EthicalDative

At Sir John Soane’s Museum (the former home of the 19th-century architect), London-based designers who embrace a maximalist aesthetic. From left: Fran Hickman, Martin Brudnizki, Beata Heuman, Rita Konig, Luke Edward Hall and Rifat Ozbek. Credit Photograph by Daniel Stier. Shot on location at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Photo assistants: Joshua Payne and Juan Patino.

[This entertaining article about contemporary UK interior designers has stunning photo illustrations. The excerpts I provide here are mere pointers to author Hass’s sprightly, scintillating text.]

“The English,” says Rita Konig…“have never been afraid to seem a little mad…” A longstanding delight in globe-spanning, era-leaping, florid kookiness sets the British apart… The island-bound English… have long prized ecumenical, brightly colored cheekiness… The result can be read today as a parody of highbrow semantics… Such barmy eclecticism resonates with the current generation of English designers… For [Rifat] Ozbek, such a mix telegraphs contemporary internationalism… Deeply saturated colors are a first gesture of liberation, says… Luke Edward Hall… “When it’s grim in the world, you want to challenge that quite strongly.”… “[Sibyl Colefax] knew that what matters most is not the color but the tone,” [John Fowler] says. “If it is vibrating at the right frequency, there is no limit to what you can use.”… The British have never bothered to neatly segregate representational patterns from the abstract…“In this country, we have rarely done what Americans do,” [Rita] Konig says. “We don’t call up a decorator and chuck out everything we have, see something on Pinterest and overnight become something new. We keep that wretched thing your grandmother gave you and make it fantastic.”

(Nancy Hass, “Long Live Eccentric English Design,” NYTimes, 2-11-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.

In the bicentenary of his birth, it’s time we looked again at the forward-thinking and influential ideas of the great Victorian, writes Daisy Dunn.

— Read on www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190207-was-ruskin-the-most-important-man-of-the-last-200-years

Indeed, Ruskin was not only an astute critic but a talented artist in his own right. He likened the “strong instinct” he felt to draw to the instinct to eat and drink. Drawings of gooseberry blossom and ragwort, mountains and clouds, minerals and birds, including an exquisite sulphur-crested cockatoo he sketched at the zoo, line the walls of the London exhibition. Art, he believed, should reflect nature.

(Daisy Dunn, “Was Ruskin the most important man of the last 200 years?”, BBC.com, 2-8-19)

(c) 2019 JMN.