The Watts Gallery

Years ago during a particularly abortive holiday with Dr Bones involving a broken thumb and spending far too much of it in the boat moored only yards from where we'd started and trying to hide whenever anyone went along the towpath, we visited the Watts Gallery. I think it was then, anyway. We had a very nice afternoon tea and sumptuous cake in the tea room. The gallery itself had, well, let's say 'a charm of its own', involving not looking as though anything had changed since Watts's own day. That didn't mean that it looked like it had done in 1904, only that nothing had been done to it since then. It infused a glacial chill even on a warm summer's day, and in a black jacket one avoided getting into contact with the walls in case too much dust and, in extreme cases, paint came off.

The gallery has now been gloriously restored and a couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be invited on a tour. Now it really does look as it may have done when originally set up. It's become a fantastic, luscious space, if you don't mind heavy Victoriana with a topping of Art Nouveau.

Not content with the £2.5M this has cost, the Trust has even more ambitious plans to buy Watts's house and incorporate that into the scheme as well. It's very exciting.


I hadn't realised how Watts made his fantastic fortune doing society portraits which he hated, but which paid him enough to produce the strange allegorical works he actually thought were his important work, and to build the gallery to put them in (because nobody was going to buy them).

This raises the question of whether he actually warrants such extravagance. Strictly speaking, probably not. Artistically he probably should have stayed a brilliant portrait painter - but then he wouldn't have been as interesting.

Careful Now

This shows you why you should be careful in churches.

I don't like these candlesticks. They are awfully 1970s/80s and as you can see have fake plastic candle bits topped by real candles. I was looking forward to ceasing to use them as soon as our stock of that size of candle runs out.

Last week I went to visit one of our former churchwardens who is in hospital. 'You know those candlesticks?' he said. 'Should I and Elsie get them engraved, do you think?' I had no idea, because nobody had told me and it isn't written down anywhere, that these candlesticks were given by this lovely gentleman and his wife in memory of a daughter who was born with Down's Syndrome and died very young. So, whatever happens and whether they are no longer used every week as they are now, these stubby and ill-favoured items have to be retained, and displayed, because of the love and memory they represent.

I can't help thinking of the great Percy Dearmer's lines in The Parson's Handbook:

The parson must make it understood that he will not accept a single thing for the church unless the advice has first been sought of that person who overlooks the decoration of the church ... If this precaution be not taken, the services of the church are certain in time to be vulgarised. Some kind friend will work an impossible stole; another will compose a ruinous frontal, and, without warning any one, present it as a pleasant surprise when it is finished; another will be attracted by some brass-work of the gilt-gingerbread order in a shop-window, and with a smile of kindly triumph will deposit it one day in the vestry. It will be too late then for the parson to protest: all these good people will be hurt (and one cannot blame them) if their presents are rejected. But if it be publicly explained beforehand that the attainment of beauty of effect is a most difficult task ... and that a church must suffer if left to the chance of a multitude of individual tastes - this catastrophe will be avoided.

Sadly, some things did wiggle their way into churches during The Time That Taste Forgot, and can't be blamed for reflecting the dreadful standards of their day.

All these gifts need to be recorded somewhere, I think. Back in Lamford, Il Rettore got irrevocably onto the bad side of one particular lady not long after arriving when he drew a lurid chasuble from the vestment press with exclamations of dismay, not knowing that she'd made it.

 

Church Refurbishment Again - the Floor

The oak floor in the church is now completely laid, so here is a composite photo (taken standing on top of the altar frontal cabinet). The contractors will be in the second week in July to make good and the furniture will arrive then as well. The following week the lights will be commissioned, and we should be back worshipping in the church on July 22nd, St Mary Magdalene's Day.

And here is a photograph not of the floor. Well, only incidentally.

Chatham Remnants

Here are the remains of the paraphernalia from St John the Divine, Chatham, which I retrieved from Church Antiques the other day. The purple stole is a nice simple, classic one I gave to a friend who is being ordained priest. The rust-coloured veil and burse are made in a particularly beautiful brocade which includes lambs and the IHS monogramme. I'll try to put them in a frame, and have them as a keepsake.

The Candlelight Club, 29th June 2012

I've pondered before the unnatural crossover between the Goth and Vintage worlds. It was Mr Valentine who encouraged a group of us go to the Candlelight Club on Friday, held for this occasion just along the terrace from the premises which, an entirely different night of the week, house Slimelight and its popular goings-on. So I went along with Ms Vale and Mr & Mrs Hayden and enjoyed the surroundings, the fashions both authentically period and less so, and the slight thrill that comes from doing something that nobody else knows about. Vintage enthusiasts are not that far removed from Goths really: a set of people having fun doing something stylishly silly together.

Crossbones Graveyard, Southwark

My wanderings this Thursday trying to work out a route for another Walk for the LGMG took me to Redcross Street in Southwark, not part of London I know at all. Behind a set of iron gates the gleaming preposterousness of The Shard soars up the sky, but those gates are bedecked with ribbons, flowers and commemorative items recording Southwark's departed souls. This is the Crossbones Graveyard, site of ritual and vigil, of mystery plays and personal reminiscence, of campaign and public art. I won't explain its history and strange beauty here, but leave you to explore on the website, and perhaps wonder, like me, how you managed never to hear of it before.

Mummers, Maypoles & Milkmaids

Last Sunday the LGMG went to the Horniman Museum to see the Body Adorned exhibition, ostensibly about styles of dress and adornment in the capital. That was fun, although there was little attempt to marry up the range of ethnographic paraphernalia the Museum had brought out of its stores with the more modern videos, photographs and outfits which were indeed interesting and sometimes thought-provoking. However round the corner (and up the stairs) was 'Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids', a photographic display examining English calendar customs and rituals and devised by photographer Sara Hannant. I thought that was so enjoyable I bought the accompanying book:

The photos are lovely, colourful, full of interest and very human. You might think all these calendar customs date back centuries to the times when either bored or desperate peasants cooked up all sorts of excuses to dress up in ridiculous garb, bang sticks together and get slarmied on mead. Well, some are - the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance dates at least to the 13th century, as do some of the horns still used in it - but others are more modern, such as the London Apple Fair, or the Pagan March which takes place in Bloomsbury. Ms Soomarah looked at the photograph of the latter and asked 'Does that woman have her corset on upside down?'