King Edward VIII abdicated, but at least he lived well

The Landmark Trust is a British building preservation charity, founded in 1965. It was created to rescue historic and architecturally interesting sites from neglect and, when restored, to let them out as holiday places. The Trust thus promotes enjoyment of historic buildings by enabling as many people as possible to experience living in them for a time. The letting income generated from holiday bookings then pays for the future maintenance of the buildings.

In September 2010, Landmark France was established as a separate, not-for-profit organisation set up by the Landmark Trust in Britain to assist in the preservation of historic buildings in France. In a very clever endeavour, a cross-cultural partnership agreement was signed between Landmark Trust and the French government coastal conservation agency, le Conservatoire du littoral. Together they will pursue the restoration of historic buildings owned by the Conservatoire round the French coast.

Le Moulin de la Tuilerie, the main house

The opening of the first three French Landmarks at Le Moulin de la Tuilerie marked an important site. King Edward VIII abdicated from the British throne in 1936 to marry a multi-divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson. Pro-Nazi before and during the war, the couple was banished to the Bahamas where he was safely ensconced in Government House. Fantastic photos from this era can be found in Habitually Chic blog.

The couple was still in exile after the war. Banned from Britain and with no meaningful jobs, the Windsors had to settle for a very active social life on the international scene. The official home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor from 1950 was a C19th villa in the Bois de Boulogne, on the western outskirts of Paris. Belonging to the Paris town hall, the house was given to the Windsors at a nominal rent to encourage them to move to France. But they never liked it much because it was too public. So Le Moulin de la Tuilerie became their "country weekend residence", although it is only 35km south of Paris (on the edge of the town of Gif-sur-Yvette). They used their rural estate from 1952 till 1972.

Edward loved the 18th century mill site and commissioned English garden designer, Russell Page, to design the gardens. Apparently the Duke tended the gardens himself. The three buildings are set around a courtyard behind huge oak gates, and the grounds open onto views of the valley beyond. It was the Windsors who expanded the guest accommodation into the mill’s outbuildings, so it was important that these cottages should retain a sense of their simple, utilitarian spaces. And in any case, much of Wallis’ garish and charmless decoration inside the main mill house was stripped out by the person who owned the property in the 1980s and 1990s. Each Landmark has a private terrace, and visitors can sip wine on the parterre and wander around the extensive landscaped gardens that the Duke had loved.

I haven’t been there, but Charlotte Higgins says the faces of the former king and his spouse leer from photographs on almost every wall of La Célibataire. This was/is the sweet little guest cottage in which Cecil Beaton is said to have stayed when he visited the couple. Even better, the artist Fernand Léger lived in the town, staying in a handsome house close by, just when the Windsors bought the Moulin from the artist Etienne Drian.

In 2006, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor Society Quarterly Journal chose a photo of the royal couple in Le Moulin de la Tuilerie as their front cover. For excellent photos of Le Moulin, see Pigtown Design blog who recommends the following reading: The Windsor Style, written by Suzy Menkes and published by Salem House in 1988.

Francophiliac blog said that in addition to properties in the UK, The Landmark Trust has four spectacular properties in Italy, including the Florentine home of Robert and Elizabeth Browning, plus places with connections to the poets Shelley and Keats.

The Gardener’s Eden blog visited Scott Farm which belongs to the Landmark Trust USA, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of historic places. It is a 626 acre property with buildings and historic orchards. Some of the buildings on the large property are available for holiday rental, including the Dutton Farmhouse overlooking Scott Farm, Rudyard Kipling’s former home Naulakha, and Scott Farm Sugarhouse.

The French organisation Le Conservatoire du littoral already has active restoration projects underway in coastal Brittany and Charente-Maritime, places that should be ready for letting in the next couple of years. The former will be based in old sardine fishery offices on an island off the Breton coast at Douarnanez, just south of Brest. Douarnenez was blockaded by the British fleet in Napoleonic times and was for centuries a base from which French privateers raided British shipping.

Segovia's secret synagogue revealed: first time since 1492.

It must be the dream of every historian to be the first person to discover something that turns history-writing upside down. I can imagine, for example, the excitement of the first historians to uncover the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. Did they realise what they had in their hands? Did they understand that so much of subsequent history-writing would have to be modified, in light of the new discoveries?

Segovia's aqueduct bridge. Photo credit: George Dragicevic

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot broke a smaller, but still exciting story in 27/12/2009.

A Spanish decree from 1412 had forced the Jewish population of Segovia to live in a specific area - it went from the Almuzara, to the section of the city walls located between the old slaughterhouse and San Andrés Gate. The area was closed by seven gates and the main street was Calle de Judería Vieja/Street of the Old Jewish Ghetto.

Segovia's Calle de Judería Vieja is still clearly marked today

Don Abraham Senior (c1410-93) became one of the most influential Jews to serve the Spanish royals, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Together with his friend, statesman and financier Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, Don Abraham Senior undertook to farm the revenues and to supply provisions for the royal army, under contract from Queen Isabella. As royal treasurer and court Rabbi, Don Senior enjoyed a very close relationship with the royal family, at least until the two monarchs decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

Even then the relationship continued - in June 1492, Don Senior and his son were baptised in Valladolid with the king and queen and the primate of Spain acting as sponsors. Presumably Senior converted to Christianity to be able to remain in the country. Still, if he did maintain a secret synagogue for his fellow Marranos in his home, even the very influential Don Senior would have been taking a huge risk.

screened women's section of synagogue (Yediot Achronot)

This is the story of how Mrs Udiya Band, a distant descendant of Don Senior, visited the palace and searched for a synagogue that presumably had not hosted a Jew for 517 years. Any knowledge of the synagogue in Don Senior’s palace had been totally lost! The local Segovians were certainly not aware of its existence.

A thorough family investigation done by Mrs Band and her children before arriving in Spain suggested that a synagogue had indeed once operated in Don Senior’s medieval palace. The family knew that the palace was now kept by UNESCO and by the local authorities. On arriving in Segovia, Udiya Band planned to stay for two days, to see the palace and the synagogue, and to continue on. She had already seen the testimonials written by Abraham Senior describing prayers held in his house and stairs to another (secret?) storey. What Mrs Band found was that half of the Segovian palace had been taken over by the Franciscans, and was now being used as a monastery.

synagogue's holy ark (Yediot Achronot)

Despite not believing that there had ever been a synagogue there, the Department of Culture of the municipality was helpful to the visitor; the mayor provided Mrs Band with a guide and announced that the whole palace would be open to her. The guide pleaded with the priests in the monastery and he was finally informed that he would receive the key the next morning, under the condition that no one must see where Mrs Band was exploring.

One wonders why, if the municipal mayor was interested in the project, were the Franciscans so secretive?

Mrs Band received the key and a second guide spirited her into the monastery via a small back door and through some corridors. She came to a large room – on the right side was the women’s section with star of david signs and in front were the bima/reading desk and the holy ark. Udiya Band was gobsmacked, and so was the guide. On the Jews’ holy ark, there was an altar and a crucifix to be sure. Otherwise it appeared as if the last of the Jewish congregants had just departed for a spot of Sabbath lunch. 517 years ago!

The guard said that everything has been kept in its original form except for one difference: there had been no windows originally - just small vents near the floor through which air could come in. Here the secretive Marranos could pray without being seen from the street. And there was indeed a side stair case which was not being used these days - that was the stair case Don Abraham Senior had used to reach the synagogue.

Segovia is just north of Madrid

Apparently Mrs Band’s story did not end in Segovia. Upon returning to Israel, Udiya Band got in touch with historian and ex-President of Israel Yitzchak Navon and the historian Chaim Berneit. I will be very interested to hear what happened next because there are so many questions to ask. If Don Abraham Senior really did die in 1493, for example, who continued running the secret synagogue for the Marranos in the Senior palace?

**

Almost as an afterthought, I want to clearly differentiate between Don Abraham Senior's clandestine synagogue and Main Synagogue of Segovia. The latter synagogue was never secretive, although the front entrance was not directly from the street, but via a courtyard. The Main Synagogue was also confiscated by the Catholic Church and the Crown, and converted into a church in 1419, dedicated to Corpus Christi. Within a couple of years, the bishop of Segovia gave the building to the Monastery of Santa María de Párraces who used it as a church until a terrible fire in 1899.  The church was restored in the early 20th century and is now open to the public; its synagogue origins are still clearly visible and readily acknowledged.

Segovia's Main Synagogue, later Corpus Christi Church, front entrance

The white walls, horseshoe arches and elaborate capitals in Segovia's Main Synagogue appear to be very similar to the synagogue architecture I have seen in Santa María La Blanca in Toledo.

Segovia's Main Synagogue, later Corpus Christi Church, columns

In fact the Juderia of Segovia is full of beautiful old medieval houses, as Slice_n_dice has shown. These houses are two or three storeys high, with exposed wooden beams and whitewashed facades. The whole historical centre has been lovingly restored and conserved, which might surprise people who think of Spain as being a major player in life-threatening medieval anti-Semitism. Apparently there had been five synagogues, a Jewish cemetery, two butcher shops, a hospital and two Talmudic schools in Segovia's Jewish Quarter, during the halcyon days of Spanish Jewry.

Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 - totally brilliant

The Entente cordiale was a series of agreements signed in 1904 between Britain and France. This Entente cordiale marked the end of centuries of sporadic conflict between the two nations and the start of a peaceful co-existence into the future. Both countries had to resolve their differences in the Americas, deal with the scramble for Africa, give each other freedom in Egypt and Morocco respectively, avoid coming to blows in the Russo-Japanese War in Asia and sort out the Pacific.

This miraculous achievement was, by itself, enough reason for a World Exhibition, along the lines of those held in London in 1851, Paris in 1855, Vienna in 1873, Sydney and Melbourne in 1879/1880, Chicago in 1893 and St Louis in 1904. But London was also about to stage the Olympic Games during the summer of 1908, a perfect time for attracting large crowds to the British capital. The project, the first-ever World Exhibition organised and sponsored by two separate nations, was held in an area of West London near Shepherd's Bush.

Even the local infrastructure was improved. Situated between Shepherd's Bush and White City, Wood Lane railway station was newly opened, specifically to serve the 1908 Franco-British exhibition. Railway buffs noted that there was an elevated enclosed walkway running from Shepherd's Bush, leading to several exhibition halls that were raised off the ground on stilts.

The Franco-British Exhibition of 1908

There is no doubt in my mind that both nations wanted to back up the Entente Cordiale via trade and commerce; only active international trade, it was thought, could promote international peace. It was not a coincidence that the French delegates were under the supervision of the Ministry of Commerce and not, for example, Foreign Affairs or Cultural Affairs. Nor is it a coincidence that a commercial attaché from France was named and hurriedly sent to London.

Eight million visitors walked through the turnstiles! They had a wonderful time, inspecting 140 acres of fairground land that included an artificial lake, surrounded by an immense network of white buildings in ornate, Orientalist architecture. In the Fine Arts Palace, British and French artists displayed the most modern paintings, by past and by living stars. Furniture and other decorative arts were stunning, commercial studio pottery was hugely popular and wall tiles charmed the viewers.

Court of Honour, Franco-British Exhibition (above) 

Fine Art Palace, Franco-British Exhibition (below)

As in earlier World Exhibitions, the most popular sites were those set up to explain and celebrate the success of European imperialism. Visitors loved the specially-built Irish and Senegalese villages where costumed natives frolicked in the summer sun.

For fantastic images from the 1908 World Exhibition, see Vintage Postcards and Postcards of the Past.

Did French visitors travel across the Channel in large numbers and were they as committed to the joint exhibition as the British were? A French reviewer wrote his immediate impressions. In his opinion, the most important of the pavilions, and in fact the only two that were really tasteful, were the Pavilion of the City of Paris and the rather florid Collectivite Delieux in the Art Nouveau style. The Pavilion of the City of Paris was a blend of well-known examples of Gothic and French Renaissance, refined and graceful in its details, that gave visitors the reposeful pleasure always attending the contemplation of a pure work of art. Of course he would write that :)

The long term results of the 1908 Exhibition were felt on both sides of the Channel. For the centenary of the Franco-British Exhibition and the 1908 Olympic Games, a conference was devoted to Arts and Culture at the Turn of Century, organised by members of the Franco-British Network in partnership with their respective universities. In addition to the Exhibition and the Olympics, the emergence of new literary and artistic trends, the maturing of the industrial society in the modern city, as well as the importance of colonisation for these two countries, fully justified the scholarship. The main question was how did the artistic and cultural transformations take place in Edwardian France and Britain, taking into account the cultural exchanges, and the economic, technical and scientific factors then.

Marianne, a national emblem of France, and John Bull, a national personification of Great Britain, get it together.

A very useful booklet has been Great Exhibitions: The World Fairs 1851-1937, written by Robert Wilson and published by National Gallery of Victoria in 2008. Also you might find Franco-British Exhibition: Official souvenir, London, 1908: Sp Coll RB 1445

Florence Nightingale: dedicated but no saint

William and Frances Nightingale, both from staunch Unitarian families, married in 1818 and left home on a long tour of  Europe. They had their two daughters (Parthenope and Florence) en route. Eventually the family returned to England in 1821 and settled down in William's inherited Derbyshire properties where he owned and managed an active lead smelter. The main family home was Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, Florence's beloved childhood home.

Lea Hurst, Derbyshire

Unitarians believed that social evils were humanly created, not God inflicted, and therefore could be remedied by human efforts. In the early C19th, Unitarians were closely identified with the campaign for social and political reform. The scholarly William educated his two daughters well.

Florence became increasingly frustrated at the life wealthy young women led. God was still calling her to His service, but He had not made it clear how she was to serve Him. Nursing was a possibility, but it was regarded as menial employment, needing neither study nor intelligence, suitable only for prostitutes and alcoholics, or Catholic nuns. In 1846 she met Earl Shaftesbury, famous politician and reformer, who showed Florence government reports called Blue Books. She became a self-taught authority on hospitals and sanitation, although with zero experience. She also met Sidney Herbert, Secretary of War, who became the most important contact she ever made.

Roll Call in Crimea, by Lady Butler, bought by Queen Victoria

After a Nile trip in 1850, Florence dabbled in training in Alexandria. In Aug 1851 she gained some real experience as a trainee nurse in the Kaiserswerth Institution of Protestant Deaconesses in Dusseldorf. And between Aug 1853-Oct 1854, Florence went into residence in her first position, as the superintendent of a rundown Establishment for Invalid Gentlewomen, 1 Upper Harley St. That was the sum total of her medical training and experience!

In July 1853 Russia occupied territories in the Crimea that had previously been controlled by Turkey. Britain & France anguished over Russian expansion and tried to achieve a withdrawal. Turkey declared war on Russia and in Sep 1854, the Crimean War reluctantly began.

Through the first ever war correspondents, the British public learnt of the horrific condition of wounded soldiers. Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, her long time friend, agreed to allow Florence and 38 other lay women to nurse British soldiers in the war zone. She was Superintendent of the Female Nurses in Hospitals in the East.

The party arrived in Constantinople in Nov 1854. Barrack Hospital in Scutari was old but they were assured by Sidney Herbert of abundant supplies & good facilities. The unfortunate nurses walked into horror; there was nothing there! The sick and wounded soldiers had no blankets, no clean water and totally inadequate food. In these conditions it was not surprising that war wounds only accounted for 1 death in 6 in army hospitals. Typhus, cholera and dysentery raged, accounting for the rest of the deaths. Furthermore the army doctors did not want nurses there, especially female nurses.

The fetid wards at Scutari. Lithograph by Robert Rigg, National Library Medicine.

In Feb 1855 the mortality rate at the hospital was 43%. Florence was given the task of properly organising the barracks hospital after Battle of Inkerman. At Scutari Barracks Hospital she was in sole control of 2,500 sick soldiers. The soldiers adored the gentle nurses, mopping their fevered brow. The introduction of female nurses to military hospitals was a huge success.

But the soldiers were packed into overcrowded, filthy corridors with poisonous blocked drains beneath. Many of the deaths were preventable, caused by fever caught IN hospital. The Lady with the Lamp image, gliding serenely through the corridors at Scutari, took on a horrible irony. The Russians weren’t killing British soldiers; British army hospitals were. Florence did nothing to improve conditions and got typhus herself.

To show the nation's gratitude for Nightingale, a public subscription was organised in Nov 1855 while she was still in Crimea. The money collected was to enable her to continue her reform of nurse education in Britain's civilian hospitals. In Jul 1856, the war was over. Florence returned home in Aug 1856 and was surprised to find that the war had made her a national heroine to the troops and public.

The hero treatment triumphantly vindicated her claim that lay women could nurse soldiers without gross indecency taking place. This opened up new career opportunity for middle-class, Protestant women, AND it improved the quality of female nurses. She visited Queen Victoria and Albert to talk about the war, and found Queen a great supporter of women’s professional advancement.

After the Crimean war, it became obvious that a top military hospital was needed in Britain. The Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley became the biggest military hospital ever built. Stretching .5k on Southampton Water, the huge red brick complex was built in 1856-63 (and later demolished). It received wounded soldiers from across the British Empire and had an army nursing school.

Nothing could stop the critics focusing on the Crimean debacle. Yet the embarrassed government dithered and the army refused to allow investigations. So Nightingale published her Notes on Matters affecting the Health and Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army and pushed her political contacts for a Royal Commission. Finally in 1857 the government had no choice.

Scottish Dr John Sutherland visited Crimea in 1855 at the request of Palmerston, heading up the Sanity Commission. He was later appointed to a series of posts that gave him responsibility for military hospitals in Britain and India, and became Florence’s closest ally.

Florence Nightgale recovering from Crimea-guilt and from disease

Nightingale had all her Crimean hospital notes, but she didn’t know how to analyse them. So her first task was to have the government statistician, William Farr, teach her statistics. Nightingale quickly learned how to use graphs, charts and tables, based on her hospital notes. She was thus an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation and graphical display of descriptive statistics. She was the first woman elected to Fellow of the Statistical Society in 1860.

The data clarified what happened i.e terrible hygiene at Scutari in 1854-5 had killed more men than any battle! After a mental break down Florence took to bed, where she remained for the rest of her life. She never again made a public appearance, attended a public function or issued a public statement. But it didn’t stop her from working. A new, finer Florence was born from Crimea-guilt, and the campaigns she ran from her sick bed were critical in the development of good public health. The evidence she gave to the 1857 Sanitary Commission resulted in the formation of the Army Medical College.

Nightingale's scientific analysis of the Crimean data, 1856

After 1858, Florence was recognised as the leading expert on military and civilian sanitation in India. Newly assigned viceroys to India visited her home for briefings, before travelling. Nightingale published two reforming books in 1859, Notes on Hospital and Notes on Nursing. They were very popular, and were expanded in 1860-1 with a special section on infant care. Civilian health care!

With the support of wealthy friends and after publicity from The London Times, Florence raised £59,000 to improve the quality of nursing. In 1860 she used this money to found the Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses at St Thomas' Hospital, supervised from her London flat. The first students began in June 1860 and this, the first professional training school for nurses, went on to be a success!

Once trained, her nurses were sent to staff hospitals in Britain and abroad, and to establish nurse training schools on the Nightingale model. In 1860 her best known work, Notes on Nursing, was republished. Her nursing principles: careful observation and sensitivity to the patient's needs, were translated into 11 foreign languages.

But good nurses needed good hospital buildings and she, of course, had clear ideas on how hospitals should be designed. In the late 1850s she published a number of articles on the Sites and Construction of Hospitals and in the 1860s advised on specific building projects. She had a major influence on the subsequent design of both civil and military hospitals. Amazing! For someone who had had almost zero nursing training, little experience running a ward and an utterly disastrous experience in Crimea, Nightingale was now building success on success. She had become so famous that by the time the Royal Hampshire County Hospital was built early 1860s, the architects felt obliged to consult Florence on the building’s design.

Florence Nightingale and her graduating nurses at Claydon House.

Her ultimate goal was to revise all public health care in the UK. Nightingale was clearly not a modest woman, nor a woman easily fazed by huge tasks. In 1864-7, and still bed ridden, she worked on setting up home nursing system, and designing an obstetric hospital, barracks for married soldiers and hospitals for the insane & poor. Importantly she helped to stop the practice of putting all sick and poor people together: men, women, children, insane and sane.

Rural hygiene was a concern, so Florence also became involved in the development of community nursing in Liverpool. This led to the wide spread establishment of both the District Nursing Service and the Health Visitors. Many Nightingale-trained nurses became pioneers in these fields.

Deaths in childbirth were continuing. So a training school for midwives was founded at King's College Hospital London in 1861. By having small birthing wards and clean conditions, deaths from puerperal fever dramatically dropped in her facilities. She published the results in Notes on Lying-In Hospitals, 1871.

Her active career had spanned only 20 yrs: from Kaiserwerth 1851 to utter failure in Scutari to hospital designs and nursing training 1871 when she was 51, but what an action-packed 20 years that had been. Her reforms which came after the Crimea debacle WERE profound. They focused on public health, dealing with hospitals, care of soldiers, infant care & psychiatric centres, leading to the founding of District Nursing. And her writings analysing health care all remain. She wrote on Indian issues for 40+ years.

Nightingale helped to turn nursing into a respectable profession for capable, middle class, Protestant women. Arguably her training school was one of her greatest contributions to medicine. Although she was sometimes ahead of her time, she was sufficiently part in her culture to have very Victorian views and behaviours.

Battling medical obstinacy would make anyone seek allies, as the primary method of achieving reform, even Florence Nightingale. The trouble was that no-one lived up to her hopes; everyone eventually let her down. Even the cleverest people were not as focused or analytical or committed as she was. Nurses who married, and therefore HAD to leave nursing, were traitors to Nightingale and to the profession. Politicians who took up other issues were unreliable. She must have been a tough person to live with.

The end came in Aug 1910 when she died at 90.

Jean-Jacques Audubon: naturalist and artist

You have just missed the Sale of Magnificent Books, Manuscripts and Drawings from the Collection of Frederick, 2nd Lord Hesketh, held in Dec 2010 in London. The selection of books, manuscripts and drawings on offer represented the cream of this distinguished collection, built up by successive generations of the Fermor-Hesketh family. The items showed the best of every aspect of the bibliophile's endeavour: typography, illustration, illumination and fine binding, plus literary and historical importance.

The majority of these books had been acquired by Frederick, 2nd Baron Hesketh (1916-1955), who bought them at a great time. Lord Hesketh acquired a magnificent subscriber's copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America; a crisp, textually complete folio in an early binding; and other masterpieces of natural history.

Audubon’s Birds of America sold in London for £7,321,250, establishing a new world record auction price for any printed book. The previous auction record for a printed book was £5,565,110. Amazingly this too was for a copy of Audubon’s Birds of America, sold in New York in Mar 2000.

Hooded Merganser

So who was Audubon and why was a folio of his art worth more than a moderately sized palace? Jean-Jacques Audubon (1785–1851) had a less than auspicious start in life. He was born in the French colony of Saint Domingue, the illegitimate son of a French naval officer-sugar plantation owner-slave trader and a Creole chambermaid who died soon after the lad’s birth. A slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue in 1788 convinced the father to sell his holdings and return to France with his French son, as quickly as possible. When he was an adult, Jean-Jacques Audubon sailed for America, Anglicised his name, learned English and was set up in business by an old friend of his father.

With the friend's assistance, Audubon continued trying his luck at various business endeavours in Ohio, before living in Henderson Kentucky from 1810-19 . A sawmill business Audubon ran in Kentucky failed in 1819, partly due to a wide spread credit crunch. But mainly he failed because he spent too much time looking at birds to worry about practical business matters. Aubudon found himself in serious financial trouble, with a wife and two young sons to support, so he and the family travelled down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Thankfully his wife found employment as a teacher and governess, and supported the family financially for a very long time.

He began conducting simple experiments on local birds, checking their nesting habits, drawing them in flight and recording their behaviour on the ground. Back in France for a family trip, young Audubon metthe naturalist Charles-Marie D'Orbigny, who taught Audubon proper, scientific methods of bird research.

In America again, Audubon joined Shawnee hunters on their expeditions, learning their methods and recording the details on paper. Audubon spent 20 years travelling throughout the length and breadth of America, painting every different species of bird he encountered. The birds were posed as he saw them in real life — feeding their young, hunting, eating and flying. In time he added animals and fish to his collection, but the birds remained the stars.

Grouse

In 1826, in middle age, Audubon risked everything and took his portfolio of drawings to Britain. He seemed to have been very well received - British collectors loved his images of the pristine parts of America’s wilderness, so he easily raised enough money to begin publishing his Birds of America. The work consisted of 435 hand-collared, life-size prints of 497 bird species, made from engraved copper plates.

The cost of printing the entire work was huge, paid for by subscriptions, exhibitions and commissions. King George IV said he loved Audubon’s work and became a subscriber to the book. In Sept 1827, Audobon approached Isabella, Marchioness of Hertford in her Leeds home, Temple Newsam. He convinced her to subscribe to the first volume of the gigantic work back then, and today a rare volume is still on display in Temple Newsam. The British Royal Society, a learned society for science, elected Audubon a fellow and made him even more famous.

John James and his wife had two children who survived into adulthood, including the naturalist and painter John Woodhouse Audubon (1812-62). John W Audubon, bless his heart, was involved in publishing John James’ books.

Various collections can be visited today, 160 years after his death: the preparatory watercolours for Birds of America are in the New York Historical Society while the Stark Museum of Art in Texas owns and exhibits JJ's personal copy of Birds of America. Milwaukee Art Museum had an exhibition in 2008-9 called Catesby, Audubon and the Discovery of a New World: Prints of the Flora and Fauna of America. North Carolina Museum of Art has all four volumes of  Audubon’s The Birds of America which are now on view.

The John James Audubon State Park in Kentucky (below) is set along the banks of the Ohio River near Henderson, an area that had been very familiar to the young artist. The widow of JJ Audubon's great-grandson, Leonard Tyler, had negotiated for a large private collector to place her  Audubon material on loan in the new museum which opened in July 1938. Today the museum interprets Audubon’s life through his art and personal memorabilia, framed within a timeline of world events.  Surrounded by unspoiled, natural beauty, visitors find  a wildlife Observation Room; the Discovery Centre with hands-on exhibits; and the Learning Centre, where the park naturalist and art educator conduct environmental and art programmes.

John James Audubon State Park and museum in Kentucky

St Moritz: white turf racing

By 1883 it looked as if Davos had positioned itself as the premier resort for fun-loving snow-sports fans in Switzerland's winter wonderland. Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, amongst others, sang the praises of Davos' crisp mountain air and perfect snow.

But it was St Moritz that became the primary alpine health resort, the place where large scale winter sport and tourism were founded. You would think it would be enough that St Moritz had an idyllic lakeside setting at a high altitude, health-giving mineral springs and 320 days of annual sunshine - the place was snowy bliss on earth. But no, they wanted something very special.

As I found in an early post, the First Cresta Run took over two months to build, and was completed in January 1885.

skijoring today

In 1906, St Moritz again invented a brand new and scary winter sport called skijoring. Nowhere else in the world did thoroughbred horses run their race with jockeys being pulled behind the horses, not sitting on the horses’ backs. The race followed a 10 ks route by road from St. Moritz to Champfèr, and the participants did not start all together, but individually at one-minute intervals.

Ever since skijoring was transferred to the racecourse, it has been run like any other horse race – in a group, horse against horse. This demands a great deal of skiing prowess on the part of the athletes, as well as firm control of the horses. As the organisers admit, the start of the race can be very dangerous. At that point, the reins can easily get tangled up or the thoroughbred horses may not know in which direction they are supposed to run. Chaos can reign, and does.

skijoring, 1928, demonstration sport

The racing programme became enlarged over the years. As well as skijoring, St Moritz has had a galloping event since 1911; a wild, snowy 1,100-m sprint on the flat. In 1922 steeplechasing was added. If you think that steeplechasing in the snow is reckless, I wonder what the competitors' insurance companies think.

In 1923, 5 years before the first ever Winter Olympics were held, they considered the idea of skijoring becoming an Olympic discipline. When the 1928 Winter Olympics were finally held, in St Moritz of all wintry places on earth, skijoring was indeed a demonstration sport. Even today, the organisers still think it is a shame that this mixture of skiing and horse racing has been OFF the Olympic programme agenda since the very beginning of the Winter Games.

white steeple chasing

At least the jockeys wear ski goggles and motocross face masks as protection on the icy track. But what do the horses do, when it is -20c outside? And how do the horses handle the high altitude and the lower oxygen levels?

Although the quality of the horses used in these races has improved and the safety of the 2,700 ms long racecourse on the 60 cm thick ice has been increased, most mothers would not want their children to get involved in skijoring. The rider needs strength, balance and heaps of luck to manage the compressed turf, high speeds and falling snow. Summerhill blog rather tellingly described the participants as courageous young men and women who don skis and are drawn behind horses, at cheek-wobbling speeds.

white trotting

white turf racing on the flat

Trotting races have been added more recently to the St Moritz calendar.

These days, the busiest horse racing season in St Moritz starts in late January every year.  During February,  the White Turf Events take place in front of  some 10,000 spectators for each of the three days of the racing carnival. And record-breaking prize money is awarded to each successful owner, jockey and trainer.

St Moritz hotels

Even the hotels have been serving sports-loving or health-seeking guests since the mid 19th century. As the first guest house in St Moritz, for example, the Kulm Hotel opened for business in 1856. The hotel is appropriately located in a quiet, sunny setting with fine view of the Upper Engadine valley, lakes and mountains.

To show how utterly glamorous the winter sports were, Pullman Editions has a collection of original winter sports posters called Art Deco in the Alps, designed and printed in the 1927-37 period. I have selected those posters that were identifiably advertising winter sports in St Moritz and not, for example, in Davos or Gstaad.

Art Deco objects and Hollywood glamour

People tend to think of Art Deco in the field of architecture and monumental sculpture. Consider, for example, the Deco dominance in American diners, English lidos, blocks of flats in Miami beach and most public buildings in Napier New Zealand. But small decorative objects were also important.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London drew a firm connection between Art Deco and Hollywood. Film, the most powerful medium of the modern age, established Art Deco as a global style. In Hollywood Art Deco reached its full potential for fantasy, glamour and mass popularity. In films such as Our Dancing Daughters, Grand Hotel, 42nd Street and the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Hollywood spun a magical web of luxury, youth, beauty, upward mobility, sexual liberation and rampant consumerism. Stars like Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford played racy, modern heroines who embodied Art Deco chic.

Ashtray and cigarette holder, bakelite roll tops

Waves of European émigré designers, directors, writers, actors and producers brought the Art Deco aesthetic to Hollywood. However, the values and culture their films conveyed were no longer European. The Hollywood dream was played out against a backdrop of fantastic Art Deco hotels, night-clubs, ocean liners and skyscrapers. Offering a heady cocktail of modern themes and high style, the films proved irresistible to millions worldwide.

Starlet Showcase blog has great images from Hollywood’s glamour days of the pre-WW2 era. One photo has many women doing synchronised water ballet in a fabulous Deco set. Even by Hollywood standards, it was over-the-top.

Chrome scent bottle shaped as the SS Normandie, Jean Patou, 1935

I liked that Deco was also known as the “P & O” look because of the charm, glamour and adventure that cruise ships symbolised. Various Deco features such as port-hole windows and hand rails were borrowed from ship design. Even more specifically, a Jean Patou perfume bottle was designed in the form of the SS NORMANDIE. Made in Paris in 1935, you can readily identify where the stylised ocean liner was intersected by a cylindrical bottle, with the centre stack acting as the perfume reservoir.

Every household object could be easily decorated in the Deco style. But it seems to me that some objects were particularly suited - those related glamorous, naughty and luxurious uses: alcohol, smoking, greyhounds, makeup, jewellery, fast cars, fast planes and fast ships.

Greyhound desk set, aluminium and marble

Easy and Elegant Life said people turned to the cinema to raise spirits, and put on a happy face. A whole generation went a little crazy celebrating the end of The War to End All Wars. The Golden Age celebrated glamorous sophistication.

Of course the Great Depression started in most countries in 1929 and lasted throughout most of the 1930s. Not many people did very well out of the Depression, and unemployment was rife. Even those who managed to hold on to decently paid jobs were careful about how they spent their income. So it was assumed that going to the cinema once a week was an indulgence that would make the Depression feel marginally less depressive.

Examine an American Art Deco chrome plated cigarette lighter c1930 where the user had to rotate the propeller clockwise to ignite the lighter. I don’t suppose anyone believed it was a priceless object, but it certainly was fun to own and to use. Same with the matching American ashtray and cigarette holder, with bakelite roll tops photographed at the top of this post.

Drinking cocktails, every now and again, would also made stressed people feel happier and more relaxed. The cocktail and smoking objects may have looked flashy, but they were usually not very expensive. Base metals were often used instead of pure silver or pure gold, and the decorative elements were usually painted or etched, rather than precious or semi precious jewels being used.

With alcoholic objects, there was yet another element. Prohibition in the USA continued throughout the period from 1920-1933, during which the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol for consumption were banned nationally. That made the use of alcohol even more glamorous, even naughtier, but only in the USA.

cigarette lighter (L) and compact (R)









A greyhound desk set (picture above) had two covered ink wells for holding inks. The stately greyhounds and the pen holder were made of polished aluminium, while the ink wells were made of finely faceted crystal and fitted with polished aluminium tops and supports. It all sat elegantly on a cream-colored marble base with polished aluminium disks for feet.

My favourite object was a combination camera powder compact (picture above) with brown and cream enamelling. It has a section for powder, cigarettes and a lipstick holder inserted into the end. Not a very large or important object, but a woman pulling this compact out of her handbag in the 1930s would have felt quite glamorous.

When pure silver was used, it was very glamorous indeed. Black onyx glass cocktail shakers (picture below), each with sterling silver decorative overlays and silver tops, were very expensive when they were made. A large, streamlined silver flask c1930 (picture below) in a masculine design was also indicative of the period. I particularly liked the bold stripes down the front, with a space for monogramming.

Black onyx glass cocktail shakers, USA, at Pullman Gallery

sterling silver flask, c1930, Ralph Lauren 

So Art Deco involved the use of up-to-date materials, emphasising Hollywood glamour and style where possible, providing a simplicity of design. A modern elegance and the use of streamlined geometry were associated with the Deco era, raising rather ordinary household objects to something a bit more impressive.

For the most glitzy, most streamlined, most Hollywood-inspired Deco objects made in the USA, see the book American Modern, 1925-1940: Design for a New Age by Stewart J. Johnson. This book, the companion volume to an exhibition that opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showcased the most influential works. From chairs, dinnerware and textiles to lamps, cocktail sets and clocks, these glamorous objects still bowl the viewer over.

American Modern, by by Stewart J. Johnson

Objects Not Paintings presented a very interesting but slightly less glamorous piece of Deco. Note that the tray and chocolate bowl, made of glass, wood and gilded metal, was from Germany and not from the USA. Clearly European artists, the very people who created Art Deco in the first place, tried hard to emulate the glamour and glitz of American pieces. This very modern cocktail shaker set (picture below) was designed by Jean Després, French master of the streamlined aesthetic of the machine age.

cocktail shaker set, by Jean Depres, c1930

Marriage, fertility and courtly love in Renaissance Italy: cassone

A cassone was a richly made carved and decorated chest. Because it was expensive to buy, the cassone was much loved by wealthy families in Renaissance Italy. And it was connected to a very special occasion as well, being given by the parents to a young bride during the wedding and then placed next to the marriage bed. A cassone would be a storage space, but it could also be useful as occasional furniture eg a table top.

Cassone with tournament scenes, Florence, c1460, 38 x 130 cm, National Gallery UK

My favourite cassoni had classical architecture, where the flat panels might have corner pilasters, and the sculptural panels might be carved in low relief, under cornices. Most did not have a high panelled back, for these were much too heavy and much more expensive. But with all that gold leaf and all those Old Master paintings, I suppose some families REALLY wanted to show off how elegant they were.

There was one important fact I did not know. James Yorke (Country Life 19/5/2010) said that on the wedding day, the cassone was carried in procession through the streets to the bride’s new home, as shown in a contemporary painting in Tuscany Arts. Thus the element of public display was even more important than I had imagined.

And another thing about the nature of more private display. The Courtauld Gallery said the cassone probably dominated the relatively small but significant space at the centre of the household’s activities. Here the husband and wife would conceive the next generation of their family. Here, too, important guests were entertained or family discussions held. The cassoni provided the backdrop to the life of the family and their painted decorations were carefully chosen, providing both entertainment and instruction.

Courtly love in the Story of Esther, Florentine cassone panel, c1465, tempera and gold on wood, 18 x 55", Metropolitan Museum of Art NY

There was no end of subject material for decorating the side panels, depending on the tastes of the individual family. Certain artists specialised in cassone decoration and became very talented in the themes they depicted – religious, courtly, romantic or domestic. Typically, a devout family might ask for a painting of the Annunciation or the Visitation of St Anne to the Virgin Mary, feminine themes. A family with more noble aspirations might select courtly figures at the fountain of love, or ladies on horseback with falcons taking part in the hunt of love.

Later C15th Florentine cassone, Madrid Archaeological Museum.; cedar wood, gold leaf and oil paintings,  218 x 106 x 86 cm.  Battle of Anghiari paintings.

I knew all of this as an undergraduate art history student. But I had not looked at marriage chests for this blog because they seemed to be too early for my self-imposed 1640 starting date. However there have been several excellent museum exhibitions of cassoni since 2008 and it is worth going back to a much-loved object of domestic Italian art.

Cassoni starred in a 2008-9 Metropolitan Museum NY exhibition called Art and Love in Renaissance Italy. It explored 150 objects created to celebrate love and marriage till the mid-C16th, including maiolica, marriage portraits and paintings that extolled sensual love and fecundity, glassware, jewellery and of course cassone panels.

In 2009, The Courtauld Gallery in London opened a display called Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. Marriage involved huge expenditure both by the groom and by the bride's family. A patrician husband would buy clothes, jewels and textiles for his new wife and would often refurnish his suite of rooms in the family palace. Among the most significant items commissioned at the time of marriage, and displayed by the Courtauld, were pairs of richly decorated chests. Pairs!

In 2010 The Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence hosted The Virtue of Love exhibition, nuptial painting in the Florentine 15th century. The show introduced the visitor to the private universe of the nuptial suite in the 1400s, richly embellished with works of art. Images from history and mythology populated the wedding chests. Painted by great masters and lesser-known talents, these scenes formed a colourful and vivacious repertory that offered models of virtue and stories of love, historic events and tragedies, to instruct and advise the newlyweds.

Courtauld cassone with high panelled back, 1472, made for the Morelli-Nerli wedding 

Reading recommended by miglior acque came from a 2008-9 exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, also centred on painted marriage chests. I'd love to see the catalogue which made an important contribution to the field: Baskins CL, Randolph AWB, Musachio JM and Chong A, The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance (Pittsburgh: Periscope Publishing, 2008).

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With no gold leaf and no coloured or painted panels, the National Gallery of Victoria has introduced a pair of walnut cassoni, dated from the 1570s. They too would have been placed in the bedroom of the newlyweds' home, to be used as storage furniture. But the parents of these newly weds were not going for gold leaf elegance and glamour; rather the story was told in richly carved narrative scenes which ran across the front of both chests. The story of Judith and Holofernes, for example, provided moralising decoration which was intended for the new wife to follow; Judith was a model of chaste virtue whose bravery saved her people from destruction at the hands of one enemy or another.

The Frick Collection in New York has a similar walnut pair, this time with reliefs of Caesar, still resting on large paw feet. Since these walnut cassoni were also made for the scions of two great aristocratic families, we can assume the parents didn't shun gilding and depictions in polychrome tempera from poverty. Rather the (relatively) restrained decor might have shown a preference for classical learning and respectful moralising .

Walnut cassoni, late C16th, 180 cms long

Frick Collection