A short story about Liberty Fabrics

Once upon a time when I was a fresh faced bright eyed bushy tailed student, I was besotted with all things Liberty. Just about every penny I had was spent in that building. I thought it was a temple to the exotic, a shrine to all that was creative and unique,and all those years ago it was rather affordable exotica too. The haberdashery department was amazing, trimmings and buttons of the like you could not possibly imaging. And the fabric, have I every told you how wonderful the fabric was?

There was Tana lawn, Viyella, Velvet Devoré or the more esoteric knitted tubes of ribbed wool.

You could with some judicious pattern cutting, create some amazing outfits, which is what I often did.

Shawls too were all the rage during the early eighties and I had a substantial collection of various brightly coloured ones to wrap around in that romantic style so popular at the time.

During my college years we even got to tour the factories ‘up North’ where we wept as grown men wiped the grease off the printing presses with paisley off cuts, yet cruelly we were denied anything, nothing, not a skerrick. Too, too cruel.

When did this love affair stop? I know it was with a whimper, not a bang. But somehow my weekly visits petered out until they became annual, then not at all.

I recently posted about how many of the women featured on the Sartorialist blog stood out because they had festooned a plain coat with one or more scarves. I hunted high and low for some to wrap together. Nothing, absolutely nothing caught my fancy. Then a ripple of a memory surfaced, I remembered that deep in the archive of my resources at school, I had kept one very eighties tessellated patterned shawl and two skirts made of liberty paisley wool. Perfect.

Unbelievably, I found them. The skirts need unpicking, but it will be worth it to give me three new vintage scarves. Why vintage? Because as I discovered recently, the fabric department is so utterly depleted they appeared to sell only a minimal range of basic cotton. Gone were all the exotica.

Thank God I kept those skirts, because now this winter I will rock the plainest of coats.

Images are a montage of the 3 pieces of fabric twinned with some images of a recent Liberty window display

Sally Mann

Image & text from here

This was a project my husband Larry and I talked about for six years, maybe eight. The further I got into it, the more exciting it became. Every new picture opened the door to another, which doesn't happen often. I knew I was done when I had explored every inch of Larry's body: feet, arms, hands, legs, butt, back, head.

Image from here

Sally Mann just gets better and better, the few images I have found from this new body of work are sublime. Would that I could catch them in the flesh, so to speak.

Barbara Hepworth

Although Barbara Hepworth’s house and garden makes me ache with lifestyle envy, the truth is when she bought it just after the break up of her marriage after the war, she could not really afford it. She was egged on by her dealer who felt sure that she would sell enough of her work to eventually pay for it. He was right, she did, and spent the rest of her life working here. It is but a stones throw from the heaving masses on Fore Street, and yet it is the most peaceful tranquil environment you could ever hope to find. The garden evolved and was completely devoted to displaying her sculpture so that you get these amazing multiple viewpoints.

I liked the story I read, that every time anyone came to take photographs of her or interview her she would lock her assistants in the conservatory. All artists employ assistants but she seemed keen not to let anyone else know, she was at the time one of very few woman struggling to make a name for herself. I suppose she was afraid that if the public knew that a lot of her work was completed by men, that would in some way devalue her achievements. Hepworth has always been portrayed as a harridan but I often wonder if a man would ever gain such a reputation for the same behaviour? I know for a fact that Paolozzi was a very unpleasant person to work for, and yet somehow because he is a man this becomes an endearing and acceptable quirk of an eccentric genius.

Her studios are particularly poignant reflecting the suddenness and unexpected nature of her death.

I love the way the tools look as if she might reappear and pick up where she left off

Although I love the garden, I love this room more. I always though it had evolved after her death as a kind of museum, but pictures show the room has barely changed; it is just a little tidier. It was her untidiness that killed her in the end. Having fought cancer with some particularly aggressive and unpleasant treatment, she then fell and broke her hip. She brought her bed up to this room so she could walk straight outside to her studio and carry on working. She was a heavy smoker, and one night a lit cigarette burned through copious mounds of polythene which she used to protect her work. She in fact died of smoke inhalation in her sleep. The fire such as it was, burnt a tiny patch of floor, nothing else, but a glass jug on display is completely opaque from the smoke which shows how thick and acrid it must have been.

That table you can just see at the end of the room is gorgeous, and despite the lack of views the room feels surprisingly light and airy.

You can see more images on Flickr

Barbara Rae

Small slices of heaven from Barbara Rae.

I think these images are from a series she completed in Spain. I am looking forward to her next exhibition which celebrates the publishing of her new book
All this is to cover the fact that so little has happend this weekend it is slim post pickings.

I start teaching on Monday and I have made small inroads into preparing to paint. I was however a tad side tracked with editing my next and last set of images from my holiday.

Surf Widow

Surf Widow
Originally uploaded by theviewfromhere indigo16

Now on Flickr, the first set of images from St Ives.
I loved this project, it was considerably harder than it looks. I had to be directly behind the woman,I tried not to have too much around them.
Humans must have a sixth sense because the amount of times they would turn around and see me and then move was amazing.
Nevertheless I had a 70% success rate and I love this set

The view from here

The clock is ticking away my final hours before my sanity can rush back to work and unpack it's bags. Not a moment too soon I tell you, because after 6 weeks of He Who Must Be Obeyed managing to keep is big fat mouth shut, he finally came home and said it. Yep, he finally let the words trip effortlessly from his tongue, but oh so laden with meaning. "What the hell have you done all day*" Oh that went down well. So I explained how I felt about this rather insulting remark, receiving a similar retort, implying it was but a simple question.

Bollocks was it, what he should have done is walked into the kitchen, burst into tears, stamp his foot and wail beseechingly, "Where's my dinner?" Because in effect, that is what he meant. Well moron I do not cook for someone who belittles my cooking and since the kids were not around I had made Leyla and myself a comforting plate of tuna mash.

So having thrown all his toys out of his pram he made some cheese toasties and sulked in front of the tele for the rest of the night. Thankfully Mr Moron is stuck in a meeting all day.

I had in my fantasy world thought I might spend my last hours of freedom visiting Kettle Yard, but quite frankly the thought of yet another day following Leyla in and out of every public toilet in town and listening to her whining voice exclaiming how utterly bored she is, or how hungry she is, filled me with such dread that I have stayed at home.

Daisy came back from Reading dumped a large bag of washing at my feet and then went flush with another £30 of my hard won alimony to Bluewater. Kitty too came back home dumped two bags of washing at my feet then she too went clutching the other £30 plus £10 pocket money to Bromley. Their bedroom which I had tidied and cleaned looks like someone couldn't decide on what to wear and so tipped out their entire wardrobe. Oh actually that is exactly what has happened. Well if it does not resemble a photo-shoot by the time I get back from work tomorrow tears will be spilt, and I suspect they might be mine.

Currently Leyla has just locked me out whilst I was emptying the compost bin, it took a long and somewhat irritable 10 minutes for me to get her to open the door. Any tiny privileges amassed were promptly rescinded. THANK GOD she is back at school tomorrow, I used to cry when Kitty and Daisy went back, I used to howl all the way back to work.

Leyla and I have really reached the end of our goodwill and we will both be glad to see the back of each other. The au-pair arrives tomorrow as well, the bells are ringing out in celebration.

I have booked the cottage in Scotland and will post pictures once I have confirmation. For someone so not superstitious, I am curiously superstitious! plus I do not want someone gazumping me as I have set my heart on a cute shepherds cottage overlooking loch Awe.

I have read quite a lot over the holiday, nothing particularly challenging, some Kate Atkinson, and some Patrick Gale, who coincidentally lives and writes in Cornwall. I really enjoyed a couple of his books, very easy to read but quite perceptive too.

I also got out of the library two books by Kate Muir, Left bank and West Coast the latter being set it seems in or near the town where I have just booked a cottage. Although the books are peppered with grotesque caricatures, much of the observations are quite pertinent and very pithy.

* I had in fact had huge amounts of fun trying on all my new clothes and planning some outfits to wear for work without using any black.

I had also spent;

• 2 hours playing with Leyla
• Taken Leyla to the library
• Taken the dog for a walk
• Made lunch for Leyla and I
• Taken Leyla to the park and walked the dog again
• Spent an hour booking swimming lessons for guess who?

The view from here

I realised with a bit of a start, that I had forgotten to go and see the Jeff Koons exhibition currently on at the Serpentine Gallery, So borrowing Emin;s travel card I went up to Hyde Park to see the show, Leyla, of course came too.

She loved it. But she was perplexed by it too. Try explaining to an eight year old that what she sees is an illusion. They are in fact hard sculptures made of metal, not the blow up seaside toys they look like. At first Leyla thought it was a trick, that the reason the place was riddled with 'Do Not Touch' signs was because actually they were blow up toys.

She also even more rightly pointed out that perhaps they could have allowed everyone to touch just one exhibit, just to see what they felt like. having been rather spoilt by her recent outing to Barbara Hepworth's gardens where everyone was positively encouraged to touch and feel, she was absolutely right.They are so slick, and curiously quite engaging.

Koons has used inflatables in his work since the late 1970s; one of his most iconic sculptures, Rabbit, 1986, is an inflatable bunny rendered in reflective stainless steel. He has also made sculptures on a spectacular scale inspired by inflatables, including works from his monumental Celebration series. More from here

On Friday we visited Elizabeth Peyton's Live Forever show on at the Whitechapel Gallery

This was a strangely uplifting experience. I expected very little but what I got was very intimate images, painted fluidly using almost jewel like colours. She paints on very primes surfaces that are so thick I thought the canvas's were made of Plaster of Paris. I preferred the still life images to the celebrity ones, but the delicacy of the brush strokes were a joy. Like a modern Manet



Sadly, it was downhill after the exhibition, the curry house was shut for Ramadan, we went for a pizza and suffered quite frankly some of the worst service ever. Never, Ever go to Strada, not ever, really not good.

The rest of the weekend turned into a bit of a Kate Winslet fest as I watched on DVD

1. the Holiday
2. The Reader
3. Revolutionary Road

1. complete and utter crapola

2. brilliant, she just about breaks out of her 'two faces of Winslet' acting school, just. Ralph Fiennes wipes the floor with her.

3. Oh God, it was just like being at home, all that bloody point scoring. That was/is my world. Why is Sam Mendes drawn to such unremittingly depressing films? It was also difficult to watch and not compare it to Mad Men. The whole woman stays at home thing reared it's ugly head again. I am sure I recently read that there was a law that stated that once a woman got married she was unable to continue working. Can you believe that ? What a depressing time to live in and yet visually stunning. Both the latter films were beautifully filmed.

Daisy is back, she came, she ate, she showered, she left. Oh, this will all stop next week, OR ELSE. Once again Kitty is gatecrashing her cousins house. See answer to No3 for why, although there currently hangs a fairly relaxed truce here at the moment, part in due, to him having two holidays to look forward to.

He has booked us a week in Berlin and finally booked flights to Cyprus for the Christmas break. I am currently booking next summer.... Scotland, yeah, I have wanted to go back for ages and now is my chance.

I should probably confess that I have bought quite a few clothes, for work of course. Some lovely fluid jersey from Muji. Lovely knitwear from Uniqlo. Some T's from Gap. I am currently working a colour palette sans black, it's my way of clinging onto the remnants of summer.

I have two days left to psych myself up into waking up at 6am rather than my current totally chilled 8am, ouch.