A palatial pub

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Can there be any English building that has borrowed its style so readily and so widely as the pub (public house) or tavern. The first such buildings were essentially houses, and the subsequent purpose-built pubs followed the style of the periods in which they were built. So, many were thatched, timber-framed, tile hung, brick-built, stone-built, pargetted etc. Quite a few of these pubs from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century still stand and, where they haven't been converted into dwellings, still serve beer.

However, from the nineteenth century through into the twentieth pubs vied to attract customers. Two devices commonly employed were siting the pub on a corner so that it could be seen from two or more streets, and presenting a decorative exterior that attracted the eye and thence the customer. Backwards-looking styles were often favoured, particularly brick and timber-framing. Part-tiled exteriors that were showy (and durable) were also favoured. Many were decked out with the trappings of grand buildings, featuring towers, turrets, balconies, balusters and more. The other day I cam across an example of the latter in Islington, London.

The inspiration for the style of the Marquess tavern is clearly the eighteenth century English country house, the residence of the landed rich. It has a rusticated ground floor, a piano nobile with tall windows surmounted by alternating triangular and segmental pediments, smaller windows above and a balustrade hiding the low-pitched roof. The three-bay facade is divided up by giant Corinthian pilasters. Brick and painted stucco (no stone here) are the materials of choice. All this is, of course, a historicising veneer, a means by which to attract custom. It was built in 1854 and remains a pub today, a palatial pile in miniature in the tight streets of this north London borough.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Age, the past and the future

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An unfortunate characteristic of many older people is looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Psychologists have tried to explain this phenomenon. Some say it is because people experience emotions from the past more strongly than those from the present. Others argue that when judging the present people do it in relation to past experience, and that judgements made in the past (about the quality of films or the wholesomeness of food, for example) are inevitably made on the basis of  more limited experience (you were younger). Therefore, the argument goes, that which is judged is likely to have seemed better (and still seem so) compared with the present-day equivalent which is judged against much more experience of films or food. Then there are those who say that current judgements are made in the context of stresses, annoyances and difficulties that are air-brushed out of our memory of the past, so today inevitably compares badly with thirty or forty years ago. When I sense the approach of, "the past was always better, today is rubbish", frame of mind, I make a conscious effort to crush it because it's simply not so. Some things were better in the past, but many were worse.

From that you'll gather I'm someone who relishes the present and looks forward to the future. And I suppose that's why I don't like to see retro styles in architecture. Take today's photograph of a Thames-side building that I've become very familiar with in recent years. The landward side looks like it could have been the work of Walter Gropius, Eric Mendelsohn, Serge Chermayeff or any other architect influenced by the Bauhaus and the International Style of the 1920s and 1930s. The handling of the white walls, the black painted, wrap-around windows, the pilotis, the narrow stairwell windows, the glazed balconies, the lettering, the recessed entry and the use of glass bricks all illustrate the architect's knowledge and understanding of that which is emulated. However, the structure rests not on reinforced concrete but a steel frame and this building doesn't date from 1930 but from 1990. It is by the architectural firm of Troughton McAslan and Tim Brennan. Learned and interesting though the building is (and in a style that I like), I nonetheless have to ask why this retro look was chosen for a building in 1990? Why wasn't it built in a style of the time, or why didn't it use the vocabulary of the International Style in a new and original way, much as some Victorian and Edwardian architects used the vocabulary of Gothic and the Renaissance.

Looking back and copying a style seems to me to be a sterile exercise. It is commonplace in the speculative housing that disfigures our land, receives "official" blessing from Prince Charles through his Poundbury fantasy and his meddling in planning matters, and remains an attraction for architects such as Quinlan Terry.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shoes and fashion

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"And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish playwright, poet and essayist

Oscar Wilde's jaundiced observation on fashion will not find favour with those who design, sell and buy it. But, as ever with him, there are serious points within his outrageous and forceful remark. All fashion is transient and consequently, though "looks" re-appear periodically, it is concerned with changing the surface appearance of people and objects and coming up with a "new look". But, the simple fact is you can't do that for decades - centuries even - and always end up with something that is a pleasure to look at: so often fashion is most certainly "intolerable" in one way or another. Many people will object to this and say that fashion is fun, interesting, harmless. I would argue that it is wasteful of resources and, because its main purpose is to transfer money from the pocket of the consumer into those of the manufacturers and sellers, wasteful of our hard earned cash. Moreover, good design (not usually the same as fashion at all) is perfectly capable of investing products with innate (rather than superficial) qualities that will make us choose one thing over another. For more of my thoughts on fashion, style and design see this post called, appropriately enough, Fashion, Style and Design.

Today's photograph was taken near Covent Garden in London. What amazed me about this shop was the way the shoes were displayed like works of art or revered pieces in a museum. I was also intrigued by how similar most of them were. Clearly these are shoes that are designed to be looked at rather than worn in any utilitarian, work-a-day way. Wouldn't it be interesting to return to the shop in six months and test the veracity of Wilde's remark.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 205mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Heckington and the Decorated style of architecture

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"...one of the dozen or so grandest churches of Lincolnshire...a church remembered for Dec exuberance"
Pevsner, Buildings of England: Lincolnshire

The exterior of the church of St Andrew at Heckington, Lincolnshire, is beauty made stone. Some would say its spire is a little short, or, conversely, that its tower is a touch too big. Others would question the way the transepts fit into the body of the church. But none would deny the beauty of its pinnacles, the decoration of its buttresses, the 38 statues that adorn it, the inventive carving on its south porch, or the quality of its window tracery, particularly that of the east window. "Dec exuberance" sums it up nicely. However, the interior, after the splendours of what is outside, is somewhat disappointing. The Victorians scraped it too much. It is not without a few highlights though - the font of the 1300s, elaborate sedilia and piscina, and an Easter Sepulchre of the first order.

But what of the quotation at the start of this piece? Those without an interest in English Gothic architecture might be wondering about "Dec". Context suggests it might be short for decorative, but why then the capital "D"? In fact it is short for Decorated and refers to a style and period of architecture. The English architect, Thomas Rickman (1776-1841) was a self-taught and quite prolific builder of churches, who also took an antiquarian interest in the styles of the architecture of the Romanesque and Gothic churches that he found all across England. He categorised their architecture of the middle ages into four basic styles: Norman (1066-c.1190), Early English (c.1190 - c.1310), Decorated (c.1310-c.1390) and Perpendicular (c.1390-1485). Subsequent authors and ages have tinkered with the names and dates of this classification, and there are those who have pointed out its limitations. But for all its failings Rickman's original categories still stand up to scrutiny very well, and continue to be used by many laymen and academics.

So, today's photograph shows a significant and beautiful building of the Decorated period of English Gothic architecture, a style characterised by wider arches than Early English, the ogee arch, flamboyant and undulating lines and forms, crockets, naturalistic carving, fleurons, mouchettes and dagger-forms, chamfering and more. Heckington church is quite difficult to photograph in its entirety due to nearby buildings and closely planted trees. This shot, I felt, captured something of its essence, and shows its tower and spire, a buttress niche in the centre, and the top of the south porch on the right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510

Mode: Aperture Priority

Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)

F No: f6.3

Shutter Speed: 1/800

ISO: 100

Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV

Image Stabilisation: On

Op, Pop and The Avengers

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Here's the second of my 1960s-inspired images. The other week I bought a couple of inexpensive decorative pots for plants. One is black with white circles, the other white with black circles. My intention was to fill them with the "right" plants and display them side by side. I haven't decided what the right plants are yet - any suggestions welcome - so they are sitting in a cupboard waiting for inspiration to strike. When I was wondering what I could put into my 1960s still life these pots immediately came to mind.

I used the same pieces of black and white vinyl as in yesterday's shot, butted edge to edge, and placed one pot the right way up and the other upside down next to it. I moved them around with reference to the line in the surface they were on, and tried to get a good, asymmetrical, angular, semi-abstract composition that used the light to model the objects.

This is the best of my efforts. I've tried to achieve interest and balance. Unlike yesterday's image this one is in full colour! The image reminds me a little of the set designs that featured in the 1960s TV series, "The Avengers", with Diana Rigg (Mrs Peel) and Patrick McNee (Steed), that ran from 1965-1968. That series was particularly innovative in the way it incorporated ideas from Op Art and Pop Art into its design. The best episodes were like nothing else on TV at the time. This shot might be like nothing else you've seen on a photoblog for a while.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 0.8 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Thinking about the 1960s

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The other evening I came over all 1960s! I'd been listening to the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album, after which I moved on to "Magical Mystery Tour". Then, with the echoes of "If I needed someone" and "The fool on the hill" still reverberating, I settled down to read a chapter of Reyner Banham's "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age" (published in 1960). Despite its rather forbidding title this is a very readable account of the rise of the International Style. I needed to look again at his review of the Expressionist architecture of Amsterdam and Berlin in the period between 1914 and 1923, a development that ran counter to the emergent and increasingly dominant work of the early modern masters. I wanted to place this style of architecture, and the motivation behind it, against the Post-Modern and so-called "iconic" styles of recent years. Well, it's something to do on a cold winter evening!

However, my mind wandered off at a tangent, and I began to think again about the reasons why, in the pre-WW2 and post-WW2 years the International Style was so successful in continental Europe and the United States, but barely registered in Britain. And from that I started to speculate on whether the revolution in society, architecture, style and music that erupted in England in the 1960s was, in part, a reaction to being so far behind in art, architecture and design. Perhaps the creative people of our country raised their collective gaze from parochial concerns, looked abroad, and the move into modernity that had been achieved elsewhere finally registered. Maybe, at some level, the sudden flowering of Carnaby Street, "Swinging London", the Beatles etc., that in turn gave rise to British art, architecture and design that is now acknowledged as amongst the best in the world, can be linked to the slowness with which the modern age was accepted here.

Which brings me to today's photograph. The thoughts outlined above gave me the idea of doing a few shots that harked back to the 1960s - to Mary Quant and all that. Given my photographic track record there's no chance that I'll be photographing people a la David Bailey, but I did think I'd try a few still life shots and compositions that use that decade as the jumping off point. Perhaps you'll indulge me! Here's the first, of a white mortar and pestle on black and white vinyl, converted to black and white. Mortars and pestles, in my mind, made a return to wider use in the late 1960s, perhaps because, as well as people looking forwards, there was a backwards glance and a plundering of the past going on at the same time - think the satin uniforms on the cover of Sgt Pepper's. Why the conversion given the colour of the items in the shot? Well, the shadows had an orange tinge that detracted from my intention for the image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1.6
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

What goes around comes around

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No one who knows me would say I was at the leading edge of fashion. I search out boring, sludge-coloured clothes and moan if I can't find the same garments from one decade to the next. And yet, I was wearing trainers as casual footwear in 1970! I suppose someone will tell me that wasn't unusual back then, so to bolster my credentials (I think!) I will say they were white with turquoise stripes, were made by Dunlop, and they definitely weren't black and white baseball boots (which were quite fashionable at the time).

That's probably the last occasion I was in fashion. However, I do notice fashion, even if I don't wear it, and I'm now old enough to see styles and colours coming round for the second or third time. I went to buy a lampshade the other day. The shop I entered offered any colour you liked as long as it was beige. On display nearby were cushions in various shades of brown, cream, or brown and cream. Ah, I thought - we're back in the 1970s again! I'm also old enough to know that an object becomes fashionable as soon as everyone's got rid of the old, out-moded version. I predicted that stained glass details in house windows would make a come-back in the 1980s and 1990s, because in the 1970s people were throwing the Victorian and 1930s versions away with great disdain. But, I wouldn't have predicted the re-appearance of the mortar and pestle in kitchens. I'm sure there is a high-tech kitchen gizmo that whines and grinds and produces what this old-fashioned pairing does. Yet, many kitchens I know have a copy of the original article, including my own! Truly, what goes around, comes around.

The other week, I thought I'd combine 1970s colours with a shot of our mortar and pestle. I set up this still-life to provide an assortment of textures, colours, tones and shapes. As with recent images I put the collection on a mirror, and lit it with an on-camera TTL flash bounced off a home-made reflector. I used a 70mm macro lens (35mm equivalent), with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f18 at 1/80 second), ISO 100, with -1.0EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen