Small Finds Five

This is the fifth of a small series of articles in which I will discuss items that I have either purchased or just seen when visiting antique establishments in Hungerford and elsewhere.

The Piccadilly Circus Saucer

Most people in the UK have visited Piccadilly Circus at some time or the other in their life.  I can remember visiting the landmark when I was very young and being totally in awe of the magnificent light display.

As I grew up, I visited Piccadilly Circus on many occasions, sometimes to hook up with friends or just to kill time whilst waiting for a performance at a nearby theatre or cinema.  Whilst I do not do crowds that well, I did enjoy sitting under Eros just watching the world go by.  I was there a few weeks ago as I wanted to take in the bookshops on the Charing Cross Road and although the light displays are very much state of the art these days, the actual feel of the area has not changed that much.

https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/

There has been a road rationalisation of course, but the Criterion Theatre is still there and tourists from all nations can be found just chilling out and taking photographs.  There is an exciting buzz, but also I feel a degree of calmness when I am there for some reason.

With the advent of mobiles and selfie sticks, you can bet that if you sit under Eros for any length of time, your image will be captured a thousand times and in the weeks after, will be transported to a great number of different countries.

You might have guessed that I find Piccadilly Circus an interesting place as you feel that you are in the heart of London.

Diego Delso, delso.photo, License CC-BY-SA

I remember chatting (with difficulty) with my daughter who happened to be in New York with her family and as luck would have it, was in Times Square at the same time as I was sitting under Eros.  To think that I was in Piccadilly Circus and she was in Times Square at the same time gave me a peculiar feeling of movement and stillness.  She was in a similar environment thousands of miles away with visitors from all corners of the globe as company whereas, I was in London with the like visitors surrounding me.

For fun, I suggested that we should click our fingers simultaneously in London and New York.  Which we did.  Nothing happened, the world did not end, we had not proved or disproved the Chaos Theory and there were still butterflies nearby.  Enough of this Stuart, there is a time and place to write about La La Land and you should have by now explained why you have called this short article The Piccadilly Circus Saucer.

The answer is easy as recently I purchased a solitary saucer from the the only stall with a basement in the Arcade.  But why did you buy it?  Because it had an illustration of Piccadilly Circus printed on to its face.  Fine, but is is just another example of the London tourist tack which is available everywhere.

The saucer is not dated so I am looking for clues as to its age.

I purchased the saucer because it challenged me and if you look at the photograph of this saucer, you will see where I am coming from.  There are a number of clues.

What are the clues you may ask?

The red AEC Regent buses and the general traffic, including the cabs help to date the illustration.  The bus radiators are old fashioned and the cars and coaches definitely are from the 1950s/1960s

This could have been painted yesterday.  I agree, but why would a pottery take the trouble to illustrate this vintage scene?  The saucer is genuine but I have not firmly dated it.  But there is a bigger clue which you might have spotted whilst I have been waffling on.  Yes, the actual advertisements will help me to date the saucer and as normal, I will turn to the internet for help.

As you can see, the main advertisements are the Bovril and Guinness ones.   Both of which vanished years ago.

Well unless the artist used artistic licence, the illustration pre dates 1954 as the Coca Cola advertisement was next to the Guinness time clock from that year onwards and although it has been moved around slightly, it is there to this day.

The second clue is the Schweppes Tonic Water advertisement which can just be made out on my little saucer under the bold Bovril one.  Well according to my researches, both the Bovril and the Schweppes advertisements were in place between 1920 and 1961.

So here goes.  I believe that this illustration dates from between 1950 and 1954, but I have a feeling that the artist has pulled a fast one as the motor cars seem to have been of a later design and the red buses had such a long life that they provide little in the matter of detail.

I tried dating the illustration by taking into account the position of Eros, but this statue has been moved so many times that I began to get dizzy even thinking about it.  All this for a small saucer that cost me just fifty pence.

But I did learn one thing when writing this article, and that is The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain that we all call Eros is nothing of the sort.  The winged statue is not Eros at all, but of Anteros his brother.  It as an easy mistake to make but it took the purchase of an obscure saucer in a small West Berkshire town for me to realise this.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

Thursday, 7th March 2019

7:30 at Herongate Club, Hungerford.

Tickets £7 including a glass of wine from Hungerford Bookshop (01488 683480) or on-line: https://crimeroadshow.eventbrite.co.uk 

Hungerford Arcade is very proud to tell you about World Book Day which has been organised by Hungerford Bookshop.

Orenda Roadshow – an evening of International Crime Fiction

Lined up on the stage and waiting to tell you about their books – in just one minute – will be at least 14 top class Crime writers. Each author will then randomly read for one minute, before answering any questions you may have.

These authors tour the country and Hungerford Bookshop are proud to be the only selected independent bookshop on their 2019 tour. You can catch them in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester and Hungerford. People travel from all over the country for this evening of crime fiction.

Authors joining us will include: Matt Wesolowski, Louise Beech, Steph Broadribb, Will Carver, Kjell Ola Dahl, Simone Buchholz, Helen FitzGerald, Thomas Enger, Johana Gustawsson, Antti Tuomainen, Lilja Sigurdardottir, Susi Holliday, West Camel.

Join Hungerford Bookshop for this funny and engaging evening and come away with a list or pile of books that will keep you absorbed for weeks.

PART OF HUNGERFORD BOOKSHOP’S CRIME SEASON. Buy a CRIME SPREE TICKET – to all 4 events and save £4!

Hungerford Arcade recently had its own J R Hartley moment. (Those of us of a certain age will remember the advert where a gentlemen was phoning bookshops trying to find a copy of Fly Fishing by J R Hartley).  We were delighted to meet Lesley Herbert, who found a copy of her book “The Ultimate Book of Wedding Cakes” in the bookshop (unit 27) and commented that she guessed it made her officially an antique!  She is a lovely lady, who was a catering lecturer for many years in London and currently judges sugarcraft with the English team.  She kindly autographed the book with her best wishes for the person who buys it.

This is the second of a small series of articles in which I will discuss items that I have either purchased or just seen when visiting antique establishments in Hungerford and elsewhere.

Hannah and George Phillips

Sometime in 1826 a young lady named Hannah Phillips wrote her name in a long forgotten book.  She also added the year as a reference.  Just over forty years later on, June the 19^th 1868, George Phillips purchased a full sized house mat for the sum of four shillings and nine pence.  How would I know these random facts you might ask?  The answer is quite simple.

I found a Victorian receipt and Hannah’s autograph when looking around the Arcade today.  The stallholder had kindly placed both items in a cellophane packet and was asking only two pounds.  George and Hannah appear to have been related (Possibly a mother and son judging from the dates).

Little did George know when he purchasing the house mat in the summer of 1868 that one hundred and fifty-one years later, the receipt would be sold on a cold and bleak February day in Hungerford, West Berkshire.  The same could be said about Hannah who added her simple record of ownership (Hannah Phillips Her Book 1826) one hundred and ninety-three years ago.

Both the receipt and the record of ownership were written in fine copperplate which is nearly always the case when one is looking at handwritten ephemera from the Victorian era.  Quite why Hannah’s name was removed from her book is open to question, but it seems that this and George’s receipt have deliberately been kept together for many years which to me is rather haunting.

Perhaps there were other items that have been lost.  I will never know.  That is why I occasionally collect ephemera (Which is a very cheap pastime) as even the most obscure of items have a history.  Letters and other forms of correspondence are fun to research as normally there is a lot more to go on.

Quite often when I am in the Arcade, I see ephemera for sale and it comes in all shapes and sizes as you might expect.  In the last few months, I have purchased a number of mortgage deeds (Dating from the 1830s) which belonged to long demolished properties in my home town of Bradford on Avon.  I have also purchased a number of items of correspondence dating from the early Victorian years.  My main aim is to preserve these items for posterity as once separated (George and Hannah being a good example), they rarely come together again.

Over the years, I have seen boxes of papers that have originated from one individual or from a family, but I do not tend to purchase these.  I prefer the random finds.

The dictionary definition of ephemera is as follows:- 

Things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time. 

The word comes from the Greek (Ephemeros).

There is plenty to find in the Arcade and elsewhere so if you are interested like me, do keep your eyes peeled.  You never know what you are going to find.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

This is the third of a small series of articles in which I will discuss items that I have either purchased or just seen when visiting antique establishments in Hungerford and elsewhere.

Marlow Railway Station

Today I was caught in a terrific downpour as I went to get a newspaper and although I had not planned a visit, I popped into the Arcade.  After purchasing a small Poole vase for Caron, I wandered up to the book section, more to pass the time than for any other reason.  I looked through the books but none really took my fancy so as the signals were clear, I drifted into the railway section under Rafters café.  A number of items took my fancy but I remained strong.  That was until I found an 1873 photograph of the original Marlow Railway Station.  The dealer had also noted that this self same photograph was probably the original used in the book, The Marlow Branch by Paul Karau and Chris Turner which was published in 1992.

Prior to moving to Hungerford, I had lived in Maidenhead for over twenty years and often visited Marlow to see the rugger team or just to sit by the river.  Marlow also has strong literary connections with both Shelley (Who wrote The Revolt of Islam there in 1817) and T.S. Eliot who lived in West Street during the Great War.  Thomas Love Peacock wrote Nightmare Abbey (1818) whilst resident in the town and lived only a short distance from Shelley.  Our great friend, Jerome K Jerome wrote part of his Three Men in a Boat (1889) in The Two Brewers which was and maybe still is a local pub.  It is also rumoured that Mary worked on her famous novel Frankenstein (1818) whilst living in Marlow with Shelley.  But enough of the literary references let us go back to The Marlow Donkey as the Marlow branch line is affectionately known (Please do not ask me why).

My photograph which was taken, it appears, at about the time of the lines opening in 1873, shows a locomotive (Class 517 Number 522) at Marlow Station with a number of carriages hired from the GWR.  The sepia photograph itself is delicious and is fading gracefully with age and the dealer had kindly added a photocopy of the photograph from Chris and Paul’s book for reference.  Although simple, it was quite a find as made this rather damp writer quite happy.

I have not been to Marlow Railway Station since I moved to Hungerford in 2007 and even then, there was not much to see as the original station had been demolished in 1967.  The present station is on the site of the old goods yard and was opened at the same time.  Quite how the Marlow branch survived is open to question as it was an offshoot from the Maidenhead to High Wycombe line which was closed without much thought in 1970.  Before, this one could travel north to Leeds and the like via Maidenhead and Bourne End (The next station along the line).  Just to think that in the early days there were plans to link the Marlow branch with the Henley on Thames branch (Another surprising survivor) but this met with some local opposition and was dropped.

© Copyright john bristow and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence The ‘Marlow Donkey’ in 1962 taken 57 years ago, near to Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, Great Britain

I will not go into anymore detail about The Marlow Donkey as I think that you should experience it for yourself.  Just go to Maidenhead and the trains for Marlow leave either from platform four or platform five and are reasonably regular.  You will pass through Cookham (Of Stanley Spencer fame) and it is worth stopping there for a while as it is a fascinating village to visit.  Cookham like Bourne End still retain their original railway buildings and there is a sense of a branch line mentality about the whole route.  This and the complicated working arrangements at Bourne End make it an original experience.

I would travel to Marlow on an agreeable summers day as the Thames accompanies you for much of the way.  There is a languid feel to the journey and Marlow itself is pretty laid back and has some excellent places to eat and drink.  As far as I am aware, there are no plans to electrify the line which is good news.

If you can get hold of a copy of The Marlow Branch then this will add to your experience as the whole line has a varied and interesting history.  But, be safe in the knowledge that at least one of the original photographs now has a loving and lasting home.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

Edward Weston [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

As you walk around the Arcade, it is surprising how many photographs you come across some are framed and some are not.  Quite frequently people buy these photographs and frame them at home (I have done this on occasions and they make nice gifts).  Everything on this planet has been photographed and will be photographed within our lifetimes as we all carry small cameras around in our pockets.  In a way, the cameras on our mobile phones have changed the playing field.

Let’s say that I am on the beach in France with Caron and decide to take a photograph of her, I know that within seconds I can post this photograph anywhere.  That is where we are at present.  Everything is almost instantaneous and that is what we expect.  But if we travelled back thirty or so years then the photographs from the self-same holiday in France would have taken a lot longer to produce.  A trip to the chemist would have been needed and if you had taken poor holiday photographs, then to all intents purposes, you would have had to live with the results.  These days if you take a poor photograph you can make it quite acceptable by using the wonders of modern technology.  You can change anything.  But it was not always like that as I found out when I came across a number of American photographers at college many years ago.

I had had a passing interest in early twentieth century photography and was familiar with the works of Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand. What I did not know was that the model in some of his works became a photographer herself and in my view was the equal of Weston.  But whilst you find books on Weston and many other famous pre-war photographers, you very rarely find books on the short lived but now almost forgotten Tina Modotti.  Of these, Edward Weston was my favourite photographer and I particularly admired some of his nude studies.

Tina was born in Italy in 1896 and died in Mexico in 1942 and during her short life she managed to be not only an immensely talented photographer but also an actress, a model and a revolutionary political activist which it is rumoured led to her early death.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=193834

Tina was born in Udine in Italy in August 1896 and emigrated to the USA (San Francisco) in 1913.  Like many girls of her age, she dreamed about becoming an actress and maybe making her mark in the movies.  During this time she acted in various plays and a few silent films and also worked as an artist’s model to bring in an extra income.

In 1917 she met a long forgotten poet who went by the name of Roubaix.   They became lovers and soon moved to LA so that Tina could pursue a serious movie career.  I remember reading many years ago that the writer (I forget who) considered that the Italians as a whole were the most beautiful race on the planet.  Whether this is true or not is a matter of opinion, but in Tina’s case it acted against her as she was often cast as the femme fatale in the movies she made.  I have never seen any of her movies (if they still exist) so cannot comment on her ability or lack of it but she was beautiful and the camera loved her.  This said, she did not make another movie after 1920.  However her relationship with Roubaix meant that she moved in the bohemian circles of LA and because of this she met Edward Weston who made a great impression on her.

Diego Rivera with a xoloitz cuintle dog in the Blue House, Coyoacan – Google Art Project.jpg

In my view, if Tina had not met Edward then her story might have taken a much different course and we would not have been talking about Tina Modotti Photographer.  She soon became Weston’s lover (Roubaix died of smallpox in 1922) and in 1923 travelled to Mexico with Weston and his son Chandler (I forgot to mention that Edward was married).  Tina in exchange for his help and mentoring agreed to run his studio for him.  Things were falling into shape.

If I digress for a short moment.  It always surprises me how often in the arts the meeting of like minds produces works of the highest quality.  In poetry, I think of the Browning’s and more recently Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath as examples.  Often one part eclipses the other which is sad and it is usually the woman who suffers and discontinues her art.  I think of Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda in this vein although I might be in a minority with my thoughts about them.

Whilst in Mexico City, Tina met Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and like in LA, she moved in their bohemian circles.  At this time, Edward was moving towards landscape as he was fascinated in the abstraction of the subject whilst Tina was equally fascinated by the Mexican people and also worked a great deal with the vibrant Mexican mural movement of which Diego Rivera was a part.

Dial Film Company / W.W. Hodkinson through Pathé Exchange [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

It was during this period that her visual senses matured massively.  Tina was beginning to find her eye and what an eye.  She photographed interiors and landscapes, flowers and many other subjects and I find  a great lyricism and gentleness in a lot of her work dating from this period (these works are available on the internet and you will have to make your own mind up, but in my view they in their way surpass a lot of Edward’s work).

Tina Modotti (1896-1942) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In 1925 things began to change, Edward returned to California and Tina began to mix with a number of left-wing radicals including senior members of Mexico’s Communist Party and was becoming radicalised.  Her photographs were beginning to appear in a number of their journals and it was said later that she had two distinct periods during her creative life.

These were Romantic and Revolutionary and I tend to agree with that supposition and I do believe that to some extent she was floating without Weston during this period.  She had a number of love affairs and in 1930 she was exiled from Mexico due to her activities within these subversive organisations (I have kept this summary simple as detailed histories of this time can be found elsewhere).

Initially, Tina went to Berlin for a while and then on to Moscow where she stayed for a number of years.  It was clear that Tina was seen as a political subversive in many countries and the Italian Fascists tried to extradite her although it was her intention to return to her home country and join the anti-fascist resistance.

However, the situation in Germany dictated that this was not a good idea and also poor Tina was quite exhausted (photographs from this period show that she by then had lost a lot of her beauty and looked tired and drawn).  She was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and in 1939 returned to Mexico using a false name.  Three years later on the 5th of January 1942 she died after a dinner with the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.  She collapsed in a taxi on the way home from what was later described as congestive heart failure but Diego Rivera amongst others were suspicious that she was actually murdered due to her radical activities (which as far as I can see were less visible once she had returned to Mexico).  If anything, it might have been the case of what she knew and of who she knew and if she was murdered by an unknown agency, then either the right or the left might have been responsible.  Personally, I just think that she died exhausted and disillusioned.

Neruda composed Tina’s epitaph which I have noted and this can be found on her tombstone.

Pure your gentle name, pure your fragile life,

bees, shadows, fire, snow, silence and foam

combined with steel and wire and pollen

to make up your firm and delicate being

Obviously, a little has been lost in the translation but you can see what the poet was saying quite clearly.

[[File:Tina Modotti with her arms raised – Edward Weston restoration.jpg|Tina Modotti with her arms raised – Edward Weston restoration]]

The sad thing is that Tina was not recorded as taking photographs after 1931 which was an immense loss to the art.  Perhaps if she had followed Edward back to the USA things might have been different, but there was something in her DNA that prevented her from doing so.  It was rather like saying if Buddy Holly had not taken the plane or if James Dean has not driven his car on those fateful days then things would have been different.  The idea is abstract as the past cannot be changed.  But what Tina did leave us during her short working life was a great number of photographs which rank amongst her peers.  They are in short for the most part superb and at auction often surpass the prices gained for the works of Weston, Stieglitz, Strand and many others.

You may have seen collections of photographs from this period and it is likely you would have seen the posters for the Dorothea Lange exhibition recently.  There have been other exhibitions notably of Paul Strand and Georgia O’Keeffe in the last couple of years.  I cannot recollect that Edward has had a show for quite a while, but wouldn’t it be great if one of our galleries combined both Tina’s and Edward’s works together?

The time is ripe as the Frida exhibition was a great success.  Time will tell.

I have yet to see reproductions of any of Tina’s photographs in the Arcade but occasionally other American photographers show up and these works are worth picking up.  In the book section there is a great selection of art books and you can usually find something or the other on photography or the like.

Recently, I have seen books on Fox Talbot on the shelves which is a good place to start.

I have often visited his house in Lacock in Wiltshire.  Check it out if you are in the area.   

We are all photographers that goes without question but how many of us have the eye?

I am influenced by light-light-light and take hundreds of photographs on my mobile hoping that just a few will be worthy of the subject.

Each of us is different and I hope that in a small way I have opened up the life of Tina Modotti for you and from that, (if you are interested) you might study this interesting era in more depth.  That was my intention when composing this article.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

Hungerford Arcade has many interesting people who love to come and shop with us.  Simon Moore, is a  scientist, cutlery historian, author, Adviser and Conservator of Natural Sciences.   His website says more about him than I can tell you.  Click here to read about this fascinating gentleman.

Artists’ Spoons and related cutlery is a fascinating book written by Simon Moore.  Do a Google search and you will find it.  Or, you can contact Simon direct at  couteaufin@btinternet.com.