Tag Archives: Art Deco

Perth Museum, Scotland

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We visited the new Perth Museum a couple of weeks ago, it’s mainly for local interest I think and was opened because what had been an Edwardian concert hall was no longer fit for purpose, so it lay there, rotting and unused. Some thought the building should be demolished, but it has been repurposed, successfully. The big attraction is the Stone of Destiny which has been taken from Edinburgh Castle, but we had seen that before so didn’t bother with it, you had to book a ticket for a time slot . I took the photo below of the Pullar’s dye works and cleaners. It reminded me that in one of her books Deborah Devonshire mentioned that they used to send their evening gloves to this place to have them cleaned, and it was so famous the address was just PULLARS, PERTH. I think the building itself is one of those Edwardian, on the cusp of Art Deco, designs.

Art Deco Pullars, Perth, Scotland

The St Madoes standing stone was dug up from a field where it must have lain for years undisturbed, hence it being in unweathered condition, I think some of the designs on it look a bit Mackintosh-ish.

St Madoes stone, Perth Museum, Scotland

The swords were all found locally, possibly gifts for a river god, but there were so many battles around the Perthshire area they could just have been lost in battle. When I read a book about Montrose fairly recently I was amazed by how many villlages in Perthshire Montrose had ridden into that I had visited. Places where battles had been fought in the Civil War, or Wars of the Three Kingdoms as it now seems to be called.

Swords, Perth Museum, St Madoes

More finds, including an amazing leather shoe.

metal stuff ,shoe, Perth Museum, Scotland

In 1633 King Charles I did actually visit Scotland, and they had a bit of a do for him.

King Charles 1, Perth Museum, Scotland

Below is one of the costumes from that dance. I imagine it was a bit more colourful back in its day.

River dance , Perth Museum, Scotlandgarment

King Charles’ surcoat apparently, below.  There must have been a contrasting silk fabric showing through the slashes originally I think.

King's surcoat, Perth museum, Scotland

These neolithic carved stone balls which must have taken ages to make are a mystery, they’ve been found in lots of places in Scotland, but what were they used for?

Stone Balls, Perth museum, Scotland

There was a ‘Unicorn’ exhibition on the top floor of the museum, but that had to be paid for separately and as neither of us are much into unicorns we didn’t bother to visit it.

Murder in a Heatwave – short stories

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Murder in a Heatwave is a compilation of ten vintage crime short stories. I was attracted by the bookcover which was on display in a charity shop, so art deco.

The authors are: Dorothy L. Sayers, Rex Stout, Arthur Conan Doyle, Carter Dickson, Baroness Orczy, Michael Innes, Julian Symons, Ethel Lina White, Margery Allingham and surprisngly Ian Rankin.

I had read all of the authors before, except Baroness Orczy and although I’m not a huge fan of short stories I enjoyed most of them. I wasn’t massively taken with the Rex Stout story which is I think the longest, and I have  a bit of a Conan Doyle phobia. I enjoyed The Mystery of the Russian Prince by Baroness Orczy, and I’ll definitely give one of her books a go.  A Good Hanging by Ian Rankin features the Edinburgh Festival and Rebus, it seems strange that he should count as classic crime, but that probably says more about me than anything else.

I think that the back cover is more art deco than the front.

After reading these stories all set in summer heat I’ll soon be going on to my Christmas/Winter themed books that I’ve been hoarding throughout the year. Fingers crossed they get me into the festive mood!

Lorient in Brittany, France

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We sailed into Lorient in Brittany on a Monday. Apparently shops in France shut on a Monday. I’ve spent a couple of holidays in France before and I don’t recall that at all, although they did have what seemed to us to be bizarre opening times. In Britain we just assume that shops should open at 9 am and close at 5.30 pm but it isn’t like that in other parts of the world. You would have thought though that any town that has a cruise ship containing nearly 1,000 passengers docking within a very short walking distance from ‘centre ville’ that the business owners might think it was a good idea to open up the shops, just for that Monday, but hmm, they don’t seem to think like that in France. The only shops open were bakeries and pharmacies. I think that France must have the biggest number of pharmacies of any country in the world. The photo below is of a typical street, complete with very tall plane trees. Well, I think that’s what they are.

a Street 1 Lorient

aStreet 2

Anyway, it was just nice to be able to stretch our legs properly after getting off the ship and Lorient is a lovely town – for window shopping. If I had known the town would be shut we would have arranged to go on one of the arranged trips to nearby Quimper, where that charming pottery originates, oh well, maybe next time we’re in that neighbourhood we’ll go there.

Below is a photo of the Hotel de Ville, I love fountains, I don’t know why we don’t have as many in the UK.

aHotel de Ville 3 fountains

It has a rather snazzy looking modern theatre.

aTheatre 1

Most of Lorient is quite modern, it was badly bombed during the war in 1943-44, but the Hotel Gabriel and tower below are quite historic. The Germans had their U-Boat headquarters in Lorient so it was always going to be a big target for the allies, they apparently dropped leaflets prior to the bombing campaign advising inhabitants to get out. It’s quiet depressing how nothing seems to change where human beings are concerned, we – or should I say – the powers that be just never learn and ordinary people just have to suffer it all.

aHotel Gabriel + tower
Despite being disappointed at fetching up in a more or less deserted town, it was only at this time that I began to really enjoy the cruise. The weather wasn’t great, it was quite chilly and we even got a wee smattering of rain, but Lorient has some beautiful planting and fountains and is obviously quite a wealthy area, going by the huge amount of yachts and boats moored there. The photo below shows just a tiny fraction of them.

ayachts in harbour

There’s quite a lot of art deco inspired modern architecture around. I especially liked the porthole windows in the building below.
aDeco 3

As we were leaving port on the Black Watch there was a nice looking wee town across the river from Lorient. I think it’s called Locmiquélic.

Locmiquélic

Tomorrow we’ll sail via the Bay of Biscay to Getxo in Spain, the port for Bilbao, where things get much better.

The Age of Glamour

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Last night I watched a programme on BBC4 called Glamour’s Golden Age which seems to be part of a new series. If you missed it and you are into 1920-30s design, I recommend that you catch it on the i-player.

I love everything about that era, well – obviously not the T.B., Diphtheria and Rickets sort of stuff, but you know what I mean.

The first building which I can remember seeing and thinking ‘art deco’ was The Midland Hotel in Morecambe. It was about 1969 and as I recall the hotel looked pretty sad and delapidated at that time. However it’s fab now – must have cost a fortune to refurbish it.

I saw the De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea about 1979. Similar story there and I think it has been refurbished twice since then. That is the down side to art deco (modernist) buildings, if you don’t keep them looking really buffed, they quickly begin to look horrific.

The fashions looked wonderful too but definitely not for the heftier figure.

The posters were fantastic as well.

The 1938 Empire Exhibition was held in Glasgow. It is a city full of fashion conscious artistic people and by the look of things they really pulled out all the stops for it. It’s just a pity that the weather let them down – as usual.

But it didn’t stop the visitors, well after all, we aren’t made of sugar. Unfortunately most of the buildings were just temporary structures, so there isn’t much evidence of the exhibition now. I think it would be great if they would rebuild Tait’s Tower. Tait is more famous for having designed Sydney Harbour Bridge.

However, I think my favourite building would have been The Atlantic Restaurant. Taking tea there must have been a wonderful experience, especially when you consider that most of the visitors would have been living in cramped tenements with outside toilets and gas-lights. It must have seemed like a glimpse of heaven to them.

There are fantastic colour pictures on flickr.

There are black and white pictures in this You Tube clip.