St Georges Everton.

St Georges Everton.

Everton was once a suburb of Liverpool and in the 1820's hat had a setting of what we would now think of as picture postcard.

Thomas Rickman, St Georges architect did not start out as an architect he had a journey that led him to design buildings that was quite unusual.

He was a pharmacist and a surgeon and also worked in the corn trade.

When he lent money to a friend who could not pay it back, he left his home town of Maidenhead and came to Liverpool looking for work in 1807.

After his second wife and their daughter died he seems to have been free to drift into different studies. Weather, geology, gas lighting, steam boats and drawing all got his attention. He may have been what we would now say, on the autistic spectrum, he was a meticulous accounts keeper. He painted and catalogued a whole army of toy soldiers probably lead.

Collecting engravings he began to study architecture and he studied and recorded Gothic churches and their ruined state.

In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures and was elected professor of architecture at the Liverpool Academy.

His friend Thomas Cragg owned the Mersey Iron Foundry and waxed lyrical about the use of cast iron in architecture.

Rickman sketched architectural details such as windows door frames and balustrades for him.

As simply as two friends talking Rickman began to draw a cast iron church, they were kindred spirits in design. His designs at this stage it could be said were not quite top work and were stiff in design. This was an early stage of iron construction.

Mr Atherton had promised £12,000 for the building of a church on the site of the old Liverpool lighthouse and on 29^th December 1812 a public meeting was called.

Rickman attended the meeting only to be shocked and astonished that Cragg was submitting a design of Rickmans own sketches.

This proved a master stroke as Mr Atherton gave the commission to the pair on the understanding that the exterior be built in stone and the interior be erected in cast iron.

This enabled them to pre fabricate the structure and bolt it together on-site.

One commentator stated that the structure 'exhibited a very marked advance upon anything previously attempted in Liverpool-the tone character and motif of every part being derived from a careful study of ancient examples'.

Gothic architecture at the time had a wide breadth ranging from Norman to Henry VIII.

Architects could do what they liked with it.

Some Gothic structures were a derision of classical wrapped up in a confused fusion of many differing styles.

Iron was cutting edge at the time and when we analyse it, there appears to be that the medieval oak and stone ribs of ancient times were being replaced by slender columns of iron.

With an ease of construction this was being explored well ahead of Ruskin's eloquent dissecting of Iron's pros and cons and how it would fit into the modern forms of construction in his Seven Lamps of Architecture.

The challenge in the blending of the old with the new is something we now take for granted as it all looks old now but the debate would be intense.

Rickman began to publish papers in Liverpool showing his understanding of his work that were to be inspiring to others.

An attempt to discriminate the styles of English architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation, proceeded by a sketch of the Grecian and Roman Orders, with notes on nearly 500 English Buildings was published in 1817.

Years later Ferguson was to write ' by a simple and easy classification Rickman reduced to order what before was simple chaos to all minds'.

So the Gothic was born of Rickmans work and was championed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.

Cragg also built St Micheals in 1814 with even more iron used. Many of the mouldings were from St Georges. The exterior is of brick. Parapets and finials of iron. It was called “the cast iron church”. St Philips in Hardman Street followed in 1816. From these three buildings stems the seed of the prefabricated cast iron church and the onset of mass production so from this little acorn of an idea buildings were shipped all over the world. Some sections could be replicated over and over again, and from a single mould.

At a time of great expansions in cities nationwide it came at a very convenient time to produce quickly churches for the masses. This need was combined by the “Million pound Act” to get ecclesiastical buildings erected quickly to educate the masses coming in from the fields no doubt.

Rickman worked with John Foster junior on a commission for St Martins which is no longer standing.

Foster was not a purveyor of the Gothic style.

I did not realise when as a young boy, along with the rest of the class, as we were led into the church like little lambs, silent lambs, from the side directly adjacent to the school of St Georges how important it was.

It was a solid building that wrapped around you with protective care, friendly and self assured, we didn't know we were poor.

As a small child born into a two up two down, the first sight of a church interior is awe inspiring. The scale those uprights supporting the roof were like giant pines reaching for the heavens.

The play of light through the bejewelling of the stained glass with its storytelling panels was always designed to bring you to a subservient situation. The torch of coloured beams searching, and finding you, in between the columns of pews. I still remember to this day my first sighting of the interior of St Georges with the angelic sound of choristers raising your spirit, bringing you closer to what you were told to believe in. Those pointed arches and the fine and light decorated tracery. I did not know I was in one of the most important churches in the country. I remember my neighbour staring up at me and winking to me as I showered him and his newly married wife with a handful of confetti from the roof of the exterior porch. I remember the christening of my cousins and the crying over the font when touched with that holy water from within.

I don't know if these memories that are torched into my mind are what made me understand that even in poverty you can still look up to the stars, and even though we were poor we were in the middle of an area of St Georges plateau that had great care and fine workmanship bestowed upon it.

I would often stop at Everton Library on the way home, that is still standing and hopefully will be restored soon. Unfortunately The Luftwaffe didn't understand the maintenance programme of our architectural stock, and blitzed the gubbings out of it.

Most of the stained glass was destroyed in the Second World War survivor is a window dated 1863 by A. Gibbs. The glass in the east window dates from 1952 and is by Shrigley and Hunt.

The original chair frame bell was made by Ainsworth of Warrington. It was restored in 1937 by George Eccles but vandalised in the late 1960s. The present clock was made by Smiths of Clerkenwell and installed in 1973.

In the next street to our humble abode was Our Lady's, the beginnings of the church that was to rival St Peters in Rome. The chancel chapel was built, it was going to be massive. It was demolished in the 80's, how sad. It was a Pugin and Pugin design. This was the original site for what Arthur Dooley christened Paddy's Wigwam. St Georges may have been the most prominent structure on Liverpool's skyline prior to Gilbert Scott's Anglican sandstone Cathedral being built. How mariners will have been thankful to see the sight knowing they were safely home. Probably having been press ganged in the Baltic Triangle area, which was renowned for this form of kidnap to keep the seas highways safe for the British Empire.

There were other Pugin buildings that had fallen into disrepair, the wash house was a hive of soapy gargling conversation spun together by the washerwomen within. It was a social thing.

I would sometimes get a treat and be given a tanner and go over to the cubicle d public baths where someone in the next bathtub would sing “My name is Jack and I live in the Bath” as a take on the hit of the day.

The smell was a slightly carbolic one, that of cleanliness and running hot water was a luxury we did not have, nor an inside loo.

Mr Tyson the builder used to run a boys club in one of the buildings behind the steaming wash house.

I did not know we relied on charity and philanthropists. A caged football pitch was built in between the school and the house, on St Domingo Road, as somewhere the kids could play and we played 9 a side football, that was sometimes a little light on one side depending on how many turned up.

The Prodi dogs against the Cats we would all have enough incentive.

It was stupid I know now. How pathetic it seems now that there was such a monumental battle still ranging amongst the Popery and King Billy's lot.

It raged all around you people tried to indoctrinate you at an early age.

Though it did not take long for me to see through all that religious none-sense

And my church, my lovely little church was part of that too.

http://www.stgeorgeseverton.com/

The Mersey Tunnel-Art Deco Architecture In Liverpool.

The Mersey Tunnel Entrance’s

One of the world’s most ambitious engineering undertakings of the time.

The Mersey tunnels connecting Birkenhead and Wirral with Liverpool.

Opened by King George V on 18^th July 1934.

Extensive piling was required in the main vicinity of the entrance of the Liverpool side.

In 1715 gates were built across the mouth of the Pool at Canning Place to give Liverpool its first dock.

 Liverpool had been tidal up to the point of the entrance of the tunnel at that date.

The total cost was 7,750,000 pounds. The Ministry of Transport contributed 2,500,000.

In 1922 a report was put forward to table a motion for the appointment of a committee of six to enquire on a scheme to improve transport facilities

A bridge or a tunnel would be considered.

A bridge was to cost 10,550,000 pounds. This would add superficially and in the event of war would prove a vulnerable target.

The Port of Liverpool would then be inaccessible.

The tunnel was considered the best option. Winston Churchill, then at the Treasury, offered a change of heart and the 2,500,000 was finally agreed as capital for the project and permission was given to charge tolls for a period of no longer than 20 years.

They still charge today and the project flawed from the start has never paid its way.

Herbert Rowse was appointed architect to the Joint Tunnel committee in 1931.

 His former teacher Sir Charles Rielly complained that he had been set a thankless task and not being involved from the outset his work was compromised.

The Haymarket entrance had been sited wrong in his opinion, slightly to one side of the axis with St George’s Hall. 

Rowse had been set the task of decorating a hole in the ground.

“The engineer too often thinks he can call in a Architect to cover up his mistakes to add pretty things to hide them”.

Said the Liverpool Review in August 1934. I have to agree how much more symmetrical the whole area would look today if a proper process had been undertaken.

Rowse showed again that the style needed was an Art Deco style, which fitted in perfectly with interpretations of speed and function. 

This style also shows its American masculinity, which Rowse was also familiar with. Walter Gropius praised the functional dado of black glass and stainless steel, which ran through the tunnel for its simplicity. 

The Pegasus ornamentation sum up “a mood” of the time.

It looks almost like an Egyptian scarab design.

 Rowse would go Egyptian with The Georges Dock Ventilation.

The lights look as if Edgar Brandt had designed them in France.

The Birkenhead Entrance still retains its Pylon but the Pylon from the Liverpool side is said to be buried in a Council Yard.

 Wayne Colquhoun c2015

Lorenzl Bronze Figurine-Piece of the Week

 Lorenzl is a name that anyone familiar with Art Deco will instantly recognise.
 I used to think they were twee, but I am warming a bit to the better ones.
So what makes the better ones stand out.
Well its all about movement.
Often Lorenzl as sculptor tries too hard, but its an easy fix to be seduced by a beautiful dancing lady wanting to jump off the base.
I say that not meaning them in a sexy way because I don't believe that is the way they were intended, but more an emancipation of women some decades after the Suffragette movement had fought and won the vote.
 Most of my figurines that I have sold over the years, and there have been many of them, are actually bought by women, or at least they have the decision as they will be the ones who normally have to be  around them and not be upset or intimidated by the female form. This piece is often called Arabesque. No, I don't know why either. Maybe its her costume styling? She is certainly a bit slim for a belly dancer. See More Here
So what can you expect to pay for a Lorenzl in to days market? They have shot up in price the smaller ones seemed to be £250 forever and then as if overnight they went to £750 and beyond. a large version (68cm) of this sculpture recently made £8750 at a Christies South Kensington sale. But you need to look at around a thousand pounds to own a similar one to this beauty. But be careful there are art deco fakes out there.
 http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/jan/11/art.artsfeatures

Alexander Archipenko-Master of Modernism?

Alexander Archipenko's work at first glance and to fresh eyes of the 21^st century seems cliched and old hat.

This is because, like many artists such as Mondrian and numerous others that we thought of as modern, it has been copied over and over again by plagiarists.

So why does his name stand the test of time and be linked with some of the greats?

And where from where did his inspiration occur, was it original?

But in asking this question, we must remember that in the age it was made, there was a seed change that reflected a modernity, before the word had been invented.

Nobody was aware what would last at the time.

And this environment was fighting with the old.

Put in context of the Glasgow school with its entrallic and linear forms of new art or Art Nouveau, it is as if from another planet.

The Vienna Secessionists were moving the art nouveau of old and making the link to the Bauhaus.

Early in the century there were several experimentalists such as Picasso and Braque who were adopting new styles and these along with other modernists fed into each other and inspired all those who came around them.

Paris was the hub of the impressionists, but almost nothing could have seen this coming if you look at art from a decade earlier.

Much has been written about how they all may have tried to capture the primitive art of tribal masks and oceanic totem, with or without knowing what they were doing.

Picasso collage of 1912 “Still Life With Chair Caning” is tipped in, as the first time collage on paper was used.

The multi layered use of collage may have inspired Archipenko. Will we ever know?

Alexander Archipenko was born in Kiev in 1887. He died in 1964.

He studied in Kiev Art School from 1902 to 1905 but in 1906 he went to Moscow.

Archipenko left for Paris in 1908 where he visited the great museums.

He studied for a year in the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris where he started exhibiting, but his first one man Exhibition which was held in Hagen in 1910.

He also exhibited in Berlin and several other German cities.

Archipenko's work, it is said was a form of constructivism based on cubist forms and the parring down and streamlining of shape and form. His sculpto painting shows us a understanding of the inner phsyce. So it has been said.

Archipenko's grandfather was a Icon painter.

By inspiration he used a brilliance of colour, in his work. Deep reds, orange and gold which are dominant colours of the Novgorod School from where his inner inspiration probably came. His interpretation of these ancient forms into the secular makes his work seem even more provocative.

But also this shows us that it is those who believe, in image and who absorb the image of an icon, whether it be religious or secular are possibly accepting something similar in reflection.

Like his contemporaries such as Brancusi, who preceded him to Paris and Jacques Lipchitz who left Lithuania to study in Paris, but returned to Russia for Military service in 1912, he entered adventurous paths that had opened up for budding artists with the desire and dedication to succeed.

He replaced form with hollows and concave materials in these sculpto paintings that it was said he invented in the early twenties worked by incorporating and using metal and glass.

His use of cut conical shapes made the concavity that he desired.

This also worked in convex and his use of perspective was sometimes made simply with painted lines.

In 1914 he travelled to Nice where he saw out the war.

During this time his work was entrusted in storage to his friend Ferdinand Leger who was conscipted.

Though with his absence and lack of care for them, moisture entered the shed in Paris and his paper mache constructions were ruined.

In a separate storage some of his work that had been exhibited in America at the Royal Armoury show in New York were destroyed by long range German bombardment.

He was often ridiculed in France, as were quite a lot of the adventurists who we now see as pioneers of modern art.

Though when hostilities ceased he sent a lot of this accumulation of work to Germany and Switzerland.

He opened a school in Paris and taught others how to interpret his use of the experimental.

In the 1920's his work in Germany was thought akin to that of Picasso's, and his work entered numerous museum and gallery collections such as Essen, Mannheim, Frankfurt and Berlin.

His execution of a series of brilliantly coloured lithographs were produced by the Ernst Wasmuth publishing house.

In 1921 he closed down the Paris Atelier and moved to Berlin marryng a German sculptor Angelica Bruno-Schmitz.

In the same year Kandinsky arrived to the new 'hub' from Moscow and Chagall from Paris.

His work was amassed by collectors such as G. Falk from Geneva inculding polychromed plasters and terracotta sculptures along with work in Bronze.

Another misfortune destroyed a lot more of his work the “Entartete Kunst” exhibition of 1936 opened by Hitler and Goebbels that triggered a vast confiscation of works deemed degenerate. Thousands of works of art during this period were destroyed and lucrative works made auctions. Not many of Archopenko's work found its way onto the market and was lost.

He had moved to America in 1923 with his wife and on the voyage on the S.S Mongolia, with them were trunks laden with his work.

A lot of this work would be acquired by the Gugginheim Museum in 1956.

A second fortunate act was kind to his work when his patrons Mr and Mrs Goeritz who had bought a huge amount of his work, when new, sent it to Tel Aviv then in Palestine and thus it escaped the ravages of World war II. So did Archipenko, as there is no doubt what fate he would have met if he was still living in Germany when the Nazis came to power.

In 1955 and upto the death of Goeritz it was held in almost obscurity in vaults awaiting the family to gift most of the collection to Tel Aviv museum and in 1971 it finally opened with these works going on display.

In 1970 a retrospective of Archipenko's work was organised by Alfred Barr Jr and was held in the Museum of Modern Art. This cemented his role in modern sculpture.

I feel you have to look at the works in a different place inside your mind and take out all those works which have subliminally copied his, to see if it has any worth.

Yes I know art, like music is a culmination of what has gone before it and Archipenko himself absorbed much around him either by stealth or by default, but we still need to ask questions.

It is obvious that he believed in himself and needed to make a name for himself, either during his lifetime or at a later date.

So is he one of the most important artists of the first half of the twentieth century?

Or only one of the pieces in giant jigsaw?

That we are only still piecing together and will not understand the full picture for some time but in the meantime the Tel Aviv museum continues to display his work from the period 1910 to 1921 having over 30 pieces. So he is assured the continued attention, and maybe its fitting. 

This month February 2015 sees a pair of his paintings go on sale in New York.
 Portrait of a Woman with an estimate of $75,000 to $90,000, and Nude Torso,with a $75,000 to $225,000.

I myself look at these in image form in the catalogue and think, well its all in the name. And that name is Archipenko, and someone or some institution will probably pay the money.
Maybe the Tel Aviv institution may add them to their collection.

One think is certain, that his name will continue to be around for a long time.

But Modern Master......well I am not sure too about that.

Liverpool Antiques Roadshow 2015 Lutyens Crypt Transmission Dates

Filming in Liverpool at Lutyens Crypt for the Antiques Roadshow went well and there will be two programmes that should go on air 22nd March and 29th March respectively.
Among items discovered will be a World War One Death Plaque.
Oh and some glass panels.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/antiques-roadshow-what-amazing.html


Further Reading;
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/dead-mans-penny-edward-carter-preston.html

Signature Bespoke Has Opened In India Buildings.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Signature Bespoke.... now of India Buildings who have just opened here this week.

 They are to bring their own brand of made to measure tailoring to the beautiful Travertine Marble Holts Arcade of  India Buildings.

http://www.signaturebespoke.co.uk/

A UNIQUE TAILORING EXPERIENCE

Signature Bespoke's Haute couture service offers a unique tailoring experience, which allows you to create the look that expresses your personal style. The care and effort devoted to the tailoring of these hand made suits is what makes our garments so special. All our suits are examined continuously during their production while careful attention is given to each and every detail.

I wish them every success, the shop looks great.

Update; Though I offered them a warm welcome. I quickly found that the owner of the business could not sew a button on. They are what should be called Custom Tailors. Meaning they take the measurements and get the suit made abroad somewhere like China or Greece. 
This is all smoking mirrors. My ex girlfriend was a time served Tailoress with City and Guilds qualifications. This is an insult to word tailoring in my opinion.
 If you want to be fleeced well you had better get down there and see Coco. 
This is the worst sort of bluff. 

Ships At Anchor by Richard Parkes Bonington-One Of My Favourite Things.

This is one of my most favourite pictures.
Yes I know I love modernism and 20^th century art, but in a round about way this is the forerunner to those modernist pictures that we are all, now, so familiar with.
To my eye this may be a 19^th century work but it is as fresh, and bright, as if it had been painted last year.
Why?
Because most of being an artist is not just about being able to paint.
It is about being able to see.
You cant have one without the other.
I recall how after studying of an evening with life drawing for over a year, and then one day, as if by magic.
 I could see where I was going wrong.
(I threw all my previous work away).
Now, that to me is more important than seeing where one is going right.
Put into context I could suddenly see the shadows.
No not the light that is easy to see, but the shadows where light does not fall.
This is a very important time for an aspiring artist, and only studious practice will enable this talent to be captured on paper, or canvas.
Richard Parkes Bonington sees it all, in this small but beautiful oil painting, arguably the best in Liverpool Museums collection.
Then he adds a little bit of extra colour, which as if a magician, by slight of hand, he turns your gaze in a direction that he wants it to go, with a little dab of red here and there.
A lot can be said against modern art and its excuses for talent.
 But I still do not want to linger in the 19^th century for too long.
 A sheep on a hillside will mostly convey, well a sheep on a hillside to me.
Though as long as masterpieces like this are around I may cancal my taxi back to the 20^th Century, till a later hour.
I first discovered it at the now, ruined Sudley Art Gallery in Mossley Hill Liverpool. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html
It was, at that time, hung next to a Turner and I was at that age wondering what all the fuss about Turner was. (I went to see the film Mr Turner a few weeks ago. Didn't it go on a bit.)
I know what how all the theory about Turner has been played out.
Usually written by people who couldn't emulsion a wall I may add.
But where is all the fuss about Boningtons work.
Some of his work is a trifle sentimental, but its what he may have achieved that this, one of my favorite things, portrays.
Yes a ship at anchor on a becalmed sea, the sort of whimsical painting we all know.
But this to me has always touched me deeper than that. The way the light falls on the water and the way the composition is laid out is by the hands of a budding master. A painter who is completely self motivated to discover his own personal journey through light and shade.
Who knows where he would end up, would he challenge Turner or be thought more highly than John Constable, a national treasure. Or would he fizzle out to nothing. Over 200 years later we are still talking about the brush master and the small taste of what talent he had to offer in his short existence. And his impressionistic style.


Richard Parkes Bonington was born 1802 in Nottingham.
His father was the governor of Nottingham Jail who had strong political views and when he was arrested for riotous and disorderly conduct he had to step down.
He set up a ladies school that did not succeed later he set up a lace-making business. Nottingham of course was the countries lace making capital.
The factory was smashed up by Luddites who saw the coming of the industrial revolution as a risk to the way of life and saw the machines as a direct threat to their livelihoods.
Bonington senior seemed to have more in common with French views of life.
 France had gone through its own Revolution and the family headed there.
Richard Parkes Bonington began drawing at the age of six. At the age of sixteen he was painting Bologne Harbour in a way that does not show his young age and seems more from the hand of a mature artist than a teenager.

He took lessons.Thomas Gerten was an influence, I was recently shown an image of his water colour of Lindisfarne Priory. This was not a common occurrance that an artist of that date would use, a water colour, as a way to show off his skill, as a finished work and not a sketch that would be later used as a study for a oil painting.
In 1819 the Bonington family moved to Paris where Richard studied with Jaque Loiuse De Bead . He had taught Grull and his teaching was in the classical form.
Richard was off, here there and everywhere, it seems that every time he had a chance he painted.
He painted Churches in Normandy and then he would work them up in watercolour.

Bonnington made a brief return to England where its understood he saw work by Turner and returned to France in 1818. He seemed restless after this visit and he recorded that he was arguing with his tutors.
Around the same time Delacrioux.........who had also seen works by Turner was painting in a romantic style. Jerico............who painted The Raft Of The Medusa had seen The Fields Of Waterloo with Gods light bathing the soldiers on the field of battle some of who had perished.
This was turning a painting into a beacon of emotion.

In 1824 Boningtons painting Fishermen Near Bologne was exhibited at the Paris Salons.
Next to this work was a painting by John Constable entitled The Haywain.
Both won Gold medals along with another British artist, Anthony Van Dyck Copley Fielding. You could only be an artist with that name!!

One of my favorite things in the whole wide, is Richard Parkes Boningtons “Ships At Anchor” a small oil once owned by George Holt and now owned by Liverpool Museums, and on display at Sudley House.
Now a former shadow of itself. It seems the more money NML spend, the worse job they do under the leadership of its current director, this once hidden gem is now a pale shadow of its former self.
 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/sudley-house-why-have-liverpool-museums.html


It is known that Bonington and Turners lives were in paralell and Richard went to Venice at 24 years of age where he seems to come under the spell of Canalettos work.
His studies of The Rialto Bridge are not by a simple hand but an accomplished and steady application of art.
He paints The Ducal palace with its religious procession but my opinion He that this period he loses his freedom and freshness and although he gains confidence of brush.
 Though I would need to study his art a bit more before making any definite decision on this.



He literally meets Eugene Delacroix in a gallery and they become friends.
You can see the influence of both artists on each other.



In 1828 he gets sunstroke from working outside too often. John Lang, his quack physician sends him to Britain to get some air as this would be better for him than the south Of France.
He was not aware that he had tuberculosis and its  in Britain that he died at the age of 26 leaving behind a legacy of amazing work and a real sense of what could he have achieved if life had not dealt him such a cruel hand.
His influences are not always reported but for several decades later we would see the fashion of French painters depicting simple peasant folk with the same degree of skill as great leaders and hero's.



The French Impressionists would unknowingly or unwillingly be influenced by British Art. Boningtons legacy was great.
He at least that he helped to influence the seed change in France that changed the world.

He died so young and like James Dean, or Marilyn Monroe, we always wonder just what their talent could have achieved. 

See it hanging in the hall at Sudley Art Gallery.