Scenery in Silk... Cryséde.

I always find it difficult to associate quaint, picturesque Cornish fishing villages today with the hardships of the past, when life was frequently mired in poverty and existence was largely determined by the ills linked to that. Nevertheless, when wandering around the back streets of Newlyn and Mousehole, you can just about imagine how far the fishing industry once defined the community on every level before fishing quotas, unemployment, tourism and Air BnB redefined it for 21st century purposes. However the old netting lofts and modest fishermen’s dwellings that had once housed families are now bijou properties that have outpriced the housing market. While the whole property game may now stink of filthy lucre, the acrid smell of fish no longer lingers. The fact that some derelict fishermen’s cottages in Sambo’s Row in Newlyn had been repurposed a century ago to accommodate a silk clothing trade of international acclaim was a little harder to get my head around!

Apart from a display cabinet in Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance, there is seemingly no trace in Newlyn of the company in question today; Cryséde. How strange that for all its vibrant colours and modern designs and patterns, Cryséde should have fallen into the shadows of oblivion. And yet in the interwar era, it was considered to be an avant-garde force in silk clothing manufacturing, not to mention being a key employer in an era of high unemployment. The clothes on display at Penlee House are curiously timeless, with their striking fabric motifs and bold colours which would not be that out of place today.

The choice of Newlyn as the production site for Cryséde was the result of the crossing of paths between the founder, Alec (George) Walker, and his future wife, Kathleen ‘Kay’ Earle. Walker was a Yorkshire man who had inherited a silk mill in 1912 and went on to set up the company Vigil Silks, with a shop in London in Sloane Street. Kay’s application for a job advertisement for a Vigil poster designer led to the encounter with Walker. As a former student of the Newlyn School of Art (under Stanhope Alexander Forbes), she was familiar with the growing art movements in Cornwall and in turn introduced these to Walker, in addition to the village of Newlyn itself. The war years saw Walker exempt from war service since his position as textile manufacturer producing fabric for army uniforms rendered him indispensable in civvy street. In 1919, Walker opted for a Cornish base for his new silk factory – Cryséde – the name supposedly being a literary reference to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.

The company established itself and Walker fully mastered the techniques of preparing the wood blocks for his silk designs, dyeing and printing the fabric which was ordered from Yorkshire. Locals from Newlyn and beyond were taken on and given training in dress-making and while the clothes produced would have been rather too expensive for many of the women living there, Cryséde grew in popularity. Other lines of clothing and accessories were introduced to considerable success, with scarves, ties and handkerchiefs in a more affordable price range whilst the company’s fabrics were also sold by the yard. Alec Walker designed many of the items himself, with his style evolving dramatically in the post-war years due to the influence of the Modernist art movement. A seminal trip to Paris in 1923 and an encounter with the artist Raoul Dufy led to further change, with Walker encouraged to find inspiration for his fabric prints in the landscape sketches he had made of the Cornish scenery around him. The energy and bold colours of modern art were thus employed in printed textile designs representing local sites such as Ding Dong Mine and Zennor Woods and patterns were likewise named to honour the local areas; Mount’s Bay, Isles of Scilly, Cornish Farm. Walker’s wife Kay also created dresses inspired by Alec’s watercolours.

Cryséde opened three stores in Cornwall in relatively short succession; namely in Market Jew Street in Penzance, St Ives High Street and Church Street in Falmouth and a little later set up shop in Quiet Street, Bath. In addition to that, by 1923 sales were bolstered by a substantial international clientele – in Paris, the USA and Australia for example - that relied on mail-order for purchase. Cryséde’s visibility was enhanced by the work of the stage costume designer, Dolly Tree, whose creations showcased the silk internationally in the early 1920— before she left for the US and a job working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer! Around the mid 1920s, Tom Heron joined Cryséde as commercial manager, since T.M Heron & Company had had ties with the initial Walker family business, Vigil Silks, as the main buyers of their silk.

In addition, to meet demand, the company subsequently expanded its production by moving to St Ives on the other coast of the Cornish peninsula in the mid-1920s. The new premises occupied the converted fish-processing buildings of the Old Western Pilchard Company, set at the bottom of The Island, near to St Ives harbour. At this location - referred to as the Islands Works site – the former fish processing tanks were used for dyeing fabric – presumably exchanging one foul-smell for another. To maintain the same quality of production, the original Newlyn work force was transported from Newlyn to St Ives each day by bus, and Cryséde also ran a tidy side-line in short trips around the region in order to profit from these buses that would have otherwise sat idle and unproductive until the end of the workers’ shift. At this time too, the London fashion designer George Criscuolo also came to work for Cryséde in St Ives, thus consolidating the company’s name not just with regard to textiles but for clothing style too.

By 1928, Walker’s textile designs were not reserved solely for use on silks but also for heavy linen, which was far better adapted for the beach and leisure wear that was in demand. Unfortunately, the pressures of commercial success and the drive for ever-greater expansion of the company started to take a toll on Alec Walker who was at the heart of Cryséde’s artistic design. Clashes broke out between Walker and Heron since they did not share the same vision for the company, with the latter being the far more ambitious of the two men. As a result, Heron left Cryséde in 1929, in order to set up his own company – Cresta Silks Ltd. Rather like Cryséde, little trace remains today of Cresta Silks although there is a rather nice door entrance mosaic bearing the company’s name in a building in Penzance. As Cryséde became a limited company with a board of directors, Walker lost much of his say in the running of the firm and the decisions taken. Furthermore, he and his wife Kay separated and in 1929 he suffered a nervous breakdown. In spite of a brief return to the company, Walker retired in 1933. Cryséde struggled with a series of financial difficulties in the following years and with war looming in 1939, it finally folded.

Meanwhile, Tom Heron’s Cresta Silks appears to have gone from strength to strength. Having made the shrewd decision to move the company to Welwyn Garden City due to its progressive image and enterprising forward-thinking design, he continued to use his business acumen to further Cresta’s success and renown. Apparently, one of the climbers during the 1939 ascent of Mount Everest wore Cresta pyjamas under his climbing gear! When silk was reserved for the manufacture of parachutes in the WWII, Cresta turned to wool for its base material. During the war years, Heron was on the Board of Trade as 'Advisor on Women's and Children's Clothing' and it was he who set up the Utility Clothing Scheme for the war-torn Britain.

Looking at the garments and accessories in the Penlee House Museum made me wonder how so much can be lost and left behind with the passing of time if we do not take care to preserve this heritage. The dynamism and sophistication embodied by the Cryséde dresses seem to have been cast off over the last few decades in favour of the ubitiquous black leggings and other varied items of sportwear that do not seem to reflect very much at all. And I will not even get started on trainers for footwear! 

A Squabble of Seagulls...

The oil painting above - Line Fishing Season © the artist's estate. Image credit: The Box, Plymouth - is that of an artist that I had never heard of until visiting the current exhibition Birds:The Art of Cornwall’s Birdlife at Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance. Although not himself Cornish, Charles Walter Simpson (1885–1971), spent a considerable amount of time living in Cornwall, arriving in Newlyn in 1906 and later going on to set up an art colony in St Ives with his wife, portrait artist Ruth Alison. He specialised in animal and bird painting, having turned to art in his teenage years when a riding accident prevented him from following his father's military career. The couple went back to London in the 1920s where he pursued other artistic ventures, each meeting with great success, but returned to Cornwall thereafter, settling in Lamorna and finally in Penzance.

His squabbling, squawking seagulls are so accurate that they could almost have been captured somewhere along the coast today (or further inland, for that matter). Wheeling Gulls, Glittering Water (1944) reflects Simpson's skill in recreating the essence of the creature in question, without resorting to slavish detail to represent reality. Seen up close, as in the detail from Simpson's Seagulls (1910-20) below, the brushwork is broad and the paint loosely applied and yet the effect is astounding as we take in the birds in their 'yelling multitudes', according to his student friend. Simpson remarked that a painter of living creatures should possess 'a naturalist's knowledge...but an equal facility for forgetting it'. In his St Ives studio, he displayed numerous stuffed bird specimens that enabled him to study the anatomy, plumage and poise of his subjects. However, he underlined his opinion that an artist should portray wild birds 'as an Impressionist treats a landscape; in their surroundings of space and light'.

Apparently, he studied the gulls around Penzance and Newlyn by luring them with buckets of fish offal that would sufficiently occupy them as he caught their likeness as they circled around, deftly skimming the water, slicing the air in flight.

Of course, other artists' work was displayed, again capturing that unique seagull aspect. Tucking a School of Pilchards by Percy Robert Craft (1856–1934) is a vast painting, of which the above is just one small detail. Interestingly, some of the fishermen portrayed in this work are thought to have been Newlyn rioters, from the 1896 protests that broke out in reaction to the fishing practices of the Lowestoft fleet (from Suffolk) that threatened to undermine the livelihood of the locals.

The soaring, gliding flight of gulls is likewise caught by Samuel 'Lamorna' Birch - regarded as the 'father figure' of the second generation of Newlyn artists - in his Tol Pedn (1907). You can almost hear the birds screeching as they swirl above the waves, preparing to plunge at fish below and to peck off the competition with poised beaks. That same energy is vividly present in the bas-relief Scavengers of the Sea (1973) by Rosamunde Fletcher (1914 - 1998).

The exhibition goes on until the 4th October 2025, and features many other bird species but the gulls were perhaps the most spectacular and above all, timeless in their essence!

Lovely Lichen... In Mount's Bay.

Even on the greyest of Winter mornings, there is always something to catch the eye when meandering along the coastline path that borders Mount's Bay, leading away from Penzance towards Marazion.

Typically, the waves were crashing along the vast stretches of pebble shore with the clattering swash and dragging backwash on the shingle. The wind blustered, sending the seagulls on perilous flight, but closer afoot were the granite bolders, with their striking smatterings of lichen!

Some of these were incredibly vivid in colour, with their bright golden aureoles 'flowing' and bursting across the stony surfaces, as ink drop diffusions, spreading out repeatedly, in a multitude of different shapes and shades.

Others, meanwhile, were more subtle with delicate lacy clusters embroidered on rust-coloured stone or scaling over the weather-worn wooden fencing with feathery outshoots...

With this strange organic shroud, every surface becomes strangely ageless, or rather seems to acquire a patina of age and wisdom, witnesses of the passage of time and Life itself.

Retracing the Past and Present... Harold Harvey.

Sometimes what is the most glaringly self-evident in life nevertheless strikes me as strange and fascinating and so it is with the blindingly obvious idea that places that have meant so much in one lifetime (mine, as it happens!) have likewise had as much significance in those of others, throughout time. The experiences and emotions associated with a particular setting are joined by many more, over the years, decades and centuries. Places become shared repositories for the lives lived there, yet each set of memories largely independant and unaware of those before and after them, like strata set in ancient rock. Looking at the work of Cornish artist Harold Harvey (1874–1941) - on display at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance - in order to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, I had the odd feeling of the familiar, seen through a prism - the eyes of an artist long-dead, and yet whose painted scenes are still recognisable today. The work above, The Marsh Landscape (1922), represents the lakes and marshland near Marazion, and remains uncannily similar today.

When travelling to what will always be home - even if it is no longer where I live - this precise part at the tail-end of the trip back marks the final stretch towards Penzance, as the train track runs parallel to the shoreline off Mount's Bay, offering glimpses of St Michael's Mount and then the town with Newlyn in the distance, as seen in this detail above of his Seaweed Gatherers (1904) and presumably in Collecting Seaweed of 1903.

Funny how I could not wait to board a train heading out of the county, all those years ago, eager to discover something new and therefore surely 'better', only to realise finally that the best was already there, all around me. Here is Harvey's 1907 painting, Return from the Orchard, with Newlyn harbour just distinguishable in the distance...

Harold Harvey, born in Penzance in 1874, would presumably have observed the trains departing too, however he knew that he did not wish to leave indefinitely. He chose to stay; depicting the Cornish coastal landscapes and the local fishermen, farmers and miners who inhabited these with their children, eking out a living for themselves, as their ancestors had done before them. Following his studies at Penzance School of Arts under Irish artist Norman Garstin (1847-1926), Harvey would spend almost his entire life, finally dying in Newlyn during the Second World War years. He did, however, leave Cornwall and indeed England for several years in his younger years in the 1890s, going to Paris to further his artistic training at the Académie Julian, in a manner similar to that of later painters from the Newlyn School of Art. On his return to Penzance, inspired by the artistic approach of Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), he painted plein-air in a style of naturalistic realism, working with his mentor Garstin, whilst influenced by the work of Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) - known as the ‘father of the Newlyn School’. Below is Unloading the Catch, Newlyn Harbour from 1905.

By 1911, Harvey had met and married a fellow artist, Gertrude Bodinnar.(1879-1966) and settled in Newlyn, frequenting other members of the artistic community in Cornwall, including Alfred Munnings, Lamorna Birch and Laura Knight. Exempted from military service in the Great War due to health issues, Harvey remained in Cornwall.

Although wholeheartedly devoted to painting the everyday Cornish genre scenes around him, Harvey's style gradually changed to become lighter, sometimes impressionistic, employing simpler forms. During the war years, national security measures meant that painting local outdoor scenes became problematic, so that interior scenes of his beloved home and life there with his wife predominate his work from that period. His figurative painting evolved into a distinctive style that reflected a shared approach with his friends Ernest and Dod Proctor, and indeed the two men set up the Harvey-Procter School together in Newlyn in 1920.

Leaving the human interest of the paintings to one side, I took details of the paintings on display in the exhibition in order to 'feel' the essence of the countryside and seascapes beyond, without the elements that would indicate a set time in history. Such is the case with the section of Harvey's 1924 piece, The Road to Market, with its timeless sweeping moors and vast skies above. His works were exhibited several times in the Royal Academy in London, but Harvey never left his beloved Cornwall for the great city for any prolonged period.

Above is a small detail of the work Blackberrying 1917, with a dramatic view across the Bay with St Michael's Mount just visible, whilst the later painting, the Little Maiden (1934) offers an image down over Newlyn harbour from another high vantage point. Children often featured in Harvey's pieces, while he and Gertrude were apparently childless yet both came from very sizeable families, eight and ten respectively. I don't know if this weighed on them as a couple or gave them a feeling of weightlessness, with no direct bloodline stemming from them, to anchor their lives, secure in the perspective of future generations.

Perhaps this partly led Harold Harvey to convert to Catholicism in the latter years of his life; a spiritual journey not shared by his wife, but that is just speculation on my part. Home was certainly important to him and domestic scenes of his house and garden, generally featuring his wife, represent a significant proportion of an impressive artistic output, but of all of his art on display at Penlee House, the landscape details were my favourite....

Penzance Purples...

As I walk along the paths that I have taken many, many times before, I never fail to be stunned by the view, or by the plants I encounter on my way...

This indeed must be the perfect combination; one of my favourite places associated with a colour I am always drawn to, in all its various shades, on flowers typical - but not exclusive to - the region around Mount's Bay and more specifically Penzance, Newlyn and Mousehole...

All around are agapanthus in their different stages of development before bursting into full bloom. Firstly the strange cocoon-like form open slightly to reveal a cluster that looks like a rather ungainly chick emerging from an egg shell, with pale and muted colours.

Then the inflorescence cluster frees itself from its papery pod to unfurl and positions itself. Initially the flowers remain in their blunt-ended club forms but these slowly open up, from the outside rings to the inner ones...

The process goes on to disclose each bell-shaped flower with its arrangement of six (or even seven) parts; three petals and three sepals that are virtually identical...

Each flower resembles a tiny lily, with darker lines that lead towards pollen-coated stamens and as they all open fully, one by one, violet trumpets seem to burst out, as each inflorescence rises towards the light on long, bright green stalks, set among vibrant green blade leaves...

The agapanthus seems to grow in even the most unlikely spots, to dramatic effect...

But of course the agapanthus is not the only flower to brighten the hedges and pathways, for there are the buddleia bushes along with majestic thistles so imposing that they resemble artichauts; Cardoons.

Then other varieties, with their delicate tufted lilac collars...

And naturally the papery-thin pale petals on the blackberry brambles...

And then there are the final foxgloves of the summer, with their distinctive speckled bells drooping down...

But as we lift our eyes, we will surely catch a glimpse of that unique view; St Michael's Mount!

And of course the spiny sprigs of seaholly set amongst the granite boulders along the coastal route that leads there...

Vagaries of The Weather over Time across Mount's Bay...

I came across this small painting at the Tate Britain last year; it immediately caught my attention and drew me in. Without even looking at its title or the name of the artist, I instinctively knew that it was a Cornish landscape with that distinctive but impossible-to-define light and unique atmosphere. Peering at the work, I even had the impression of familiarity so you can imagine my surprise, or perhaps lack of it, when I learnt that this was Mount’s Bay and Tolcarne, painted in c.1898 by Norman Garstin, one of Newlyn School of painters.

I even imagined I knew from which vantage point it was painted and so through it relived the invigorating feeling of looking down across the bay. Although over a century has passed since the artist captured the dramatic view stretched out before him and furthermore his position was closer to Newlyn than Madron, it did remind of being in the area in the summer... This is certainly a far cry from the work for which Garstin is perhaps best-known, in Penzance at least; The Rain It Raineth Every Day (1889). However both are equally representative of the weather in the region! The work is on display in Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance.

Submerged Forests... The Rain it Raineth Everyday.

Emerging from the sandy beds that have enshrouded them in the Mount's Bay for thousands of years are the remnants of pre-historic tree trunks, roots and stumps. Due to shifting sands as a result of relentless pounding waves in stormy weather, coupled with exceptionally low tides, the gnarled remains of ancient forests have arisen from their watery resting place to appear before us in the 21st century. This eerie presence offers a glimpse into another unfathomable world situated in the site of the one before us today - so familiar and seemingly dependable.

Catching sight of battered, wizened wood just by Newlyn Green, I was delighted to believe that these were part of this elusive, mysterious landscape, when St Michael's Mount was not the island as we know it today, cut off by the daily tides, but rather a vast rocky outcrop in the midst of forests. Indeed, the original Cornish name for the Mount is Karrek Loos yn Koos, meaning ‘Grey Rock in the Wood’ and studies of the peaty soil in the sands using radiocarbon dating has confirmed that that woodland covered this extensive area some 5000 years ago, until it too was covered... by the sea.

Sadly, I am no longer sure that my weather-worn wood is part of this petrified forest that is said to be etched with traces of shipworms and gnawed by piddocks. Although not far from Wherry Town, where traces of the ancient pines and oak have been located, mine must have been either the skeletal frame of a wrecked ship from early centuries or perhaps part of an original wooden structure in the building of the former seafront.

Regardless, they still provide a link back to the maritime history of a coastline that has always lived with and through the unquestioned, unequalled power of the sea and the extremes of Cornish weather, the wettest of which are reflected in Norman Garstin's painting of Penzance seafront The Rain it Raineth Everyday (1889). Below is a detail of this work, now in Penlee House & Museum Penzance, having spent a number of years hidden away in the town hall since it was feared it would give a negative image of the town!

Whilst these traces of a prehistoric past may be intriguing to us from our present-day vantage point, with the comforts of a civilized life, the causes of those ancient floods can only be unsettling, to say the least. For indeed, such past surges and tsunamis were the consequences of an activity that is still ongoing, as the Earth’s tectonic plates continue to grind, slip and collapse, giving rise to earthquakes and volcanos, thus affecting tidal movement. Although the Mount’s Bay region is not on a fault line, it has fallen victim to the devastation caused by seismic phenomena elsewhere. It is said that a tsunami engulfed the region in 709 AD, and then in 1014 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that extensive sea-floods had obliterated villages and settlements, affecting “an innumerable multitude of people", although this was supposedly the result of a vast asteroid hitting the coast. Towards the end of the 11th century, in 1099, another tsunami hit, so that St Michael’s Mount was no longer land-locked at a distance of around 10kms from the sea but formed part of Mount’s Bay.

Catastrophic seismic activity led to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 with shock waves building up a monstrous tidal force that travelled the 1600 km distance to reach the Cornish coast, wreaking havoc on All Saints’ Day. Further sea surges were experienced in Cornwall, in March and July 1761, again linked to earthquake activity in Lisbon. Although unlikely that tsunamis linked to Portuguese seisms will occur again, sea surges and seiches (freak waves) have been observed as recently as 2011 and further events cannot be excluded; quite the contrary given climate change and the rise in sea level. How strange to look at land and seascapes that are, to me, so familiar and 'safe', and understand that even these are but part of a process of never-ending change and evolution.