Kettle's Yard

18 hours ago

To complement the last work of the week (Miro’s Tic Tic), this week we’ve chosen the pewter plate and lemon which can also be seen in the The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge display Beauty and Balance.
Jim Ede often used to used ‘Tic Tic’ as a way to explain balance and composition. His placement of the lemon nearby can been as an echo of the yellow dot in Mirò’s painting or an extension of the flat canvas into the room itself. At Kettle’s Yard Ede treated the artworks, natural objects and furniture as components of a larger whole, and some people have described the careful arrangement of the house as a work of art in itself. The pewter dish dates from the 17th century. Jim Ede wrote about buying it: ‘Pewter Plate from Brompton Road, London – purchased with money gained by sale of a radiator. It was marked £16 but I got it for £8 as it was the first sale on a Monday morning!’
Photo: Kathryn Faulkner ... See MoreSee Less

Kettle's Yard

4 days ago

We recently took a tour of the David Parr House, an arts and crafts gem in an unassuming terraced house in the Mill Road area. David Parr bought the house in 1887 and over the next 40 years decorated it in the style of the grand interiors of the Victorian Gothic Revival churches and Arts & Crafts houses he worked on every day.
www.kettlesyard.co.uk/about/news/the-david-parr-house/ ... See MoreSee Less

Kettle's Yard

1 week ago

Our work of the week is Joan Miró's 'Tic Tic', currently on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum as part of 'Beauty & Balance'. Jim Ede often described himself as a ‘friend of artists’, and much of his collection was acquired over five decades through these friendships. Jim Ede visited Miró on several occasions in the inter-war years and Ede wrote that he received the painting while discussing Miró’s work with him on a café terrace in Paris.
While Jim lived at Kettle’s Yard he kept ‘open house’ every afternoon of term, personally guiding visitors around his home. Ede wrote of 'Tic Tic': “The Miró was to me an opportunity to show undergraduates the importance of balance. If I put my finger over the spot at the top right all the rest of the picture slid into the left-hand bottom corner. If I covered the one at the bottom, horizontal lines appeared, and if somehow I could take out the tiny red spot in the middle everything flew to the edges.”
www.kettlesyard.co.uk/collection-item/tic-tic/ ... See MoreSee Less