In Honour of Glen Baxter

In a long career Glen Baxter (who died at the end of last month) created a fine body of work that resisted categorisation. Evolving a style of drawing that gently parodied the banalities of mass market illustration, his imagery had the clarity and simplicity of a textbook diagram combined with the sense of mystery that lay beneath the expressionless surfaces of Magritte’s paintings. In vintage picture books for children he discovered the joys of captions that stated the obvious in utilitarian language with a reckless disregard for the perils of the double-entendre or misinterpretation.  Many of his regular cast of characters came from the same source - the intrepid but hapless explorer, the denizens of Sherwood Forest, cowboys, boy scouts, ancient mariners and deep sea divers. The frisson generated when caption and image pull in separate directions amplified the incongruities that he delighted in exploring. Defining his work by genre or designation feels like a fool’s errand. For some, he was a cartoonist, others saw an illustrator, for me, he was simply an artist. Art world references abounded and it’s intriguing that he exhibited in such disparate galleries as Nigel Greenwood (home of Artists’ Books, Conceptualism and Gilbert and George) and Chris Beetles (citadel of figurative illustration).

In his 1980s prime, Baxter found himself approached by advertising agencies and his artwork began to appear in newspapers and magazines.  In 1987/88 Brooke Bond tea made use of his talents in a trio of full colour amusing drawings - the image of tea-making on the ocean floor was especially arresting.  A commission from Gilbey’s Gin was not without problems due to the client’s persistent efforts to include a ‘pack shot’, it eventually appeared in both newspapers and magazines.  Art postcards enjoyed a season of popularity in the 1980s and many Baxter drawings were reprinted in this format. A further ‘brand extension’ came in a range of Poole Pottery with Baxter designs. There are few more prestigious clients for editorial illustration than the New Yorker and the Glen Baxter Wall Art page displays 79 examples. And the books kept coming, in which every few pages an image guaranteed to astound and amuse would surface. As long ago as 1983, Miles Kington in a slightly ungracious review concluded that Glen Baxter needed to find a new act. Thanks perhaps to never scaling the heights of celebrity status he was able to refresh and renew his distinctive offer, while avoiding ubiquity and the deathly slide into unfashionability.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 112, Starcross

Captain George Peacock was born in 1805 into a naval family in Exmouth. He served in the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy as well as pursuing a career as a surveyor and inventor.  In 1831-32 when sailing in the Royal Navy in South America he surveyed some potential  routes for a future Panama Canal.  The value of his pioneering work was recognised by de Lesseps 50 years later when the canal was finally constructed.  Four years later he surveyed the Corinth Isthmus and proposed a route for a canal, for which he was, many decades later, honoured by the Greek sovereign. By 1840 he was sailing with the Pacific Steam Navigation Company in South America for whose benefit he set about developing business opportunities. In Chile he established the first coal mine in the continent, after which he explored nitrates in Chile and located guano deposits in Peru.  In 1841 he supervised the construction of the first railway on the west coast of South America. Inventions were many and various, including an improved screw propellor for steamships, a desalination treatment for sea water on board ship, an early form of life jacket and anti-fouling paint for the protection of iron hulled ships.

Not content with all this, after retirement to Starcross on the Exe Estuary he designed and built the Swan of the Exe in the 1860s, a 10 berth sailing yacht in the form of a swan, equipped with two large wings that served as sails. Internal fixtures and fittings were said to be comparable with those in a First Class railway carriage. Four small swan-shaped launches were built, one of which, known as Cygnet was employed to ferry passengers from the shore to the yacht and can be seen in these postcards.  This eccentric vessel became a celebrity in the Exe Estuary and was written up in the press.  By the time these postcards were on sale the Peacock Swan was over 50 years old and in the care of his descendants.  There’s a mass of conflicting information about its ultimate fate, some witnesses claim to have seen it afloat in the 1930s after which it seems to have become unseaworthy and downgraded to the status of garden ornament. Cygnet did survive and is now on display at the Museum of Topsham on the opposite bank of the Exe.  Artist and designer Enid Marx (1902-98) made a colour linocut of the Starcross swans in 1936 that can be seen by following this link.

Tibidabo, Barcelona

Tibidabo is a 500 meter hill overlooking Barcelona.  With the example of Sacré Coeur in Paris in mind and the encouragement of Pope Leo XIII, the Spanish Roman Catholic Church began construction of the Sagrat Cor (Sacred Heart) church on the summit of Mount Tibidabo in 1902. Three years later its supremacy was challenged by the impudent arrival of the Tibidabo Amusement Park which opened in 1905 (just in time for the global boom in postcard sales). An amusement park can be thrown up in a fraction of the time needed to build a cathedral and the Sagrat Cor was only completed in 1962. Since when the pair have represented the sacred and profane in a relationship of mutual reproach. The park and most of its original rides remain in operation supplemented by the regular introduction of new attractions.  Public access was via a new purpose built funicular railway that began running in 1901. Opposite the funicular station, a Moorish-styled hotel was built.  A superabundance of roller coasters and white knuckle rides suggests that the citizens of Catalunya possess an unusual appetite for dramatic demonstrations of gravitational force.  A suspended monorail (Laderas del Monte) conveys passengers in open capsules around the perimeter of the summit offering spectacular views of the city far below.  More gentle attractions - carousels, a puppet theatre and a Museum of Automata - are available but the emphasis is on vertigo-inducing contemplation of the void.  The postcard industry supplied a wide range of views of the park and recorded an exhaustive survey of the operation of the funicular railway from which this selection is drawn.

 

Lands End, Kernow’s Last Gasp

Visitors from over the border in Tiverton pose for the camera at Lands End.  Dated on the reverse - July 1st. 1960.  Probably born in the last decade of the 19th. century, they are of the generation that survived two world wars and came well experienced in the hard graft of stoicism. Defined by the formality of their dress - suits or blazers, collar and tie and well polished shoes for the men. The men could be brothers and their wives could be sisters.  The Lands End estate has always been in private hands. An attempt by the National Trust to purchase it in 1987 failed when Peter de Savary outbid the organisation.  Today’s site owner is Heritage Great Britain Plc who operate a minor empire of mid-level attractions including a petting zoo, an audio-visual experience, traditional craft studios, a shopping centre, the First and Last public house and a hotel and restaurant complex.  Plus a car park from which the coastal footpaths can be reached.  It’s easy to imagine the more environmentally sensitive development that the National Trust would have provided but it has to be conceded that it would have been every bit as commercially minded in extracting value as the present owners.

The version of Cornwall with the greatest cultural heft is the magical land of myth and legend where the landscape itself vibrates with mystical powers under the protection of St. Piran. From Jethro to Ithell Colquhoun, locals speak of the sense of relief and heightened sensory impressions when the wretched land of the lumpen Devonians is left behind as they cross the Tamar into the enchanted homeland.  My youngest son and I experienced something of this in the summer of 2002 as our train from Exeter inched its way through Saltash station at less than walking pace. A small group of wayward urchins, no more than 11 or 12 years of age, was inspired to offer a traditional Cornish welcome to its captive audience. Jumping to attention from the abandoned luggage trolleys on which they had been reclining they conjured up imaginary erections of stupendous proportions via the medium of gesture and mime which they directed at the gawping passengers.  With well rehearsed movements of the hand in which enthusiasm triumphed over subtlety they brought their imaginary organs to a towering climax as the holidaymakers were ever so slowly conveyed in silence closer to the beach and surf.  It was a rare moment when the affluent seasonal visitors came face to face with the boredom and resentment of the indigenous population.  During the journey a young female passenger had been passing to and fro through the carriage clad in a T-shirt bearing the slogan, “Stop staring at my fucking tits” suggesting that if the urchins had been bold enough to board the train they might not have wanted for like-minded company.  Not the warmest of welcomes to the sacred county of Kernow.

Every MP in Cornwall is a Conservative.  It’s worth recalling that when the Cornish complain, as they do, that they’re overlooked, ignored and left behind by Westminster.  Spokesmen for the fishing community in Newlyn can outperform their counterparts in Peterhead and Brixham when it comes to complaining.  Since their former colleagues sold off their fishing quotas to European competitors they’ve never stopped wingeing about how hard done by they are.  Cornwall is certainly a complicated county with a powerful sense of identity that can shade into exceptionalism, equal to anything found in Yorkshire.  Celtic roots are carefully cultivated by Mebyon Kernow (Cornish Nationalists and campaigners for a Cornish Parliament), Cornish bards and Cornish language revivalists.  An abundance of megaliths, menhirs, cromlechs and stone circles encourages a spiritual sense of place for some, though there would be many more standing stones if Cornish landowners had refrained from destroying them when they got in the way of the plough. While many in Cornwall find a virtuous path into the spirit world, the dark shadow of Aleister Crowley and his “Scarlet Women” still lingers over West Penwith. The landscape value is exceptionally high and includes wild and windswept coastlines, dark and sinister uplands battered by deluges, driven by deep Atlantic depressions, as well as wide and fair, expansive beaches bathed in diffused sunlight of an unusual intensity, all of which feeds the imagination of artists, writers and craft workers of whom the county has many more than its fair share.  And so it came to pass that the county has a fine collection of visual arts venues - Tate St. Ives, Barbara Hepworth’s Studio, Leach Pottery, Newlyn Gallery, Penlee House in Penzance and the Jackson Foundation Gallery in St. Just.

Visitors to the county may well encounter a Cornish Engine House on their travels and the more curious will discover that the Industrial Revolution came early to Cornwall leaving multiple abandoned relics to tell a story of pioneering mining technology that was exported around the world from Mexico to Montana and Australia to Argentina.  Cornwall’s industrial secret, the extraction of China Clay, is largely confined to a little visited area of Mid Cornwall with its own landscape of devastation and towering mountains of waste.  It’s a spectacle that’s unlikely to be encountered by chance but it has its own fascination, not least because it exists just a few miles from coastal villages celebrated for their unspoilt beauty. The prospect of profitable lithium mining has attracted some interest and tin mining may yet be revived at South Crofty.  Meanwhile Richard Branson’s venture, Spaceport Cornwall, rests in abeyance at the time of writing having goofed up its initial satellite launch - the search for viable investment goes on. The setback has been a useful corrective to the great emotional wave of over-claiming on the part of local politicians and local media whose crystal balls glowed with unlikely visions of gleaming rocketry surging into Cornish skies to conquer the solar system. The presence of the Branson name should have served as a warning.

David Cameron made a point of taking his family holidays in Cornwall and complained about the primitive mobile phone and wi-fi connectivity.  If he noticed the evidence of social deprivation he never said so.  Yet in any Cornish town that evidence is hard to miss - just check out the local Wetherspoon’s, ride a local bus or take in a car boot sale.  There’s only one major hospital in the county and it always seems to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. Second home buyers have distorted the housing market, boosting property values far out of the reach of most locals whose earnings, often from tourism and hospitality, are well below national averages.  Zero hours contracts and a dependence on seasonal casual working force many to take on two or more jobs to make ends meet, placing family life under often intolerable pressures.  By way of escape the nation’s drug dealers offer easy access to a full range of altered states in even the most remote locations.  The Cornish main line railway and a clutch of branch lines survive in a much reduced form from their heyday but most people in employment have to run a car to reach their workplace, putting further strain on depleted household budgets.  The existence of a significant colony of bungalow dwellers living out their retirement is the bedrock of the Conservative vote along with the reliably Tory agricultural community. It will be interesting to see if the Conservatives can maintain their Cornish supremacy at the next election although the most exciting outcome would be for Mebyon Kernow to break through to a seat in Westminster.

 

London Stations in Postcards and Photos - Charing Cross

Not the most celebrated of London stations.  There are no books that tell the story of Charing Cross station and there is no record of it serving as a movie location.  The 1865 Charing Cross Hotel (now the Clermont) frontage on the Strand has survived more or less intact but seen from the Thames much of its distinctiveness has been buried beneath Sir Terry Farrell’s 1986-1990 Po-Mo vanity project.  The station itself opened in 1864 - after a protracted battle with parliamentary opposition and obstruction from its competitors, the South Eastern Railway (SER) extended a line through London Bridge station across the Thames via Hungerford Bridge to its present site.  A long history of mismanagement, disputation and fatal accidents (one of which, at Staplehurst almost killed Charles Dickens) ended in 1866 when a new Chairman, Edward Watkin was appointed.  Watkin was a busy man - he was Chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln Railway as well as the Metropolitan Railway, and also a director of the Chemins de Fer du Nord.  He would sponsor the first attempt to build a Channel Tunnel and nursed an ambition to run through trains from Manchester to Paris. Forty years later in 1905, the single span glass and wrought iron roof collapsed, triggering the fall of the western wall. Six lives were lost but despite there being 4 trains at the platforms, no passengers were among them.  In just 3 months the roof was replaced with a basic ridge and furrow design and the station was back in business.  Its days as a gateway to Europe with boat trains to Dover and Folkestone are long gone and today’s station serves commuters in Kent and East Sussex reaching the coast at Ramsgate, Margate, Dover, Folkestone and Hastings. 

 

Postcard of the Day No. 111, Jacob’s Ladder, Falmouth

This post is number 111 in this series.  The same number of steps can be found on Falmouth’s Jacob’s Ladder staircase, the work of a local builder named Jacob Hamblen who had them constructed to connect two of his properties at different altitudes.  Flights of steps confined between two buildings are a common feature in communities built on hills and there are other examples where locals have turned to the Scriptures and bestowed the name of Jacob’s Ladder. At least in this instance there was an additional justification for the choice of name.  Local photographers were quick to spot the postcard potential hastening to Killigrew Street and point their cameras in its direction, making it one of the most common subjects in this Cornish town.  The steps date from the 1840s and have the distinction of being listed at Grade II by Historic England.  The building on the right has since been demolished to be replaced by a branch of Lloyd’s Bank.  On the left, Falmouth Methodist Church has survived to the present.  Despite multiple passes, the StreetView camera has never captured the steps.  These two examples are the closest it has come to doing so.