Ding Dong Doorways and Doulton – Delightful Distractions in Kensington

I went to the The Design Centre on yesterday afternoon. I like it there. But this time, my enjoyment was spoiled by screaming kids at every turn, meaning I couldn't hear myself read. Yeah yeah, I know it's school holidays, but some parents were allowing their sprogs to charge about the place like it was a playground, treating the exhibits as interactive toys. A small Habitat pod exhibition on the ground floor contains a bed with a duvet. I tried to read the the info board in there whilst two adults stood and waited as their charges had a pillow fight and screamed at high pitch. I fear this is what the Museum of London will become. Sorry, I mean The London Museum, henceforth to be known as 'The House of Splat'. 

I gave up and headed out into Kensington High Street and investigated the nearby charity shops* before deciding to wander the streets that form the lower part of my Agatha Christie walking tour. I made my way down to Marloes Rd, passing the revamped St Mary's Hospital site, and turned left into Lexham Gardens. At the far corner there is a passageway leading to Cornwall Gardens.

There is a tree at the centre of this path that has the most enormous leaves, bigger than your head. I can't now recall the name, and I'm pretty sure it's not an indigenous species, but the leaves look gorgeous in the Autumn when they turn marvellous shades of pink, orange and yellow. I continued into Cornwall Gardens and headed south via Grenville Place, looking left and right at the mews. 

Then across Cromwell Road and directly into Ashburn Place with The Millennium Hotel ahead on the left. As I passed the side of the wall I noticed what looks like a face in the render:

Surely this is no accident?!  I had hoped that retrospective Google Streetview of this wall might show what this was, but I can find nothing on there. Perhaps this was a bit of street art/graffiti that was swiftly overpainted by the hotel...?

I turned right into Harrington Gardens. This wasn't my intended route, but this road serves me something new every time I walk along it. I managed to keep my phone in my pocket until the end of the end of the road when I noticed that the houses along the south side seem to have all had some kind competition 'my tiled threshold is better than yours' thing. Each one spectacularly different to the next and all splendid in their own way.

Most are small tiles but one of them sports slices of grey marble.
They also boast some excellent coloured glass in the porches. 

Round the corner, the first/corner house in Collingham Gdns has a lovely symmetrical mosaic pattern.

Turning southwards, I nipped briefly into Wetherby Gdns when I spotted the ghosts of the original doorbells in a gatepost. 

Collingham Gardens becomes Bolton Gardens and here I noticed something I've not seen on houses anywhere else – there are fancy metal ventilation grilles on the ground floor adjacent to the front doors. The second pic is one of a few Thomas Crapper manhole cover plates that I spotted along the way, this one is in Cresswell Place: 

I continued my detour and took a wander around The Boltons, a sort of elliptical shaped arrangement of large houses surrounding a church and private gardens. I counted twelve large vehicles idling with chauffeurs within, and about about the same number of drivers standing or leaning by gates waiting for moneyed clients to exit these large properties. It's all very sterile. Exacerbated by these houses all being painted exactly the same shade of bright dazzling white, which, to my eye, looks completely wrong, and fake. I dread to think what the insides of these houses look like as I very much doubt any of them retain much of their original C19th features. I think I'd be gutted, just like the interiors.

I turned into Priory Walk. There are two properties along here which sport 'Ancient Lights' signs. This tells us that c1870s this area, being ripe for property development, was a cause for planning concern and we might well have had taller blocks on narrower streets. 

One sign is high up on the back of 5 Harley Gdns, the other is a street level adjacent to the side entrance of 86 Drayon Gardens. (possibly the lowest sign of this type?):

Staying in Drayton Gardens there are  a couple of lovely mosaic thresholds. The one at No.90 is HUGE, flanked by beautiful fired tiles on the walls on the porch, and the other is chequered:

Enough. I was hungry. I headed back to Brompton Rd to get a bus to Sth Ken tube station but got distracted by the blue Doulton tiles on The Duke of Clarence. I should have taken a pic of the whole building because I hadn't realised until now that it has only recently been restored – see here to see how the pub used to look when it was slathered in paint. Hurrah!

The delightful Dove Mews behind the pub was yet another, albeit short detour, and then, as I waited for a bus on Old Brompton Rd, I noticed an old hand-painted street name peeping out from underneath the metal one near the corner with Creswell Gardens. It shows how it used to be called Moreton Terrace. 

What I haven't mentioned or shown here are all the lovely coal hole cover plates that I 'collected' along the way. I'll write up separately. Try not to get too excited... LOL!

*In Oxfam I had found and purchased a book about arsenic poisoning – 'The Inheritor's Powder' by Sandra Hempel.  I used to occasionally work with Sandra when I freelanced for publishing houses. I haven't seen here for +15 years and had no idea she'd written any books. I started it on the way home last night and continued it today, such that I have read the whole thing already. It's fascinating and engaging. 

Unusual and endangered animals at the Natural History Museum

I was out and about two Sundays ago and it was really biting cold out there so, rather than go home and wait for the house to warm up, I headed for Museumland because I wanted to see an exhibit within the NatHistMuseum about the loss of the Great White Rhino due to poaching them for their horns. I just cannot fathom how some human beings still believe that magic remedies can be obtained from what is basically the same as our fingernails. 

The museum was really busy. Lots of visitors. Mainly foreign families. And after finding the CGI exhibit I really enjoyed wandering the mammal galleries, something I haven't done in a while. 

I read every information panel and pressed every button and found it quite endearing how so many of the interactive pieces in those rooms have voiceovers that sound like TV programmes from my childhood – very clipped Queen's English pronunciation. Well, I say. How jolly marvellous.

I took some square format snaps of some of my favourite animals, some of which have already made their way into my Instagram feed @janeslondon – I'd never realised before how so many of these beasts are toothless and from South America. What's that all about? 

And it had never occurred to me that 'glutton' is another name for a wolverine. makes sense really.

I am also intrigued by some of the fishy oddities on this planet – who needs sci-fi books and movies when we already have multi-toothed weirdness like this?!

Every day is a new learning experience.

The V&A's new Sackler Courtyard and Sainsbury Gallery – I'm not impressed at all

I was invited to the press preview of these spaces and had been quite keen to go. On Wednesday morning, the day of the event, I put on the TV and saw it on BBC news. Oh ugh! How disappointing. I considered not bothering to leave the house after all. But then I thought, c'mon Jane, it's probably much better in the flesh, go take a look. So off I went.
As I approached the gates my heart sank and, as they say a lot these days, I am not going to lie to you – I really don't like it. Any of it. By which I mean any of it being here in this location. The elements are OK but just not for here. It reminds me of the Daniel Libeskind university building in Holloway Road which looks like some kind of malfunction happened and it was dropped from the sky into the wrong location.

Exhibition Road – the new entrance and the cafe just inside. 

Let's start with the gates on Exhibition Road. The Aston Webb Screen has been designed so that people can see through the gates when they are closed and have better access to the museum when they are open. All well and good, but the new gates are horrible.
As I approached them, I really thought they were temporary. The shade of grey is just like those corrugated panels that go up around building sites. A dark grey would have looked much better here. Apparently the barely noticeable patterns within the mesh is meant to echo the shrapnel damage that was on the walls they replace. Call me weird, but I preferred the walls – did we really need so many gates?

Architectural features; curves angles and reflections. Yawn.

Inside the gates it's all geometric shapes and mad curves over a courtyard paved in ceramic tiles. The cafe building (shown bottom left, above) looks to me like it could be part of Crossrail's scheme; the sharp angle on the roof resembles those vile geometric greenhouses we now see at the entrances of Tott Ct Rd station.
But it's the colour of the courtyard floor that concerns me most. It hit me hard as I arrived as it is completely the wrong tone. The tiles are a basic dead blue-white with added colours in stripes which, being mostly blue, further add to the coldness of the white and jar with the natural earthy tones of the older buildings. It was explained that these coloured lines tied up with some elements in the gallery below but try as I might I could not find the visual connection (see pics further down). This brings to mind Enzo Piano's explanation for the bright colours he used on his large constructions at St Giles, near Centrepoint; that they were to echo the colours of the guitars sold in Denmark Street. Really? green, yellow and orange guitars?!
But, back to the V&A courtyard floor – it was also explained that because tiles can be slippery (no shit Sherlock) it took a lot of time and effort (and money?!) designing them such that the fired coloured stripes sat within recesses. I really don't know why they bothered. I wonder if the whole thing is just so the V&A can say they have the first porcelain courtyard...?
Some sandstone or Yorkstone paving would have worked a treat here, even with all the other new elements, thereby mixing old and new.

Porcelain tiles – filth and a accident waiting to happen

The first two pics above show how the porcelain tiles are already filthy. Also worth mentioning is a triangular sloped section between the main flat area and the access ramp shown in the second two pics. In these days of Health and Safety madness I am quite surprised at this – see how the tiles have been placed with the design flowing downwards to further aid anyone who puts a step wrong. I reckon a guard rail of some kind will be added along the top after a few sprained ankles occur.

To the left of the courtyard near the cafe entrance, come carved lettering and leafy motifs on the old building has been re-gilded. All well and good but look how the new floor, which is metal here, obliterates WING and V&A.
Moving inside the building... The Sainsbury Gallery is a vast unsupported gallery space beneath the courtyard and is accessed via a staircase of glossy black and red (architects' orange). I was completely non-plussed on seeing this space – it's just a big dark empty room waiting for an event to arrive. It felt a bit like a underground car park with not columns. I suggest only architects and engineers who will be impressed by it. The general public will only appreciate the exhibitions that happen here.

Staircases, 1980s colours, wooden floors (nice touches) and the huge gallery

In conclusion, it's a mish-mash of ideas brought together in the wrong location.
And it cost £48M – yes, that's forty eight million pounds.
I will stop now.

Thought: Have I ever written about how I don't rate Tate Modern and it's damn Turbine Hall commissions either...?