ERIC GILL, DURATION, AND THE DITCHLING MUSEUM

Eric Gill, Spoil Bank crucifix and chapel; paper and ink, 
1919. Collection of Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft. 
Photo, Tessa Hallmann

I wanted to go to the Ditchling Museum in the Sussex village of the same name, when I learned of its association with the artist Eric Gill. I'd become interested in Gill years ago when I learned letterpress printing under the auspices of the Annis Press at Wellesley College. There I became acquainted with Gill as the designer of beautiful type fonts, Perpetua and Gill Sans, so I assumed that the Ditchling Museum would focus on letterpress printing and book arts. It turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. I had known that Gill was also a celebrated stone- and print-maker, but that he had been a magnet for artists who followed him to establish a rural Catholic artists community I hadn't known. What he founded—and abandoned—in Ditchling was both a locus, movement, and inspiration for three generations of brilliant British craftsmen.

In the early years of the last century, overlapping with the arts and crafts movement of William Morris, Gill was a student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, where he studied lettering with Edward Johnston, who would later design the famous London Underground typeface. The two became friends, as Gill did with printer Hilary Peplar. Both Johnston and Peplar moved to the village of Ditchling after Gill moved his family to live a way from the hectic, industrialized world, in 1908.

Guild rules. Text by Eric Gill, lettered by Joseph 
Cribb. 1920s. Author photo.

In 1920, after Gill’s conversion to Catholicism, Peplar, under Gill's leadership, joined engraver Desmond Chute and apprentice letter-cutter Joseph Cribb, to found the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, a fraternal community for responsible workmanship and self-sufficient living, dedicated to the Dominican life. Within the Guild grounds—with its chapel, studios, and school—printing, stone-cutting, and calligraphy were pursued, and soon weaving, silversmithing, wood carving, and painting too, as more artists moved to Ditchling to join the Guild, attracted both by Gill and the other artists and by the ideals of the life. 

The Guild lasted until 1989, when the property was sold and the buildings razed. Some relatives of the original families are productive artists in the traditions of their grandparents' art forms, living nearby and active in the preservation of the Guild's materials and heritage. On my visit, I met the grand-niece of Eric Gill's brother, Macdonald, who is soon to publish a book on Mac's extraordinary maps.

"Disruption, Devotion, and Distributism," the current show marking the centennial of the founding of the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, uses every inch of a small museum's space and draws on the breadth of its permanent collection to introduce the heart of Guild's aesthetic, spiritual, and social aspirations. Central in the early days was Hilary Peplar's Stanhope printing press with which he founded St. Dominic's Press. The press was not about fine printing, and Gill's contributions were not typographic (he designed is famous types after he left Ditchling). The array of titles below indicate that the ethical life of Dominican Tertiaries (lay affiliates of the order) was a major part of founding community's work. Gill wrote and Peplar produced pamphlets to give guidance on all aspects of acceptable living, even down to the "UnChristian Apparel favoured by Females" in the Welfare Handbook, Dress.

Welfare Handbooks, 1919-1923; paper and ink. Printed by St. Dominics Press. Photo by Tessa Hallman.

When Gill left in 1924, it was abruptly and had something to do with his colleagues' knowledge of the dichotomy between his ideals and his deeds. Fiona McCarthy's 1989 biography revealed to those of us who weren't there then that Gill had sexual relationships with his sisters, daughters and a dog, on top of being generally overbearing. In the years since McCarthy's biography, Gill's reputation has naturally suffered tremendously, yet his work is remains. Some demanded the removal of his Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral (work on which excused him from serving in World War I) after the revelation of his incest, but the work's merits assure its place despite some outcries. (Illustration right: Eric Gill, Stations of the Cross, panel 3, 4'6," ca. 1915. Westminster Cathedral. Photo from Cathedral website.) 

Philip Hagreen, "Trying to Make Ends Meet," 
wood engraving, 1940s. Reproduced 
by kind permission of the estate of 
Philip Hagreen. Photo courtesy of the 
Ditchling Museum.

Then, too, the Guild survived Gill's sins and flourished on what he had built, as "Disruption, Devotion, and Distributism" amply demonstrates. The show illustrates how each of these principles shaped the Guild not only at its founding but as it continued even after Gil's removal to Capel-y-ffin, Wales, where he established another Catholic workshop. In this show we see prints by Philip Hagreen, who came to Ditchling to study letter cutting and wood engraving, left for Wales with Gill, but returned after a few years on his own. In the current show, there are several of his Distributist woodcuts, decrying the effects of industrialism. These were made in the 1940s, two decades after the Guild's founding. Despite Gill's early departure, the work and faith of early Guild members remained deeply committed. Socially, Hagreen was a Distributist, a champion of returning people to rural settings where they could produce their own food and provide for their own modest basic needs, independent of the degradations of larger economic movements—capitalism or communism alike.

Ethel Mairet, "Vegetable Dyes," 
1924, 4th ed.Wood engraving 
by Eric Gill; printed by St.
Doiminic's Press. Collection 
of Ditchling Museum. 
Author photo.

Valentine KilBride, gold vestment 
detail, 1920s; silk. Collection of 
Ditchling Museum. Worn in
the Guild chapel. Photo courtesy 
of Ditchling
Museum.

Longevity and duration seemed to me to be two of the most outstanding features of the Guild, aside from the brilliance of its individual artisans and their commitments to traditional, honest workmanship. Ethel Mairet—who, because of her gender, never became a member of the Guild—was a major force in Ditchling's creative community, a weaver who literally wrote the book on the sources and use of natural dyes. She attracted Valentine KilBride who learned from her and became a Guild member in 1924, soon setting up shop for himself and specializing for years in liturgical vestments. In time, his daughter, Jenny, became a weaver. She become the first female Guild member in the 1950s, and she is still living in Ditchling, active in dying and silk weaving in 2019.

Another case of duration and longevity within the context of honest workmanship is in the silversmithing of the Pruden family. Dunstan Pruden attended the same arts and crafts college as Gill. As an ardent Catholic, Pruden became interested in Gill's writings. After they met, Gill obtained Pruden a major ecclesiastical commission, one that helped establish his reputation. In the 1930s, Pruden moved to Ditchling and joined the Guild, specializing  in liturgical pieces. Pruden's grandson, Anton, is still silversmithing in Ditchling, using the traditional methods that Dunstan plied.

Dunstan Pruden, "Cavalry Group," brass, 1973. Collection of Anton Prudent. Author photo.

Visiting a show like "Disruption, Devotion, and Distributism"—a show that aims to clarify those founding principles of the Guild—is both illuminating, inspiring, and confusing. The Guild endured for over sixty years, with a mixture of transitory and stable resident artists. There is nothing intrinsic in this show's artifacts to indicate the passage of time. It makes sense: Given the continuity of devotion to traditional methods, simple living, and the integrity of work, it's natural that the work from 1920 and 1950 might not look very different. A jacket woven by Ethel Mairet was undated, as was a gown Valentine KilBride woven and dyed for Mairet. But when? 1920s? '30s? Displayed nearby were samples by Mairet's students, Barbara Allen and Hilary Bourne, who wove the textiles for the film Ben Hur and the curtains for the Royal Festival Hall in the 1950s. Does the eye date them? The dyes are exceptional in all.

Ethel Mairet, Jacket of hand-spun,
hand-dyed cotton. Undated. Ditchling
Museum. Author photo

Hilary Bourne and Barbara Allen, Woven
Cloth woven for Ben Hur, 1959. Brora wool.
Ditchling Museum. Author photo.

The Ditchling Museum, like the Guild it memorializes, is small and very special. I think that the current show needs the fourth "D," for "Duration," because it seems impossible to characterize the place and its spirit without imagining a shuttle moving through time. Eric Gill and his few colleagues set the place in motion, and the original members were profoundly influential in setting out principles that held fast for the duration. As far as I understand, if there was disruption within the community, the greatest was from Gill himself. 

Our most congenial and 
enthusiastic Ditchling host and 
guide, Larry Yates.

David Jones,  "Our Lady of the Hills," ca. 
1921. Oil on canvas.
Photo by Tessa Hallman

The devotion of the Museum's staff; the relationship of those who keep the Museum and Guild memories alive today; the works of art and the reputations of the artists: None of  these show signs of failing. While it's a complicated place with many individuals and relationships, a history of comings and goings, and many art forms, it's worth the work to know this place. If I lived nearby, I'd have an on-going relationship. I'd see each new show. I'd speak with the current generation of relatives and neighbors who come by. Immersion seems to be the way to appreciate a place at once vast and intimate. 

If you look up the Ditchling Museum on a travel site, reviewers focus curiously on the excellence of the coffee and pastry. I didn't try them, and I'm sure they are great, but I urge you beyond.
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You may also be interested to read:
https://theguild.000webhostapp.com/g12.htm
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/eric-gills-fall-from-grace/
https://distributistreview.com/the-thomist-inheritance-and-the-household-economy-of-father-vincent-mcnabb/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/jul/22/art.art
https://www.academia.edu/1628468/The_Guild_of_St_Joseph_and_St_Dominic

TROY: MYTH AND REALITY at the British Museum

Heralds take Briseis from Achilles. Roman relief, 30 BC - AD 80,
reworked 1750-1850. Marble. British Museum.

Anticipating a visit to the British Museum, images from two ends of the museum-experience spectrum warred in my brain. Which would it be? In one scenario, I stood in the hush of grand, gray halls, reverentially studying classical antiquities, exquisitely wrought works in marble, clay, and gold. Vying with that was the realistic image of the unbounded central chamber, once the British Museum Library and now at its feet a town market miscellany—the vast gift shop surrounded by caterers serving bouncy school children and distracted tourists, all dripping and disheveled on a damp November morning.

George Chapman, The Whole Works of
Homer, ca. 1616. Lent by Her Majesty
The Queen.

I got the plebs and patricians both at Troy: Myth and Reality, the major show that opened on 21 November, when I visited, and runs through 8 March 2020. Topic and curation appeal both to a popular audience and to the learned and connoisseurs alike. As an introduction to the stirring story of the Trojan War story and its characters as advanced by the Homeric tradition, it is terrific. The groups of girls in school uniforms with their notebooks in hand appeared quite as engaged by the displays and exemplary labels as did tweedy elders bent low to inspect Chapman's Homer or the inscription painted on a two-handled Greek cup.

I fall somewhere in between these groups, between gawping enthusiasm and a reasonable degree of learning. My literary self felt swoony as I dropped my own eyes upon George Chapman's seventeenth-century English translation of the poetry that moved Keats to feel, "like some watcher of the skies/When a new planet swims into view." The whole exhibition gives one that frisson of discovery and drama, especially in the first half that's focused on ancient art. 

Homer as a god. Hellenistic relief, probably made
in Alexandria by Archelos of Priene, ca. 225-205
BC. Marble, Bovilae, Italy. British Museum.

This show demonstrates how accounts of the Trojan War have been reflected in visual art through the ages, with an intermission focused on the archaeological search for evidence of historical Troy. The curators take care to tell us that the stories are not only from Homer's Illiad, but from many sources lost to us. In the works themselves we see interpretations of familiar episodes that depart from our knowledge of Homeric versions. Still, as illustrated by this Italian relief (right), Homer's stories reigned. Herein, nine Muses and the ranks of the gods above him oversee the apotheosis of the poet, crowned by Time.

Over two centuries earlier than this relief, an Etruscan painter depicted the Judgment of Paris that precipitated the war. Invited to choose which of three goddesses was most beautiful, by selecting Aphrodite over Hera and Athena, he was guaranteed the hand of Helen, who was incidentally already wedded to Menelaus: Ten years of war ensued. This scene shows Aphrodite giving a broad hint by displaying a little leg to Paris (middle panel), while behind her, at the far end of the panel, Helen is gird her for travels by her servants.

Helen promised to Paris. Etruscan wall painting, ca. 560-550 B.C.
Terracotta. British Museum. (poorly photographed by the author through  the vitrine)

Such major episodes from the Iliad and Odyssey abound in this show, and it's impossible to come away without a vivid sense of action and characters. The wrath of Achilles over and over, and is illustrated in a variety of media. One of the most effective of these is a bronze container with etched drawings that show blood-thirsty Achilles cutting the throat of the first of nine Trojan prisoners lined up for sacrifice to his unholy revenge for Patroclus's death. The episode is literally graphic, chilling in its precisely cut detail.

Achilles sacrifices Trojan prisoners (detail).
Container (cista) 320-250 BC. Bronze. Palestrina,
Italy. British Museum

Wounded Achilles, 1825, Filippo Albanicini.
Marble with restored gilded wooden arrow.
The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth

The stories from the Iliad are stories of high passions against the flames of war. Kings and warriors lose and win wives and slaves in battles waged against stated enemies and, just as often, within their own ranks. Factions fight; the gods intervene or don't, confusing agency. Perspectives on outsized events can make them heroic, tragic, or painfully mixed. Characters too are terribly complex: Achilles is a hero; a defiant brute; a figure of pathos, lost in grief. The curators have taken pains to build a show that highlights the ambiguities and nuance of the stories in the traditions that we know as Iliad and Odyssey—and Aeneid, when we see Homer's stories retold and changed for different literary, cultural, and historical ends. There is no Penelope faithfully awaiting Odysseus, but Creusa who perishes in Troy, leaving Aeneas to take his son and father to found a future dynasty in Italy: Hail Augustus!

"Helen (Flamma Troiae)," ca. 1860. William
Morris. Pencil and watercolor. Victoria and
Albert Museum.

Both Greek Odysseus and Roman Aeneas are strong, courageous, wily, and virtuous. And both draw for audiences the limits of the civilized world in their encounters with the travails and temptations of Beyond: the seductive Sirens, the brutish Cyclops, cannibals, Aeolian winds, and other terrors and intrigues. These heroes ultimately define the power of home and civilization. But Moderns interpret these stories in ways the ancients would not have, as metaphors for all sorts of journeys, especially personal, psychological ones.

Sirens. Roman fresco, painted plaster, AD 20-70. Pompeii, Italy. British Museum.

The second half of the show feels uneven after the first, which is filled exclusively with ancient art. Once we reach the Common Era, when ideas and interpretations that arise from a wider world appear, it strikes me that this bumpy experience is inevitable. The ancient world was tiny. In the art presented, we sense the individuality of regions and periods, but even more we see what is mirrored and reflected in a world that extended only along the shores of the Mediterranean in art produced over 600 years (roughly 500 BC through 100 AD). Over 600 years in the Common Era, though, from around 1400 to 2010, we see work on display from all over Europe—south and north—Britain,  and America. Some of it imitates or refers directly both to the Homeric stories and to ancient art itself, but much refers to the ancient stories in expressions unique to the artists' own times and places. What may feel miscellaneous in a hallway displaying 600 years of work—including illuminated manuscripts, a Rubens painting, William Blake watercolor, and poster for the 2004 movie, Troy, with Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, and Orlando Bloom—is indeed the vast history of Western art and popular culture. It's in the nature of the little we've recovered of ancient art that what remains is relatively unified in place, culture, and study. But the six centuries since then fill the globe and scores of academic departments—history, art, language, anthropology. While I paint this idea with a broad brush, I think it accounts for the sense that the first part of this show is excellent, while the second part is ungainly.

"The Sirens' Song," Romare Bearden, 1977. Collage. Collection of Alan and Pat Davidson.

I'm sorry that I won't have a chance to visit Troy a second—and a third—time. This is a show for several visits, if only to feast the eyes on the riches selected for display. Fortunately, I was able to buy the comprehensive catalogue. It doesn't have the Brad Pitt poster, but most everything else, and a thorough text that goes more deeply than the labels for visitors can. The show runs at the British Museum through 8 March 2020.

More early reviews of Troy: Myth and Reality at the British Museum:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/24/troy-myth-and-reality-review-british-museum-london

https://www.artdependence.com/articles/troy-myth-and-reality/

https://www.timeout.com/london/museums/troy-myth-and-reality-review

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/what-really-happened-at-troy/

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50492708

The photographs are the author's, shot with a cell phone camera through the vitrines and display cases at the show. These images are poor representations of magnificent works of art, but may give the reader a sense of what s/he might gain by seeing the show.

JERZY JOTKA KEDZIORA at Schiller Park, Columbus

"Acrobats with Chairs," Jerzy Jotka Kedziora. Installed at Schiller Park,

Columbus, Ohio, 2019.

The trees are only half-bare in German Village, where selections from Polish sculptor Jerzy Jotka Kedziora's Suspension: Balancing Art, Nature, and Culture have been placed for a month. That they are suspended in our midst at all is only because of the quick work of the Friends of Schiller Park, whose president caught wind of Kedziora's show on the East Coast and finagled a stop in Columbus before it moves back to Poland.

"Acrobats with Chairs," detail. Jerzy Jotka Kedizora.

To my mind, November may be the perfect month to have high-flying sculpture. The thinned-out trees show their own bones now, exposing their linear underpinnings through the leaves they continue to shed. "Acrobats with Chairs"—two performers in positions of superhuman extension, clutching chairs on high wires—appeared silhouetted against a washy early morning sky the day I went to look. Like stage props, the larger-than-life figures catch our approaching eye and engage us in their drama. But the sculptures have two tasks: They have to engage us in this theatrical way—as distant circus or magic, as Performance—and as planted sculpture too, for when we are as close to them as we can come, our relationship with them changes.

Close-up, we are in awe of individual acrobats. They are huge, with muscles of steel! They are strong as iron to hold transient positions requiring such extraordinary flexibility. Are they made of flesh, putty, or steel? Looking up from below, the acrobats are god-like. Their extreme positions are beyond human—inconceivable—though, impossibly, there they are. "Acrobats with Chairs" is about poise, coming and going, far away and up close. It is whimsical and light on the horizon, a miracle of idea elevating heavy matter up close.

"Broken Rope," Jerzy Jotka Kedziora. Installed in Schiller Park, Columbus, Ohio.

I had walked beneath "Broken Rope" on my way to see a piece suspended above a pond without noticing it. It was on my way back to my car that I looked up and discovered the remarkable figure, even more compelling than her high-wire neighbors. She is the rope, holding two parted sections together in her hands. Perhaps a circus performer could do this, but this feels more desperate than balancing with a chair. I had an instinctive reaction that she could fall, which I hadn't felt with the pair of acrobats. I was immediately drawn into the drama of this sculpture simply by the act it represents.

"Broken Rope," detail. Jerzy Jotka Kedziora.

But, again, these works are not to be seen from a single distance or point of view, and "Broken Rope" particularly demonstrated the beauties of tree-top installation in the fall. The extreme extension of the figure's limbs against the limbs of the trees further complicates and enhances the beauty of each. The tree, which we might call "bare," becomes a busy filigree against which the bold pose of the body (star-like, not linear from this perspective) is placed. The "mighty" tree feels delicate in comparison with the fierce strength of the figure, who holds on, suspended, not even close to rooted.

"Rower," Jerzy Jotka Kedzidora. Installed in Schiller Park, Columbus, Ohio.

"Rower" sits above one of the Schiller Park ponds. The indirect morning light gave it mystery from some directions, but compared to the other works, this seemed mundane. The compact, rowing body doesn't transform itself as the viewer changes place, as the extended, flying bodies do. The big surprise here is the lack of a boat. We might see the oars as legs that walk the figure across the water, but I wasn't convinced by this piece. A view from the front had some interest; from the rear is seemed—well, to lack a mooring.

"Rower." Jerzy Jotka Kedizora.

Neither the rower nor his oars touch the water's surface. From some points of view, the wires that secure "The Rower" are distractingly apparent. Unlike the acrobats' wires, these are purely functional, and not worked into the story. As the light changes through the day, the illusion of floating will be clear from different spots, but the wires will be just as problematic from others too.

Kedziora's show continues in Livingston and Thurber Parks in Columbus as well, through November.

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STARR REVIEW, NEW EDITION continues STARR REVIEW, published from 2011 through 2016 on this platform: http://starr-review.blogspot.com/