NADFAS

I had gone to great lengths to make it to this NADFAS as I am on a mission to not miss any and despite the disappointing start to the year I was not going to let that influence me. So I changed rotas in the shop, re-booked deliveries, and left with plenty of time.  Nadfas is wonderful but it’s a daytime gig and that’s difficult if you work or have small children and that’s reflected in the average age of the audience. However, if you are able to be flexible or to find a babysitter I would highly recommend visiting your local group.  Anyway I parked in plenty of time, with plenty of change for the car park and headed towards the door feeling all righteous and smug. Then my phone rang, the shop was closed, my staff were sick and where did I want these beds! Ugh, 5 seconds more and I’d have switched off my phone. Ten minutes later I slid everything back into place and dashed in late again reminding myself to not be so cocky in future.

Today’s talk was about Hatshepsut by Lucia Gahlin, Egyptologist from the Petrie Museum.  It was enjoyable to hear her name properly pronounced as I have always referred to her as Happy Batshit, which I’m aware is lazy and disrespectful of me.  In order to set the scene the lecturer needed to stress how unusual it was to have a female ruler in Egypt and after many slides of bulls, athletes and mighty erections she rammed the point home. Egypt was a masculine culture ruled by men. Once that point was emphatically made and underlined twice we went on to discover how she had become pharaoh. This then descended into the most complicated family tree made worse by the fact that Pharaohs can have multiple wives and that sisters can marry brothers. Eventually we got to the point where Pharaoh Thutmose II  had died leaving his young son, Thutmose III, from his second wife as Pharaoh, and Hatshepsut, his first wife, as regent Pharaoh.  This had happened previously so there was precedence but in both cases the regent had been the uping Pharaoh’s actual mother and she stepped away from the role when the boy reached majority, and as he was Pharaoh that was pretty much whenever he wanted it to be.

Hatshepsut  was different though. She herself was the daughter of a Pharaoh, Thutmose I, was a wife of Amun, their chief God and first wife of the Pharaoh, these were powerful titles but as we have seen in a male dominated society these titles may have just been window dressing. In becoming ruler she either chose to do so and out-trumped the mother, or she stepped up to the challenge as the mother didn’t want to rule.  Given her subsequent rule I would say the former, she was born in power and lived in power, the death of her husband wasn’t going to prevent that but that is wild speculation based on a very cloudy glass.

The physical evidence of Hatshepsut’s reign is in her buildings and the words and images upon them as well as statues of her.  She is always depicted as Pharaoh alongside Thutmose III but most importantly as “first” Pharaoh. In all imagery of the pair of them she is named first and is always standing in the more powerful position.  Their joint rule appears harmonious and only ended on her death. At any point before that Thutmose could have called it a day but didn’t. Again we can only speculate. Maybe she was a power hungry tyrant as some would paint her but that holds no water on close inspection. Her power was only what she was given to her by a patriarchal society, had she been a problem she would have soon been made to step down.

It seems much more likely the young boy was growing up and enjoying being a teenager, total freedom, playing and fighting. Many images depict him as an athletic warrior. Maybe he went off to battle knowing he had a damned good regent running the country, maybe he was lazy and didn’t actually want the responsibility.  Again we don’t know, but what we do know is there was a time of stability and prosperity during this joint reign. We know that he was engaged in some large battles following her death and this could have been evidence of the  tight lead that she kept Thutmose on.  It could also be evidence that she was a great diplomat and peace keeper and without her rule enemies sought to take advantage.

We can see that the earliest depictions of her as Pharaoh are clearly as female but after about 7 years she starts to look identical to Thutmose III, she is shown wearing male dress, a beard and virtually flat chested. Doubtless as she was ruing at the time she approved of this image change.

Following her death all seems fine until about 25 years later when she is suddenly and comprehensively rubbed off the wall.  Her name and images where she was depicted as Pharaoh were chipped off, her statues were thrown into a ditch and covered over and every mention of her as a Pharaoh was removed. As a wife and daughter she remained in evidence but as a Pharaoh she was excised. For a long time it was suggested that this was evidence to prove that she was indeed a wicked tyrant from whose tyranny Thutmose III was glad to escape. One or two years maybe but 25? That speaks to me more of an inheritance issue looming. Maybe there was a very strong wife or daughter somewhere in the background and the powers that be didn’t want her to be able to claim any sort of precedent. Maybe, Thutmose III was growing petulant and senile and wanted to rewrite history. More likely the destruction came from Amenhotep II, his son.  Who can tell?

A hundred years ago we weren’t even aware of how powerful Hatshepsut actually was.  And before we start moaning about lack of evidence let’s remember that when she came to the throne the pyramids of Giza were already 1500 years old, her country had been flourishing during all that time. She came to the throne in c.1350BC. In Britain in this time we know that Britons lived in wooden huts, some of them built structures out of non interlacing stones and that’s pretty much it. We don’t know the name of a single person, let alone what they got up to, their history or the history of their nation. In fact the first named person living in Britain is Imanuentius mentioned by Caesar in his campaigns in 54BC. Prior to this we are a mystery and we have to rely on an invader to shed any light on us.  So if we are concerned that so much of this seems sketchy and prone to speculation we are talking 3000 years ago, 25 years give or take is within certain statistical  parameters.

One very interesting sidebar, and there were many in the lecture, was the discussion of the land of Punt and the imagery used to portray foreigners. Although Egyptians appear in a very formalised way, and require name tags to denote who is being represented they were far more descriptive in their portrayal of foreigners. One particular portrait is the queen of Punt, she is displayed as being vastly overweight, whether this was a positive, negative or neutral message is hard to say. What we do know about Punt was that it was viewed by the Egyptians as a land of milk and honey, with great resources and was the source of their incense.  Enjoyably we have no idea where Punt was. I imagine that the reason we have a culture of lost cities and and lands is because we have an actual history of lost cities and lands!

Links – 

Anyway the talk, maybe because the subject was so large or the talk time was shorter than usual this talk seemed “less” than others, nonetheless it was still interesting.  Through a range of portraits  that neither started with Hogarth nor ended with Hockney we looked at the progression of the mainstream British portrait, although not everyone was British.

To see the paintings better click on them. Each link will take you to a larger picture and a far more detailed discussion of the painter and painting.

Moving on to Hogarth we are in full English ascendency in fact Hogarth was almost xenophobic in his love of Britain. In his self portrait we see his books are by  Shakespeare, Swift and Milton. His dog features heavily being in the foreground and almost the same size.  We also see his line of beauty and grace depicted on a palette, this sweeping line is apparent throughout all his portraits. 

There are so many things to see in this paining but the one I like focusses on the cat.  The boy is smiling up at the goldfinch no doubt believing it is his playing that is making the bird cheep but we can see that in fact it’s the cat above.  The boy and the cat also have the same expression. But the last joke that Hogarth wants to make is to make us see what is going to happen next. The latch on the birdcage is undone, any second now the cat will pounce, the bird will flees and this perfect scene will descend into chaos. Incidentally the line of beauty in this portrait is depicted in the white apron pulled up and swept over the blue girl’s arm; a very deliberate arrangement.

Vivien was at pains to point out that portrait artists love to tell to stories about the sitters in the scene, painting are full of clues and allegories. You will always learn more about the sitter by looking in the background and the objects placed around them.

Sickert has done a lovely painting of a married couple called Ennui. Everything about the picture suggests how fed up the wife is of her life and how complacent the husband is about his. Clearly this wasn’t a commission but an artist beginning to paint to sell to whoever would buy his work.  Art was becoming more commercial.








We are also starting to see the rise of female artists, Laura Knight has done this wonderful portrait and self portrait in 1913. She has her back to us, her sitter has her back to us and is naked and then the painting itself also shows the back.  Three women all with their backs to the viewer. I love this picture, it’s so “so what!” but look how she draws attention to her tiny half profiled face. Despite it taking up very little space on the canvas we notice it instantly because it is set against white space and pops out. Just as a nice little touch she bought that cardigan at Penzance market.

Links – 

Finally arrived in good time, with my glasses and without interruption. So far, so good. Our speaker arrived and I was thrilled to see that he was a total dandy. Blue suede brogues with red laces, bright pink socks and a pale pink pocket  ‘kerchief. Brick coloured trousers, a checked shirt and a pin striped blazer, topped off with a spotted tie and horn rimmed glasses.  It was a magnificent display of confidence and style. I figured that the following talk was going to be entertaining.  And then we were off. Dr Bostwick was not just knowledgeable but also enthusiastic as well as rather eclectic and we rushed through staircases, hallways and chimneys. Front doors and windows stood open before our whirlwind tour of the shift in 16th century architecture. He spoke about Bess Hardwick as though she was an old friend and all the while he delivered his knowing commentary in an accent that brought Alan Bennett to mind. It felt familiar and gossipy and very entertaining indeed;  it also turned out to be very educational.

Little Moreton Hall c.156

Longleat House 1580

Little Moreton Hall was built in stages but was finalised to look how we see it today around 1560.  Compare that to Longleat Hall which was completed in in 1580, only twenty years apart and yet they look like they come from different centuries. Out with the old and in with the new. Architecturally, this was a time a massive developments.

There was a hell of a lot of stuff discussed but the following caught my attention.

The main door.  Rather like a church, you would enter a home at one end and progress to the other. The grander the house, you would climb a staircase to the main floor upstairs. By traversing the hall you had a sense of procession and a chance to view the wealth of the house as you approached your hosts. Over the decades though builders began to employ a symmetrical look to the front of the house but had to contend with the fact that the main door was deeply off kilter.  A wide range trompe l’oils were employed to try to balance things up. Francis Bacon believed houses were to be lived in rather than looked on and didn’t consider the issue important.

Stoneleigh

 

Bess Hardwick however revolutionised things and turned the main hallway 90 degrees with the door

in the centre of the house and the hallway running through the middle of the house towards a grand staircase at the rear where guests then walked up to the main hall upstairs.  This hall was so grand that Hardwick Hall was called more glass than brick.  It was also so cold in winter that Bess had  five sets of curtains on every window and found the main hall intolerably hot in summer. Thankfully the reception floor was only for entertaining, the family lived on the other floors that were far more hospitable.  Unfortunately a more recent resident of  Hardwick wasn’t as wise as Bess and tried to live mainly on the grand entertaining floor.  Eventually he too fled to the other floors.

So that was symmetry taken care of.  Then there was the start of perpendicular architecture. Obviously castles went up but most homes sprawled and grew sideways, tacking bits on here and there.  With the inclination for symmetry the houses began to rise.  The first obvious rise was the heraldic crests above doorways.  First the family crest. Then a local Lord’s or another family crest and finally at the top the royal crest, if you were very grand. After crests we had columns. Corinthian, topped by Ionian, topped by Doric. A reversal in importance over the family crests. Then windows began to conform to the sense of rising grandeur.

I also loved demonstrations of how our language has developed.  In the serving hall cups were placed on a side board for servants to fill and distribute.  This was the Cup Board. A collection of dinner plates or where everyone dined together was called a mess.

Bread was kept in the Pantry (pain try) Buttery (Bouteille) is where the bottles are kept.  A lot of our “Dignified” language comes from the French and our down to earth language is Saxon.  For example: animals as livestock is Saxon; pig / sheep / cow. But animals as food is from the French, pork / mutton / beef.

Finally, here is a very evocative piece of writing describing a female scholar and her chamber.

 

Lady Anne Clifford (1590 – 1676) distinguished herself, according to Edward Rainbowe (a contemporary scholar and preacher), by combining effective household management with effective textual management: 


“she would frequently bring out of the rich Store-house of her Memory, things new and old, sentences, or sayings of remark, which she had read or learned out of Authors, and with these her Walls, her Bed, her Hangings, and Furniture must be adorned; causing her Servants to write them in Papers, and her Maids to pin them up…. So that, though she had not many Books in her Chamber, yet it was dressed up with the flowers of a Library” 

Sadly there are no pictures of her room but maybe it was a bit like this?

So, a whistle stop tour and the bits and bobs that I got out of it.

The Foundations of Fashion – Kate Strasdin 

Well I’m just back from my first NADFAS talk. For a long time I’ve missed the lecture circuit and academic discussions and so it was nice to stumble across the National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies, recommended to me by a friend. I had managed to miss several talks and was most annoyed to miss The Treasures of Catherine the Great and The Architecture of Barcelona, so I was determined to not miss any more. You know how it is with work and families. It’s not made any easier by the fact that the talks are on a Wednesday afternoon, clashes with the auction house and the boys’ surf session (yes school is tough isn’t it?) and it’s over in Bodmin (BODFAS) so that takes more time out of the day. Anyway the joys of being self employed and having a great husband is that you can juggle things and so I headed off to The Secret History of Underwear.

I arrived early so that I could suss things out and instantly realised that I had left my glasses at home. Nothing for it but to sit at the front of a rather large room (lurking at the back is more my style but what can you do if you want to watch a slide show of beautifully digitized photos rather than a blurry shadow show). Anyway there I was quietly reading my book when a chap wandered over, introduced himself as the president and then somehow convinced me to lead the vote of thanks at the end to the speaker and say a few words about the talk. As he sauntered off to say hello to others I sat there in a state of shock. What had just happened? I hate talking in public, I stutter, garbled and often burst into tears of panic. To be honest, that usually detracts from what I am trying to say and rules me out of most people’s first choice of public speaker. Anyway as I sat in horror a rather lovely lady sat down next to me and started to chat about her wonderful grandchildren and how happy she was that the world was in good hands. In fact as I looked around I realised that the general population in the room was very well dressed and about two decades ahead of myself. Hmm.

Still the talk proceeded and it was fascinating. We started with the basic shift which everyone wore and its primary function was to preserve the over-clothes from sweaty bodies. After all 400 years ago a shift was a far easier garment to wash than wool and linen or silk and velvet. In fact the shift remained a mainstay for men, women and children alike until the start of this century with very little change. (Very little change in design, hopefully lots of changes in the laundry department) We saw examples of bodices made of straw and horsehair worn by working women and corsets made of silks and satins, often worn as over-garments in vibrant colours.

We looked at various paddings, bicep padding for Victorian ladies, calf padding for Georgian gentlemen and lots of other weird and wonderful garments to constantly re-shaping our silhouette. We discovered the meaning of “Charlie’s showing” when your slip is exposed. What was meant by “Red shoes, no knickers” but no one including the lecturer knew why the silt panel decoration on stocking is called the clocks. Although we all recognised the terms Knickers! Gussets, girdles and girders and finally over the shoulder boulder holders.

Towards the end she showed a liberty vest, an item that children commonly wore in the 50s that ad finally replaced the shift. It raised a laugh amongst the audience as they recoginsed a childhood staple. It was easy to thank her at the end and as I asked her if boys wore the vest as well? Before she had the chance to answer a large number of deep voices from the audience laughed and said yes, definitely. History in action!

The laughter helped me struggle to the end, and the applause gave me leave to return the mike and go and sit back down again. As soon as the light came on I scarpered bumping into a familiar face who complimented me on my bravery and recommended sitting at the back with her next time.