Tag: Yorkshire

A new adventure for H is for Home

The finished set up of the H is for Home pitch in Valley Antiques, Hebden Bridge

A new venture/adventure has begun for H is for Home this week. We’ve spent the last couple of days moving into the recently-opened Valley Antiques Centre in Hebden Bridge.

Arriving with stock for Valley Antiques Centre, Hebden Bridge

Arriving with stock for Valley Antiques, Hebden Bridge

We’ve long-fancied having a retail space in Hebden. It’s a lovely little town full of small independent shops; cafés & coffee shops, pubs & bars and art galleries. It’s a great place to spend the day mooching around. We actually lived here when we first moved to Yorkshire from Brighton back in 2000.

Hanging the H is for Home banner in our new pitch

Arriving with stock for Valley Antiques, Hebden Bridge

Despite recently moving to Wales, it will be nice to maintain an ongoing relationship with the town, Todmorden and the Calder Valley, in general.

Hanging vintage fabric in our new pitch

Hanging vintage fabric in our new pitch

We’ve secured a decent-sized space, big enough for furniture and smaller vintage items such as fabric, lighting, artwork and kitchenalia – and all manner of decorative things for the home.

Corner of our new pitch Corner of our new pitch

Vintage trestle table in our new pitch

Valley Antiques Centre has only been open a couple of months, it’s looking great and is packed full of interesting and quirky stuff from a number of dealers. It’s well run, and you’ll receive a warm welcome from Jan, who has launched the centre – or one of the other dealers on hand.

Vintage wooden printers blocks

Antique brass candle holders

We’ve included these photos to show you how we’re getting on – and to showcase the kind of stock you’ll find on our pitch. In future posts, we’ll highlight other dealers and their wares.

Vintage Husman's potato chip tin

Corner of our new pitch in Valley Antiques Centre

Valley Antiques Centre is situated at the end of Valley Road – just past the Doctors’ Surgery, on the opposite side of the road. It’s open 10am-4pm, Monday to Sunday.

Corner of our new pitch with a vintage kitchenette

Corner of our new pitch in Valley Antiques Centre

We hope that you can pay us a visit sometime soon!

Designer Desire: Gerald French

Portrait of Gerald French paintings | H is for Home

We’ve owned two huge examples of artworks by Gerald French, so it’s surprising that we’ve not featured him on our Designer Desire series before now. You can have a look at one of them here.

French (1927-2001) hailed from Bradford and attended Bradford School of Art part-time where he was a contemporary of David Hockney. We’ve included one of a few sketches he did of Hockney in our collage above.

There’s a small number of French’s works in public collections including The Hepworth Wakefield, Bradford Museums and Abbot Hall in Kendal, Cumbria.

Original examples of his work regularly come up for sale at auction – especially up here in Yorkshire.

Portrait of Gerald Frenchcredit

Additional image credits:

Abbot Hall Art Gallery | Bradford Museums | Calderdale MBC | David Duggleby | The Hepworth Wakefield

A Piece of history

Piece Hall, Halifax

It was a gloriously sunny day a couple of weeks ago when we took a trip to nearby Halifax. It’s a long time since we’ve been and we wanted to pay a visit to the recently restored, historic Piece Hall.

Piece Hall, Halifax with the spire of Square Church in the background | H is for Home

It’s incredible to think that when the Hall was first opened, trading within was only allowed for 2 hours per week – and just on a Saturday. In his book, A Topographical Dictionary of England, Samuel Lewis writes:

Early engraving of Piece Hall, Halifax

The Piece Hall was erected by the manufacturers and is a large quadrangular building of freestone occupying an area of ten thousand square yards with a rustic basement storey and two upper storeys fronted with two interior colonnades which are spacious walks leading to arched rooms where goods in an unfinished state were deposited and exhibited for sale to the merchants every Saturday from ten to twelve ‘clock. This structure which was completed at an expense of £12,000 and opened on 1 January 1779 unites elegance convenience and security. It contains three hundred and fifteen separate rooms, and is proof against fire.

First floor colonnade, Piece Hall, Halifax | H is for Home

The Hall is on 3 floors, now housing a range of little independent shops located along the long, beautiful colonnades. Shops such as Yorkshire Soap Company, Loafers Vinyl & Coffee – there’s even a gin bar in a corner on the ground level. The large central square is being used for concerts, gigs, markets, workshops and so on. The Antiques Roadshow takes place there this summer.

Adelle standing at one of the huge gates leading into Piece Hall | H is for Home

We couldn’t leave without taking a couple of photos of the impressive, restored cast iron south gates manufactured in 1871.

Detail from one of the gates leading into Piece Hall | H is for Home

The white rose of Yorkshire is one of the prominent symbols. The gates are inscribed with the Latin, “Nisi Dominus custodierit civitatem” from Psalm 127 meaning, “Except the Lord keep the city”. They bear a figure of a lamb, a nod to the fact that Halifax was an important centre of the woollen trade in England. The head of John the Baptist is also present, he’s the patron saint of wool weavers’ guilds.

 

Designer Desire: Sheila Bownas

Mosaic of Sheila Bownas textile designs | H is for Home

What a coincidence that, just a week after our trip to the Yorkshire Dales, we’re featuring one of its local creatives.

Sheila Bownas (1925-2007) was a fine artist and surface pattern designer from the village of Linton in Craven near Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales. In 1946, she won a scholarship to London’s Slade School of Fine Art, where she won further awards which included a year’s extension to study History of Art in Florence. Bownas freelanced as a textile and wallpaper designer for companies such as Liberty and Co., Marks and Spencer and Laura Ashley. She also worked for the Natural History Museum in the 1960s, creating botanical studies. She returned to Linton in the 1970s, where she settled unobtrusively for the rest of her life. She was the only child of the village shopkeepers, she never married nor had children of her own.

Some of Sheila Bownas’ design archive was rediscovered by Chelsea Cefai, an art gallery professional, when it came up for sale at an auction house in Ilkley in 2008. Cefai purchased some 210 of her original textile pattern prints and slowly set about researching the designer and celebrating her designs.

Bonas was indefatigable in her efforts to secure salaried employment. She apparently applied for around jobs in the 1950s and 60s. In 1959 in yet another rejection letter, this time from Crown Wallpaper, Bonas was told:

Thank you for your letter enclosing your design… I have decided to retain this design so would you please let us have your invoice? With reference to your desire to obtain a position in our studio, the Director feels that should an appointment be made at all, a male designer would be preferable…

Last summer, a retrospective of her work was shown at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum and is currently showing at Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery until 7th January 2018.

Cefai has set about collaborating with artists & designers reintroducing Bonas’ work in limited-edition prints, furniture, ceramics and other homewares.

In an interview with the Yorkshire Post, Cefai shared:

It’s been hard work and there have been times when I felt like giving up but then I feel like it’s something I have to do. I love her work and it saddens me to think that an artist with such wonderful talent could so easily slip through the net of recognition That’s what drives me. Sheila Bownas is not just a number in a file now, she’s a name in the limelight.

UPDATE: In 2021, Cefai donated the Sheila Bonas archive to Leeds Museum Discovery Centre where it can be viewed by appointment.

Portrait of Sheila Bownascredit

Additional image credits:

The Guardian | The Northern Echo