26 rue Vavin, Henri Sauvage, 1912

Adaptability is what distinguishes Henri Sauvage from his architectural contemporaries. After designing an expansive, florid Art Nouveau mansion, Villa Majorelle in Nancy (1901-2) at the age of 28 - he was quick to leave all that biomorphism behind him and by 1912 was busy designing this Parisian apartment building in rue Vavin in Montparnasse with all the clarity of purpose, elegance, simplicity and formal organisation absent from the Art Nouveau stylistic vocabulary.  All this well before the Great War snuffed out the last dying embers of the style. In the 1920s and 1930s he steered in the direction of Art Deco - a move that culminated in his redesign of La Samaritaine department store. A man who had mastered the art of staying one step ahead of the competition.

In rue Vavin Sauvage experimented with the idea of stepping back the floors of the building to leave each apartment with outdoor space for leisure or recreation.  It was progressive thinking for its time and popular with the occupants, who in the first such case in Paris were members of a cooperative formed to finance the building.  Despite being much acclaimed on completion there were few imitators - higher returns could be made with more conventional spatial arrangements. The exterior was clad throughout with gleaming white tiles, making for a contemporary uncluttered appearance.  Inspiration came from Otto Wagner and others who had been developing innovative ceramic facades in Vienna for several years.  The judicious placement of blue tiles enhances the sculpted forms beneath the balconies and emphasises the window recesses.  The last of the photos illustrates the difficulty in sensing the building as a whole thanks to a group of unhelpfully placed trees.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 114, Snake Handling

An adoring group of female admirers have gathered to pay homage to the courage and skill of the neighbourhood snake handler.  Look closer and all may not be as it seems - even though one of the group has fallen to her knees in homage, their expressions suggest they are less impressed and have sensed the defensive air of insecurity on the part of the snake handler.  A lack of confidence can be read in his facial tension and his audience appear to be close to dissolving into scornful mirth.  The stereotypical imagery falls clearly under the umbrella of Orientalism in its dependence on the exotic. I have another postcard of an Egyptian snake charmer that looks suspiciously like the same person - even the serpents look the same.  Other examples are from Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka. Closer to home is the demonic grin of Henry Brusher Mills (1840-1905), celebrity snake catcher of the New Forest, pictured here with a fistful of writhing specimens. Charming was not part of his act. Armed with a forked stick he offered his services to anxious homeowners and it has been calculated he caught over 30,000 snakes in his lifetime - some of which were rendered down to create various dubious potions, others were boiled to reveal their skeletons for sale to tourists. In a rare interlude when not snake bothering, he lit up a pipe and sat for his portrait - the result can be seen here. After his death in 1905 he was buried beneath a rather handsome headstone in the churchyard at Brockenhurst, where you can now take a drink at the Snakecatcher pub.

 

Leslie Carr on the cover of “Morris Owner”

Images of motoring subjects made up the greater part of Leslie Carr’s output and he had a close relationship with Morris Motors, one of Britain’s most successful volume car manufacturers of the first half of the 20th. century. Morris Owner magazine was launched in 1924 to appeal to existing and prospective customers and in March 1925 Leslie Carr made his first appearance on the front cover.  Many more would follow (as many as 10 in 1926-27) and my selection of 5 is a very small part of his output. Sales were expanding rapidly in the post-war boom as more affordable vehicles attracted the middle class aspiring motorist. The 1920s was the decade of the open air motorist enjoying the freedom of the road in the pre-congestion era. Advertisers were beginning to learn the dark arts of selling dreams and the magazine covers served up a diet of bracing seaside picnics, following the local hunt down empty winding country roads, pitching a tent in deserted beauty spots, bluebell gathering in the woods - all the joys of the new found freedom that car ownership brings.  Carr was a remarkably versatile illustrator with the ability to adapt his style to suit any occasion, always with the support of outstanding drawing skills. A speciality was night scenes where the drama and excitement of contrasting pools of deep velvety darkness and incandescent flashes of artificial light are evoked to perfection. Picture editors recognised this and would routinely assign him to produce a cover for the prestigious Motor Show issues as seen here in 1928 and 1929. If I had to choose one it would be November 1929 where the composition is boldly divided by the angular form of the aircraft wing while the tightly drawn subject matter is confined to the lower third.

 

Leslie Carr illustrates "By Road, Rail, Air and Sea" (1931)

Fourteen years have passed since I last wrote about the illustrator and poster artist, Leslie Carr and noted the lack of online biographical information. That situation has changed and a lot more detail has emerged about his life and work. We now know he died in the town of his birth, Hove, in 1969 and in his last decade was employed as Art Director for The Motor magazine. In the First World War he served in the Tank Corps and during the Second World War he was a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service. Carr painted a series of paintings of wartime subjects based on his experiences, one of which sold at auction in 2018 for £16,000 after a pre-sale estimate of £200 to £400.

Today’s images come from a Blackie picture book for children published in 1931 titled By Road, Rail, Air and Sea for which Carr supplied the cover art and the majority of illustrations. The cover is a busy dockside scene in which all four transport types are combined in a single image in which areas of unmodified colour are enclosed by crisply incisive contours. In the spirit of the time he mostly employs a sachplakat style, to which he occasionally (and sometimes incongruously) adds some vigorous cross-hatching. Drawings are considered and precise with a subtle and inventive colour palette and at their most radical (the paddle-steamer) display a near-Japanese quality of repose. Examples of his poster work can be seen at Art UK and the Science and Society Picture Library.

 

Seaside Photographer at Work

Between the wars every seaside town and resort would have at least one photographic business that specialised in selling visitors their photographic likenesses.  With large plate cameras they would record the departure of every charabanc tour and have prints of the participants ready for them to purchase on their return.  Others would haunt the esplanades and deck chairs taking photos on spec in the hope of selling prints later.  Often they would hand a docket to their subjects with a reference number and an address where the finished prints could be purchased. Another strategy was to gather the largest possible crowd of trippers at a point where a camera could record the scene from an elevated position.  They were then directed to a nearby shop where prints were on sale in less than hour.  The legal right to a week’s paid holiday was only established by the Holidays with Pay Act of 1938 but since the 1870s major employers had been closing factories and mills annually for a week enabling the workforce the luxury of an unpaid summer holiday commensurate with whatever they had saved during the winter. So there was no shortage of customers for the photographer’s services and photos like this must survive in hundreds of thousands if not millions.

What’s especially fascinating is the high definition that the plate camera supplied, leaving us with images that reward close scrutiny with remarkable clarity of detail. A rich variety of physical types and expressions turn up alongside a wealth of information about contemporary fashion trends. I counted only 16 hatless adults in this image. This camera confronts a mostly happy multitude of holidaymakers, it’s undated (the time is inscribed as 6.45pm) but on the reverse is the address of a Bournemouth photographic studio by the name of Bailey. Bournemouth with its origin as a Spa resort cultivated an image of respectability reflected in its Invalid’s Walk and the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery while they made the most of endorsements from the likes of Thomas Hardy and JRR Tolkien.  Many proud fathers, often in collar and tie, hold their offspring high for the camera and there’s an air of prosperity apparent in many other faces suggesting that the middle class is well represented here.  These aren’t the sort of people you might see on a Jarrow Hunger March.

A few details are selected here - faces that jump out of the crowd, some that are almost instantly recognisable, others that look like nobody we’ve ever seen before. There’s no lack of traditional British grumpiness to be seen but there’s also an impressive level of equanimity and good cheer - testament to the healing powers of a day at the seaside. These were the last decades of White British domination - pre-diversity Britain. After the war this would begin to change and a new and very different pattern of ethnicity arrived on the scene.  People who came to Britain because Britain had come to them.

 

Central Arcade Newcastle

Even in a city well supplied with buildings of quality, the Central Arcade stands out for its sumptuous ceramic decoration. In plan, it links two sides of a triangular island building with a spur connecting to the third side (see diagram below).  The original building of 1840 was intended to serve as a Corn Exchange but before opening, it was remodelled as a conference hall with a coffee house and subscription newsroom included.  In its third iteration it was converted into a concert hall and art gallery in 1870. By 1897 it had become a vaudeville theatre which 4 years later was destroyed by fire. During rebuilding as shops and offices in 1906 the toffee coloured Central Arcade was cut through the centre to a design by J Oswald and Son. It is listed at Grade II* by Historic England.

Like the opulent, theatrical County Arcade in Leeds (1900) the faience decoration was supplied by Burmantofts of Leeds.  Renaissance motifs with rococo flourishes strike a more sober note on Tyneside than the exuberant floral swags and polychromed ironwork arches to be seen in Leeds. Central Arcade offers a café crème experience with a rich depth of colour in place of the dazzle of Leeds.  At each end, twin-arched entrances are topped by operatic ensembles of ornamental ceramics designed to impress. The shop fronts are restrained and close to the originals, there are no banners or intrusive signage to confront us with the vulgarity of commerce. Mostly specialist shops trade here as in many other arcades, less reliant on passing trade. Footfall is light despite the surrounding streets teeming with pedestrians - most who make there way under the arches are taking a short cut for the sake of protection from the elements and a time saving of about a single minute.  A more economically viable future for such places is difficult to imagine but for now at least the Central Arcade continues to delight the eye with its superb interior.

The immaculate condition of the arcade is a tribute to the owners and city planners who have enabled such sensitive conservation of an architectural treasure that despite a city centre location is unable to attract the prime retail that draws the Leeds public into the County Arcade in great numbers.  Perhaps it’s an act of contrition for permitting the demolition of one of the finest arcades in the country. This happened in the 1960s when the Royal Arcade of 1832 got in the way of an urban motorway project. There’s a low-res image that gives some impression of its magnificence below but what seems to have doomed it was the originally chosen location on the very edge of the city centre where it struggled from the start to attract custom.

Royal Arcade (1832 - 1963)

 

Scarborough’s Grand Hotel

Above is a detail from a painting of 1867 in the Scarborough Museum and Art Gallery - it shows the seaward side of the just completed Grand Hotel on a day of unusually perfect weather.  The artist is John Wilson Carmichael (1799-1868) whose speciality was maritime subjects and coastal views who retired to Scarborough after a working life based in Newcastle.

In 1852 Cuthbert Brodrick (1821-1905) won a national competition to design a Town Hall for the City of Leeds. When his ambitious design was finally complete in 1858 the opening ceremony was performed by Queen Victoria.  Brodrick was 37 years old and his building had been hailed as a triumph - he stood on the threshold of a brilliant career but it never quite happened.  It has been argued that while his contemporaries mostly worked under the influence of Classical tradition, Brodrick with his preference for the French Second Empire style (“opulent and coarse” in the words of Jonathan Meades) was increasingly out of step with public taste. For the Leeds design Brodrick had made use of Classical elements and restrained his Frenchified tendencies but in his design for the Leeds Corn Exchange he surrendered to his passion for the Halle aux Blés in Paris (later rebuilt as the Bourse de Commerce). For more about the Corn Exchange follow this link to my blogpost of 2008.

Scarborough’s Grand Hotel was Brodrick's last major commission and he seized the opportunity to design a massive and imposing exercise in Second Empire style that wouldn’t look out of place on Haussmann’s Parisian grands boulevards. Built on a V-shaped plan between 1863 and 1867, it was one of Europe's largest luxury hotels adorned with corner domed towers, rounded windows, ornamental balconies and terracotta decoration. On the landward side there are 4 floors plus 2 attic levels, facing the sea an additional 3 basement levels are visible. It is claimed that the 4 domes represent the 4 seasons, while there are 52 chimneys for the weeks in a year and 365 rooms for the days in a year. After remodelling today's hotel has only 250 rooms. It retains a formidable sense of presence on Scarborough’s South Bay but is no longer a destination for the wealthy visitor drawn by the restorative powers of the local Spa waters, operating as a budget hotel as part of the Britannia Hotels group. Britannia Hotels consistently occupy last place in the annual Which survey of customer satisfaction and make less than perfect custodians of Brodrick’s great landmark.  YouTube has many hostile amateur videos of the horrors to be encountered there - one of the less hysterical examples is embedded below and it makes depressing viewing.  There’s no avoiding the evidence of internal dilapidation and the mistreatment of key architectural features and elaborations that seem increasingly obscured by clumsy partitioning and lowered ceilings. This would be Brodrick's last major commission - in 1870 he retired to France where he and his wife lived quietly for decades in the well-heeled western Paris suburb of le Vesinet.