William Morris: Story, Memory, Myth at Two Temple Place

Housed in an extraordinary late Victorian mansion built by William Waldorf Aster, on the Embankment, Two Temple Place is a museum that has only recently been open to the public for exhibitions. From October, and sadly until this weekend, the house played host to a free exhibition on the artist William Morris. The inaugural exhibition, showcasing tapestries, pattern tests and printed tiles, describes how Morris was inspired by poetry, myth and folklore. From Chaucer to Arthurian legends and Greek myths, Morris and many of the Pre-Raphaelites- Edward Burne-Jones included- featured these tales and poems in their work. For myself, it was not so much the tapestries in the exhibition that were interesting, but much more, the hand painted and block printed patterns; some showing the designs in progress with panels half sketched/ half coloured. The building itself provided an extremely apt setting, and as much a reason to see the architecture as to see the exhibition. This seemed readily accepted and utilised by the museum, who provide doubled-sided A4 sheets of information on the architect and designers. Some features to look out for: the beautiful mosaic floor in the main hall made of jasper and onyx, the stain-glass windows by Clayton and Bell, the wood carvings of the Three Musketeers on the handrail of the stairs, and also the stunning glass roof light at the top of the hall. 

Images: My Own

Some examples of his beautiful fabrics:

Why I don’t wear trouser suits by Lucy Worsley in The Times today

Read the full article here.

Light and Wellbeing

After watching Tom Dyckhoff's 'The Secret Life of Buildings' on Channel Four last week (which is on again tonight at 8pm), it got me thinking about our interior spaces at home. In comparison to previous centuries, our homes are now lighter than ever; glass is more sought after and readily available, and large expanse's of glass facades have become the modern ideal. However, despite this, windows in modern homes still often fail to reach standards that correlate with our wellbeing and health. Developers are creating generic houses with prison-like windows to lower costs, and architects are designing buildings for art's sake; to look beautiful and photograph well. Does this mean we are failing to design the building around the occupant? Has architecture ever put the occupant's needs first?

If we go back to previous centuries we can see that the architecture of the home was once dark and small, mainly to stop heat escaping and to keep the warmth in. Dark furnishings were used to conceal stains from soot and gas lighting, and to show off a family's wealth through rich velvets and tapestries. The French invented Plate glass in 1688 but it wasn't until 1838, that sheet glass was introduced; a cheaper alternative that cooled faster than it's predecessor and could be produced economically in much larger sheets. 

The window tax, imposed from 1696 in England, caused owners to brick up their open windows,  coining the term 'daylight robbery'. The taxman was literally stealing light, which some would say are essential elements to even the most basic of homes. "The tax was sorely resented as 'a tax on air and light', and meant that many servants and others of constrained means were condemned to live in airless rooms" (Taken from Bill Bryson's At Home, A Short History of Private Life") Properties were taxed 2 shillings per house, with properties with between ten and twenty windows taxed 4 shillings. This changed to seven in 1766 and eight in 1825, before being abolished in 1851. In addition there was a tax on the weight of glass from 1746, resulting in thin, leaky windows and heavy frames. You can still see various period houses today in London with concealed square holes.

Source: Agent's Diary

Windows became status symbols for the rich aristocrats; such as Bess of Hardwick who showed off her wealth and successful marriages through the grand facade of Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. Having so much glass on display was extremely extravagent for the time, panes were often small and held together with a lead lattice. It even resulted in the popular epigram; 'Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall'. The problem though was that the Architect (thought to have been Robert Smythson) designed the facade purely from an aesthetic point of view, to demonstrate symmetry and grandeur from the approach. This meant that there was a disparity between the interior rooms and the windows; some of the larger rooms don't have enough windows, where as some of the smaller rooms have more than needed. 

A modern example of interior architecture for art's sake is David Adjaye's Lost House, an apartment in King's Cross, with three interior glass courtyards and void of any exterior windows. The result is more like a dark bunker than a home; from 'The Secret Life of Building's' footage, it looked like a harsh, un-homely environment with heavy materials such as black polished concrete and black wooden joinery.

Tom Dyckhoff did an interesting study in his own home, where the windows were partially covered up for a week. At the end of the seven day period, his mood levels were seriously reduced and his glucose levels were dangerously close to a Diabetic's. Architecture should be designed around the human's needs, to serve the occupier in it's function. One can only know how an interior space effects our wellbeing once we have inhabited a space, but surely we must have learnt by now that light is not only essential for our health but for our happiness as well.

Images: Archipreneur

Leighton House Museum, Holland Park Road

Lord Frederic Leighton by G F Watts in 1871

On the edge of Holland Park is a small museum, which showcases the opulent 19th Century home and studio of renowned British artist Frederic Leighton, who remains the only British artist to become a Lord and Baron. The design for the house was proposed and created by architect George Aitchison, and includes a Arab Hall as it's centrepiece, complete with sparkling and vibrant Islamic tiles brought back from trips to Damascus, Syria. "Leighton has been collecting tiles for years" said George Aitchison, "Chaldean tiles, tiles of Damascus, tiles from Crete, of wonderful colour and some of wonderful design. They used to stand in the studio and get in the way. One day he said 'I must really do something with these tiles." and Aitchison undertook to furnish him with a design that would be suited to their employment. The interior is truly remarkable, richly decorated with gilded ceilings and silk wallpapers, William Morris curtains and Millais' paintings. Leighton was part of the Aesthetic Movement (see V+A exhibition- Cult of Beauty), which believed in art that existed only in order to be beautiful. He was creating a new type of beauty for the interior, one that could be observed and appreciated by the many famous guests that walked through his front door. As one 19th Century critic said about the interior, "Aitchison has managed to build a home that reflects the mind of it's occupant: encompassing the eclecticism of Greek art, the devotionalism of the Medieval and the warmth of Orientalism".

The Silk Room

The entrance lobby when Leighton lived there

The Arab Hall

See: Leighton House Museum

The Cult Of Beauty

This weekend I went to 'The Cult of Beauty- The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900' at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In the latter half of the 19th Century, there was a clear movement away from Victorian conventions and a desire for beauty and refinement within interiors, architecture, art, painting and furniture design. The lead figures of this 'search for a new beauty', included the Pre-Raphaelites; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, John Everett Millais, as well as interior designers such as William Morris, and architects including Phillip Webb and Edward Godwin. The artists associated with the Aesthetic Movement believed in 'Art for Art's Sake'; work that solely existed to be beautiful. Artworks started to be less concerned with religion, stories or morals, but purely designed to offer pleasure for the viewer. This can be best seen in William Morris's famous quote from Hopes and Fears for Art in 1883, 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful'.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti reading a poem to his friend Theodore Watts-Dunton in Henry Treffry Dunn's 1882 depiction of the eclectic sitting room at Tudor House

Edward Burne Jones- The Beguiling of Merlin

The Little White Girl: Symphony in White, No.2 by James McNeill Whistler, 1864

Design for Fruit Wallpaper by William Morris, 1862

Dante Gabriel Rossetti- Boica Bacinta

George Frederick Watts- Study with a Peacock Feather

Frederick Sandys- Vivien

Linley Sambourne House, 18 Stafford Terrace, Kensington

The museum states on the cover of the guide, that Linley Sambourne House is 'A hidden gem in the heart of London', and this statement couldn't be more true; indeed a visiting journalist writing for Winter's Weekly on the 25th August 1894, stated "Stafford Terrace lies at the back of the busy whirl of Kensington High Road, and here, in modest retirement, unpretentious of exterior but exquisitely decorative and elegant of interior is situated the beautiful house of Mr Linley Sambourne". This was the home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne and his wife Marion from 1875 until 1910, and today is a uniquely preserved example of a middle class Victorian home. The interior rooms strongly show a taste for the 'Aesthetic' movement, a style defined by lightness, harmony and selectivity, showing William Morris wallpaper, gilded mirrors and collected foreign vases and ornaments. Special features to look out for include the only bathroom of the house, one of the first to have a bath with running water and featuring a pull-out shelf to hold various bottled chemicals, as Linley Sambourne used the bath to develop his photographs to then sketch over. Some of the doors of the rooms were painted dark green with botanical images by Linley Sambourne himself, and the intricate stained glass windows were his design.

 See: Linley Sambourne House

If Walls Could Talk

A programme on BBC Four I am currently enjoying is 'If Walls Could Talk' with Lucy Worsley. Each episode takes us through a different room in the house from the Middle Ages up to the current day, describing its uses, activities and transformations. It offers a wonderful insight into how the modern home has evolved through the ages and how we have come to value whats inside our homes today. Tonight's episode was the bathroom, a room which before the beginning of the 20th Century simply did not exist. It was only after the First World War and the emergence of Hollywood, that the bathroom came to be seen as a place to relax, pamper and recharge, and not just a room defined by it's practical uses.
Watch on BBC iPlayer

There was a misconception up until the beginning of the 20th Century, that washing, bathing and water itself could be harmful. People thought that if your pores were opened up by the water, then 'miasma' or bad air could enter your skin and have disastrous effects. Instead people washed their linen and clothes more often than themselves, and used bowls of water in their bedrooms to wash their extremities and faces. At the beginning of the 20th Century, families could use a tin bath beside the warmest place in the house, the fire, starting with the father and mother, and down to the youngest siblings. Survival of the fittest!  

Carbolic Soap

1930s

1950s

Bathrooms began to appear as seperate rooms in the 1930s and some interesting(!) suites began to appear up to the 1980s. Today the bathroom has gone all modern, clean and sleak. See: American Vintage Home

And today..

Via Dezeen