The concert itself was highly atmospheric. Janáček’s String Quartet no.2, ‘Intimate Letters’, written right at the end of his life when he had fallen tragically in love with Kamila Stösslová, who singing voice he had heard in the café of a Moravian bar. Movements from the quartet were interspersed with readings by Joely Richardson from the 700 letters he wrote her. Then a piano quintet by Erich Korngold a Moravian, who migrated to Hollywood and wrote the sound track for The Adventures of Robin Hood, with readings from Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka and Stefan Zweig: all the spiritual and psychological torment of writers in central Europe in the early part of the last century made Bloomsbury seem much less tortured.

We arrived at Charleston just in time to catch its new exhibition on the Omega Workshops, set up in 1913 after Fry’s Post-Impressionist exhibition to provide work for artists.

Duncan Grant, c.1910:-

Invitation card to an exhibition:-

An illustration to Roger Fry’s ‘The Artist as Decorator’:-

The advert for their pottery:-

A (beautiful) teacup designed by Roger Fry, made at Carter, Stabler & Adams:-

A pair of cupboard doors from Charleston after Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell moved their in 1916:-

Book covers in block printed paper:-

It closed in 1919.

Nothing could be nicer than tea at Charleston in the early autumn sun in the new courtyard next door to Jamie Fobert’s exhibition building, with Melvyn Tan and the Škampa Quartet practising a Janáček String Quartet in the barn:-

I went to the start of the Twentieth Century Society’s memorial event for Gavin Stamp, sadly only just long enough to hear Jonathan Meades’s magnificent, vehement paean, delivered in absentia from the Unité d’Habitation and to see unlikely films of Gavin singing the praises of the Birmingham New Street Signal Box, built in the heaviest brutalist style in 1964 and Ralph Erskine’s Byker Estate, which was perhaps a more likely place for him to admire for its communitarian principles. What came across from Ken Powell was the unpredictability of his taste, hating everything by Norman Foster and Jim Stirling, excoriating the work of Quinlan Terry at Downing, but admiring the work of Caruso St. John at Walsall and Nottingham. Most of all, he liked championing the underdog with robust and unpredictable independence.

We loved the new display of busts drawn from the Royal Academy’s stores and put together with intelligent irreverence by Cathie Pilkington and Alison Wilding. They are nearly all male ancestors in an immortal General Assembly.

It’s the death mask of Constable in the foreground:-

Although one is meant to view it as a ensemble, I found it hard not to try and identify some of the individual busts.

Sir Francis Grant was PRA in the 1860s and oversaw the move to Burlington House. His bust was done by his niece, Mary Grant:-

This is what he looked like in an accompanying photograph:-

Edward Armitage RA was a history painter. His bust (the one on the left) is by Sir Joseph Boehm Bt.:-

Sir Alfred Gilbert’s very recognisable bust of G.F Watts:-

Isabel Cholmeley, another female sculptor about whom nothing is apparently known, did a bust of John Gibson RA:-

The display is dominated by Dame Elisabeth Frink’s Goggle Head, the only work on loan;-

I called in this morning at The New Craftsman which opened its exhibition last night of work by a group of Orcadians, including the last person to make chair backs from straw, baskets by Mary Butcher and carved slate by Frances Pelly:-

Nice jewellery, too, by a non-Orcadian:-

One of the pleasures of being involved with the Royal Drawing School at this juncture is that, jointly with Thames & Hudson, it has just published a book, Ways of Drawing: Artists’ Perspectives and Practices, which includes a host of short essays by artists who have been involved with teaching at the School encapsulating their various ideas, beliefs and attitudes, and illustrated by a multiplicity of drawings by ex-students (plus works from the Royal Collection):-

My first act as the new chairman of the Royal Drawing School was to celebrate and congratulate the 139 Young Artists whose work is on display in the Drawing School’s gallery in Charlotte Road. They are mostly between the age of 15 and 18 and attend classes not just in Shoreditch, but also Trinity Buoy Wharf, the National Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum, Norwich and New Cumnock Town Hall. It’s an amazing programme, developing skills of expression, concentration and observation, which are valuable whether or not the students go on to art school:-

It was a pleasure to re-visit Dumfries House, the fifth Earl of Dumfries’s smart new house, designed for him by John Adam, the oldest of the three brothers Adam, who took over their father’s successful architectural practice after their father’s death in June 1748, with the possible additional involvement of his younger brother, Robert, who was in Italy for much of the time that the house was being designed, but who was named as party to the alterations to the final design agreed in February 1754. Maybe he tweaked the final design.

John was originally given the task in November 1748, was paid £22 1s. on 4 June 1750, and the first set of plans were submitted to Lord Burlington for his approbation in April 1751. On 19 March 1753, Lord Dumfries wrote to the Earl of Loudoun that ‘Mr. Adam has at last finished the plans and estimates for the new house’ and he bought two volumes of ‘Paladios Architecture’ on 19 July 1753. The contract for construction was signed on 19 May 1754.

I can maybe take a break from politics for a bit and return to architectural details. The policy seems clear: silence parliament; and then swamp the media with state-funded propaganda, promoted by H.M Treasury, singing the praises of cheap booze under No Deal. Unfortunately, the policy may work given the recent history of using social media to target swing voters, emphasising how horrid life under Corbyn is going to be. But, as I understand the psephology, it requires those people who remain passionately in favour of Brexit, whatever the consequences, to vote in favour of a Conservative/Brexit party coalition and swing from the benefits of a close relationship with Europe to preferring an American-style low wage, free market economy, regardless of long years of Austerity. As plenty of people have pointed out, one can’t disregard the possibility of this happening. But will all those traditional Labour voters in the north really swing to the Conservatives, irrespective of tribal loyalties, whilst much of the rest of the country, including many old-style, traditional tories, alienated by the extremism of what was their party, move across to the liberals and the Scots to the Scottish nationalists ? It will no doubt require more dirty money.