Doors and windows

I'd like to say something profound about

all the doors and windows opening ahead for this busy bee

but as we've just handed her back fed, watered, and in one piece after

a weekend staying with us while her parents went to a wedding in Cornwall

I may have to come back to you on that one.

dolce fa niente*

'It is sweet to do nothing',

is not the motto I'd choose for the Pre-Raphaelites.

Would it be churlish of me to admit that their industry exhausts me?

Tiles, embroideries, bed hangings and counterpanes, screens, 

huge tapestries, sculptures, painted furniture, book illustrations,

wallpaper and fabric design, poetry, calligraphy,

stained glass, paintings full of shimmering,

glowing, painstaking detail.

Nothing escaped their attentions.

Yes, I've just come back from the Tate exhibition

and feel quite feeble.

How did they do it all?

And have time for affairs?

And die young?

For a more mature appraisal of all things

Pre-Raph do look here.

* William Holman Hunt

Behind every great man...

stands a great woman - or so the saying goes.

Red Lion Mary was a popular servant at 17 Red Lion Square

where William Morris and Burne-Jones lived from 1856 to 1859.

She was later depicted at Red House, but standing, 

as befitted her station, on the other side of the garden fence.

Morris was a man of prodigious energy 

and died as his doctor wryly observed of, 

'simply being William Morris and having done more work 

than most ten men.'

Thank goodness then that I see from the 1861 census 

that he had a little extra help:

Thomas Reynolds - groom

Jane Chapman - housemaid

Charlotte Cooper - cook

Elzabeth Reynolds - private nurse

and by 1871 when he had moved to Queen's Square in London

he had three servants:

Eliza Searle

Agnes Turner

Marie Hughes


I just thought they deserved a mention.

Si je puis*

* If I can -

William Morris's motto, seen below in a stained glass window 
at Red House, the home he had designed for him 
by Philip Webb, when he was only 26.

'The beautifullest place on earth,' said Edward Burne-Jones.

It was set in the middle of a Kentish orchard, 

sited so that apples fell in at the windows 

as they stood open on hot autumn nights.

The only items that Morris would buy for the house 
were Persian carpets and Delft china, 
so it became the focus of intense communal effort by Webb, 

who designed tables, chairs, cupboards, shelves, candlesticks, 

fireirons, catches and hinges;

Morris and his wife Jane, who embroidered hangings, 
frescoed ceilings, hand painted tiles, 
painted cupboard doors and stained glass, 
(but not the birds -

Webb had to do those for him);

 and Rossetti and Burne-Jones who supplied stained glass and paintings.

Rossetti said that it was,
'more a poem than a house, but admirable to live in too.'
In truth it was too hot in the west-facing kitchen in summer, 
and too cold with its north facing aspect in winter -
not helped by the inadequate size of the coal cellar.


Sadly, the house was only home for six years.
The plan to build two more wings 
to accommodate the Burne-Jones family
never materialised and financial problems meant 
that he had to sell in 1865 for £1800 - 
well short of the £4000 that it had cost to build.
He never visited the Red House again.

Despite the unhappiness occasioned by 
his wife Jane's long affair with Rossetti
I prefer to think of the early happy times
 when he would drive three miles through the
rose-hung lanes of woody Kent, 
in the wagonette designed by Webb, 
to collect his friends from the station
for a weekend of house decorating, 
bowls in the garden, hide and seek 
and singing round the piano.

His 'can do' attitude to life should be an inspiration
and instead of my usual lament 'tempus fugit',
it might be as well to adopt the more galvanising
' ars longa, vita brevis' in future.

A foray at the V & A

What a wonderful labrynthine treasure trove

the Victoria and Albert Museum is.

I spent a while familiarising myself

with the floor plan.

And then set off in search of James Leman

and his influences -

specifically tulips.

Might he have seen this bottle?

or this dish with tulips and roses from 1575?

Might he have admired these tiles from 

the mosque of Piyale Pasha north of Istanbul?

I saw so many beautiful things,

but sadly the camera didn't cope well with the low light levels

so I can't show you the Ottoman hanging

with silk embroidered flowers and serrated leaves,

or the Turkey kemha silk with gold tulips and pomegranates 

on a green ground

scattered with red and blue rosebuds .

There were chintzes from the coast of Coromandel

(where lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo)

and pull out frames of medieval tapestries and

William Morris's own take on 

Tulips in 1875.

I reached the Prints and Drawings Study Room

just too late to request sight of the fifty or so boxes

of James Leman's designs,

but they are mine for the asking next time.

By then

I was ready to assume the horizontal

and rather envied these folks

their cool marble bed. 

Art imitating Life

Arbutus wallpaper designed by Kathleen Kersey for Morris & Co 1913

The Strawberry tree

The brass finger plate

There was very little that I could save from our family home when it had to be sold after my parents' death.

This filigree brass finger plate was one of the few things that I had room for.

In fact it had never been fixed to a door until we moved to our present house and I knew very little about its provenance.

One of our favourite National Trust houses is Standen in West Sussex.

It was designed in 1891 by the architect Philip Webb and decorated by Morris & Co.

We have visited it for years with our children and made friends with another family after their baby crawled over to our eldest son to make the first connection.

One day I noticed the finger plates all over the house and recognised that they were the same pattern as the one above.

They were designed by Philip Webb.

On our Easter Monday visit, the house was crowded and as the sun obligingly shone for the late afternoon, 

we spent all our time in the 12 acre hillside garden and woodland with the friends we first met there fourteen years ago.

A few words from my sponsor

on my birthday

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, 

but the very foundation of refinement; 

a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, 

and flowery meads, and living waters outside

William Morris

and jugs and cake

and a decent camera

to record the passing days

(approx. 20,000 of them).