Good at looking blog

Got the blues?

23/3/2014

Most of us experience some version of Sunday night or Monday morning blues at some point in our lives. But the blues aren’t always a sign of feeling down. Blues in music can be exuberant. Blue skies are rejuvenating. Blues can be life affirming and a welcome shock to the system.

Take this ultramarine cockerel by contemporary artist Katharina Fritsch. Standing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, it’s an unmissable wake-up call, a cock-a-doodle-doo of a "Good morning London!"

Hahn/Cock by Katharina Fritsch (2013)

And if it could speak, it might say “Come and see the Veronese exhibit at the National Gallery just behind me.” Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice displays around 50 of the sumptuous paintings by Paolo Veronese, one of the most renowned artists in 16th-century Venice.

The colours in his works are stunning, even after more than 450 years, and the fabrics and settings are lush and detailed.

The Conversion of Mary Magdalene by Paolo Veronese (1548)

So next time you’re feeling down, head to Trafalgar Square for a bit of colour therapy and embrace the blues.

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Lost & found at the V&A....

17/3/2014

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…a series inspired by my experiences as a volunteer Welcoming Ambassador at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Madam, breakfast is served

The restaurant at the V&A was originally a place for evening meals – for Victorian folk to get a reasonably priced bite to eat after work before wandering the collection to be educated in, and inspired by, what was good taste and what was bad.

For me, breakfast, not dinner, is the most inspiring meal of the day. These days, you can get a very decent breakfast in the Museum’s restaurant. And afterwards, you can wander the collection and marvel at objects inspired by the most inspirational meal of the day.

Breakfast table. W.64:1 to 3-1950. © V&A Images.

Start in the British Galleries, 4th floor, in a side gallery (room 118a), with a table from the mid-eighteenth century. Not just any table, but a mahogany breakfast table designed by Thomas Chippendale, furniture designer extraordinaire, and made by an unknown maker somewhere around 1760.

Apparently, Henry VIII had a walnut breakfast table in his Privy Chamber. In the 1700s, the rich and fashionable continued to have breakfast in their bedrooms, and tables were adapted to include storage for writing and reading, for those with multi-tasking skills.

Eggs are, of course, a staple of the Anglo-Saxon breakfast (although in the past both broth and sardines were popular, and our Continental neighbours in Germany and the Netherlands prefer hams and cheeses). The rich would have had cups for boiled eggs made of silver, but the designs were for everyone and were made in less expensive materials for the less wealthy.

This egg cup stand, also in room 118a, is from about 1790 and was made in moulded creamware, in a design probably originally made in Sheffield plate.

Egg cup stand. C.5 to F-1945. © V&A Images.

The Museum’s description notes that although the egg stand is elegant, a “minor drawback was the fact that the eggcup feet (which provided stability) had to be smaller than the bowls in order to lodge in the holes of the stand.” A bit of a fashion victim, then, but also a survivor. The creamware examples were vulnerable to breakage, so it is rare to have one intact as this one is.

You would need a toast rack to serve the toast. While in this part of the British Galleries, have a look at the toast rack in the Woolfson Gallery, room 118 – a stunning example of toast rack design in an unusual shape of a lyre.

This one is from 1790, not long after the toast rack first appeared on English breakfast tables, and is made of Sheffield plate (copper-plated silver).

Now consider what to wear to breakfast, and head to room 125b, case 3.

This dressing gown from the mid-nineteenth century would have been the perfect outfit – casual but beautiful and very warm (for those draughty houses). It’s made of jacquard woven silk, quilted and silk-lined, in a style of a frock coat.

Often, men wore these over their nightshirts if they had just jumped out of bed, but some put on their trousers and shirt first, then the dressing gown.

Breakfast attire can be even more outrageous, as in this dress of Dame Edna Everidge’s that pays homage to the Full English. You can see it in the Theatre and Performing Arts Gallery, a mini-museum within the V&A.

Complete with sausages, bacon, eggs and baked beans, the dress celebrates breakfast with the irreverent fervor this most humorous of meals deserves. Dame Edna (Barry Humphries’ ‘housewife superstar’ creation) said she felt like ‘a transport caff on legs’ wearing this.

Who knew that breakfast at the V&A could serve up such a sumptuous smorgasbord of delights?

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Got the blues?

Lost & found at the V&A....

Madam, breakfast is served

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