All Things Considered

Emily Sutton’s High Street
Posted by Simon Lewin

As part of our St. Jude's In The City exhibition in London which opens to the public on 24th May 2012, Emily Sutton will be exhibiting a series of High Street paintings.

Born and raised in the depths of North Yorkshire, Emily studied at the Edinburgh College of Art. With a lifelong love of drawing, painting and crafting, Emily uses a combination these approaches in her current work, producing paintings, prints and handmade birds - as featured in World of Interiors magazine.

Emily is inspired by the relics of a bygone era and afternoons immersed in the contents of the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh and recently illustrated a children's book for the V&A Museum in London - now in its second edition.

View the rest of the series of High Street paintings and find out more about our St. Jude's In The City exhibition.

Posted by Simon Lewin on May 18th, 2012

Ed Kluz – Theatre Britannica
Posted by Simon Lewin

Work commitments means that we're very reluctantly able to be in London tonight for the opening of Ed Kluz's Theatre Britannica exhibition hosted by Ben Pentreath and Bridie Hall.

The exhibition features drawings, collages and other works by Ed who is fascinated by the objects of our cultural heritage. He seeks out the eccentric, the lost and the overlooked. Follies, curiosities, vanished buildings and folk lore inspire artworks which explore themes of renewal and reinvention.

Ben and Bridie have very kindly let us display Ed's fabrics for St. Jude's in one of their Rugby Street windows. I have to say we're delighted with how Painswick is looking in situ.

Theatre Britannica runs until 26th May 2012 at Ben Pentreath, 17 Rugby Street, London WC1N 3QT.

Here are some of the works exhibited. From top to bottom: a window display featuring Ed's Painswick fabric, Old London After Canaletto, Dundee Arch, Gothick Cottage, A Norwich Prospect and The Dunmore Pineapple.

Posted by Simon Lewin on May 9th, 2012

Bauhaus at the Barbican
Posted by Simon Lewin

The biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK for 40 years, Bauhaus: Art As Life, opens at the Barbican on 3rd May 2012.

From expressionist beginnings to a pioneering model uniting art and technology, this London exhibition presents the Bauhaus’ utopian vision to change society in the aftermath of the First World War.

The exhibition will feature work from Bauhaus Masters including Josef and Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gunta Stölzl.

Find out more about the exhibition and book tickets online via the Barbican website.

Photograph: Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius sitting on the B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer and wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and dress fabric by Beyer, c.1927. Herzogenrath, Berlin. © Estate Erich Consemüller

Posted by Simon Lewin on April 27th, 2012

Edward Bawden’s map of Scarborough
Posted by Simon Lewin

This wonderful map by Edward Bawden, commissioned in 1931 by hotelier Tom Laughton is now back on display in Scarborough Library.

Friends Of Scarborough Library members raised the £2,000 required to restore this forgotten treasure. Find out more about the project

Posted by Simon Lewin on April 15th, 2012

Stoke Edith House
Posted by Simon Lewin

Here's another print that's being launched at our St. Jude's At Tinsmiths exhibition in Ledbury.

Ed Kluz is fascinated by the past and inspired by our architectural heritage. He explains the background to this new print...

"Whenever I'm at the V&A I always find myself gravitating towards the British galleries. The extraordinary objects assembled there never fail to intrigue me. They posses a transfixing power in both form and historical significance; but it is the survivors, the fragments and the disconnected that really send my imagination racing. Fragments have always held a particular fascination for me. It is in absence and incompleteness where the imagination is fired - filling in the spaces and engaging with a narrative. In this way such objects present an opening into the past.

There is one piece in particular in the collection which is such a window and posses a power above all to engulf and transport to another place and time. The two vast wall hangings which once graced the interior of Stoke Edith House in Herefordshire were created in the early part of the 18th century. The hangings are works of pure theatre - their graphic boldness and huge scale are more akin to architecture than quaint pieces of decoration. They depict two late 17th century anglo-dutch style gardens peopled by characters engaged in various activities in the slanting light of a late summer day. In one a pet monkey plays with a ball unaware of a spaniel seemingly in pursuit of a chase, whilst a table of gentlemen and ladies converse overlooked by a young girl who mimics her guardian. I can imagine that when the galleries fall silent and the doors are locked, the image becomes animated. It is hard to believe looking upon the vivid scenes that the hangings are fragments - rare survivors of destruction.

The late 17th century Stoke Edith House where they hung, sadly burned to the ground in 1927. Gone are the great baroque painted interiors depicting scenes from classical history. Gone too is the green velvet bedroom where they once hung. I visited the site of the house in December 2011 whilst visiting Tinsmith's. What remains is an atmospheric landscape in decay. Where the house once stood is a huge void surrounded by the rubble. From beneath veils of brambles and dead fireweed yawn the cellar openings which run off into the hillside. The former manicured beauty of the gardens barely shows through the woodland and scrub which slowly returns it to a wilderness. Only echoes filled the air and my sight - a shattered fountain basin, the line of a lost path, the walls of an old terrace, birdsong, rustling in the undergrowth. The scenes depicted in the wall hangings which once played out in these gardens came back to me and dispelled any uneasy feelings I had about being alone in such a place. A day later, back in the studio I began work on the print."

The exhibition opens on Friday 30th March 2012 between 7pm and 9pm and runs until 29th April 2012. Full details

Posted by Simon Lewin on March 28th, 2012

Treehotel
Posted by Angie Lewin

We'd love to visit this unique destination in Sweden.

A collection of architect designed rooms, each suspended 4-6m above the ground in the canopy of the surrounding forest - all with views of the Lule river.

Find out more from the Treehotel website.

Posted by Angie Lewin on March 22nd, 2012

Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Posted by Angie Lewin

It's taken us an embarrassingly long time to visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Our last attempt was thwarted by car trouble. But we made it today and were rewarded with bright blue skies.

We were visiting in-between shows - a major show of  Joan Miró's sculpture opens on 17th March 2012. But there was plenty to see within the grounds including works by Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, Barbara Hepworth, Anthony Gormley, James Turrell and David Nash.

If you've never visited, you must. Find out all about Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Posted by Angie Lewin on March 6th, 2012

An Alphabet of London
Posted by Angie Lewin

We've had the pleasure of working with printmaker Christopher Brown for a number of years now.

And we recently received a copy of Chris' new book, published by Merrell in early March.

In An Alphabet of London, Chris presents a series of linocuts illustrating every aspect of London past and present, including personalities, buildings, monuments, legends, historic events and other metropolitan icons. From Dickens, Dr Johnson, Tower Bridge and the Shard to the Diamond Jubilee, Wimbledon, pigeons and jellied eels, all London life is here. A born-and-bred Londoner, Chris also recounts his own memories of growing up in the capital, and also describes how he creates his distinctive limited edition prints.

View further images from the book or order a copy online.

Posted by Angie Lewin on February 18th, 2012

Naomi Mitchison
Posted by Angie Lewin

Simon and I took a trip to the newly renovated National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh last week.

One of our favourite images was this painting of Naomi Mitchison by Wyndham Lewis.

Naomi Mitchison was a novelist, poet and passionate campaigner for social justice and women's rights. Born in Edinburgh, Mitchison's first novel was published in 1923, when she was twenty-six and she went on to write over seventy books during her lifetime.

Find out about more about the National Portrait Gallery's renovation.

Posted by Angie Lewin on February 11th, 2012

Drawing At The Museum
Posted by Angie Lewin

Choosing just one bird to inspire a print for the recent Ghosts of Gone Birds exhibition from the long list of sadly extinct exotic species was difficult. I chose the Double-banded Argus whose sole relic is a single feather at the Natural History Museum in Tring. It's now thought that this bird may never have existed at all, the unique feather being a mutation of that of a living species of argus.

This, to me, made the feather seem more precious and poignant so on a cold, frosty morning I travelled up from London to the museum to make some preparatory sketches for my wood engraving Drawing at the Museum. As I drew at a desk by the window surrounded by rows of cabinets of preserved birds, I was struck by the contrast with the lively blackbirds hopping from branch to branch in the winter trees in the grounds outside.

Posted by Angie Lewin on February 3rd, 2012