I walked through the leafier parts of Kensington west from the Natural History Museum:-

Through squares I scarcely know, Queen’s Gate Gardens, Cornwall Gardens, a market garden until the 1860s, with its grand French Renaissance apartment blocks at the end:-

Lexham Gardens:-

Stratford Studios:-

Abingdon Road (I think):-

To Edwardes Square, named after the family of Lord Kensington who sold the land to a developer Louis Leon Changeur in 1811:-

It was the first day when I experienced people not willing to shake hands, for fear of the plague.

I was tipped off by Nicholas Thomas who I met in the tube about the display Concealed Histories: Uncovering the Story of Nazi Looting which reveals the problematic provenance of objects in the Gilbert Collection.

This beaker is thought to have belonged to Alfred Pringsheim, a Professor of Mathematics at Munich University:-

A clock, which belonged to Nathan Fränkel, a clockmaker in Frankfurt:-

The third item are gates from a monastery in Kiev owned by the dealers, J&S Goldschmidt. Interestingly, it does not speculate how they had acquired such an amazing piece of eighteenth-century Russian goldwork:-

The exhibition brings to public attention the complex issues surrounding provenance. My only regret is that it does not reveal more. For example, the Snuffbox which was seized from Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, was given to the Frankfurt Museum. So, how and when was it sold to the Gilberts ?

Being in South Kensington, I thought I should call in on the small, but excellent exhibition, Landscape and Language, in the cases outside the National Art Library, about the way landscape, exploration, and topography have been reflected in, and inspired, artists’ books.

It begins with an early work by Richard Long – A Day’s Walk Past the Standing Stones of Penwith Peninsula, produced by the Coracle Press for Anthony d’Offay in 1990:-

Hamish Fulton was the other pioneer of the genre, with Twilight Horizons (1983) also produced by Coracle Press:-

Ian Hamilton Finlay had already collaborated with Simon Cutts who ran Coracle Press in a tiny book, Straks, published by Finlay in 1973:-

I liked the little self-published book by Stephen Willats documenting a walk in Roydon:-

Then, in a case all by itself, is Romilly Saumarez Smith, Newfoundland, a book of such refined photography (Verdi Yahooda), typography (Nicola Barnacle and Dan Edwards), layout and design, including anagrams by Gavin de Fiddli and M.M. Hamar Ritz that I am pleased to see it in such company:-

We started in Lucie Gledhill’s room, where she has collaborated with Kasia Wozniak, a photographer, who uses wet plate collodion-

We liked the work of Ikuko Iwamoto, a ceramic artist represented by Cavaliero Finn:-

Nina Bukvik:-

Rie Taniguchi:-

Last, the magnolia chandelier by Christopher and Nicola Cox:-

I’m really sad to read on Twitter of the death of Fiona MacCarthy – a wonderful, charming, life-enhancing writer and gregarious friend, who started life as a deb (see The Last Curtsey), then went to Oxford, worked as the design correspondent of the Guardian in the 1960s, married David Mellor, moved to Sheffield and, in 1989, published her startling and revelatory biography of Eric Gill, based on love of the subject and archival research. This was followed by William Morris in 1994, which won the Wolfson History Prize, Stanley Spencer in 1997, Byron in 2002 (she did a small exhibition about Byron at the NPG), Burne-Jones in 2012 and, most recently, Walter Gropius. All her books were enlivened by her deep interest in people and their foibles and a passionate engagement in the art and practice of design. So sad to lose her.

I have been asked whether or not it is appropriate for members of the public to attend the public inquiry about the future of the Bell Foundry. Here is the answer, as below. Yes, it is. I gather that there is a strong feeling on the part of our legal team that good public attendance by the public will help to demonstrate to the Inspector the strength of public feeling. I will hope to be there as much as possible myself.

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/02/29/a-date-for-the-bell-foundry-public-inquiry/

We had the second meeting yesterday of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry’s Development Board, which has been given the task of raising £150,000 by the beginning of May to fight the legal case. We’re off to a flying start with an anonymous gift of £25,000, another of £5,000, and a promise of another £25,000, but this still leaves another £95,000 to raise.

I am posting this in the hope that it might catch the attention of potential donors in Toronto, Philadelphia, New Zealand and other parts of the world who care about church bells. We need money ! All amounts great and small are welcome as it’s a way of showing support for the cause.

The funding is being collected by the United Kingdom Historic Building Preservation Trust. Sort code: 60-40-05. Account number: 32067062.

I had lunch yesterday in the Coal Office, a fine mid-nineteenth century building at the southern end of Coal Drops Yard, facing on to the canal. It’s thought to have been designed by Lewis Cubitt, the younger brother of Thomas, who was responsible for so much of the construction of Belgravia. Lewis built both London Bridge Railway Station in 1844 and then King’s Cross and the railway yards beyond it, including the Coal Office and Coal Drops Yard where coal from Yorkshire and the north-east was temporarily stored before being made available to the London market. The Coal Office was burnt out in 1985, but has now been restored as Tom Dixon’s headquarters and a fancy restaurant where you can eat tahini overlooking the gasometers and canal:-

I called in on Cathie Pilkington’s small, surreal and surprisingly intense exhibition upstairs in two small rooms at 44, Lexington Street, above Andrew Edmund’s print shop. She makes use of photographs by Pierre Molinier, a Surrealist erotic photographer whose work is easier to study in the accompanying booklet, and creates an atmosphere of dolls, blankets and bondage:-

Hearing John Summerson criticised from the pulpit of the Paul Mellon Centre more than twenty five years after his death made me feel tenderly towards his memory. Not that I knew him. But I was brought up to admire him from afar and remember seeing him in a Breton cap in the streets of Cambridge and walking at speed round the book stacks of the London Library when he was in his eighties: an Olympian figure, ‘Coolmore’ as John Betjeman always called him, the pseudonym that he used in his 1930s architectural journalism and which stuck to him because it conveyed his character of intellectual detachment. Nor do I think that bringing qualities of critical evaluation and judgment to the writing of architectural history is necessarily a bad thing, even if some of his judgments read quaintly after nearly seventy years.