tapestries following Medieval tradition and work practices – he even set up a loom in his bedroom! He experimented with natural pigments for the dyeing process with his daughter, May, believing that modern chemicals could not match the quality and beauty that emanated from the integrity of ‘honest’ materials and ancestral methods. 

The production facilities of the William Morris company moved to Merton Abbey in 1881 in order to follow through this practice of time-trusted techniques that had fallen by the wayside in the pursuit of speed efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In the former monastic grounds, the water flowing from the River Wandle was used to carry out hand block-printing and weaving in the same manner as in previous centuries, contrary to the modern practices employed by the fellow textile printing company, Liberty.

Steps up to the back garden at Kelmscott

With the same intense devotion, Morris turned to his other great interest during his Kelmscott House years; book-printing. With a reverence for books that were ‘a well of life’ and a ‘mirror of the soul’, Morris stated that a library was a creative well-spring, and he hoped to live in a society ‘with a public library on each street corner’. 

Drawers of movable type sorts

Certainly the library in the Morris household was a revered place of beauty and reflection, a sanctuary that held his precious collection of works that embodied his creative vision; Medieval manuscripts, historical tomes, a 15th century illuminated Book of Hours, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales…

In 1891, Morris set up his own private press in the family home with three Albion machines – the Kelmscott Press – in order to create the ‘ideal book’ that would reject the contemporary industrial process and produce, in favour of the beauty of medieval-inspired design, poetic and historical content partly influenced by Icelandic sagas and mythology, original typefaces and wood-block illustrations. I loved the fact that the very press itself had large squat paws on the base of its strong legs, showing again that there could be beauty in design and utility. 

What would Morris make of the extensive closure of public libraries across the UK, that has been taking place over the last decades due to financial pressure and budget prioritization? The creation and funding of free libraries for all, established by the successive Public Libraries Acts from the mid-19th century is slowly being over-turned and these grand civic buildings are now turned over to other activities or sold on for lucrative property development. Meanwhile, the book itself has suffered an insidious decline as the physical text is often perceived as too time-consuming, cumbersome and slow-to-deliver in a world that demands stimulation and rewards at a click, a swipe and a like. 

A wearisome world indeed…. And while we often feel enslaved to our jobs, surely we have already become slaves to our screens and apps, becoming dumber as they become ever smarter? What would Morris have to say to Elon Musk, I wonder?  

Gorse and Gold....

As Winter was drawing to a close, I idly pondered over the question as to why so many early Spring flowers seem to be yellow in colour - and then asked myself why I had never wondered about this point before! Apparently this is typically down to evolutionary adaptation, since such early flowering plants need to attract as many of the few pollinators that are available in the harsher, shorter daylight hours.

Yellow offers a distinct advantage as it is clearly visible and stands out against drab vegetation and undergrowth. However, it should be remembered that the human eye is unable to detect the same colour range as insects to the point that those with compound eyes make out colouration that does not exist for us! Not only that, but the production of yellow pigments - principally carotenoids - do not deplete the limited energy reserves of plants just emerging from the Winter months thus enabling them to thrive.

Beyond that, there is naturally very little physical resemblance between the wide selection of yellowing flowering plants, but each has its unique charm that is synonymous with Spring. The clusters of Lesser Celandine border the banks and hedgerows, with heart-shaped leaves of such an incredibly vibrant green. The flowers with their bright, lacquer-tipped petals marked with the same polished finition as the Common Buttercup, are set to burst open during the sunlit hours before sealing up at dusk. 

How different is the Primrose, with its pale rounded petals surrounded by a rosette of elongated leaves whose furrowed, puckered texture reminds me of a strange cow's tongue...  

The perfume of many of these flowers - when present - also bears a strange scent that is not typically floral. Gorse flowers are said to smell of coconut, wild daffodils have a curious powdery perfume whilst primroses release a light honey tone and as for celandines, well, I will have to check those! In the meantime, it is enough just to look at all those different shades of yellow...

Fishwives and Folk from Newlyn Past...

On display at the Penlee House Gallery and Museum are many of the works of the Newlyn School artists from the late 19th century, depicting life in the coastal communities set alongside the Cornish countryside. Despite being at a remove of well over a hundred years, the local scenes represented in these incredible paintings are still recognizable today, creating a strange feeling of familiarity and continuity. Parallel to that sense of continuum is the comforting feeling from the rediscovery these ‘old acquaintances’ – the works themselves – paintings that have always occupied a discreet yet significant place in my mind, coming up to the forefront every so often, like a treasured strain of music.

And yet for all the pleasure I derive from the Newlyn School paintings, these paintings truly deliver it as it was, with no or minimal mawkishness or excessive preoccupation with the maudlin, even if the material could have easily lent itself to such an approach. The plein-air technique largely employed by the Newlyn artists enabled them to capture the mood of the people and place in a unique way, reproducing the special play of light that is still specific to Cornwall today. It was this strange luminosity that initially drew many of these artists to the South-west, with the desire to capture on canvas the light and shadows that in turn illuminated the hardships and fleeting joys of the existence in the fishing communities in this particular setting.

In a fishing community such as that of Newlyn, daily life was marked and measured by the tides; albeit rhythmic they were nevertheless as precarious and unpredictable as the weather itself. The catches were dependent on the elements, at the mercy of the waves and skies, and as for the men bringing back their load, sometimes prayer alone could deliver them from the perils of the sea. Given the frequently treacherous conditions, boat losses were common and not all the fishing crew members returned safely to harbour. 

By the end of the 19th century, Newlyn had established itself as one of the key fishing ports in the southernmost part of England. Boats sailed out to catch pilchards, mackerel and herring, setting off from Newlyn harbour, across Mount’s Bay and beyond Mousehole, with the women folk taking care of the home and children prior to their return. Once the catch had been landed, the fishwives assumed their vital role in the fishing industry, deftly gutting, cleaning and preparing the fish for sale or helping to cure it for export. 

Depending on the weather, the ‘lugger’ boats went out daily -sometimes overnight or longer - with the exception of Sunday which was respected as the day of rest for the faithful Methodist community. This observation of Sunday worship indirectly led to the Newlyn Riots in 1896, when fleets from outside Cornwall came to fish off the Cornish peninsula for economic gain that could only be detrimental to the already vulnerable local community. 

Looking at the Newlyn School paintings, the strain and challenges of the fisherman’s life are etched on the unassuming, worn faces of the local people at work, some of whom appear in different works yet always illustrating the same themes. However, it is the female figures that always draw my attention, with their striking silhouetted forms that seem almost an emblematic as the lugger sailing vessels, set against the skyline. 

Dressed in dark, coarse clothing, typically long skirts, layered petticoats and aprons, the women must have found these cumbersome and heavy to wear, especially once wet and buffeted by wind and rain. They also had little but practical shawls, headscarves and mop caps to protect them from the harsh, pitiless elements that were surely equally challenging in winter and summer. The footwear was equally stout and functional, giving them support as they carried heavy baskets of fish loads on the slippery quays to sell to local buyers, or as they transported basket cauls of fish strapped to their heads as they made their way up from the beaches once the luggers had landed the catch. 

Ssh... Fishwives from Brittany!

Home life would barely have been a respite from the harshness of the working activities outdoors. Indeed, the living conditions in such households must have been dire – not least for the overpowering, rank smell of fish – from the catches, clothes and fishing nets. With no real sanitation to speak of, no domestic washing facilities – or simply the most rudimentary equivalent - and obviously no central heating or electricity of any kind, day-to-day existence must have been hugely challenging on every possible level. Add to that the damp that would have been rife in these homes, the overcrowding and general insalubrious nature of the sites, and it was hardly surprising that many of the Newlyn dwelling places were labelled as slums, deemed unfit. 

Once the golden age of the Newlyn fishing industry was largely over, decades later in the 1930s, plans were drawn up to demolish these old buildings with the Newlyn Clearances project. This move nevertheless underestimated the attachment felt for the old community setting and soon led to protest from fishermen, local residents and artists alike, all seeking to block the demolition. Interestingly - but not all that surprising – many of the women were slightly more open to change and were not wholly set against the new housing proposed ‘up the hill’ in Gwavas. This would surely have been due to their hands-on experience of running a household in run-down conditions. The menfolk, meanwhile, apparently put up more resistance to the idea, perhaps more attached to the tightly-knit community they were accustomed to on land and sea, in spite of those same conditions.