#lodnon

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

Welcome to Elizabethan London :)

[travelling-my-little-pony]

Cow creamer

ARTIST / MAKER:John Schuppe (maker)

DATE:1761 (made)

PLACE:London (made)

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES:Cast, engraved and applied silver

Weak, green tea was initially favoured by wealthy Europeans, as was traditional in China. By the 1720s, the British had developed a taste for oolong and black teas. To counter the taste of more bitter brew, varieties such as Bohea, Pekoe and Souchong were taken with milk or cream, which created a demand for decorative jugs to hold these additions and became an essential part of the tea service.

This silver milk jug takes the form of a cow, with its tail curled over to form the handle. The cow’s open mouth forms the spout, while the hinged lid on its back, engraved with blossoms and cast with a resting fly, would have allowed the vessel to be refilled. Commonly referred to as a cow creamer, this shape first appeared in Britain in 1753 and was popularised by the Dutch silversmith John Schuppe, who immigrated to London in the 1750s. Although Schuppe’s are considered the earliest and finest examples, a large number of cow creamers were made by other Dutch and German silversmiths, while many British ceramic manufacturers produced examples in lead-glazed earthenware.

Tea Leaf went to see the Craft of Tea Exhibition at the Goldsmiths' Centre, in London, England.

A bit more about the exhibition here:

The Craft of Tea: 1660-2024 is a free exhibition at the Goldsmiths’ Centre that explores the material history of tea, stylistically and them

[fuckyeahplattenbau]

John Donat, The Watchers, 1960 (detail). Alton West Estate, Roehampton, South West London, featuring Lynn Chadwick’s sculpture ‘The Watchers’

[actaecon]

[rhur-garbage]

“ He did it –– rusty did it! “

[hubertmajka]

Carlos from The Squad for Lewis Magazine, photographed by Hubert Majka

[floatingonwater]

Coal yard

[psychi-artist]

Invisible Cities: Architecture of Line

Waddington Custot Gallery 7th March - 10th May, 2018

Curated by Flavia Frigeri, ‘Invisible Cities: Architecture of Line’ is currently taking over the Waddington Custot Gallery in the most spectacular way. The exhibition consists of paintings, drawings and sculptures by a group of international artists; Georgio de Chirico, Fausto Melotti, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Gego, Shusaku Arakawa, Giulio Paolini and Tomás Saraceno. These artists explore the concepts of the ideal city, discovering, in the process, the necessary coexistence of the real and the imagined.

The exhibition is named after Italo Calvino’s novel, ‘Le città invisibili’ translating to, ‘Invisible Cities’. The book explores the imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by explorer, Marco Polo. The book is framed as a conversation between the ageing and busy emperor Kublai Khan, who constantly has merchants coming to him describing the state of his expanding and vast empire. It mostly consists of poems that describe fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as parables or mediations on culture, language, time, memory, death, or the general nature of human experience. In one exchange between Khan and Polo, Khan prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly - his hometown. Polo’s response: “Every time I describe a city, I am saying something about Venice.”

The metaphysical cityscape paintings of Giorgio de Chirico 1888-1978 (‘Il grande metafisico’ and ‘Il segreto del porticato’) show dream like settings of cities, with awkward, steep perspectives of Italy, surrounded by melancholic shadows and skies.

The metal sculptures of Fausto Meloti are incredibly abstract representations of cities. Calvino met Melotti while writing  Le città invisibili and Melotti’s sculptures became a central focus of Calvino’s ‘thin cities’, describing them as spider web cities.

The term spider web cities also refers to the structures that swing above viewers heads, as the stunning, show stopping sculptures from Tomás Saraceno’s long-term project, Cloud Cities, hang from the ceilings. These sculptures oppose gravity, creating floating cities that perfectly capture the light and reflect it, creating a blinding, radiant glow over the gallery.

Viewers are presented with the delightful opportunity to view ‘Invisible Cities’ through the eyes of these artists, opening their own eyes to brilliant and new perspectives. ‘Invisible Cities’ creates a vast amount of inspiration, as viewers soak in the poetic essence that flows from the pieces featured that together create an imagined utopia.