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What Estella saw
`In 1965 a woman died in an old house in Palace Green, a house she had lived in all her life. The house had once been the laundry of Kensington Palace but her parents had just been looking for a...
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In Estella’s house
In the previous post about Estella Canziani I showed you some of the pictures she painted or drew of the garden and the area around the house she lived in for her whole life. This week we’re...
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Markino returns: alone in this world
The recent Christmas post I did about Yoshio Markino, the Japanese artist who lived in Chelsea, reminded me that there were still some images I hadn’t used in a post, even though I wrote four about him...
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Louisa’s album, and other memories of an ancient house
Louisa Boscowen Goldsmid’s album is a threadbare scrapbook with a stained fabric cover. Inside it are a set of watercolours. Mrs Goldsmid was clearly an amateur but like other amateur artists featured...
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The Children’s Library murals: 1947 and afterwards
Today’s post requires another story about the archive life. Sometime in the late 1990s I found myself, with a couple of companions piloting a large trolley (with pneumatic tires, bought for...
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Christmas Days: a good read
One way or another reading has played a large part in my life, at home and at work, so it’s not surprising that I was given a calendar called Women Reading a few years ago (that’s pictures of women...
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Madame Bach Gladstone: water colours of a neighbourhood
Local Studies collections quite often contain water colour paintings by local residents. We’re all familiar with that trope of historical fiction and TV drama, the accomplished young lady who paints...
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Walter Greaves: postcards and photographs
Monochrome photographs of paintings are unsatisfactory in most cases. In my travels through archives and reference stores I have come across many old art books full of black and white images which have...
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Wartime paintings
This post is a kind of loose follow-up to the last one and also ties up with Westminster City Archives’ recent posts about wartime paintings. I’ve collected pictures by Josephine “Jo” Oakman, and...
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Quiet days: reading and sleeping
Quiet days on your own, or with close family. If you’re like me you’ve turned to books you’ve loved in the past. Sit quietly in a garden in a sheltered spot. After breakfast, or in the late...
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