We spent New Year’s Day happily in Tate Britain:  not too many people;  an opportunity to see the Rachel Whiteread exhibition again, including the installation of Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) in the central Duveen galleries:-

To admire the detailing of the Duveen galleries, which were designed, as I understand it, by John Russell Pope, the neo-classical architect of the National Gallery of Art in Washington (but in conjunction with Romaine-Walker & Jenkins):-

And we were pleased to see what seems to be a later cast of Old Flo (or is it the original ?  there is no label), on loan from a private collection, together with a maquette:-

Happy New Year !

From Bunhill Fields, I walked past St. Luke, Old Street, one of the Fifty New Churches, with a nave thought to be by John James, but with an obelisk and west tower by his colleague, Nicholas Hawksmoor:-

A block of flats protesting in Norman Street:-

I admired the Greek Revival detailing on St. Clement’s, King Square by Philip Hardwick (1822):-

Beyond on Garnault Place is the southern extension of Finsbury Town Hall with its baroque detailing by Charles Evans-Vaughan:-

So, into Amwell Street:-

I ended up in Lloyd Square with its fine houses of the early 1830s, designed by W.J. Booth for the Lloyd Baker Estate:-

Since it was clear and sunny, I set out in a slightly aimless way having long intended to see Bunhill Fields.   I walked past Brady Street cemetery, no easier to photograph with a Leica than a mobile phone:-

Across Allen Gardens:-

Through Arnold Circus:-

I stopped for a poached egg at Ozone, a giant coffee shop which has come from New Zealand to Shoreditch:-

To Bunhill Fields, the nonconformist burial ground where one can find (but I didn’t) the tombs of Bunyan, Defoe, Isaac Watts and William Blake:-

We had lunch in Bedfordshire.   After lunch, I slipped out into the garden to admire the lawns lightly covered in snow:-

I went for a short walk to blow off the cobwebs of Christmas, reduce the fat of the Christmas pudding, and exercise the Leica.   Up the canal, as usual:-

Through Meath Gardens, which has an unexpected, pyramidal, brick gate pier:-

Past the railway bridge:-

Past the curious cemetery in Globe Road:-

And back past the flats:-

I have been forbidden from posting a picture of our Christmas tree, but have been allowed to post a photograph of the Christmas decorations on the staircase, a minor work of art, which I do with best Christmas wishes to all my readers, wherever you are, a highly select group, together with a picture of the curious creature on the top of the tree:-

It was as if a bomb had dropped on East London this morning, as if everyone was sleeping off a gigantic hangover which, of course, is always possible or has gone on holiday in the Azores:  nothing but the smell of wood smoke from the barges which is soon to be banned:-

I ended up in the Ceramics Galleries:-

I admired the small statuette of a Mourning Woman by Henry Cheere, done as a preparatory model for the tomb of Thomas Archer:-

And a bust of Napoleon done in 1805:-

In the Gilbert Bayes Sculpture Gallery (new to me), I admired the recumbent terracotta of Dr. Hugh Chamberlen by Scheemakers (c.1728):-

And the astonishing self-portrait of the Burslem potter, Enoch Wood:-

An ivory of the Countess of Sunderland by David Le Marchand:-

I had actually come to the V&A to see the reproductions of medieval tombstones in the Qala Quraysh fortress in Dagestan, which are displayed in the so-called Prince Consort Gallery, till recently the textile store room:-

I spent the morning in the V&A. I started in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries.

My eye was caught first by two hats, not particularly ornate, presumably those of a commoner, tossed away and somehow preserved, roughly five hundred years later:-

The Head of a Young Man by Michel Erhart, made out of limewood in Ulm:-

And the Descent from the Cross by Sansovino, made for Perugino when they were both in Rome:-

An angel by Riemenschneider:-

A Donatello Lamentation:-

Three angels by Giovanni Antonio Amadei:-