The Wellington Rooms-Liverpool’s Disgrace.

What is the point in letting this historic building rot?
Here is a picture taken in 1989 by Jeremy Hawthorn. It was used on calendar a couple of years past that was published by The Nerve.

How can this building be left to rot after a billion pounds of European objective one funding has been sloshing around over recent decades?

The city in talks of regeneration while this building, and many other, lay in a state of degeneration.

It’s easy to miss its façade as you drive along Mount Pleasant.

 The Wellington Rooms in Mount Pleasant were once described as a ‘house of mirth and revelry’.

They were erected after funds were raised by public subscription in 1815
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/
Pic as it appeared in NERVE magazine current issue 24 available from News from Nowhere Bold Street Liverpool

An Adaptation of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates of Athens, which was illustrated, in the influential publication, by Stuart and Revelt, entitled Antiquities of Athens.
It had a porch on one side for the setting down of sedan chairs. The Portico was originally open but was found to be draughty and a disfigurement to the original design was made in my opinion, with the blocking up.
A ballroom of some 80ft by 40ft it had a card room and a supper room.
It was thought to have been frequented by the upper classes, as subscription balls, assemblies and occasional fancy dress balls.

How that description conjures up the most remarkable images of Georgian Liverpool.

A Maritime City of tall masts, sundrenched sailors, rope-makers and barrow boys.

The Welly is from at the nucleus of Liverpool’s upward growth, from humble beginnings, of its gentrification, taking it to the city of its height in the early 20th century.
It is a descendant of bygone age of wigs and crinoline gowns and candlesticks and taverns.

I grew up with it being known as The Irish Centre in the 70s and 80s, and ignorant of these historic facts relating the building back to the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleons defeat by the then axis powers under the leadership of the Duke of Wellington.

In 2008 I highlighted its plight in a walkabout for the then Daily Post pleading for the then Liberal Democrat council to save it.

There were then ghastly plans put forward to develop it, by sticking a Rubik cube sort of extension on the back.

The plans looked more like a sketch on the back of a jerry-builders ciggy packet than a professionals work; thankfully they were rejected amid controversy.

2008 may have turned the nations perception of my town but being European Capital of Culture was also a curse because it turned into a culture of capital feeding frenzy, where property developers are helped to do the ordinary and the more difficult has to wait to fall down

Nothing has been done to stop the rot, and it is still the same building, only the deterioration seems to have been helped, by the lead on the roof going missing. What state inside to the plasterwork and its Adams style frieze?

On the English Heritage at risk register for as long as I can remember.

It is Grade II* listed.

The area director of EH should be ashamed of the record that Liverpool has for not looking after its Georgiana.

Though asking English Heritage to protect, with this planning department that in my opinion is a law unto itself, is like asking my mouse to look after my cat.

With a ineffectual conservation office we don’t stand a chance.

Now this great city has areas such as Duke Street with its swathes of beautiful simple three storey Georgian terraces that now look alien in their own environment after modern pastiche, or inferior designed student flats have been erected.

So what chance by this council under a Labour council of turning the tide of humiliation to our Georgian stock.

There may be developers crawling over it now. But look at the mess the council made with St Andrews Church on Rodney Street, after it was reported, was offloaded by the city council for a quid to a convicted fraudster.

Yes I know we have to move on but our history is our future.

Look at the restoration of Seymour Terrace; they certainly did a good job there.

Over the road on Hope Street, they throw a £20 million grant at the demolition of the Everyman culling it, with history bleeding out of its walls. They build a replica in its place, whether that will prove successful time will tell. But once you lose your history its lost forever. This is the town that knocked the Cavern Club down.
Next to this historic gem, and with objective one funding an extension was built on Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral built by the architect Gibbard,

The Oscar Niemeyer Basilica rip off, daubed by the effervescent card carrying communist, Arthur Dooley, Paddys Wigwam, while this wonderful little Georgian gem lies there, rotting, a forlorn looking Mausoleum to itself.

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

Go Billy Liddel Steaming Down The Middle.

I grew up with stories of footballing legends.

Roy of the Rovers was staple diet.

 You went with it, collecting football cards could swallow up all your earnings. Those hard earned pennies from minding the cars that parked down your road, every Saturday home game. It was a perk of living so close to Anfield.

The cars did not actually need minding, but it was a way of developing a interaction with people.

 It instilled inside you, from an early age, that if you put some time in, and you were polite,and you had a go, you could earn some money.

You would chase towards a car before your mate got there “Mind your car Sir” we always got a smile.

I remember one day a massive chrome encrusted Mercedes the likes of which you never saw on the terraced streets of Anfield parked down our street.

 I had to patiently wait till after the match had finished, but I got a shilling, the usual rate was a couple of pennies or maybe a tanner.

The takings always went up when we won the match.

 Saturday afternoons would be spent taking the results on Final Score which usually came up after the wrestling with Mick McManus and co, including  the strangely named Kendo Nagasaki. I always remember knowing Giant Haystacks, he was a bouncer on the Robin Hood camp disco in Prestatyn where you would be dragged for a holiday.

Although we didn't have a TV, until 1966 when a special effort was made because of  the World Cup.

 Those footie cards always seemed to have lots of swaps, you could just not get Roger Hunt.

I had loads of Tommy Smiths and Tommy Lawrence's but Roger Hunt was gold dust.

Last week I lingered in some family archives that I had been wanting to tidy up for over a decade and I come across a Liverpool Echo, and it was old.

7^th November 1957.

What was strange was that the front page was in colour, and emblazoned upon that front page was a hero of a generation before mine....Billy Liddel.

I thought Billy Liddle was a giant, as that's how he was always talked about.
The greatest goalscorer ever they said, and there it was in black and white and red all over, the statistics.
 It must have been my grandfathers, who I never knew. My Grandmother will have kept it. She would often sing out in chorus as if involuntarily Go Billy Liddel, steaming down the middle.
He was a hero. They immortalised him in pubs and factories all over the city. A working class hero was something to be.
Even Evertonian's respected him in the same way as we, with, the Dixie Dean.History is not only about posh art, its about the everyday.

 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/red-or-dead-i-turn-into-anorak.html

This is the week that Liverpool go seven points clear and although Man City have a few games in hand the next match, the Chelsea match is pivotal we could win the league. Alex Ferguson said the first thing he wanted to do was knock Liverpool off their perch. He must be sick as a parrot this week when ex Everton manager, David Moyes is sacked...the chosen one, by him.
It took 15 years for Moyes to get Everton in the Champions League, but he  has finally done it.
By resigning as Everton manager.
Chelsea have a new cat now, that's what they called their goalie in the 60's.
The Cat. I had a couple of footie cards of Peter Bonetti, The Cat, and a few Peter Osgood's.
You had to eat so much plastic tasting chewing gum and all you get is  a load of Martin Chivers.
 They must have sent all the Roger Hunts to London and sent the London strikers up here.

The Kop hero now of course is Suarez, who hasn't always done the right thing but he may be winning round most of his critics.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/suarez-scum-ashamed-to-be-liverpudlian.html

I read the paper as if it was the Whizzer, or whatever comic it was that that Roy of the Rovers always dribbled past one, then another , then he would dummy the goalkeeper and yeeeess, he scores.

I read on, and was alarmingly reminded that the paper I was reading, dated 1957 was a year that Liverpool were in the second division.
Then the great Bill Shankly arrived.

I am to have it framed, its history.

Liverpool Town Hall As A Giant Advertising Placard For Mobile Phones-How Tacky Is That?

It is with deep regret that my city council is being run by people who neither wish to or do indeed respect Liverpool's World Heritage Site.
It is hard to imagine at a time when Liverpool is on the Unesco "In Danger" List that this placement of an advertising hoarding on our Town Hall could be done.
Some time ago the Mayor Anderson helped me remove an advertisement for a giant advert for A Burger In A Bun next to the Listed Lyceum at the bottom of Bold Street.

I have today written to him asking how this unfortunate occasion has been sanctioned.

I wrote this for LPT at the time

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/lyceum-bold-street-whopper-job-well.html

Read the letter about illegal hoardings. click above 

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/lyceum-bold-street-liverpool-how-can.html

Mr Anderson,

It is very disappointing to note that Liverpool's town hall has been turned into a giant advertising placard for mobile phones.

I know you think that Liverpool's World Heritage Site status is no more than a plaque on the wall in the Town Hall and that the city is now about making money out of heritage sites, but this is a step too far.

You will recall agreeing with me that a advert for Burger King was inappropriate for the adjacent building to the Lyceum. You claimed to have it removed.

So how can you find this acceptable.

I am not aware of any planning applications for this event of placing a huge tacky advertisement in a WHS, which is also in a conservation area and on a listed building.

Would you please advise me of any planning applications that have been considered by the planning committee.

Would you also advise me who sanctioned this idea.

Also would you advise me how much is being paid by the advertisers.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Wayne Colquhoun.

Dr Christopher Dresser-STUDIES IN DESIGN. Published by Cassell, Petter and Galpin.

I was very pleased this week to acquire this Folio entitled STUDIES IN DESIGN by Christopher Dresser which is printed to the highest standards.

Though the binding is in a distressed state the plates inside are mostly as they were when the left Cassell, Petter and Galpin print works.

Each plate is frameable. Though I will never break up a book.   

It has been reprinted but as an original of 1876 It appears to be quite rare.

Its all been said about how far ahead Dresser's designs were.

Though a lot of them are now more esoteric than commercial there is no doubting his place in the history of design, not just in this country but in the world.

If my memory serves me correctly and I am typing this as I think, he collected glass for Louis Comfort Tiffany on his travels round the globe. Where he collected designs, quite a lot of them in the Japanese taste  Not all designs are actually by him, but by his studio. This was a common practice in Victorian times, as an example in today's terms, we can say, Lord Foster cant do all the drawings for all his architectural projects.

Here in splendid colour we can see the vibrancy and attention to detail that was applied in a Victorian age of heavy brown furniture.  If I also remember rightly I was once told by a learned authority that his father was a tax inspector in Liverpool.

I thought you may like to share the beauty of some of the plates. 

And I thought I would like to share it.

Click on the link below to read the e-book on line.

https://archive.org/details/Studiesdesign00Dres

Arts and Crafts Candlestick In The Manner of WAS Benson-Piece of the Week

Copper and Brass Arts and Crafts Candlestick. 

In the manner of WAS Benson.

This is a fantastic piece of design.

Reflect back to a time before electricity when a candlestick could be knocked over, so this design is counter-balanced with the round ball weight that is part of the design.

It was also designed to be carried in the hand and placed down safely.

10cm high by 24cm long

It is in overall good condition for its age.

 It has a few knocks but I would want to see this as it has been used. It would benefit from a bit of a polish. 

This is possibly a design by........ 

Carl Deffner was born 13 Oct 1856 in Esslingen. On 11 June 1892 he married Charlotte (Lolo) Schoenleber. Records show only one son for Carl and his wife, Karl "Max" Deffner (1900-1985) who was an engineer.   Deffner died in 1948.

Antique Dealers Are Breaking Up Their Brown Furniture To Keep Warm.

Up and down the country, they are burning their stock to keep warm.

Faced with one of the worst winters on record they have no option.

With gas prices at an all time high and electricity now a luxury, they have to make ends meet.

In an age when most Victorian tables are now cheaper to burn than buying coal and with massive warehouses to heat. 

There is only one option reduce storage costs by burning wardrobes. 

They are only worth a tenner at auction anyhow.

What the bloody 'ell has happened to Mahogany, Rosewood and Walnut this is ridiculous.

Antique furniture is now that cheap that you cant fuel your fire for less.

Can you believe it, the furniture retail index has dropped again for the umpteenth year on the run. Its crazy. One dealer I know had his pension tied up in quality stuff and he told me its worth a fifth of what it was.

It cant get any cheaper And Joe Public educated by Bargain Hunt are more interested in cheap and cheerful than quality.

Where is all the money going to? 

 MDF and chipboard rubbish? 

What is wrong with the public? What is wrong with the public's sense of reality when they would rather add to Sweden's balance of trade, while antique dealers are smashing up their chest of drawers, just to stay warm through this storm spread winter.

What’s more the same people complain that the high street is dying on its feet.

Cant you give them a break, they are hard working people who deserve to have food and clothes for their families. Some of them are second and third generation antique dealers, some even more. There may not be a fourth. What’s more the same people complain that the high street is dying on its feet.

And the great British public wont even give them a meagre crust.

Buy antiques now before they are all burnt.....or painted with Farrow and Ball.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Henry%20Sandons%20letter%20to%20the%20Times

Its all the same shops these days, they say. They love it when they go to France and find all those Brocante shops full of things that the French wont buy.

They bring pieces home, and tell everyone as if its a trophy, “Its French”. Then they go and add to China's economy and accessories it in John Lewis with stuff made by people paid two pound a month. While the local antique shops are disappearing and will soon become as rear as a glass cased Dodo.

Antique dealers are green they stop things being destroyed, they recycle.

Nowadays if you recycle a bit of wet cardboard or a squashed milk carton there is definitely someone who will give out a grant for it.

If the person running the recycling firm is a black, one legged lesbian well there are hundreds of thousands available. So where is the help for antique recyclers?

Where is the aid to stop them going to the wall, going out of business and allowing their shops to be taken over by charity shops, that get tax relief.

The same charity shops are generally full of the lower middle class trying to get the stuff before the antique dealers get it. 

There was recently one tweed suited  twerp on the Antique Road show, proud as punch that he had bought a vase worth two grand in a charity shop for £37.50. Grinning like a Cheshire Cat. “No £36.50” he corrected the valuer.

He should have been made to pay the charity that he robbed, back, or the staff in the shop who valued it, without getting a second opinion, should be made to pay.

Whatever the case, the charity was done out of a couple of grand while Billy Brewster wallowed in glory as if he was clever.

If it had of been forty five quid he wouldn’t have chanced it.

Just think how much Oxfam lose a year by not getting the prices right.

So mahogany and walnut is out of style and decades of furniture dealing experience does not count for a jot these days.

Most warehouse-men have burnt their Millers Guide years ago, to keep warm, because they are not worth the paper they are written on any more. They are so out of date, that it is hilarious, especially when someone comes into the shop trying to sell something quoting their prices.

Though its no joke when a member of the public comes in the shop taking about the table they bought 15 years ago for three hundred quid and says “There’s one in the Millers Guide for £550” and you have to tell them its worth a hundred if they are lucky.

So does anyone care if your heritage is broken up and burnt because its cheaper being used for cooking on a barbecue than charcoal.

The exception of course has been Art Deco furniture. 

This is strange as most of it that was made in England is, lets say, not the best quality.

Yes there are Epstein and Hille, but most of the stuff that passes for Art Deco may in fact be post war.

The look is there though. The blonde veneers seem to brighten up a room where mahogany will dull it.

But I still love a good grain, and I hope an appreciation for quality timber will be revived and it will come back.

But for now, Art Deco furniture and post war design is where the money has gone. It looks so modern in an apartment.

And when all the brown furniture has been burnt so dealers can stay warm,some bright spark will realise that a good patina is back in style, and everyone will run around buying Georgian again and it will all start all start to go up in price....only this time there may be less of it around.

Who will be the brave one who will hold their nerve and stack a warehouse high with good stock, the stuff they used to want years ago? Will they be the clever ones?

Because the stuff is for nothing it cant go any cheaper, though someone did said to me last year......and it has.   

WMF Art Nouveau Card Tray-Piece of the Week.

This is a nice Art Nouveau design on a pewter tray 22.5 cm long. It was made in Germany probably 1899, though they did continue designs up to the start of the First World War where they would have been making rather different styles that were not designed as tableware or decorative objects. The original name of the company is.

Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%BCrttembergische_Metallwarenfabrik

The Art Nouveau maidens hair merges with the entrallic floral decoration that is so typical of the period.

Though we in Britain helped to start the art nouveau style with our rediscovery of arts and crafts, the continental factories excelled at design. Though 20 years later the Bauhaus would industrialise design.

WMF will have been sold in the likes of Liberty in London.

  This is a nice way to own a piece of original Art Nouveau at a reasonable start price of maybe £250.

Liverpool Banksy To Be auctioned In London-Good Riddance

Well I have to say good riddance really. In my opinion this was never a Banksy. 
 This is a copy of a Banksy who in turn copied Brec Le Rat. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/blek-le-rat-this-is-not-a-banksy-811130.html
The invention of it being by the Urban Vandal Banksy was made up by journalists at the Liverpool Echo and the Liverpool Daily Ghost (Thank god someone put that bit of chip paper out of our misery, at least it stops them spreading lies)
Now we can all marvel at the reproduction of a Georgian Building that was basically rebuilt and has almost none of its originality. Though most would not be able to tell.
The ECHO have reported that it has been saved. Well they would, wouldn't they.
They say it is now to be auctioned off for charity.:
Stuart Howard of Ascot Property Group said: “If Banksy's Liverpool Rat could feasibly have remained on the Whitehouse pub, or even returned to the building, then we would have been happy to give it pride of place. “We took the advice of experts and it lead to the conclusion that this was simply not an option. “The piece has now been preserved and we will ensure that a number of fantastic Liverpool causes benefit from its sale.”One of the beneficiaries includes Litherland’s Rowan Park, a school for children with severe learning difficulties
It must be in a thousand pieces though.


Apparantly I valued it somewhere along the line.
 Funny I don't remember saying that it was worth a million to Andrew Rosthorne, of the Lancashire Magazine. 
I may have said a million people valued it at a pound. But where did that come from.
Its about as made up, as the whole spoof of it being an original when it is a caricature anachronism of a a bit of spray can on a wall. 
Banksy was a copyist of Brec Le Rat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blek_le_Rat in France anyway. 
http://www.thelancashiremagazine.co.uk/news/north-west/masked-men-will-auction-banksys-missing-liverpool-rat-at-a-futuristic-london-hotel/

He says:
After its disappearance, Wayne Colquhoun of the Liverpool Preservation Trust declared, ‘The Banksy is no more. It was worth a million pounds but they have destroyed it. The most important part of it, the head, was painted on to stucco. It can never be restored to its original condition. They would need rather a lot of Araldite to glue that back together.
‘Artwork by its very nature can never be replicated. You can never sum up the spirit of an original. Destroying an original Banksy to put in its place a copy is beyond a joke. It would be a repro. The boards below the head may have been saved but will be badly rotted as they were not marine ply and the glue of plywood disintegrates.’
Now the rat, or cat, is listed to be unveiled with seven other Banksy works in an auction for charity at a bizarre event to be staged on April 24 in the futuristic ME London hotel in The Strand.
The auction, in the £330.00 a night hotel designed by Foster and Parters, has been named Stealing Banksy? and opens after a press conference to be given by masked men and women described as ‘curators, restorers, and salvage teams’.

The Sincura Arts Club say, ‘Stealing Banksy? is the 2014 project exploring the social, legal and moral issues surrounding the sale of street art. Though we have been accused of many things during this project, we do not steal art nor do we condone any acts of wanted vandalism or theft. We do not own the pieces of art, nor encourage their removal and to date have made no financial gain from the sales of street art. If assigned to manage a piece of art we ensure the salvage, restoration and sale is carried out in a professional and sympathetic manner.
‘We perform extensive due diligence on each piece assigned to us to ensure there are no legal issues surround the ownership, removal or sale of the art. It should be noted that both Scotland Yard and the FBI have issued statements that there is no evidence of criminality involved in the removal or sales of our pieces.’
The Sincura Group claim to be ‘market leaders in VIP concierge, lifestyle, tickets and events’ and last summer said they had rescued Banksy’s famous No Ball Games graffito by cutting it away from the side of a shop in Turnpike Lane, Tottenham Green.
Tony Baxter, a director of Sincura, now says: ‘We are delighted to include the Liverpool Rat in our upcoming show as it represents one of Banksy’s most important pieces. We understand the lengths Ascot Property Group went to, to safely salvage the piece, which was no small feat given the level of damage. Without this work the piece would have been lost to the elements forever. By putting it on the market its sale will ensure both the piece’s longevity and benefit local charities.’

If the Liverpool Rat is sold by auction in London, funds have been promised to the Rowan Park school for children with severe learning difficulties at Litherland. The school’s business manager June King said, ‘We are thrilled that Ascot Property Group has thought of Rowan Park School when choosing a charity. We are in the process of building a community adventure play park for children with disabilities within the Sefton area. It is a massive undertaking and the first project of its kind in the area – with sandpits, water pumps, tunnels, zip-wires and all kind of other activities, all of which will be accessible to children with disabilities and their families.’

What I did say was.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/liverpool-banksy-destroyed-you-dirty-rat.html

Liverpool Banksy Destroyed-You Dirty Rat-Or Was It A Cat?

                      Now Here’s something to really get hacked off about.

 The Whitehouse Public House on the Corner of Duke Street Liverpool is in the Shadow of Gilbert Scott’s gigantic sandstone Cathedral and recently had become as Iconic a landmark after was claimed that the Graffiti artist Banksy hopped off a train and knocked a quick mural of a giant Rat in the dead of night on its facade. It was said this happened in 2004 and was then covered up in 2008 when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture.

The property had been left to decay and It was claimed it was to be preserved, after a repairs notice was served on the properties owners, but Liverpool is a city that is incapable of preserving anything of note these days be it old or new.

Then to make it worse they allow a modern landmark to be butchered in plain view with little or no consultation to the masses that pay their wages that feel this piece of modern art was done for them. 

Lets Butcher a Banksy, 
Now that’s real Culcha for yeh!

This was then written up by the pay per click website Liverpool Confidential
http://www.liverpoolconfidential.co.uk/Culture/Banksy-rat-liverpool-whitehouse-pub


All in all good riddance, its been a bit of controversial fun while its been there, but now if someone wants to pay money for a piece of garbage masquerading as art, well, there's no accounting for taste.
At least after we paid 300 grand through our taxes for its removal a charity may now benefit.

All this fuss over a spray daub by someone who copied Banksy who copied Brec Le Rat only in Liverpool!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/blek-le-rat-this-is-not-a-banksy-811130.html

La Piscine Roubaix-One Of My Favourite Things

You get around a bit and see things and then you think you have seen it all and cant have your socks blown off that easily, and then you come across a little gem like La Piscine.

I had been meaning to go for a decade and it always seemed a little out of the way and in a part of the world that you would not normally go to, unless you were in Brugges and its not far a detour to get there. Its an old industrial town that the world seems to have forgotten about, it seems to be a bit smog stained still from its past. Though it has a bit of your usual French style architecture a lot of it seems heavy and a little overworked. It seems a little like, well I wouldn't say Bradford, oops I just did, but I didn’t mean it. 

What I meant to say is that at one time it was a proud place with Civic pride and then the industry moved out and it fell down the pecking order. What all places with this past history is trying to do, is re-invent itself. Bilbao tried it and won. Liverpool copied the idea and failed with the museum of Liverpool that destroyed some of the cities most cherished views.

Roubaix has got a more difficult job. 

There are no cheap flights there is no tourist industry here and, why would you want to go there?

Well they have quietly created a gem a palace of pride in what appears at first drive, a barren wilderness.

And it is wonderful. After the approach that you take to get there and take in the underwhelming façade of La Piscine, what is after all a swimming baths, you get inside and it has everything.

We only had less than two hours but I wish I had a full day. 

I wish I would have been able to eat in the restaurant with its art Deco wrought iron balustrade that was lit with the sunlight that flooded in to the structure, through modernist style sky lights.

Now I have seen a few bits in my time. Sometimes being at a quality antique fair, I have been able to see thousands of items of beauty. You can sometimes see better, stuff, than what’s in most museums, especially if you discount how curators are like pack animals and follow the leader, and buy things that other curators or art journals say are needed.

There are curators who go out on a limb, but rather a lot of them fail, and they cant be allowed to fail because, curators are clever.....aren’t they?

Well this curator who put all this stuff together was clever. It is one surprise after another. Maybe its because the theme is Art Deco and French, but maybe its because they are just bloody good at their job, and have sewn together some magnificent things that are class, and not too pretentious, but have an unassuming sense of style, of what the period that I love has to offer.

We get the term Art Deco as a reworking of the 1925 Exposition Art Decoratif et Industrial in Paris. 

Someone or other, who may have been Bevis Hillier coined it.

This museum is both entertaining and absorbing.

 I sometimes like to think I know a bit but it was a tantalising, tingling of the senses that ensued that left me amazed. Combined with a sunny day, the sense of surprise that left me hunting for more. I was so disapointed when I had to leave, as I was on a work trip and needed to be somewhere else.

I will have to go back. I need to go back.

 Not just for some of the most amazing sculpture in a beautifully polychrome tiled swimming baths interior that was designed to be reflective and I don't mean looking back reflective I mean jewel like.

What it must have been like with water inside and beautiful French ladies in stylish bathing caps inside and around the pool, in its heyday I can only imagine, and I did.

Here it contains works of art by the likes of Paul Jouve, and the sculptor PomPom and my favourite, Rembrandt Bugatti ( the son of the furniture designer and brother of the car maker). These mix with lesser names that make you question what art means. There is a Jan Martel.

Can art, by a artist you have never had pumped up by a writer, be as good as a work by somebody you have never heard of. I know it can. You cant sell a dud to me.

The ceramics section was encompassing, not huge. 

There were ceramic works designed by the amazing French furniture designer Emile Jaques Rhulman for Sevres. 

Along with works by a ceramicist whose work I bought new a couple of years back in Lille, called Amina Roos.

There's the proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There are Picasso ceramics and a huge 8ft high pot that defies the art of firing.

Bit it is the way it all melts together that is the beauty of this place.

 I believe they were going to knock it down one at one time. It is my pleasurethat the did not.

From an age when swimming baths were palaces designed to be an experience just like cinemas and theatres were.

There were so many ceramics on show I have to go back.

 I used a whole memory stick photographing nearly every piece, but I need to go back and have lunch and take my time.

The whole area that houses the paintings would be worth a trip in itself but the experience of the whole is remarkable.

There are temporary exhibitions that are made to be contemporary and to attract people and give the whole experience a contemporary quality.

Who so ever is running this show has class and is not afraid to challenge.

Unlike the people running my local museums they understand that a museum experience should not be designed to resemble a penny arcade with flashing lights, or a creche were people can dump the noisy kids on to people who are studious in their approach to art and may be a little bit more serious than the “I don't know much about art but I know what I like brigade”

If you ever are within a hundred miles of this place, La Piscine in Roubaix Belgium, make sure you detour.
I guarantee you.
 It will be worth it.

 http://www.roubaix-lapiscine.com/

Sudley House-Why Have Liverpool Museums Ruined This Historic Gem?

I went along, as I do every now and the to Sudley art Gallery in Mossley Hill.

I first stumbled across it 25 years ago......a hidden gem.

That was before they ruined it.

 Now it is a shadow of itself, and in my opinion ruined. 

Where has all the art work gone. I wanted to see one of my favourite pictures, the small Bonnington that has hung there for decades.

I searched but I couldn’t find it. I was disappointed, but as I walked around it was evidence that this once hidden gem has been found by David “Fuzzy felt” Fleming the butcher of Liverpool Museums.

It seemed to have it all, at one time, it was bequeathed to the city and the merchant who left it to us must be turning in his grave at the uninviting mass that has now the remnants of the collection.

It was crammed with art, it was a hidden gem, that just needed a little polish every now and then, and now it isn’t. 

Why have they changed the character of this once grand institution. I know our museums need disabled access but the lift that has been fitted has taken up two exhibit rooms and is such a monstrous carbuncle that you have to question if the curators of this museum understand any thing about aesthetics.

 A modern contraption that must have cost a hundred grand. Has anyone used it?

It looks like someone has built a greenhouse in the middle of a room. Then two rooms are taken up further with no exhibits at all.

Upstairs is bland to say the least. Where has the Herbert MacNair furniture gone?

This was an amazing display. Not many people know the links with Liverpool and the Glasgow Four.

And what has happened to the Robert Anning Bell pieces? He designed for Della Robbia. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-della-robbia-pottery-by-peter-hyland.html

That were local. The Bates plaque that was on the wall.

 Where has that gone along with other works of art that sat beautifully in an elegant poise for all to see.

And why has a whole host of rooms now been devoted to rooms for kids to draw things that have nothing to do with the art contained, or, was contained, as they have been shipped out to make room for the new idea of creating a crèche.

Dump the kids on serious scholars so they cant learn anything seems to be the fashion.

I know we have to get our kids into museums I spent enough time bunking off school in the Walker Art Gallery, but why ruin it for the rest of us by aiming the collections for snotty nosed kids.

I saw one of them ready to strike the Godwin gong before little Johnnie Bratsville's mother took it off him.

Now little Johnnies mother didn’t look like she was taking a blind bit of notice of the exhibits.

Just killing time, getting the kids out of the house so the husband can watch the match or something like that. 

The Liverpool museums also put most of the Liverpool Herculaneum collection into permanent storage to hide our own history from us. Why?

80 million pounds they have spent in the last decade, well we spent it, its our money, our taxes. and they ruin the whole feel of this once wonderful museum.

It was here in Sudley House that I first saw the most beautiful work by Bonnington.

Had it been exhibited next to a Turner on purpose because of the quality and freshness of the work.

 I then went on to study some of his work and find out just how important the work was.

If he had lived he may have rivalled Turner. He was a traveller and went to take the light in France and was ahead of the impressionists, but had a realism that they could never achieve.

I marvelled at the simple brush strokes that created a sail or a buoy. 

How this man understood light and tone and colour, and in age without the things we take for granted.

He died so young but not before he had befriended some of the most important artists in France and exhibited there himself.

The art savagery that has taken place here at Sudley house is alarming.

It is ruined by the very people who are supposed to be protecting our heritage. Our museums.

And where is my Bonnington?

Now all I have, is a 6 by 4 postcard to remind me of the most wonderful little painting I have had the pleasure to sight.

Its probably in store they will say...well get it back and the rest of the stuff that have been taken out. Its vandalism on a institutional scale.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/herculaneum-pottery-held-by-liverpool.html

BBC Antiques Road Trip 24th February 2014

Charles Hanson is a character alright and the last time he came to my shop with the BBC Antiques Road Trip, it was funny.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b03wyp05/

 I couldn't resist taking the Charles out of Hanson and he is a good sport to have run with it.

All the wit and sarcasm was cut.

 They certainly wont show the damage he caused when he backed his car into a structural post in the garage.
It went on air 24th February.
 May be worth a look. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/antiques-road-trip-call-again-to-my.html

The crew were well entertained with Charles clowning around with his mothers hat on.

Save The Curzon-Old Swan Liverpool

This is a decent building a brick built Art Deco block that should not be demolished to make do for some B&Q shed that will only last 10 years.

We have yet to quantify all the 1930’s buildings in the city.

This is a really nice one that we should not let go.

We tend to think of saving old buildings like the Georgian or Victorian ones Only a few decades ago that these period properties were being demolished hand over fist and it took a while for attitudes to shift, when people started realising that the more that are lost the more we will regret it.

Ex Councillor Jan Clein has whose ward was Greenbank has expressed an interest in this strange planning application to demolish a decent Art Deco stylised structure.

Can we trust the Liverpool Conservation Office to respect this style of architecture when they cant even protect the Georgian. It may be hard.

It may have been mucked around with and had some naff shop signs and frontages slotted in. But this can all be put right.

The Futurist and the ABC on Lime Street are also at peril.

Does anyone care?

Save The Curzon.   Application No: 14PM/0257 Case Officer/Team: City North
Ward: Old Swan
Proposal:
To demolish former Cinema building.

Location: Applicant: Applicant Address: Agent (if any): Agent Address

599-607 Prescot TJ Morris Portal Way Quod Ingeni Building
Road Limited Liverpool 17 Broadwick Street
Liverpool L11 0JA London
L13 5XA W1F 0AX

See Also

http://oldswan.piczo.com/cinemas  

Big In Japan-My Shop Is Featured........In Japan.

Following the visit of a Japanese film crew late last year the programme Europe;Scenery of Water (yes that was the title) went out  on BS Japan.

Japans Judith Chalmers was doing the travel programme. She even bought something a rather nice vase with which had been painted well with a slightly oriental lady.

 Liverpool looks great the shop is featured at 00:26minutes  into the video and is on for about 10 minutes.
I may be dubbed. I even told a joke that I shouldn't have, when she asked me where I was born.
"Ten minutes from Liverpool F.C's ground in Anfield" I said. "I learnt to know the score from the crowds reaction. Hooray.......one nil. Hoorayyyy.....two nil.....Hoorray .....three nil, although it could be confusing when the meat pies arrived".
 To my amazement and relief, the crew all fell about laughing which is more than I can say happens when I tell it in Liverpool.

 I try to talk up Liverpool pottery and Herculaneum to be precise. Well someone has to do it, as Liverpool museums have given up on it.  http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/herculaneum-pottery-held-by-liverpool.html


 Liverpool Vision have put it on their You Tube channel

There you go..........Big in Japan watch it here http://youtu.be/hQ8NEa8h__M

The DELLA ROBBIA POTTERY by Peter Hyland

Peter Hyland called in today with a copy of his new book ‘THE DELLA ROBBIA POTTERY’

I had given him an image of a piece that I consider the best piece of Della Robbia that I have seen. I bought it in France.

Peter wrote the book The HERCULANEUM POTTERY Liverpool’s Forgotten Glory.

My image was not as high resolution as he needed for publication, which is a shame, but there you go. I love it.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/sirens-calling.html

The book is enriched with illustrations and on first glance it looks extremely comprehensive.
Della Robbia had a brief lifespan from 1894-1906. It was founded by Harold Rathbone.
Walter Crane attended a VIP ceremony at the Walker Art Gallery on 10th February 1894 when the prominent speaker Sir William Forwood spoke of the need to keep tradition with pottery and the applied arts on Merseyside. And he said he is pleased to think that Mr Rathbone and some members of his family had already made a departure in that direction.

In the same month Della Robbia opened.

You have to ask in retrospect why a pottery was formed, to produce wares of an antique Italian tradition than of a thrusting enterprise in a modern age.

Arts and Crafts had swept the country and we see at this time the same principles being laid down in numerous potteries the length and breath of the British Isles.

Liberty sold Della Robbia.

The Birkenhead based pottery had a retail outlet in Berry Street Liverpool.

Some of its pottery ladies would be trained at the Art Sheds under the influence of Herbert MacNair and his wife Francis MacDonald who were half of the Glasgow Four. The others being Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald.

CRM would submit a design for the proposed Anglican Cathedral.

Cassandra Annie Walker who is recognised as one of the top pottery ladies at Della Robbia must have fell under the influence of The Glasgow Style.

Her designs for the cover page of The Sphinx certainly bear that out.

That style would be swept away by Charles Reilly at the Liverpool School. He hated Art Nouveau and led the city into a Beaux Arts style, not only in his architectural teaching but also in the practice of applied arts and decoration.

The Della Robbia covers such a small period in the development of art and architecture on Merseyside, slightly idealised with sentimentality and rustic ideals.

This would be swept away with the industrial scale killing in the Great War that would employ methods of mass production that would later be employed in the domestic manufacture of almost everything.

Though it closed in 1906 we see through the beginnings of Della Robbia a microcosm of society and its ideals.

Della Robbia prices have been on the increase for a while now, but beware, as a potter, I see it as some of the worst pottery that should not have been let out of the workshops…and some of the best.

The pottery is an oxymoron of itself.

My personal opinion is that its rustic antique style is hiding, on a far too often occasion, bad workmanship.

Yet ‘Boy and Lanthorn’ a panel by Conrad Dressler which was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in 1895 is of the highest quality in design and workmanship.

Frank Watkin was the thrower. And Dressler was the chief designer and modeller until 1896. Carlo Manzoni took over the role in 1898.

It was quite a going concern.

There is a huge collection in the Williamson Art Gallery.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/williamson-art-gallery.html


They designed a fountain for the Savoy Hotel and a monumental fountain in Newsham Park with Hippocampus holding a monumental bowl aloft.

There are amazing pots and plaques and tile panels.

The main decorators were….well you will have to buy this well put together book that Peter has exhaustively compiled for your delectation.