Sir John Soane's Stuff
Woke up feeling horribly stressed about the huge amount of work I have in the next two weeks and the fact that I have lost the folder with all the japanning designs I need to finish my panels and the logbook. The last history class of the seminar today consisted of a field trip to the John Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. I've no photos, since cameras aren't allowed, but there are a few pictures on the website, here and here, although none of them quite capture the claustrophobic weirdness of the place. All the photographs of it I've seen, including those in the guidebook, make it look much bigger than it actually is. I had visited several years ago, but retained little except an image of confusing excess. Visiting with a bit more knowledge and with a tutor who knows a good bit about the place made it a little more comprehensible. It is basically about one-and-a-half houses knocked together and built out and up, with
Soane was a very professional, innovative architect, and had a lot of interesting methods for bringing light into inner rooms and for secreting a lot of pictures in a small space. The breakfast room, under a shallow dome topped with a little glass lantern-light is studded with convex mirrors, and there are odd shaft allowing light to pass from one room to another and even gratings in the floor allowing light to pass down between floors. He also taught architectural pupils in the house, and the museum section was open to visitors, so there is a huge collection of architectural bits and pieces, cornices, finials, odd feet from statues, plaster casts of statues, models of houses, collections of medals, bronzes, cinerary urns (formerly full of Roman ashes), seals, and so forth, up to a huge alabaster sarcophagus in the basement, that must have been installed before that part of the house was built. The areas housing the collections are a warren of narrow passages, crammed with stuff,, with light-wells and shafts opening unexpectedly here and there, and paintings on panels that fold and unfold out, finally revealing a gallery open to the floor below. Every so often, there is a relatively normal room, like the drawing-room upstairs (tastefully done out with custard-yellow walls, and matching silk curtains trimmed in rhubarb-red) and the Greek vase-crammed dining room, but the overall effect is of a tiny Gormenghast, crammed into an ordinary terrace of London houses.
After this, with my knee killing me (forgot to bring my bloody stick), I had to go back to the college to hand in my chair essay. Got home feeling miserable and stressed, then started on the horrible little black varnished panel (simulating lacquer, and soon to be adorned with a horrible mockery of a beautiful piece of Japanese work). Suddenly, I hit on a combination of finishes that should work for the lacquer simulation, and then almost finished my large japanned panel. Feel much better about the whole thing. Hooray (sort of).
Soane was a very professional, innovative architect, and had a lot of interesting methods for bringing light into inner rooms and for secreting a lot of pictures in a small space. The breakfast room, under a shallow dome topped with a little glass lantern-light is studded with convex mirrors, and there are odd shaft allowing light to pass from one room to another and even gratings in the floor allowing light to pass down between floors. He also taught architectural pupils in the house, and the museum section was open to visitors, so there is a huge collection of architectural bits and pieces, cornices, finials, odd feet from statues, plaster casts of statues, models of houses, collections of medals, bronzes, cinerary urns (formerly full of Roman ashes), seals, and so forth, up to a huge alabaster sarcophagus in the basement, that must have been installed before that part of the house was built. The areas housing the collections are a warren of narrow passages, crammed with stuff,, with light-wells and shafts opening unexpectedly here and there, and paintings on panels that fold and unfold out, finally revealing a gallery open to the floor below. Every so often, there is a relatively normal room, like the drawing-room upstairs (tastefully done out with custard-yellow walls, and matching silk curtains trimmed in rhubarb-red) and the Greek vase-crammed dining room, but the overall effect is of a tiny Gormenghast, crammed into an ordinary terrace of London houses.
After this, with my knee killing me (forgot to bring my bloody stick), I had to go back to the college to hand in my chair essay. Got home feeling miserable and stressed, then started on the horrible little black varnished panel (simulating lacquer, and soon to be adorned with a horrible mockery of a beautiful piece of Japanese work). Suddenly, I hit on a combination of finishes that should work for the lacquer simulation, and then almost finished my large japanned panel. Feel much better about the whole thing. Hooray (sort of).