Category: Design and Engineering

Rolls Royce craftsmanship at The Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea.

6am on a cold Sunday morning and I am in Hyde Park with the Edwardian engineers dressed in period costume some have arrived on their Penny Farthings.

Today I am collecting my 1951 Porsche coupe from Maxted Page and Prill in Halsted. The coupe has just completed a six-year restoration thanks to my husbands hard work. As Andy would say ‘as rare as hens teeth’ one of only three built in 511 Grey, possibly the only survivor.

Cases and cases of ceramics in the quiet solitude of the V&A. Printed and painted, glazed and fired. Eighteenth and early nineteenth century pottery collates the whole the menagerie of Empire and the Colonies. Pictorial referencing captured by early industrial techniques redistributed amongst the newly formed merchant/middle class. The whole history and reaction to the industrial revolution and its consequences on society displayed on a cup in a show case in the V&A, heaven.

Formally, pattern and form, inside and outside, the edge the border, the accentuated line, texture and relief, the handle that dictates posture and etiquette, the saucer on a saucer, the art of revealing. All of these techniques can be applied to fashion.

Here is a place I often come to visit, the V&A glass displays on the upper floors by the members room. These floors are often deserted even when the lower galleries are full so I have lots of time to study every technique used through the ages. Colour and pattern, overlays, layering, reflections and distortions, all of these things exist in all of the applied arts but add the dimension of transparency and a whole new vocabulary transcends. The glass object is a three dimensional form that sucks in its surroundings and re-presents them as distortion and reflection. Each object offers its own subjective re-interpretation of its context. A story re-told as the light or viewer shifts position in an endless conversation. Aspects remind me of Romeo Gigli’s ghost collection.