Showing posts with label Edward Chambre Hardman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward Chambre Hardman. Show all posts

Tuesday 1 September 2020

Edward Chambre Hardman-59 Rodney Street-The Truth-PART THREE

This give the, by this time, campaign, a new life. The Daily Post waded in deep and I kept the headlines coming. Radio Mereyside wanted a interview and I nervously went to talk to Roger Philips. Who was looking for something to report on. The City Council had sent a representative to argue for sending the archive to Bradford.          What! How can this be?

It was Councillor Frank Doran who I gave a right ear bashing to outside the studios calling him an idiot. 

Which proved to be correct as he subsequently had to resign. A clown.

I also found that the City Council owned 120,000 negatives and they were going to Bradford too. 

It was an outrage .

 Liverpool City Council hawking our heritage to......the lowest bidder. 

Well for free. 

Mike Storey was leader of Liverpool City Council. Not the most cultured of people. 

He would later be gobsmacked when Liverpool was announced a capital of culture.

 He wouldn't have a clue.

 Liverpool would receive the accolade of World Heritage Site Status and he would use executive powers to take the cities tall buildings policy away and accommodate some of the dodgiest land deals, that the people of Liverpool will forever pay the price for. You couldn't make it up.

He and his friend Trevor Jones would be in bed with The Duke of Westminster's property arm Grosvener and the council would give away most of the city centre for free.

Other headlines about missing antiques from the town hall added to the pressure.

Then BBC North West decided to do a programme as the whole campaign seemed to have legs. 

Mike McCartney was interviewed and at one stage he said “Everyone is moaning at us but we are the ones paying the tunnel fees to get over there. It was embarrassing for him.

I was annoyed. I wrote to him after we had a whip round in the barbers next door and enclosed £2.40, that was £1.20 each way return and said “take a paintbrush with you next time you lazy sod”

Everyone I spoke to was amazed at what was about to happen. Soon the public weight behind it gathered momentum and I kept filling the pages of The Daily Post.

Letters started to flow in and the radio waves went haywire.

 I had found in the Charity commissions files that Memories of Avignon had been licensed to a major print producing company....for 25 grand. The archive was worth a fortune.

The campaign began to remind me of the Simon Poliakoff film about another photographic archive nearly lost.

 I kicked up that much anti feeling against the idle trustees who were, by now getting worried. I got worried that I was starting to resemble the Timothy Small, off the wall character in the film.

I spoke to Poliakoff later when was giving a talk at The Unity Theatre and thanked him for his inspiration. “I have heard of the Chambre Hardman campaign” he said.

I wrote to Liverpool Museums and received a reply from the director Sir Richard Foster said he would look into the matter. He sadly committed suicide soon after.

I wrote a letter to the National Trust asking if they could look at taking over the house as they already had John Lennon's childhood home, Mendips.

I thought they could compliment each other.

 Lets say I was actively exploring every avenue, the lazy trustees had not. I was doing their work for them.

I asked for a meeting with the council leader Mike Storey who could not ignore the publicity as it was getting hot. I kicked up headlines every week. We were making them look foolish and showing them up for the lack of respect for the historical past.

He was ignorant to the history so I explained it to him and he offered to look into setting up a room in the Liverpool Library in William Brown Street to house it.


And the 120,000 neg's owned by The City Council.  

Gavin Stamp the historian waded in after I suggested we contact him.




Now we were getting somewhere and there was a great weight behind my campaign that many others had joined. We became The Friends of Chambre Hardman.

Peter Elson was up for an award for my, err, I mean his reporting.

PART TWO http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-chambre-hardman-house-57-rodney.html


Saturday 15 August 2020

The Chambre Hardman House. 57 Rodney Street-The Truth. PART TWO


 PART TWO
By chance I picked up a newspaper to read in a coffee shop at the corner of Brunswick street.
 It was November 1999. 
I noticed an article in the middle pages of The Liverpool Daily Post. With a headline. 

Turning a Positive into a Negative.

It was about Edward Chambre Hardman.
I knew that name.
A horrid neighbor of mine in Gateacre Brow had been working for the Social Services and was involved in the clearance of the photographers house when he passed away. 


A bloke called Peter Hagerty had recognized and formed a trust and there were calls to preserve all his stuff as it was a time capsule. So here we were now in 1999.
Peter Elson of the Daily Post had the good sense to question a press release from the Edward Chambre Hardman Trust who proclaimed that it was good thing.


That was, to send the whole Edward Chambre Hardman archive, including many unexplored negatives and all his life's work, to Bradford Museum of Film and Photography!!!!

That is no longer open. 

And sell the house to pay them to take it!

What! I thought.

This was the second article. I had missed the first.
This riled my back up and looking at the picture reproduced in the paper of Hardman, with his camera, he seemed to mouth to me.
'You are not going to let them do that are you'.
I wasn't.
I contacted Peter Elson who was looking for his next angle and told him as a art dealer in Liverpool I understood the worth of this collection, not only in monetary terms but as a cultural record of Liverpool's past.
“It wasn't any old archive” I said “It was a record of Liverpool's past”.
This seemed to give him an extra confidence. He had a hook for his next article.
We had a common goal to ensure this archive does not leave Liverpool and the house is not sold off to pay for the archive's donation to....Bradford. They were going to pay them to take it!

I had seen an exhibition at The Walker Art Gallery shortly after his death.
The collection moved through at least a couple of generations.
It was also a record of Liverpool's middle classes.
 Everyone who was anyone had their portrait taken by Hardman and Burrell.
Hardman never threw anything away.
There had been big ideas at the time. What had happened?
I set to work.
I got Chambre Hardmans will from the Records Office and after a bit of exploring I found that these trustees had been in possession of a load of cash. There were lots of assets.
Where had it all gone?
Peter Elson had obtained a quote for his first article from Mike McCartney who was Paul's brother and a well known documentary photographer of Liverpool himself.
I questioned why he was saying this was a good idea.

I made an appointment with the Charity Commission to see the accounts and dragged Peter Elson over to the Kings Dock.






There was all the evidence. Evidence of squandering all the money that had been left in his will.
To make matters worse McCartney was also a secret trustee!
Elson didn't know that. They tried to stitch up the press. He didn't fall for it.
There it was in black and white for all to see. For those who took half a day off work to do so.
The figures were alarming. The wastage amounted to £350,000. Yes!
They had even received a grant of £47,000 from Liverpool City Council.
One of the ex trustees was a director of the Bradford museum!
Another, Viv Tyler was renting space in the basement of the house in Rodney street.
For a peppercorn rent.
I had written to them offering my help. I did not receive a reply. They thought it would go quietly. They had not anticipated me and Peter Elson teaming up.
Lots of valuable pieces had gone missing without any proper records kept.
I noticed a picture of Edward sitting next to what appeared to be a Tiffany lamp.
Where was it?
It had gone missing.
There was a car that had disappeared.
This was all Peter Elson needed to swing back into action and the next headline was a damning indictment of the pathetic group of ineffectual people who had networked their way into being trustees of the most amazing record of Liverpool's past and its past people. This is the City that knocked the Cavern down and called itself Beatles Town and this was the photographic equivalent of that disaster.  


Here is the next Daily Post article.

This sent shock waves all around the city and the whole sorry escapade was now becoming more than just a few photographs it was becoming a point of order. a principle of looking after our historical records.


Of Shooting The Past.

Friday 24 July 2020

Edward Chambre Hardman. 59 Rodney Street-The Truth-PART ONE.


Are The National Trust Liar's?
PART ONE
I noticed a poster tagged on the park gates of Reynolds Park in Church Road Woolton. It said that there was a talk taking place courtesy of The Woolton Society at St Marys Parish Hall.
 It was about Edward Chambre Hardman and The Hardman House in 59 Rodney Street. 
By Roy Wainwright of The National Trust.
Interesting I thought. 
There is a subject I know something about.
I wasn't doing anything else. 
It was a sunny summer evening, that I walked into the church hall and took my seat.
The speaker preparing his power point seemed to stop and notice me.
I recognized him.
He was the one that came over and asked if he could shake my hand. Thanking me.
 This was a wet Saturday afternoon.
I had been invited to meet the top brass. Of The Ark Royal. The Royal Navy were docked in Liverpool for the weekend. The Captain was being presented with a print of the famous photograph showing the construction of the famous aircraft carrier. By Edward Chambre Hardman.
The National Trust awarded the framed print but it was organised by Peter Elson of The Liverpool Daily Post.
“I love working here” the bloke said “And I have to thank you for all the work that you did helping save this house and the Chambre Hardman archive”. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, I go out doing talks now. I love it.”
I remember it well because I had been touched at the time.
Little things like that make the hundred hours working on a heritage project seem worth it.
The house had been doomed to be sold off, when I had became involved.
So I sat there one sunny summer evening in Woolton feeling proud.
There are now books about his work. All could see the photographs of Edward Chambre Hardman.
Though many of his photographs had not been cataloged yet.
Listening to the talk about his life and his work. It had been worth it.
It was enjoyable enough.
Questions were taken at the end of his talk. 
I decided to sit on my hands and a few were answered.
Then one lady asked.
“Wasn't there a bit of controversy in the papers about it all, wasn't it going to be closed?”
“Errr no” he said scuffing on quickly to another question.
What!
I nearly fell off my chair. I was about to stand up and put the matter straight.
The little fibber didn't look at me he just stood there in barefaced cheek.
With his pants on fire.
I had taped the whole talk. What a diabolical two faced joker I thought.
I am not having that.
Then I thought.
Did you do it for recognition, Wayne?
No I thought. It was something I just couldn't let go. I did it because I could.
I had made it my life for a while. 
I was successful. I know what I did.

They had written The Friends of Chambre Hardman out of his history despite the
 National Trust thanking us profusely at the time.
Diabolical bad manners, that.
I thought I would have a quiet word with him.
Then I thought. Y'know, I don't even want to acknowledge or talk to the balloon.
I walked away.



So with that. I decided to put the matter straight and post a few of the headlines I created.
So all can see what little ungrateful fibbers the National Trust are.

Part II to follow shortly.

Thursday 1 May 2014

Charles Rennie Mackintosh-Did Liverpool Ruin His Career?





It may, or may not be true but it is certain that Liverpool played a substantial part in CRM’s life that was not at all helpful to his future or his esteem.
Picture left Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Right a very similar looking,  Herbert Mcnair
Not many people outside the art world know Charles Rennie Mackintosh had links with Liverpool or that half of the Glasgow Four actually lived there, at 54 Oxford Street. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/doves/54oxfordst/index.aspx

The principal rooms at 54 Oxford St were published by the Studio magazine in 1901 in a special edition devoted to ‘Modern Domestic Architecture and Decoration’.

Herbert McNair McNair was the head of applied art in Liverpool
His wife taught embroidery and enameling.
Most of the furniture from Oxford Street was in Sudley Art Gallery before it was butchered by Dr David "Fuzzy Felt" Fleming the current Director.      
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html
They moved to Liverpool since 1899.
Here is a Mcnair design for a poster.
How they would influence the likes of Cassandra Annie Walker who worked for the Della Robbia Pottery.

 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-della-robbia-pottery-by-peter-hyland.html



The city was moving forward at a brisk pace and there was work to be had, especially for talented artists and tutors.





So important was Liverpool to CRM or so he thought, that he submitted a design for the then proposed Anglican Cathedral in 1902.

He and his wife Margaret would be able to join his soul mates. The four would be re-united perhaps.

We all love Giles Gilbert Scott’s sandstone monument but what would have been the sight that greets all those people who come to the city on easy flights now.

That comes, from all over the world. What if the other Scot, CRM’s design had been chosen.

Would it now be held, in as high regard, as the Barcelona Guadi Cathedral?

We will never know.
Would we have a structure that went way above the usual realm of architecture, something CRM, as with the Glasgow School of Art, was as capable of creating.
Such was the inner spirit of a man who could capture the spirit of an age.
Alas it was thought to play a bit safer with a more traditional design.



Mackintosh did not submit an outlandish design but for sure he would have changed it as the project went on.

Charles Reilly, later to be made a knight of the realm, who was an engineer, also submitted a design. Reilly defied the Gothic brief and submitted a classical one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Herbert_Reilly
He would be appointed Roscoe Professor of Architecture in 1902.
F.M Simpson was his predecessor.
Augustus John had left the city and The Art Sheds were swept away along with its teachings of applied arts. McNair briefly taught at the Sandon Studios. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/doves/artsheds/index.aspx

Reilly inherited a regime that was looking to the Ruskin ideals of the Gothic.

Ruskin had condemned the Renaissance and said Italian classicism was not correct styling for our nation. Even though it had long been the chosen method of build.

Waterhouse was the darling architect. Two years after his Lime Street building was erected it was covered in soot from the station trains.

Reilly thought the 19th century building of the picturesque had replaced clear thinking with sentimentality. Though he built a block of cottages, the only executed commission for Lever at 15-27 Lower Road, Port Sunlight.

They were almost Regency and were criticized because the veranda blocked out light to the lower floors. Lever himself considered demolishing them.

Reilly rejected Art Nouveau and its derivatives. But what did he build?
 America was showing the way forward.
Louis Sullivan and his pupils rebuilt Chicago and thoughts were being given to the high-rise city block style.

Mackintosh had a mixed reaction, when opened, to the now world acclaimed Glasgow School of Art.

When he started it was at the cutting edge and when he had finished construction it was labelled out of date and old fashioned.

The students seemed to hate it. Fashions were changing.

We do see the change in Mackintosh designs over the years, some of his shapes become geometric and angular almost anticipating the modern style that was later phrased as Art Deco after the 1925 Exhibition of Art Decoratif in Paris.

It was obvious that he was misunderstood by a lot of his peers. Well how were they to know that his inspiration would help mould designs by Joseph Maria Olbrich and his colleagues at the Vienna Secessionist, into world changing principles of design that would metamorphose into the Weimar Werkstatte that in turn, would influence the Bauhaus?

And we wouldn’t let him build a cathedral.

Sir Charles Reilly who would later travel with Lutyens through India, was one of the founding fathers of the first school of Urban design in the country here in Liverpool, and no sooner had he got power, he sacked McNair.

Mackintosh in 1927 called him “A bombastic second rate professor”.

Reilly had a new style of Beaux Arts. He wanted to make the city the Athens of the North.

Ironic, or even Ionic that Mackintosh Architecture, in Glasgow, is now more famous than that of Alexander “Greek” Thomson who built monumental, where they also wanted to become the Athens of the, slightly further, North.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Thomson

Gavin Stamps who taught in Glasgow, says in his lecture of 9th November 1996 at the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool. “Thomson was the main ambassador of a revival style that never went away”
He went on to say that Glasgow has a grid pattern that links it closely with the style adopted in America.

Mackintosh would later go on to call Reilly, in a letter found in a letter, he said that “the American system was wrong and that Reilly did not even reproduce it effectively”, such was his hatred for the man who disliked Arts and Crafts yet wanted to be part of Lutyens.

Even though Lutyens early style was built around the same rustic ideals as that of Voysey albeit with a slightly differing tinge.

Lutyens was given a crack at the Catholic Cathedral though he only built the Crypt. Oh how I hated it, when they started the building of what Arthur Dooley christened Paddy’s Wigwam in the 70’s.

It was a whole scale shift away from the basic principles of the craftsman that previous generations had endeavoured to uphold.

It leaked like siv, like a giant colander. They tried to be different.

Maybe they too should have played safe with a recognised design, and built it out of sandstone, but it was done on the cheap.
I don’t hate it and there are a lot of people who now like it.
There is no accounting for taste. Jonathan Glancey called it a space rocket.

So what would a Mackintosh cathedral have been like?
What would have happened if Charles Rennie had been living here in Liverpool?

Would the ego of Charles Reilly with his rich patronage by the likes of Lord Leverhume the soap magnate have allowed it?

There is no doubt that some of his pupils such as Herbert Rowse left monuments for the future, in Reilly’s favoured Beaux Arts style. He later went on to adopt a Dutch style for the Philharmonic Hall.

But Mackintosh could create something special out of a couple of lengths of 3 by 2 joined together and made into a cabinet.

He had something that appeared unique with the enrichment of his designs with his Celtic roots and the ability to extract an emotion from a dead piece of timber, from a plank, and make it come alive.

There is something of the primeval about some of his designs that tap into the inner core.

Imagine him being let loose on a whole Cathedral.

However it was not to be and the city did not have a lasting legacy that would echo the links between the two great cities of Glasgow and Liverpool and their Celtic roots. The two cities at times, appear to be hued out of the same seam of sandstone that backbones the country. That gives them strength and resilience as if made from girders, that tackles adversity head on.

But how many towns are envious that Mackintosh was not one of theirs and never built for them. I must say I have a long lasting feeling that if we had a Cathedral that straddles the highest point on the Mersey by the Big Mac we would all be better off.

Was this the turning point for a career that could have taken him stratospheric to one of the greats and not just a house builder up north that, still, no matter where you look at it from, he inspired the whole of Europe.

I could ask a pertinent question.
 What did Charles Reilly build?

http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch_Mackintosh/summaryresults.fwx?searchterm=keyword+has+furniture&browseMode=on&browseSet=furniture+and+furniture+designs
Hunterian collection