News and articles
Forthcoming auction at Gorringes in Lewes
Sale of Private Collection of Bloomsbury Paintings at Gorringes aims to raise over £11,000 in support of Charleston
A private collection of Bloomsbury paintings is to be sold on behalf of the Charleston Trust at Gorringes Auctioneers on 8th September. Featuring works by Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and Angelica Garnett, the pictures have been donated to the Trust to raise funds for the ongoing conservation and running of the house museum as it embarks on a major development project.
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Too Much Suicide?
Lyndall Gordon questions the emphasis on suicide in narratives of Virginia Woolf’s life
Seventy years ago, on Friday 28 March 1941, Virginia Woolf famously weighted her pockets with stones, and waded into the fast-running River Ouse near her home in the village of Rodmell in Sussex. Continue reading
Posted in Canvas
Charleston awarded £2.4 million from Heritage Lottery Fund
HLF South East
News ReleaseHome of the ‘Bloomsbury Set’ wins £2.4million Heritage Lottery Fund grant
The Charleston Trust – keepers of the Grade II* listed Charleston Farmhouse, the vibrant independent house museum and former Sussex retreat of the renowned Bloomsbury group – has been awarded a grant of £2.4 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) towards its Charleston Barn Project. Continue reading
Posted in Press
Charleston in Vogue
A detail of one of the beautiful doors at Charleston, painted by Vanessa Bell, illustrates this article about Bloomsbury-style plates:
See the full ‘need it now’ feature on the American Vogue website
Posted in Press
Designing the future
Christopher Woodward interviews Jamie Fobert and Julian Harrap, the architects of Charleston’s barns project
Monday morning in Jamie Fobert’s office in Clerkenwell. He has just got back from Berlin. The Neues Museum has just re-opened after a ten-year restoration and re-design by David Chipperfield. Jamie led Chipperfield’s team in the first competition for the bomb-damaged ruin, in 1994. ‘I saw David’s building when it was empty, and it looked amazing,’ he says. ‘It’s even better with all the stuff in.’ He smiles in an acknowledgement of the cliché that the architects of the new generation of bare, luminous galleries like their interiors uncluttered by ‘stuff’ – the collection, that is. His work has been praised by one critic as ‘glacial good design’.
Posted in Articles, Interviews
Art for advertisement
Posters by the Bloomsbury Group
by Margaret Timmers
‘It is surprising what alacrity and intelligence people can show in front of a poster which if it had been a picture in a gallery would have been roundly declared unintelligible’ observed the art critic Roger Fry, reviewing an exhibition of posters by Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954) in The Nation and The Athenæum, 23 May 1925. Fry was fascinated by the poster’s ability to evoke a quick-witted response that differed from what he called ‘the picture-gallery attitude’. Artists of the Bloomsbury Group attracted to the medium included Fry himself, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, while Mark Gertler, an occasional co-exhibitor with the Group, also made a foray into the field.
Posted in Articles
Bloomsbury voices: Duncan Heyes
Canvas Issue 26
Duncan Heyes describes the choices made in compiling the British Library’s latest contribution to the oral history of Bloomsbury.
September saw the release of the CD ‘The Bloomsbury Group’, the eighteenth release in the British Library’s series The Spoken Word, which so far has included many writers and poets – among them H.G. Wells, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Sitwell, Robert Graves, and a pair of 2-CD sets of Ted Hughes. Compiling this Bloomsbury CD marked a departure from my usual work with printed collections at the British Library, as it was the first time I had worked with recorded sound. However, when I was approached to get involved with this particular project I realised it was an opportunity not to be missed.
The barn at Charleston
Giles Waterfield, Chairman of the Trustees, brings us up to date with the Barns Project.
In the August 2007 edition of Canvas, Colin McKenzie told Charleston’s Friends for the first time about the possibility of the Charleston Trust acquiring the magnificent Sussex barn adjacent to the house. Since then much has been happening behind the scenes to develop the Trust’s vision for what it could achieve through this acquisition and the Trustees and Director are keen to bring Charleston’s Friends and supporters up to date with progress. The Trust has a rare and not to be missed opportunity to acquire and preserve a vital and beautiful part of Charleston’s historic site, something that has been one of the Trust’s charitable objectives since its first creation. It is clear, however, that acquiring and making full use of the barn is every bit as important to the Trust’s ability to thrive in the future as its preservation. As a result of the support we have received from the Firle Estate for our plans and their willingness to sell Charleston a long lease on the barn and adjacent spaces, we are at the start of an exciting new chapter in Charleston’s history which will ensure that this important and historic building is removed from risk, preserved for the future enjoyment of all Charleston’s visitors, and given new uses that will help the Trust to continue to thrive.
Posted in Articles
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