Kensington High Street

I had been bitten by the Victorian bug after yesterday’s visit to the V&A – and I also had a hankering to take another look at the old Derry & Toms building. So off I went.

There are actually two art deco former department stores side by side, both once owned by the same company and both designed by Bernard George in the 1930s. The one with the giant fins was Barkers of Kensington; it wasn’t actually finished until the 1950s. Of the two, I prefer Derry & Toms: the detailing is wonderful. I delighted in the decorated lintels above the entrances: the bizarre inclusion of squirrels and kingfishers in this most urban of places. The panel reliefs of transport, cosmetics and labour are more appropriate – but less cute. Having said that, there was/is also a roof garden – so the natural world is not entirely absent.

And now these two buildings have lost much of their function. Derry & Toms gave way to Biba (now that’s an experience I regret missing); there are still shops inside but they are dwarfed by their surroundings.

From the twentieth century to the nineteenth: I visited Sambourne House, the home of Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) and his family. He was an illustrator and cartoonist, mainly for Punch, and the house is furnished in the “aesthetic” style of the time – but with added clutter. So lots of Morris wallpaper; flowers and birds everywhere on carpets, door panels, stained glass; walls divided into three by dado rails and picture rails and then covered in wallpapers, prints, paintings and reproductions. It was exhausting! There were also lots of “Arnolfini” mirrors – but not used as creatively as in Soane’s House. I was glad I had arrived early as I had the house to myself to wander around; the silence of the rooms countered the oppressive sense of “stuff” that was never far from the surface, despite my pleasure in looking round.

I thought I had discovered a little bit of egalitarianism when I reached the maid’s room: it was also covered in Morris paper (willow). “How nice,” I thought. Pah! The room was papered in the twentieth century; the maid would have had plain painted walls. (Which might have been a relief for her to retire to each night after so much pattern during the day, admittedly.)

And then, heading to Holland Park Road and Melbury Road, I discovered the Design Museum (formerly the Commonwealth Institute). It’s an astonishing building because of its roof, but – according to the Twentieth Century Society – it was an even more astonishing building when it opened in 1962. I found its exhibits a bit underwhelming: examples of good design were those that have been around my whole life or I have seen (and been intrigued by) before. There’s a limit to how many times I can be stopped in my tracks by the Frankfurt Kitchen or an anglepoise lamp, brilliant as they are. At least they are on display to be discovered for the first time by young people – although it’s very ageing to see commonplace artefacts from one’s life presented in an historical context!

And finally to the “Holland Park Circle” – houses of Victorian artists clustered around Lord Leighton’s House. They were all very fine and surrounded by gardens, but the only one that I really liked was at 8 Melbury Road – built 1875-77 by Richard Norman Shaw for Marcus Stone. All that light – such a contrast to Sambourne’s house! I was ridiculously pleased to discover that Michael Powell lived there from 1951-71. The other notable house was designed for himself by William Burges – whose hideous painted furniture I had seen yesterday in the V&A. I realised that he had also designed St Mary’s at Studley Royal.

Afterwards, I looked at what Nairn had to say. I loved his description of Leighton’s house: (“the nominal architect Aitchison seems to have been brought in to ensure the decoration didn’t fall down”) but he disliked my favourite, finding it full of “surface tricks”. Not for the first time, I have little idea what Nairn means.

Rotterdam

The 06.16 Eurostar to Rotterdam + dearth of photos = evidence that I am not travelling solo at present. 06.16! What was I thinking of when I said yes to that?

At Mechelen it finally hit me that I was in another country: they build things differently here. It’s slightly ironic to feel that when I’m heading to the centre of International Style: starchitects and firms known only by their initials.

This is pretty much a repeat tour from a few years ago. The differences are that today we had time to go to the very top of the Euromast (wonderful: you are shot up to the pinnacle and then corkscrew slowly down to the lower platform) and the Boijmans van Beuningen Depot is finished and looks delightfully bizarre. Over the Erasmusbrug to the old pier, and then our early-morning start caught up with us and we headed back to the hotel. We went furnished with the latest walking booklet from the tourist office, but it’s not a patch on the old one.

Morecambe Mooch

The Modernist put on a Morecambe Mooch to look at mid-20th-century buildings, so off I went. I’m no stranger to Brucciani’s plywood or the Midland Hotel (I remember its lacklustre final years and the period when it was closed), but the telephone exchange . . .

Actually, the telephone exchange (viewed on the very day that A Man came to switch us from copper wires to Digital Voice) was great, even if its functional days may be numbered. At first sight it’s just a 1960s block, but actually it’s a well-designed block. It has variety and texture, mixing horizontals and verticals. Part of one wall was covered in pebbles, glistening in the rain-washed sunshine. The concrete blocks are patterned – again, adding interest in the sharp light.

The collection of post office buildings was history made concrete: the original Victorian/Edwardian post office, then the early 20th-century sorting office extension, all stripped classicism, and finally the 1960s extension to that – horizontal ribbon windows but with a panel of duck-egg-blue tiles and some Royal Mail red stripes to add interest and ornament.

The library (1967) – how different it would have looked when first built, before the trees obscured its shape – is quaintly futuristic. It belongs to the days when local government had real power: the architect was Roger Booth, who also designed Morecambe and Blackpool police stations. The cinema is enormous: those fins!

And then the Midland Hotel (Oliver Hill, who was also the architect in Frinton), where I saw again the map of north-west England in the “children’s room”. I hadn’t realised before that Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood had painted the original mural in the Rotunda Bar.

Studley Royal

Today’s train strike has brought me to Leeds a day early and so gave me the opportunity of turning my vague thought of visiting St Mary’s Church at Studley Royal into reality. The church, designed by William Burges in full-on Gothic revival style, was commissioned by the Marquess and Marchioness of Ripon in the 1870s in memory of the death (while being rescued from brigands in Greece) of her brother, Frederick Vyner. I had seen the Vyner memorial window by Burne-Jones in Oxford and been told that the church was worth visiting.

We-ell – perhaps not to the extent of four hours on a bus from Leeds to get there and back. It was fascinating that the church appeared to be all spire from the avenue, but once you reached it you discovered the horizontals. Inside, though, it seemed cramped somehow. It would have been wonderful to go inside the polychromatic chancel, but – understandably – it was roped off.

There were other attractions too – the wonderfully twisted trunks of mature sweet chestnut trees, deer, and the sight of Ripon Cathedral at the end of the long avenue from St Mary’s. My goodness – the way you can play with the landscape when the land is all yours! It prompted me to step inside the cathedral before I caught the bus back. I had forgotten the mismatched piers at the crossing: the reason is that the rebuilding of the tower was unfinished at the time the canons were dissolved by Edward VI. Petrified history.

Re the proliferation of tree photos: yesterday evening I watched a documentary on Georgia O’Keeffe and her stunning displays of biomorphic forms and swirls, initially in charcoal. The morning’s drawing class had probably also made me more aware of what I was seeing.

Final day in Strasbourg

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in the morning via a scenic route: the covered bridge and the waterway.

The museum was interesting: not merely art nouveau, but Mondrian, Kandinsky and a collection of female nudes, which gave them the chance to bring out their most bizarre objects by François-Rupert Carabin. The next time I am in Betty’s in Harrogate I will look at the marquetry panels by the Spindler workshop.

I amused myself looking at brushstrokes: little flicks of colour (“taches”), divisionism, blurring; I liked the wit of the depilation sign half-painted over in impasto.

In the afternoon, once I had said goodbye to the rest of the group, I headed off to look at another clutch of houses in Neudorf. Somewhat butchered in a couple of cases, but I could see both local (storks) and general (dragonflies) motifs. Catching the tram solo was also a little adventure.

Strasbourg and Karlsruhe

A day when I spoke both French and German – and had to repeat myself each time, thereby removing the risk of any self-satisfaction at my attempted polyglotism.

It started in Strasbourg with more meandering around residential streets – this time around the allée de la Robertsau. The water lily tiles were obviously a job lot (we had seen some elsewhere yesterday), but the bullrushes, kingfishers and cherry blossom (japonisme) decoration was delightful. Plenty of organic forms combined with Gothic turrets and Renaissance bays in the Immeuble Schichtel.

Then to Karlsruhe to the Museum am Markt for its applied arts museum focusing on Arts and Crafts/art nouveau/Jugendstil. Everything was beautifully displayed and, to me, presented all that I have discovered about this period: William Morris to Henry van de Velde via Nancy, Mackintosh and the Vienna Secession. It was like revision! My steals would have been the chestnut leaf vase by the Daum brothers and van de Velde’s plates.

More Strasbourg

Things to remember:

• Alsace and some of Lorraine shuttled backwards and forwards between France and Germany.
• After the Franco-Prussian war Nancy (still in France) became a garrison town and refuge for those French people – including lots of craftsmen – who did not want to become German.
• Strasbourg architects and artists at that time were more likely to study in Germany (and influenced by German style) than in France.
• After annexing Strasbourg, Germany expanded it, building new suburbs like Neustadt and Neudorf – an opportunity for the latest architectural fashions.
• French and Belgian art nouveau – whiplash, asymmetry.
• German Jugendstil – straight lines and symmetry.
• Viennese Secession – grid, faces, verticals.
• Organic or floral motifs and new materials like coloured glass and ceramics.
• Some houses are obviously art nouveau/Jugendstil and some only have one or two elements.
• Local and national traditions and taste weren’t lost: half-timbering, gables, turrets, oriel windows, traditional motifs.

Thus we walked around the Neustadt district looking at early 20th-century buildings.

As usual, my favourites were the ones – like the 1903 block by Lütke and Backes – that were more curvilinear. We were lucky in being invited to view the stairwell: trees and flowers on the lower half-landings until you reached the top, when you had a marvellous “view” of sky and the Vosges mountains. The Egyptian house was definitely an oddity.

After lunch it was the Palais Rohan in the shadow of the cathedral: paintings and the state rooms. My favourite paintings were by the Barbizon artists: simple rather than majestic, sublime landscapes or those deadly “academic” paintings by Bouguereau and de Loutherbourg. The state rooms – despite the occasionally amusing contemporary “interventions” – were just too much – but I could happily have walked away with a mid-18th-century dinner service by Paul Hannong.

Strasbourg

First* impressions of Strasbourg: simultaneously French and German (mansard roofs next to Fachwerkhäuser); an astonishingly slender cathedral (my introduction to Rayonnant Gothic, where the clerestory windows seem as tall as the nave windows); hearty food and very nice wine.

It was interesting to visit the cathedral without knowing anything about it. Was it indeed mediaeval? Were the windows 19th-century or centuries old? The apse looked Romanesque – but what about the vault decoration? Yes, it was mostly as old as it looked, but the glass had been damaged in a siege during the Franco-Prussian war.

* Not including 1985, when I camped at the youth hostel, met up with a couple of French-Canadian sisters I had first encountered in Luxembourg, and thought only of the next day’s cycle into the Vosges.

Last day in Ljubljana

Wandering around this morning I realised what the short antennae-looking structures were on the front of so many buildings, private and public: they are flag supports. I also discovered that, unlike Trieste, Ljubljana is equal ops in the matter of semi-nudity. I found crumbling art nouveau apartment blocks. While recce-ing routes, I realised once again how tiny Ljubljana is: a stone’s throw from the railway station, the streets wouldn’t have been out of place in a large village. Spaced-out low houses with large gardens where an hen or pig would not have been out of place. I also went into the folksily painted bank opposite the hotel: yes, it is equally garish inside.

After lunch, the group reconvened and we finished off Plečnik: St Michael’s on the Marsh and the Žale cemetery. St Michael’s (1937-38) was designed for a never-built suburb. It’s on (obviously) marshy ground so is lightly built and the tower is detached from the church. Ingenuity played a part to keep costs low: the columns are repurposed sewage pipes and the wood is salvaged. As with the reading room, the steps are dramatic.

Finally, the cemetery (1940): a giant propylaea at the entrance marks the passing from one sphere to another. Behind are several mortuary chapels (built on site to relieve the traffic jams caused by the cortèges from church to cemetery). It draws on all aspects of classical and Mediterranean architecture – and all done in concrete.

By this stage I was definitely drawing parallels between Plečnik in Ljubljana and Gaudi in Barcelona. Two pious, innovative, single-minded architects who left their marks on their cities.

News came to me after lunch of today’s Deutsche Bahn strike. (At least we in Britain have plenty of warning about strikes.) Relief that I had rejected my first idea of catching the sleeper train tonight from Ljubljana. Cancelled, of course. Phew!

Trieste

Reading novels for so many years has left me with unrealistic expectations. As a child, I longed to meet pirates and smugglers. My teenage reading led me to believe that happy-ever-after endings inevitably followed the clinch on the final page. If I caught a sleeper train, I was disappointed if there was no murder in the next-door compartment. Hence I expected Trieste to resemble a city in an Eric Ambler novel: murky, raffish and with clear remnants of its Austro-Hungarian past. Instead I found a big industrial port with a highly urban centre of over-decorated buildings, many of which are being renovated. Unlike Milan or Turin, though, Trieste’s urbanness is relieved by facing towards the sea.

(To be honest, I’m not sure that a murky raffish city would be quite my cup of tea anyway.)

We were on the trail of lo stile Liberty – Italian art nouveau, which keeps traditional Italian features (putti, overhanging eaves, ashlar) and just adds more. In Trieste’s case “more” includes lots of underdressed females. It’s particular and eclectic – but hard to like. Unsurprisingly in such an important port, many of the largest and most lavish buildings belong to insurance companies. The needy call for independence refers to a wish in some quarters to return to Trieste’s free port (i.e. untaxed) status. The café was a temple to the coffee bean – and reminded me of the conviviality of Italian life (stereotype alert) that balances the feeling of being enclosed.

I was pleased to see an allegorical female with cogwheel above the Assicurazioni Generali building in the main square: I haven’t seen one for a while.

The day ended at the Museo Revoltella; I couldn’t take any more 19th-century eclectic bling, so I headed to the art gallery. The current preoccupation of acknowledging historical injustices and oversights has not yet reached here, so the 19th-century paintings were mostly by men and mostly of women with or without diaphanous drapery. A slight change after WWI, with the “return to order”: a more rational and less romantic approach. There was one hyper-real and slightly disturbing painting of First Communion by Carl Frithjof Smith which stood out for me.