Design News: In bed with Charles II
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Your support makes all the difference.n THE ONLY annoying thing about falling for a picture or an object in an art gallery is having to wait till the exhibition is over before you can buy it and take it home. The organisers of "Southern Craftmakers" understand such impatience: should you wish to purchase one of the 140 items on show you can whisk it away at the end of whatever stage the tour is on, and a similar piece will take its place.
The show is sub-titled "contemporary applied arts for the home and garden" and the 20 exhibitors gathered from around the southern counties of England comprise furniture-makers, textile artists, potters, lettercutters, silversmiths, a woodworker, a glassmaker and a blacksmith. Choose from - among many delights - Margret Adolfsdttir's cut-out felt cushions and bedcovers, John Callen's asymmetrical wooden letter rack, Lucinda Bell's woven napkins, Charles Normandale's forged-steel fire-basket,Yvonne Renouf Smith's sleek silver salt and pepper shakers or Angus Williams's tough linen floor rugs.
Southern Craftmakers is at Beatrice Royal Gallery, Nightingale Avenue, Eastleigh, Hampshire 5 September- 25 October, Tues-Sun 11-5 (01703 610592); South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell 5 Dec-24 January; The Waterfront Museum, Poole (01202 683138) 30 January-14 March; Quay Arts Centre, Newport, Isle of Wight (01983 528825) 3 April-8 May.
n FORGET MIRRORS on ceilings. Far better to wake in the morning and gaze up at John Michael Wright's huge painting of "The Allegory of the Restoration", as Charles II did in his bedchamber in the Palace of Whitehall. It is at an exhibition to mark the 300th anniversary of the destruction of the palace, along with many drawings by Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, and artefacts that were found buried in the ruins.
`The Lost Palace of Whitehall', 1530-1698 will be at the RIBA Heinz Gallery, 21 Portman Square, London W1 from 10 September-24 October, Monday-Friday, 11-5pm, Saturday 11-2pm (0171 580 5533)
n WHEN BERNARD Leach returned to Britain from Japan in 1920 and set up a pottery at St Ives, he was helped by his first apprentice, Shoji Hamada (1894-1978). This Japanese potter stayed for three years, became a deft interpreter of medieval English slipware and a huge influence on his British counterparts. When he returned to Japan, he was so revered that in 1955 he was declared a National Living Treasure. Michael Cardew - Leach's second pupil - said that Hamada's pots were "kind ... and the clay sits there and glows. The treatment is right, no violence has been done to the material." Judge for yourself at a show of work from Japanese collections at Bonhams.
Bonhams auctioneers, Montpelier Street, London SW7 (0171-393 3900) from 4-17 September.
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