-
Exploring Bermondsey
A friend was due to be in London and available for a catch-up, and I had a vague plan to visit the Fashion and Textile Museum for the Paint! Pattern! Print! exhibition, so I decided to combine the two. I wanted to make the most of my time, and I didn’t know much about the area around the museum, so I asked Claude to devise me a plan based on things I generally like: bookshops, stationery shops, crafts, galleries, parks. And I knew I’d need a sit down with a drink at some point.
After a trip to a gorgeous little bookshop I headed off to Southwark Cathedral, an oasis of calm in the hustle and bustle of Borough Market. I loved the Diamond Jubilee Window, designed and made by Icelandic artist Leifur Breidfjord.
It was the sparkling jewels dotted through the glass that caught my eye first, and only then did I take in the rest of the colours and the general beauty of the piece, much brighter and clearer than some of the more traditional windows nearby.
I also felt fortunate to catch the photography exhibition of Peter Marlow’s work photographing all 42 cathedrals of the Church of England. I enjoyed comparing the cathedrals side-by-side. All buildings with the same purpose but with different styles and materials on show. A lovely way to appreciate the elements that are the same, and those that are different.
My next main stop was the Fashion and Textile Museum with the exhibition I’d come to see.
Not far from there is the London Glassblowing studio, which is currently showing a retrospective show of Peter Layton’s work.
I loved both the colours and shape of this piece, and the shadow it casts.
I saw these as penguins from the moment I spotted them, and was pleased to find that I was right. This piece called Birds by Bruce Marks.
This piece by Colin Reid seemed incredible. These artists really know how to handle glass!
After a quick browse of the books in Morocco Bound, I needed a coffee and a sit down, so headed to WatchHouse, a wonderfully reworked building turned into a calm and sophisticated coffee shop. There’s a lovely black and white photograph of the building on their wall, and on their about page, showing what it used to look like. I didn’t know what a watch house was, so I looked it up:
It was essentially the headquarters for the beadles and very similar ‘headboroughs’ who formed the Parish Watch
The Parish Watch was then mainly concered with keeping the peace, arresting lawbreakers, ensuring that the nightly curfew was observed etc.
Next stop for me was the White Cube gallery, another place I’d never been, nor even known about. Impressive space, so very tall, with artwork to match. The art wasn’t necessarily to my taste, but I could totally appreciate the scale.
Finally, I walked towards Tate Modern to meet my friend, and enjoyed this mural, “London Cityscape” by James Cochran, glowing in the sunshine.
All in all, Claude did a good tour, introducing me to new places I doubt I’d have found alone, all independent, all within a mile of each other, all at a chilled pace. I’ll experiment with using Claude as a tour guide again.
-
Paint! Pattern! Print! exhibition at The Fashion and Textile Museum
Earlier in the year I came across information about the exhibition Paint! Pattern! Print! The Textiles of Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell, possibly via a Time Out listing, and bookmarked it for a possible visit.
The exhibition describes itself as:
Step into the exuberant world of pioneering designers Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell, from painted beginnings to bold textiles, fashion and homeware designs.
I’d never been to the Fashion and Textile Museum before, so that was interesting in its own right. I didn’t know anything about Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell before spotting the listing, but the imagery on the museum page jumped out at me straight away, their patterns and colours felt very much up my street, and that was enough to decide I wanted to go.
It was pleasantly busy, alive enough for a bit of atmosphere but never crowded. It’s a lovely building with a good amount of exhibition space. It’s exhibition-led rather than home to permanent collections, which reminded me a little of Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, another place that curates around one major show at a time and builds outward from it. I spotted a poster for workshops tied into Paint! Pattern! Print!, the same kind of thing Ditchling does well. The secondary show here was a collection of pincushions made by soldiers on active service. It’s quite moving, some of the pincushions carry photos of the person who made them, and in some cases that would have been the last image a mother ever received of her son. It was genuinely interesting, and there was something fun about the collection itself too. The info panel explained that these simple, kit-made cushions need no real skill or creative eye to produce, which may be exactly why collectors and curators overlooked them for so long, until two private collectors became captivated by them.
But I was there for Paint! Pattern! Print!, which covered two floors and was a proper riot of colour throughout. One of the highlights for me was the reproduction of their studio, fascinating and just as colourful as everything else on show.
The timeline upstairs was useful for getting a proper sense of what happened when across their working life together, though it was impossible to photograph in any meaningful way, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Upstairs in the studio space there’s a film showing Sarah Campbell painting flowers onto fabric in a simple but effective manner, clearly showing her skill and talent, and then also working with paper and card, some of which are on show too. The film was charming, and her process looks peaceful.
A few other favourites from the visit:
A headscarf, above, and the felt-tip design that was the original artwork for it.
This is a four-colour print, and yet it feels so much richer than that.
I loved all the patterns here, right up my street.
And a clock crafted from colourful threads.
I came away thoroughly charmed by both the exhibition and the museum, and I’d happily go back.
-
The Lancing Weatherstone
Thank goodness for the stone, how else would I have known that it isn’t raining?
Hopefully Lancing never gets itself into a panic fearing for a tornado just because someone nicked the stone.
