SEASON'S GREETINGS

Summer flowers by Vanessa Bell.

"The garden ..is incredibly beautiful...full of reds of all kinds, scabious & hollyhocks & mallows & every kind of red from red to lead to black. Pokers are coming out. It's all in very good order & we have masses of plums and apples. I have of course begun by painting some flowers, it seems the inevitable way to begin here." Vanessa to Roger Fry, 6 August 1930 

Photos:
TravelinaGarden, Charleston, August 2016

Paintings by Vanessa Bell (1879 - 1961)


Dahlias and Canterbury Bells,

Flowers in a Blue Vase, 1951

Still Life with Flowers,

Summer Flowers in a Glass Vase, ca. 1945

Hydrangeas, 1946

Flowers in a Black Pot, c. 1946

Further reading:
Charleston a Bloomsbury house & garden
Quentin Bell & Virginia Nicholson
Frances Lincoln Limited, 1997 London

(quotation p. 134)


Link:
Charleston, Firle, Lewes
East Sussex 

The Nine Elders of Huichang, The Palace Museum, Beijing

There are leafy trees with gnarled trunks, supple bamboos, a roaring waterfall and nine old men finely carved in a green jade boulder on display in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
Subdued shades, irregularities and the smooth surface of the stone add to the beauty of this three-dimensional landscape carved in a jade mountain weighting more than 800 kilos. The skill of the craftsmen in creating this delicate work, in a hard and tough stone, is celebrated in the lines of poetry inscribed on a boulder that will last longer than any painting.
The scene evokes the meeting of the poet Bo Juyi (772-846) with eight of his friends in the spring 845 to celebrate their old age and longevity.
The Emperor Qianlong commissioned this work, completed in 1786, when he was 75 years old. 'The Nine Elders of Huichang' is one of the finest jade mountains he commissioned, all inspired by ancient paintings.
The painting 'The Nine Elders' created by Huang Biao in 1594, a copy of the most famous painting  attributed to Liu Songnian, is included in the exhibition: 'Fineries of Forgery: "Suzhou Fakes" and Their Influence in the 16th to 18th Century' currently on display at the Palace Museum and it is available on-line. Comparing the shapes carved in the jade mountain with the coloured procession of elders on silk was a joyous and rewarding occupation, as I eventually discovered what the four elders, hidden in the back of the boulder and not visible, are doing among spring flowers.

Photos:
TravelinaGarden, The Palace Museum Beijing, China, April, 2017


Further reading:
So, Jenny F. Brush on Jade: Emperor Qianlong and "jade painting." Chinese Jades from the
Cissy and Robert Tang Collection.
Art Museum, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese Universtity of Hong Kong, 2015

Denney, Joyce. “Longevity in Chinese Art.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/long/hd_long.htm (August 2010)

Words in pictures: from a Wheatfield to a Library of Trees, works in progress in Milan.

April 2015










June 2015




             

October 2017


















November 2017

 May 2018

to be continued ....

Photos: TravelinaGarden

Barr's Descriptive Catalogue of Hardy Daffodils, Autumn 1886.

Daffodils are growing quickly and the warmth and the gentle rain of these days help.

Waiting for flowers, I found an old plant catalogue with a promising title: Barr's Descriptive Catalogue of Hardy Daffodils, also a List of Easily Cultivated Hardy Bulbs and Plants, for All Seasons. Dated Autumn 1886, the Catalogue was published by the Barr & Sons Nurseries, founded in Surrey in 1860 with mail order and shop in Covent Garden in London. 

The Catalogue has a lyrical opening: 

"THE most beautiful of all hardy Spring flowers is the Daffodil; for centuries it has adorned our gardens and withstood uninjured our severest winters. Its blossoms suffer less from frost, snow, rain, and wind, than any other spring flower, and this was observed by Shakespeare, when he wrote-

" Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take 

The winds of March with beauty."

With a flowering season from January to June, daffodils are perfect for mixed borders and shrubberies, and "to naturalize in woodland walks, and for large groups in grass or on sloping banks,..."and "on the moist margins of lakes and streams, or islands, where their golden nodding flowers contrast with the cerulean reflection in the limpid water below." Poetic verses by Keats and Wordsworth celebrate this beautiful flower.

Then, the Catalogue turns to more practical information with general notes for cultivation in pots indoors and in beds out of doors, as well as offers. A "Selections of inexpensive daffodils... to plant in grass, orchards, woodlands, walks, ..." was sold at the price of 150/ for 1.000 in 30 var.,  or 120/ in 20 var., or 84/ in 10 var.; or 1.000 "Inexpensive Poeticus to plant in Grass, Orchards,..." in 12 var. for 95s. Daffodils for pot culture were more expensive: 6 "Polyanthus Narcissus each 12 splendid varieties 22 s." 

Daffodils are divided into three different groups, (Magni, Medi and Parvi-coronati of Baker) and "to assist amateurs in making their own selections of these hardy and beautiful spring flowers, a number of woodcuts have been supplemented to illustrate each group." 

A little history is included too, from: "The first systematic arrangement of this family is found in Parkinson's 'Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris; or, A Garden of All Sorts of Pleasant Flowers,' published 1629" to "Baker's review of the genus Narcissus appeared in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1870."

Pots, flowerbeds and woodland areas did not exhaust the uses of this versatile flower.

"As a cut flower the Daffodil is one of the most prized for ladies' dresses, bouquets, and vases", and the  Double Roman  Narcissus was perfect  "in  small  bouquets  and  for  buttonholes."

Did Daffodils decorate dresses or dresses were inspired by daffodils? 

The Narcissus bulbocodium is called Hoop Petticoat Daffodil, and its flower has the perfect shape of a Victorian hoop skirt. Barr sold 6 bulbs in a 4 or 5 inch pot in charming golden-yellow, pure white, sulphur or rich yellow colours from 2s. for the Large Yellow Hoop Petticoat to 10s for the Small Yellow Hoop Petticoat.

Fashion plate, from the Petit Courrier des Dames,
 July 1855

The idea of having fresh daffodils pinned on a broad skirt or a broad skirt that looks like a spring flower would definitely change my mood on Monday morning. 

Now it's raining hard again; daffodils are growing.  

Hoop-petticoat daffodil,
Oxford plants

Further reading:
Barr's Descriptive Catalogue of Hardy Daffodils, also a List of Easily Cultivated Hardy Bulbs and Plants, for All Seasons. Autumn 1886.
http://dafflibrary.org/


Images:
Photo Growing Narcissus -TravelinaGarden, March 2018

All woodcuts from Barr's Catalogue

Daffodils and Tulips in Munstead Glasses, from Flower Decoration in the House, 1907, by Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)
http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/

Fashion plate, from the Petit Courrier des Dames, July 1855. Corsets & Crinolines in Victorian Fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/

Hoop-petticoat daffodil - Oxford plants
https://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/

Winter gardens by J.W.L.

The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad dated Saturday, January 26, 1850 included an article, dedicated to  Winter Gardens signed by J.W.L., page 61. 

Between December 1849 and June 1850, Jane Webb Loudon (1807-58) was the editor of this weekly magazine published by Bradbury and Evans. "Assisted by the most eminent writers and artists", she wrote about fashion and arts, literature and poetry, geology and geography, travels, books, concerts and exhibitions. She answered her readers' letters, offered games for children, scientific cooking, schemes for embroideries, crochet works and hair bracelets, gardening tips and botany lessons.

When the garden in winter is "gloomy", she writes, winter gardens, or conservatories, allow people to walk among exotic trees, "and thus enjoy the beauty of good scenery when the ground beyond the glass is covered with snow."  

A small winter garden could be an adjunct to a drawing-room or a library, or a passage between different parts of a house, see Fig.1, and is perfectly affordable. Decorated with statues, it is perfect for evergreens such as: "Camellias and Orange trees, ... creeping-plants such as Coboea scandens, Tacsonia, and some of the hardier kind of Passion flower...", plants that do not require artificial heating.

At page 96, she adds a further article about the real winter garden, that is "a garden of about an acre in extent, laid out with walks beds, fountains, and other usual appendages of pleasure-grounds and only different from an ordinary garden in having glass between it and open air." Fig.2 with real trees such as "Musa Cavendishii, and the Palm by Chamaerops humilis. Against the pillars may be trained Habrothamnus fasciculatus..."

She mentions addresses of suppliers for conservatories and "ornamental tallies." A brief history of winter gardens is proposed together with beautiful winter gardens in London and abroad from Russia to Berlin, but "none of these,... are equal to the one lately formed in the Champs-Élysées, in Paris." 

Quotations from:

The Ladies' Companion At Home and Abroad
N.V London: Saturday, January 26, 1850
Fig. 1 p. 61
Fig. 2 p. 96
British Library