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The Magpie Eye : Mark Hearld

Mark Hearld is the busy, polygamous artist and maker whom I've long wanted to meet. He has made multiple marriages, to print-making and collage, drawing and painting, lino-cutting, ceramics, wallpaper and textile design, cut-outs and collecting, clot...

September 21st, 2021

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Gretchen Andersen, and her extraordinary Lacquer Chest of Treasures

At the Lacquer Chest, her fabled antiques shop in Kensington Church Street, Gretchen Andersen has a ringside seat from which to monitor and influence the shifting sands of our changing taste in things. When she started out, interiors magazines ...

August 9th, 2021

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A last look at @mark_hearld ‘s late Georgian tow

A last look at @mark_hearld ‘s late Georgian townhouse - filled with his own works on paper, wallpaper, textile and ceramic, all of them vivid, lively and ‘mouvmente’ representations of animals and birds and foliate forms, nestling and jostling alongside purchases and gifts and pieces traded with other artists and wonderful, unique finds, truffled over thirty years and lately from the York racecourse car boot sale… full story and pictures on the bibleofbritishtaste.com !
Photo no. 1: circus horse lampshade by @christopherbrownlino
2. Puckler signpainting by @emilysuttonartist
3. Red snd blue ceramic platter by @1690works
4. Wastepaper bin by @mark_hearld for @t1nsmiths
5. Paper sample handbound folio by ? - do remind nd me @mark_hearld ?
6. @mark_hearld s scrapbook will be published by @thamesandhudson
7. Birthday art from a friend
8. Hare leaping by Geoffrey Palmer
9. Overmantle picture by E.Q.Nicholson from @townhousespitalfields
10. Bedroom, John Piper’s Sunflowers, wallpaper @mark_hearld @stjudesfabrics

Remembering Ed Fairfax-Lucy, artist - and Charle

Remembering Ed Fairfax-Lucy, artist - and Charlecote, where so many of his paintings were made - and the rooms he created and reordered there - @artworkersguild
@theworldofinteriors

Remembering Ed Fairfax-Lucy - last chance to read

Remembering Ed Fairfax-Lucy - last chance to read my piece in October’s @theworldofinteriors about this artist and his painting practice at Charlecote , the theatrical, profoundly romantic great house that he preserved and fostered , lived and worked in from the 1970s until his death in 2020. He created a family kitchen from a service passage and pantries, laying stone flags and mixing every drop of paint on its walls; his last still-life remains unfinished on its easel by the kitchen table. His paintings were ‘records of the time of their creation’ - he once said that he painted the space between objects, light, time, memory or something he was not quite sure of. You can catch the small beautiful commemorative exhibition of his paintings @artworkersguild until December 15th, go to their website for details.

If you like these pictures? - the new autumnal sto

If you like these pictures? - the new autumnal story on the bibleofbritishtaste.com is just published ! - the Magpie Eye - @mark_hearld - showing just now @yewtreegallery and then @yspsculpture - genius potter, painter, sculptor, graphic artist and collage-maker, documenter of the natural world, wallpaper designer for @stjudes and maker with @t1nsmiths , collaborator and curator - but seen here as the collector and haunter of York Racecourse car boot sale, at home with his prodigious harvest festival of folkish art and crafts- a museum of everything wonderful…

Gretchen Andersen has run her antiques shop @lacqu

Gretchen Andersen has run her antiques shop @lacquerchest for over 60 years, taking it over post-war from her mother-in-law who claimed then ,‘There are no antiques left.’ Gretchen and her husband Viv confounded her prediction, shopping for country pieces and folk art, samplers, Sussex chairs, the wooden spoons and crocks that Elizabeth David cooked with and anything interesting and overlooked. Terence Conran, Alan Bennett, Julie Christie, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Lord Snowdon and Lady Epstein all came and bought and the marvellous @lacquerchest is still a mecca for such things. Read the story of Gretchen’s wonderful house and her taste-maker role in the trade - now on the bibleofbritishtaste.com - and previously @theworldofinteriors and @tat.london by @the.charlie.p - but here, with many many more pictures... and for the captions to these pictures - have a look at the bibleofbritishtaste.com - the last 3 were taken in the i imitable @lacquerchest- thank you!

Bright star @isabelbannerman designs gardens, but

Bright star @isabelbannerman designs gardens, but she sometimes casts her eyes indoors. Here is the Dairy cottage next to the Tudor manor house that she shares with master-gardener by appmt. to HRH the Prince of Wales, Julian Bannerman, refurbished by her (& @ridge_and_furrow ) with painterly gipsy caravan colours for temporary occupation while the big house is being restored. Before this it served as a ‘young farmers’ discotheque and cider barn. Her new book, The Star-Nosed Mole, will be published by @pimpernel_press in September; her last book, Scent Magic @pimpernel_press was extraordinary.
Red plate rack by @cosmofryfurniture,
Bannermandesign.com

Wolveton or Wolfeton Hall near Dorchester is rathe

Wolveton or Wolfeton Hall near Dorchester is rather off the map - tho its round towered medieval gatehouse can be rented via @landmarktrust and you can book a private tour via @historic_houses_association . It has been the family home of Captain Nigel Trwhitt Lumley Luttrell Thimbleby and his wife Katherine - nee Weld, of Lumley Castle - for nearly sixty years, but it was mostly built by the Trenchards in the reign of Elizabeth I. I was last there in 2010 but came back to make a picture-story about this deeply settled old place, where sheep dung the cart-track drive and creeping weeds with ancient English names star the turf, for this place has some of the most extraordinary sixteenth century decoration in stonework and carved wood that I have ever seen. Now Land Value Alliances.co.uk - and @pegasus_lifestory - a housing development company specialising in the retirement / down-sizers market - is seeking to build - but too close and too densely - on the skirts of Wolfeton’s ancient park and the bordering village of Charminster. Read about Wolfeton on the bibleofbritishtaste.com
or stay there @landmarktrust - or take a private tour, booking @historic_houses_association ... and decide for yourself.... Capt. Thimbleby’s portrait is up @theenglishmansroom

@restorationhouserochester again, the home of Jona

@restorationhouserochester again, the home of Jonathan Wilmot and Robert Tucker since 1994, which looks even more wonderful under the pewter skies of an English July... restored by both, refurnished and furbished and decorated by Robert’s genius. A previous owner was the comedian Rod Hull and his violently aggressive Emu puppet. The pictures show:
the dresser in the old ‘archaeological kitchen’ with its Wedgwood creamware load, Jonathan’s exquisite Oriel bedroom with its original painted overnantle and the Gainsborough landscape bought from the back of a van by Robert, Father Time, the Tapestry Room, 2 of bits and bobs in the Eccentric Room, Delft dresser, Robert’s bathroom ( one of my favourites), Mantle-detail, topiary.... AND - FULL STORY AND PICTURES UP NOW on the bibleofbritishtaste.com. Do have a look?

Next story on the bibleofbritishtaste.com... @res

Next story on the bibleofbritishtaste.com... @restorationhouserochester
by very kind permission of Robert Tucker and Jonathan Wilmot... here are just a few....

We’ve done it!!!! @gipsyqueennw5

We’ve done it!!!! @gipsyqueennw5

@mark_hearld ‘s Regency house in York is filled

@mark_hearld ‘s Regency house in York is filled with wonderful ‘THINGS’ - many that he has made himself, some by unknown artisan and ‘folk’ makers of previous centuries and other by his talented friends in the artist-maker community. Prints, ceramics, collages, paintings, textiles, wallpaper, E.Q.Nicholson, John Maltby, Bawden, Piper, Barbara Jones, @darktownresident , @emilysuttonartist ... and the numerous curiosities he truffles out at the York Racecourse car boot sale - that I really want to go to .. . All will be revealed in due course on the bibleofbritishtaste.com !
Every picture tells a story...

Tea a month ago with artist - designer @lukeedward

Tea a month ago with artist - designer @lukeedwardhall in the start-up farmhouse retreat he adopted in 2019 with @jduncancampbell and Merlin the young whippet, whose coat is the colour of milky coffee. Influences are Arthurian-folk-pastoral as a foundation, overlaid with masses of Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant, Rex Whistler, vintage Habitat, Colefax, toiles, a bit of Bloomsbury @charlestontrust and a dash of Sir Roy Strong gothickery. Thank you! I loved it. Luke is currently painting a mural for @bonhams1793 , The Male Form. You can read his excellent interiors column @ft_weekend , @ft_houseandhome . The FULL STORY of his multiple talents and masses more photos are up now on the bibleofbritishtaste.com , do have a read ... I asked them not to tidy up - judge for yourselves....

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