60 happy customers

I should have posted this yesterday to coincide with St Davids Day but all things are a little on the late side here at Straker Towers. We have just returned from a delightful break in Pembrokeshire - a county I know well and love dearly, but just like Norfolk it takes an age to get there. You think you are almost there and bang! Another few hours to go.

My trusty Shell Guide and Pevsner always accompany me on such trips, nothing has been produced since that even comes close to them. One of the joys of the Shell Guides is doing a modern day comparison with the superb photographs of Edwin Smith or Piper - I am pleased to say that in Pembs not a lot has changed.  

I have not visited St Davids cathedral since I was a child and on this particular day it was absolutely deserted - my mission was to view the 60 heads in the cathedral quire. Now, it didn't help that I had recently watched the utterly brilliant MR James story The Stalls of Barchester........if you know the story you will of course know that carvings form a great part of this chilling tale. I was the only one creeping around the quire. It was dimly lit and the day was dreary - needless to say the carvings were amazing including those of the green man on the stall seats. I looked over my shoulder more than once I can tell you.

They are pristine and probably in the same condition as first carved over 500 years ago. Each about the size of a 50p piece.The majority are of human faces and about twenty are of the grotesque. People or animal? Not sure really, very similar to those stunning stone carvings at Kilpeck where I have lost many an hour in wonderment. The joy for me is wondering just what, who and why?

   

Market Finds No 18

A run on reading matter over the last few weeks - as per usual, the most expensive for the cost of a pint (and not your inflated London pints at that!). The norm is around a pound or two, sometimes less.

All of these were found in the book town of Hay on Wye in the cheaper less frequented back passages and nooks on our recent holiday jaunt. I was particularly pleased with Going Fishing (letters to a brother angler - 1925 Arrowsmith). I cannot speak highly enough of this book and to find two copies in one day is quite something. I was only recently recommended the book after leafing through friend Ferney's copy and took an instant liking to it. Some things are meant to be. Such lovely chapters as: A Norfolk Mill Pool, My Favourite Spot, Winter Roach, Catching and Cooking, Two Chubs and Another, The Verb to Stret-Peg, A Hint and some Animadversions, The Sixteenth, Sultry Days. The list of enticing chapters goes on and it is a superb read.

I have no intention of ever going trout fishing in the streams of Natal (signed presentation copy from the author Neville Nuttall), but who could resist a book with such a splendid jacket for £2? Not I.

England Parish Churches by Edwin Smith and Olive Cook just continues to fuel my passion for the country church and a superb guide to Canterbury Cathedral by Rena Gardiner for 50p. You can do no wrong with a Puffin Picture Book, especially if SR Badmin is involved and I need not tell you what a delight Follies, Grottos and Garden Buildings is.........splendid!    

The sweet curl of the Downs

Peggy Angus - The Three Bears, Furlongs 1945

I don't need to be persuaded to go on an adventure. Especially with good friend Demus to lovely East & West Sussex. The main item on our agenda was to visit the wonderful Towner Gallery in Eastbourne. It has been on my list to visit for a while and it was truly superb. All the better as the wonderful Peggy Angus exhibition was on - it is running until this Sunday, so not long left if you want to go.    

Peggy Angus - Carters of Poole tile

The Towner building was an architectural joy in itself - light, bright and roomy with an altogether good feel about the place. I could have spent all afternoon enjoying the view and wonderful weather from the art gallery cafe balcony, but we had much to fill our day. 

Peggy Angus - Carters of Poole tiles

I have written before of my liking for Peggy Angus - it all started with me getting to know the links that all my favourite artists had with each other (Ravilious, Bawden, Olive Cook, Edwin Smith) and finding an article some years ago that Olive Cook wrote in World of Interiors magazine on the house Peggy lived in called Furlongs. This, of course, was the house below Beddingham Hill on the South Downs so famously painted by Ravilious.

Peggy Angus - Carters of Poole tiles

I am lucky enough to own some of Peggy's tiles that she designed for Carters of Poole and use them every day, which I am sure she would approve of, as pot stands and the like. The one thing that struck me in the exhibition and those paintings on display in the Eric Ravilious room at The Towner was how frequently the same chairs (see Three Bears, above) feature in all the paintings. Whatever happened to them? They are slightly iconic in their own weird way - anyone know?  

Peggy Angus - Cuckmere Coast Guard Cottages 1947

Furlongs - Edwin Smith

I'll leave you with a quite wonderful bit of footage showing Peggy Angus singing in her house, Furlongs, filmed some years ago - I wonder what she would have made of all this attention relating to her work now?

  

Market Finds No 12

I have been a tad slack on the market finds front. I did manage to sneak in a little foraging whilst up in North Norfolk and here is what I came across - all for the cost of a few pints of ale.

I didn't expect to find such a good copy of the Shell Guide to Dorset - some lovely Edwin Smith photography and a little bit of Nash. Shame it wasn't the super 1935 edition that Paul Nash put together, but I am sure that copy is lurking on a market stall somewhere! 

Fish, Fishing and Fishermen by William Caine (Philip Allan 1927) has to be one of the loveliest angling books written. It is such a good read. I already have a well read copy, so this will go in the pile for presents or swapsies. 

Peggy's place

Furlongs 1953 - Edwin Smith

Furlongs 1961 - Edwin Smith

The ploughman homeward plods

Holkham, Norfolk 1970 - Edwin Smith