Stepping into the Kettle’s Yard house, the space is showered with the beautiful June light. After spending much time here in the afternoons, I drew five objects and plants that particularly caught my eye.
My choices were influences by the house’s integration with nature — in any of the rooms one is greeted by how the artwork and furniture interact with the sunlight and the greenery… It became evident to me how integral this theme was to Jim Ede in the display of his collection here.
The most captivating rooms to me are those located on the first floor of the cottages. Upon entering the Dancer Room from the modern extension, I am immediately fascinated by a unique, cylindrical chair — the Kubbestol. This traditional Scandinavian design is created from the hollowing of a tree trunk, and this chair is cushioned with a rush mat covered in animal hide. Unlike the other chairs in the Kettle’s Yard house, this one stood out to me as from afar it appears more like a drum than a seat. As I began to draw it, I found joy in the sloping outline of the reclined back as well as the intricate carvings around the perimeter of the base revealed through the wearing away of the original dark varnish. Through the incorporation of the natural cylindrical form of a tree into the chair’s design, it’s quite fitting to me that it sits just opposite a tall potted plant by a window — these two points almost ‘frame’ the room to echo the integral role nature plays in one’s experience of the space.
Four steps lead from the Dancer Room to the Bridge, and as one glances up it is hard to miss a charming character peering over from around a white beam. One of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s last works, Dog (1914), undoubtedly adds a sense of animation and character to the room.
Its emotion is impressively conveyed despite its simplistic, succinct design, which I hoped to capture in my drawing.
These avant-garde qualities reflect influences from the Vorticist movement (of which Gaudier-Brzeska was a part of by 1914), which took an interest in the modern machine age and championed a style dictated by abstracted, linear forms and geometric shapes. When drawing, I noticed how the form was dictated predominantly by outlines — the dark colour of the surface creates a beautiful silhouette against the white wall it is set against. Gaudier-Brzeska creates a sense of dynamism and movement by making the dog perch almost like a bird, with its hind lifted into the air — it is frozen in limbo between its coyness and curiosity towards the visitor. In a way, I felt the dog acts as a visual welcome as one ascends the steps leading to the Bechstein Room ahead. Dog adds a ‘homey’ quality to the room, with its presence being very fitting as its dark, earthy bronze surface interacts harmoniously with the earthy neutrals of the room.
Opposite Gaudier-Brzeska’s Dog is a large window covering the width of the wall, fronted with shelves and an array of potted plants. Their various shapes, sizes, and colours all reflect such unique, individual characters — I couldn’t help but notice how many of the stems and leaves dangle out of their pots, almost crawling into the room.
This sense of movement is emphasised in the summer afternoon light as claw-like shadows are cast onto the floor, visually extending this ‘spillage’ of nature into the house.
These shadows create a rhythmic pattern seeming to interact with the detail of the rug. However, a particular plant I felt prompted to draw went by somewhat unnoticed at first glance — it sits on the second-highest shelf in the right-hand corner. I was drawn to the repeating circular elements of the coin-shaped leaves and found interest in how they mirrored other circular features nearby, such as spheres of blown glass and a suspended clear disc.
Located to the left of this plant is a large plexiglass disc held in suspension in front of the plants, and I felt invited to look through this disc at both the view outside and the plants surrounding it. This is Disc (1960) by Gregorio Vardanega, who in 1959 began experimenting particularly with plexiglass spheres that explored the movement of light and its relationship with colour — all elements his work would become renowned for. These qualities are echoed in Disc, as it slowly rotates, emitting a flow of bouncing light while also providing a moving distortion of the various plants in the conservatory. When one looks through the disc, the centre magnifies the plants behind while elongating the image outwards towards its perimeter. While drawing, I found particular interest in representing these stretched forms near the edges of the disc.
Entering the Bechstein Room, my eyes automatically glance towards the small pot of flowers on the low table opposite the staircase from the ground floor. The flowers add a pop of colour to the room especially as they are situated by the large, black Bechstein piano. Their small, contained quality emphasise the grandeur of the stately instrument — it leads the eyes towards this crucial feature of the space, highlighting a key theme of this room: the combination of music and visual arts.
I found interest in representing the medley of flowers, stems, and leaves, with my favourite part to draw being the lone sunflower.
These arrangements of cut flowers are changed regularly, and so a sense of transience is given to this ‘time portal’ of a house. Here, Jim and Helen Ede’s legacy remains tangible, frozen in time through their collection — and these changing flowers serve as a reminder of how their vision for Kettle’s Yard still continues today.
Drawings and photographs by Vienna Zhang.