Inigo Jones

Inigo Jones (1573-1652)  was a true renaissance man. Little is known of his early life, the son of a Welsh cloth worker he may have been employed as a joiner but at some point a rich patron, impressed by his sketches, sent him to Italy to study drawing and from there it was onwards and upwards.

The stamp set issued in 1973 for the 400th Anniversary of his birth and designed by Rosalind Dease probably sums up this polymath whose fluent Italian gave him an insight into Palladian architecture and the rules of proportion and symmetry; the concepts he put into practice with his architecture when he returned to England.  The stamps show two of his buildings and the stage settings and costumes he created  for court masques (he is also credited with bringing the proscenium arch and moveable scenery to the English theatre).  Some 450 drawings of costumes and theatre design survive however his statue was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 along with some of his buildings.

The statue I show is by the 18th Century Flemish sculptor John Michael Rysbrack and I thought it a bit random being here at Holker Hall as it did not seem to connect to anything.

It turns out indeed it doesn't and was originally installed at the neo-Palladium villa, Chiswick House in west London built by the 3rd Earl of Burlington in 1729 to showcase his art collection "and enthral his guests". An Inigo Jones statue would have been a nice nod to architectural history. The statue arrived at its present location because the 7th Earl of Burlington brought it north to Holker Hall.  He was part of the Cavendish family who have many properties and land throughout the country.   The statue at the time of this photograph in 2014 was on one of the garden walks to the north of the house.

The next time I visited Holker Hall Gardens (which have recently been awarded Garden of the Year 2015/16 by the BBC Countryfile Magazine) Mr Jones had moved

nearer the house and was on a bare mound of earth tucked away in a corner

I presume from the way the trees are cut they are going to plant up the mound.  As I usually visit the gardens when I take my car in for its annual service at a nearby garage (due next month) I wait in anticipation to see where Inigo Jones peregrinations have taken him.

I leave you with some views of the 'Queens House' at Greenwich, London, designed by Inigo Jones, which is supposed to be fabulous inside but being short of time I contented myself on the way past with some views of the entrance

and part of the south facade

and the view from Greenwich Park hill

gleaming white in the centre on a  very misty London day. 

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at I here   

Candy Baa

I am not sure which is the more colourful, Shaun the Sheep as Candy Baa, the little girl dresses for sale in the background or the floral handbags to the right.

But Shaun in his guise as Candy Baa does look good enough to eat as painted by Emily Golden (see Painting Candy Baa here).  This was temporarily on display at Covent Garden before a gathering of 300 different Shauns arrived in the Piazza and they were all sold off for charity.

The west Piazza is also where street performers come to put on a show and here the crowd is enjoying the sunshine and those on the balcony of the Punch and Judy pub, the beer.  It is thought that the Punch and Judy pub takes its name from the puppeteers who put on performances here and indeed Samuel Pepys makes mention in his diary of 1662 of "Italian puppet plays".  For this reason Mr Punch's birthday is celebrated on the 9th May (the date of Pepys entry)

The annual gathering of Punch and Judy Professors (as the puppeteers are known) takes place by Covent Garden's St Paul's Church at the same time as the 'May Fayre and Puppet Festival'.  The pub sign (where you can spot another 'C') shows when the pub arrived here, 1787, which would have been when Covent Garden was famous for its flower sellers and

although the wholesale of flowers moved location in the 1960s to the New Covent Garden a few miles away, the statue to Flora the Goddess of flowers and Spring still reigns supreme on the roof top

The statue is by Robert Sievier (1794-1865) and is made of Coade stone, an artificial but hard wearing stone resistant to both frost and heat created in 1769. There are many statues made of the material around London which Eleanor Coade called  Lithodipyra (Greek for 'stone fired twice')  and promoted heavily for its ability to be able to be moulded into complex shapes. Eleanor died in 1821 when the factory passed to other family members but ceased to trade in 1840. It was said the 'secret formula' had been lost at this time (although people knew that one of the main ingredients was Cornish white china clay) but this is not true and Wikipedia lists the ingredients here but marvels at the skill needed to manufacture it which is probably why the Coade factory was the only one to produce it.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at C here

Venus de Frog

This old stone byre once a home for cows and goats now becomes an artist's hideaway at Clearbeck House gardens. Located amongst the Tatham Fells in north Lancashire the land was once a farm but the Osborne family have over the decades changed it from dereliction to a mix of formal garden and wilderness with follies and sculptures.  Lets take a walk around the corner of this old byre

As you can see from the ferns and mossy tree trunk this is a  damp and shaded corner.  No need to squint at the sign I'll go closer

and here it is "Venus de Frog",

and here she is, keeping an eye on the frogs,  The byre had been built with a stone arched niche to contain the Victorian plaster cast  of the Venus de Milo.  It has to be kept dry, as must all plaster, and she watches the flow of Clear Beck at her feet.

I would love to know about the Victorian farmer who dreamt up this idea and it does rather typify the wonderful Victorian mindset.  Why have a plain structure when there is an opportunity to embellish.   The original Hellenic Venus de Milo was discovered in the 1820s and became a sensation so perhaps that might have been something to do with the choice of sculpture.  Alternatively as she is Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology) who is not only goddess of love but also purity and one would hope the high fell spring water would be pure. I imagine in past times the beck would be the only source of water.  

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at V here

Embankment Embellishments

On the Victoria Embankment in London I managed to extricate  my camera from my bag as these two passed, union jack hats embellishing their summer outfit, and of course that Barcelona football shirt. Is he a fan of the club or Lionel Messi (considered as one of the great players of all time) winner of FIFA World Player and Ballon d'Or.

 They were passing by the cast iron sphinx benches, originally installed in the 1870s to mark the opening of Cleopatra's Needle Obelisk and designed by Lewis and George Vulliamy, the latter who also designed the famous sturgeon lamposts which line the embankment, however I was distracted by colour

and the embellishment on one of the roadside lampposts.  I don't know if these were later riffs on Vulliamy's theme or originals. 

The newest sculpture on the embankment is a monument to "the few" of the Battle of Britain of 1940 it pictures the aircrew scrambling for aircraft take off.  Unveiled in 2005 for the 65th anniversary it also lists the 2,936 airmen and ground crew who took part in the defence of Britain from invasion.  Outnumbered 4 to 1 the odds were stacked against them but their courage and sacrifice meant that Hitler changed his invasion plan.

Time to turn from the riverside and head off 

through one of the gardens off the Thames Embankment. It was the embellishment of the sunflowers which attracted my attention and those tree/palm things.  The statue is to Henry Bartle Prere (colonial administrator) who in the film Zulu Dawn was played by the actor John Mills.  

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at the letter E here   

Greening II in the Garden which is Green (or in Dutch) Groen

When doing the tourist thing and pounding the streets of Antwerp I discovered this sculpture. Are they descending or growing?  I thought they were growing until someone mentioned descending. The clue may be in the title "Greening II" by the artist Monique Donckers. She says that in painting you can create a world but sculptures must create their own world, and this one certainly does. Maybe it depends on the time of year how you view it, in spring or autumn.

 Here they are glimpsed from the back by the fish pond.  Monique Donckers I learn has a handful of sculptures dotted around Antwerp.  Strange how one always finds out things after you have left a place but I suppose it does mean there is something new to see if you return.

This is definitely a place to return to, a little oasis of relaxation in the city where you can sit and watch the gardener at work tending his A for Antwerp. 

 You can see what time of year I visited with the tulips full out and a

bee trying on a bluebell hat for size. 

Now I may have gone clickety click at all the tulips but this garden contains much more. It is called the Plantentuin (Plant Garden) or Botanical Garden. It was created in 1804 for students of the School for Surgery, Chemistry and Botany which was housed in the St Elisabeth Hospital and at that time grew only medicinal plants. Today there are flowers, trees and around 2000 herbs but more than that it is also a popular place to relax on the benches or just walk through and enjoy the green space.

The greenhouses are not open to the public but I did peer through the window and spot a nice display of cactus.  

Here are the plant labels ready for the summer plants to appear by them and a lone statue of Peter Van Coudenberghe (1517-1599) , a pharmacist and botanist who is famous for writing about the medicinal use of plants and herbs, he listed and described more than 600 different plants and explained how they can be used.  He also kept exotic plants which were protected during the wintertime by placing them in underground storage, unfortunately this garden was destroyed by the Spanish Army during the Siege of Antwerp (1584-5).  Like the garden the statue itself was nearly destroyed.  262 years after his death a statue was erected in 1861 to celebrate his pharmaceutical contributions but was damaged during the first world war and moved to a warehouse. Not discovered again until 1996 was what was left of the statue was restored and placed in this peaceful corner of the Botanical Gardens in Leopold Street, Antwerp.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet

    

ABC Wednesday - Paul DAY

 Paul Day's "The Meeting Place" was one of the statues commissioned for the recently refurbished Victorian railway station of St Pancras in London.  Day shows himself and his half-French wife Catherine representing a French woman reunited with her English lover, symbolising the meeting of two cultures and the romance of travel.  This is a station that the French and English do meet because the Eurostar trains departs and finishes here, travelling back and forward from the two countries under the Channel Tunnel.  The statue is huge 20 tonnes and 9 metres high,  it needs to be because the William Barlow's St Pancras shed of 1868 is on a monumental scale.  The statue is one that is both loved and hated.  I'm now going to leave the luscious St Pancras architecture, glimpsed in the background, for later in this round of ABC Wednesday but instead show some of the reliefs around the frieze at the bottom of the statue, all continuing the theme of people meeting in a public spaces  

 The men who built the railways

 I think this is supposed to be a railway driver and two people waiting on a station

 The underground rush hour commute, and lastly

meetings on stairways.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, Round 10, a journey from A to Z...