Fitzroy Tavern

A couple of weeks ago some classmates and I relaxed a little after completing paper number three. We are at the Fitzroy Tavern in Bloomsbury near the Institute. According to Wikipedia.com:

"A traditional pub that served as meeting place between the wars for a group of writers and artists who dubbed the area around Fitzroy Square and Charlotte St. 'Fitzrovia.' The 'Writers and Artists Bar' in the pub basement includes portraits of former patrons who included the poet Dylan Thomas, writer George Orwell and artist Augustus John."

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Kate, Carlotta, and me.

Kate, Carlotta, and Inga.

Theewes Claviorgan

I wrote my fourth essay about the claviorgan of 1579 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, made in the English workshop of Ludowijk Theewes, a Flemish immigrant to London. For those who don't know (and I didn't until a few weeks ago) a claviorgan is a combination of a harpsichord and an organ. In the pictures below, the harpsichord is the 'wing-shaped' object with its lid open. Not much survives except the outer case. My job was to describe the materials, construction, and decoration, sources for the designs, and Continental influences.

The main reason I've posted this is to give a context for something I got to do that was really exciting. In the course of researching the sources for the iconography on the harpsichord's lid, I got to look through a calligraphy book called Exercitatio Alphabetica by Clémens Perret, printed in Antwerp in 1569. So I got to page through this actual printed, intricately illustrated book from 1569 in the V&A Library. Of course, it had to be done within sight of the 'invigilation desk.' My description of the lid is below the pictures.

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The decoration of the harpsichord case is dominated by the painted details on the underside of the lid which, when opened, displays an integrated programme of classical and mannerist elements. The lid is divided visually into two sections: to the left is a plain, vertical rectangle painted bluish-green and framed in red, perhaps in preparation for a decorative scheme that remains forever uncompleted. Tracing the painted frame’s inner and outer perimetres are two slender yellow mouldings, and centred within it on all sides are four narrow, rectangular bars painted in black. Whilst all of these bars may have been intended to receive further ornamentation and inscriptions of some kind, only one, running vertically along the right-hand side, is complete; surrounded by painted strapwork made to imitate brass, it has become a plaque bearing the inscription ‘LODOWICUS • THEEWES • ME • FESIT • 1579.’

The second portion of the lid, the triangular area to the right, is much more complex, and can be broken down into three primary elements. First is a red background, bespeckled with painted, irregular holes to create the appearance of porosity. Next, and illusionistically positioned atop this, has been painted an asymmetrical strapwork frame, a substructure of curled and pierced brass supporting two pictorial cartouches and populated with various flora, fauna, and grotesques. Thirdly are the idyllic contents of the cartouches themselves: the large, round image to the left depicts Orpheus charming the animals in a scene from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and to the right, a much smaller oval contains a bucolic, though quite faded, landscape.

Visually less prominent but symbolically significant are the individual figural elements supported within the painted framework, including three monkeys, pairs each of sphinxes, birds, flaming grenades, and human and animal masks; gems, a vase of flowers, a winged snake, and beribboned festoons of fruits and leaves. On the sides of the case, concentric rectangles have been tooled into the leather in a possible attempt to imitate wooden mouldings, whilst the soundboard shows traces of floral decoration.

Burghley House

Click on the title above to go to the Web site for Burghley House.
This is a new feature in Blogger.
I also have a link to the site in Dr. Johnson's Links.

On Thursday a group from my class visited Burghley (pronounced Ber • lee, with the accent on the first syllable) House in Lincolnshire, which is about two hours north of London. Burghley House was built by Sir William Cecil on land granted to him by Queen Elizabeth I. He was her chief advisor. If you've ever seen the movie Elizabeth (1998), Sir William Cecil is played by Richard Attenborough. If you've never seen the movie, I recommend it highly!

Anyway, it's the most spectacular house we've seen so far. It's also the oldest. It was built in the sixteenth century (although it has been extensively modified since). Scenes from The DaVinci Code and Pride and Prejudice were filmed there. I haven't seen either movie yet, but now I've got to see them. Besides, I've heard Pride and Prejudice is an excellent film. As for The DaVinci Code, according to a brochure I picked up at the house:

"Burghley played numerous different locations in the film, including all the scenes representing the interior of Castile Gandolfo and many additional scenes. The film crew were on site for five weeks and scaffolding was erected along the whole south elevation of the House as well as the recreation of a bedroom twenty feet in the air in the Ash Yard. The park was also used for their main unit base in the area with over thirty trailer units and three hundred crew!"

The interior is indescribably ornate. It is filled with sculpture, furniture, ceramics, paintings, and tapestries, not to mention the architecture of the rooms themselves. Upon entering some rooms, so many things competed to draw my attention that attention could be paid to nothing. I might leave a room feeling as if I hadn't really seen anything! We were there to look at furniture and ceramics. We are scheduled to go back next semester to look at paintings.

One of the nice things about it was that it is closed to the public for the season except for a restaurant that is open year round (part of the house is still occupied by the owners). But the house was opened up especially for our group, so we had the whole place to ourselves without a lot of other tourists buzzing around. The question arose as to why they would close it in the winter, and the answer was that it costs too much to heat. There are one hundred rooms on the ground level alone. Of course, no pictures are allowed inside and I didn't have an opportunity to take many on the outside. I got a few, but they're not great. I'm posting them anyway.

The entrance to the house was through the original sixteenth-century kitchen. It was as big as most people's houses, with a Late Gothic-style vaulted stone ceiling. Apparently the kitchen was used into the nineteenth century, so most of the kitchen 'appliances' were newer than the kitchen itself. We were shown and inventory, written by hand in the seventeenth century, of all the objects in the house. Things have been added since, though, so it wasn't complete.

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Some Random Photos

The first image is a view of Canary Wharf from North Greenwich Station in the morning. The next few pictures are from Charing Cross Road in Soho. Following these, there are more pictures of Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column. I like the golden light. The last couple of dusky pictures were again from North Greenwich station. None of the buses in the photo are for me. I take the 472.

As of this week, leaves are still on the trees and, for the most part, still green. I meant to upload these last week, but was having trouble.

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