Pavilion

Join Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and author of A Cloud A Day, as he takes you on an illustrated tour of the sky. In this enlightening and entertaining talk, he will show how to recognise many of the varied and beautiful cloud formations, from the fair-weather cotton tufts of Cumulus to the UFO shapes of lenticularis clouds and the surreal undulations of fluctus clouds. Gavin will explain why clouds look the way they do and how they reveal the invisible movements of our atmosphere. You will learn why clouds are the most evocative and poetic aspect of nature, how cloudspotting is the perfect antidote to the pressures of the digital world, and why spending a few moments each day with your head in the clouds will help you keep your feet on the ground.

Looking up will never be the same again!

Gavin Pretor-Pinney started the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2005. Since then, he’s been encouraging people to ‘look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds.’ Membership to the Society now includes over 47,000 cloudspotters. Together, they capture and share the most remarkable skies, from sublime thunderstorms and perfect sunsets to hilarious clouds that look like things.

When: Thursday 5th September 2019, 6.30pm
Where: Institute of Physics, 37 Caledonian Road, King’s Cross, London N1 9BU
Price: £8.95

Hear Gavin Pretor-Pinney speak 

Join Eleanor Crow and Krissie Nicolson, Director of the East End Trades Guild, for an evening chat about the enduring culture of Britain’s small shops and their inventively designed fronts.

Published in partnership with Spitalfields Life Books, Eleanor Crow’s Shopfronts of London is a timely volume that celebrates the small neighbourhood shops of London. As our high streets decline into generic monotony, we cherish these independent shops and family businesses that enrich the city with their characterful frontages and distinctive typography.

General Woodwork Supplies, Kingsland High Street E8

The collection includes more than 100 of Eleanor Crow’s fine illustrations of the capital’s bakers, cafes, butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, chemists, launderettes, hardware stores, eel & pie shops, bookshops and stationers. The pictures are accompanied by the stories of the shops, their history and their shopkeepers – stretching all the way from Chelsea in the west to Bethnal Green, Clerkenwell and Walthamstow in the east. As well as beloved old and lost shopfronts, there are some recent examples of new shops that have been beautifully designed too – from cheesemongers to chippies.

At a time of momentous change in the high street, this witty and fascinating personal survey champions the enduring culture of Britain’s small shops.

Eleanor Crow grew up in Cornwall, Suffolk and Gloucestershire. She has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art: Drawing & Painting from Edinburgh College of Art, and an MA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins. After over a decade of designing book covers for Random House Vintage and Faber & Faber, she returned to oil painting in 2014. She works from her studio in East London, exhibiting and working to commission. She has lectured at a number of art colleges in the UK and in the Czech Republic, in drawing, illustration and book cover design.

When: Wednesday 9th October, 7.30pm
Where: The Wanstead Tap, 352 Winchelsea Road, London E7 0AQ
Price: £7

For more information and to book tickets, please visit the Newham Bookshop website.

Join cloudspotter and bestselling author Gavin Pretor-Pinney at Chorleywood Library for a truly unique event celebrating the beautiful and vast variety of our cloud-filled world…

Gavin Pretor-Pinney started the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2005. Since then, he’s been encouraging people to ‘look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and always remember to live life with your head in the clouds.’ Membership to the Society now includes over 47,000 cloudspotters. Together, they capture and share the most remarkable skies, from sublime thunderstorms and perfect sunsets to hilarious clouds that look like things.

A Cloud A Day is a beautifully illustrated book containing 365 skies selected by the Cloud Appreciation Society. There are photographs by sky enthusiasts around the world, satellite images and photographs of clouds in space, as well as skies depicted by great artists over the centuries. The clouds are accompanied by enlightening explanations, fascinating snippets of cloud science, poetry and uplifting quotations.

The perfect dip-in-and-out book for anyone who wants to de-stress and reconnect with nature, A Cloud A Day will inspire you to open your eyes to the everyday beauty above and to spend a moment each day with your head in the clouds.

When: Wednesday 4th September, 7pm
Where: Chorleywood Library, Lower Road, Chorleywood WD3 5LB
Price: £8.00 + £1.50 fee

Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s book A Cloud a Day (RRP £20.00) will be just £15.00 on the night.

Hear Gavin Pretor-Pinney speak 

Part of this year’s Festival of Quilts and curated by our author and expert Sara Cook , this is a rare opportunity to see exciting new work from a diverse mix of textile artists — from the United States, Japan, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom — who have been inspired by the ancient Korean tradition of wrapping cloths known as Bojagi. Exploring the abstract ways that each artist has exploited the properties of the translucent fabrics and played with informal grids, Transparency and Transition will showcase the versatile ways that Bojagi can be interpreted in a contemporary context.

About Sara Cook

With a professional seamstress for a mother and an uncle who was a Savile Row tailor, Sara wasnever far from fabric and sewing advice as she grew up. As a qualified teacher and textile specialist with more than 25 years’ experience, Sara established Brighton Fashion and Textile School in 2012 to teach City & Guilds qualifications in textiles. A member of the Quilters Guild she qualified as a quilt judge in 2016 and has judged at local and international quilt shows.

Inspired by Chunghie Lee’s work, No Name Woman exhibited at the Festival of Quilts in 2009, Sara became passionate about researching Bojagi and incorporating it into her own working practice. Researching Korean textiles has inspired her to experiment with traditional narrow seams, creating irregular grids. Combined with her love of translucency and constructed textiles, her current body of work explores the effect of light on the landscape.

As a guest exhibitor and lecturer in 2018 at the international Korean Bojagi Forum in Seoul, Sara exhibited her work to a Korean audience for the first time. Awarded the prestigious teachers travel bursary awarded in 2017 The Quilters Guild of the British Isles recognised her expertise in textiles. She travelled to California to study the bojagi collection at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and worked with bojagi expert Youngmin Lee.

The publication of her book Bojagi: Design and Techniques in Korean Textile Art this year is the culmination of ten years of research into historic practitioners and artists today, those based in Korea and those practicing across the world.

*Early copies of the book will be available for purchase at the venue.*

When: 1st – 4th August
Where: The Festival of Quilts, Halls 7, 8 & 9, NEC, Birmingham B40 1NT

Please note that you will need to purchase a Festival of Quilts day ticket to be able to visit the exhibition. 

For more information and to book tickets, please visit the Festival of Quilts website.

We’re very pleased to confirm that the exhibition Batsford: 175 Years of a Bloomsbury Publisher has been extended until Monday 5th August.

The story of Batsford began when Bradley Thomas Batsford opened the doors to his bookshop on High Holborn in 1843. Before the end of the century, Batsford had established itself as the publisher of specialist non-fiction books for the general reader for which it is still known.

This exhibition tells the Batsford story, with highs and lows, through a selection of books and archive materials from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. From the first publication released under the Batsford imprint in 1874 to recent bestsellers, along with volumes by Gertrude Stein, Cecil Beaton, Stevie Smith, John Betjeman, John Piper, Constance Howard and many more. Books from the much-loved and highly collectable Batsford Heritage Series are on display, instantly recognisable through Brian Cook’s iconic cover designs. Other key publishing areas are also explored including architecture, art, textiles, craft and fashion.

Today, Batsford is an award-winning and thriving imprint of independent publisher Pavilion Books, based just a ten-minute walk from Batsford’s original location on High Holborn.

An exhibition at:

Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre
2nd Floor, Holborn Library
32–38 Theobalds Road
London WC1X 8PA

Until 5th August 2019

Monday–Tuesday 10am–6pm
Thursday 10am–7pm
Friday 10am–5pm
Alternate Saturdays 11am–5pm (6th July, 20th July, 3rd August)

FREE ENTRY

Join leading expert Sara Cook on Thursday 22nd August at the Fashion and Textile Museum where she will be giving a talk on her new book Bojagi. Discover how the traditional textile art of Bojagi, Korean wrapping cloths inspired ten years of research into historic practitioners and artists today.There will be a glass of wine in the Museum foyer and opportunity to view the current exhibition at the beginning. The talk will be followed by some time to ask questions and a book signing,

Bojagi is a traditional Korean textile art technique. They were made for everyday living, often from scraps of leftover fabrics artfully put together, and resembling the colourful and luminous works of modern artists such as Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Until the 1950s they were used to wrap or cover everything from bedding and clothes to food dishes and for religious rituals. For centuries textiles were one of the few ways Korean women could express their creativity.

The design and symbolism in Bojagi continues to spark design innovation for many artists around the world. You will see how bojagi has been reinterpreted in many different types of media including in temporary land art structures.

In her own work Sara has experimented with the traditional narrow seams creating irregular grids. When this is combined with translucent layers of hand dyed silk the seaming structure creates a further linear dimension often revealed in the shadows that they cast.

Sara Cook
With a professional seamstress for a mother and an uncle who was a Savile Row tailor, Sara was never far from fabric and sewing advice as she grew up. As a qualified teacher and textile specialist with more than 25 years’ experience, Sara established Brighton Fashion and Textile School in 2012 to teach City & Guilds qualifications in textiles. A member of the Quilters Guild she qualified as a quilt judge in 2016 and has judged at local and international quilt shows.

Inspired by Chunghie Lee’s work, No Name Woman exhibited at the Festival of Quilts in 2009, Sara became passionate about researching Bojagi and incorporating it into her own working practice. Researching Korean textiles has inspired her to experiment with traditional narrow seams, creating irregular grids. Combined with her love of translucency and constructed textiles, her current body of work explores the effect of light on the landscape.

As a guest exhibitor and lecturer in 2018 at the international Korean Bojagi Forum in Seoul, Sara exhibited her work to a Korean audience for the first time. Awarded the prestigious teachers travel bursary awarded in 2017 The Quilters Guild of the British Isles recognised her expertise in textiles. She travelled to California to study the bojagi collection at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and worked with bojagi expert Youngmin Lee.

The publication of her book Bojagi: design and techniques in Korean textiles this year is the culmination of ten years of research into historic practitioners and artists today, those based in Korea and those practicing across the world.

When: Thursday 22nd August, 6pm to 8pm
Where: Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey St, Bermondsey, London SE1 3XF
Price: Talk: £15 | £12 Students/ Talk plus book: £37.95 | £34.95 Students

For more information and to book tickets, please visit the Fashion and Textile Museum website.

Visit this year’s International Agatha Christie Festival to hear the extraordinary story of Isokon, a groundbreaking Modernist building in London, and how its network of residents helped shape modern Britain.

The Isokon building in London’s Hampstead pioneered minimal living and became the creative nexus for artists, writers and thinkers in the mid-1930s and 1940s. After having her home bombed in the first weeks of The Blitz in 1940, Agatha Christie moved into the Isokon where she joined an expanding list of famous residents, past and present. In addition to Christie, Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, the first  celebrity chef Philip Harben and local artists Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth all played an important role in the history of the Isokon.

Leyla Daybelge and Magnus Englund, authors of Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain, bring the Isokon story to life in this illustrated talk. We get an insight into the inspiration and vision behind the building, commissioned by Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by Wells Coates, and heavily inspired by the Bauhaus, which celebrates its centenary this year. However, this is not only a history of the building’s design, but also a fascinating story of war, sex, death, espionage and infamous dinner parties.

Leyla Daybelge is a Journalist and Broadcaster, with a background in news and current affairs, as a newscaster, correspondent and producer for BBC Radio Four, ITN, ITV News and Sky News. She currently writes travel and culture features for the Daily Telegraph amongst others. She was previously Head of Press for Contemporary and Design at Sotheby’s.

Magnus Englund is a former resident of Jack and Molly Pritchard’s penthouse in the Isokon building. He has championed the building’s revival and is a trustee of the Isokon Gallery. He is the co-founder of the popular interior design company, Skandium.

For more information and to book tickets, please visit the festival page.

Where: Torre Abbey, The King’s Drive, Torquay TQ2 5JE
When: Thursday 15th September, 2pm
Price: £10 (concession £8), includes admission to Torre Abbey Museum and Unfinished Portrait exhibition.

Hear authors Leyla Daybelge and Magnus Englund talk about their new book Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain at this event organised by the Twentieth Century Society. This illustrated talk will cover the story of the Isokon, and the artistic network and legacy of the Bauhaus artists during their time in Britain. Books will be available to buy.

Built in 1934, in response to the question ‘How do we want to live now?’ the Isokon on Lawn Road in Hampstead was England’s first modernist apartment building, and was hugely influential in pioneering the concept of minimal living. Its flats, bar and dining club would become an extraordinary creative nexus for international artists, writers and thinkers, including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy.

More about the book:

In the mid-1930s, three giants of the international Modern movement, Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, fled Nazi Germany and sought refuge in Hampstead in the most exciting new apartment block in Britain. The Lawn Road Flats, or Isokon Building (as it came to be known), was commissioned by the young visionary couple Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by aspiring architect Wells Coates.

During the mid-1930s and 1940s its flats, bar and dining club became an extraordinary creative nexus for international artists, writers and thinkers. Jack Pritchard employed Gropius, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy in his newly formed Isokon design company and the furniture, architecture and graphic art the three produced for him and other clients during their brief sojourn in pre-war England helped shape Modern Britain.

This book tells the story of the Isokon, from its beginnings to the present day, and fully examines the work, artistic networks and legacy of the Bauhaus artists during their time in Britain. The tales are not just of design and architecture but war, sex, death, espionage and the infamous dinner parties. Isokon resident Agatha Christie features in the book as does Charlotte Perriand of architect firm Le Corbusier, who Jack Pritchard commissioned for a pavilion design in 1930.

The book is beautifully illustrated with archive photography – much of which is previously unseen – and includes the work of photographer and Soviet spy Edith Tudor-Hart, as well as plans and sketches, menus, postcards and letters from the Pritchard family archive.

In Spring 2018, the Isokon building and Breuer, Gropius and Moholy-Nagy were honoured with a Blue Plaque from English Heritage. 2019 marks the centenary of the foundation of the Bauhaus, so the book is a timely celebration of European design.

This compelling tale shows how Modern Britain was shaped by these groundbreaking designers.

Leyla Daybelge is a Journalist and Broadcaster, with a background in news and current affairs, as a newscaster, correspondent and producer for BBC Radio Four, ITN, ITV News and Sky News. She currently writes travel and culture features for the Daily Telegraph amongst others. She was previously Head of Press for Contemporary and Design at Sotheby’s.

Magnus Englund is the current resident of Jack and Molly Pritchard’s penthouse in the Isokon building. He has championed the building’s revival and is a trustee of the Isokon Gallery. He is the co-founder of the popular interior design company, Skandium.

C20 Members’ price:  £8.00 (to include a glass of wine)     Non members: £12.00 (to include a glass of wine)

In a Thursday evening talk taking place on 18th July at 6pm, artist and author Anne Kelly will discuss her inspiration for her book Textile Folk Art and her unique and inspiring interpretation of folk and naïve art in cloth. There will be a glass of wine in the Museum foyer at the beginning and a chance to view the current exhibition. The talk will be followed by an opportunity to ask questions and a book signing.

From samplers and quilts in Europe, to tribal and nomadic cloth further afield in Mongolia and China, folk and traditional designs have played a crucial part in the development of textile art and craft. Anne Kelly explores the traditional motifs used in textile folk art and shows how contemporary textile artists use these in their work today.

Textile Folk Art is a beautifully illustrated guide of textile folk art from cultures all around the world and is also packed with helpful step-by-step projects that demonstrate how to apply folk motifs to your own work.  Modern Folk Embroidery’s Jacob de Graaf ‘ says: It is absolutely gorgeously illustrated and is super inspiring for anyone with an interest in Folk Art….You can see that it is a real labour of love’

Anne Kelly is a textile artist and tutor. She trained in Canada and the UK and now teaches and speaks to guilds and groups. Her work is exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, including private collections in the UK and abroad, the Vatican Collection in Rome and at the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. She was recently artist-in-residence at Sussex Prairies Garden in West Sussex and exhibited at the international World of Threads Festival and the Prague Patchwork Meeting. She is the co-author of Connected Cloth.

When: Thursday 18th July, 6pm to 8pm
Where: Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey St, Bermondsey, London SE1 3XF
Price: Talk: £15 | £12 Students/ Talk plus book: £37.95 | £34.95 Students (all tickets include a drink and exhibition entry)

For more information and to book your tickets, please visit the Fashion and Textile Museum website.

Come along to Heal’s Tottenham Court Road on Thursday 6th June at 6.15pm to hear Magnus Englund and Leyla Daybelge chat about their new book Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain with interiors journalist Jenny Coad.

The Isokon building, built in 1934 in Hampstead, was the first modernist apartment building in Britain. The Bauhaus professors Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy lived in the Isokon during the 1930s and throughout the mid-1930s and 1940s the building’s flats, bar and dining club became a creative nexus for international artists, writers and thinkers.

The event, led by The Times’ journalist Jenny Coad will see Magnus, the former resident of the Isokon’s penthouse who has championed the building’s revival, and Leyla, a journalist and broadcaster with a background in news and current affairs, discuss the story of the hugely influential Isokon building, which pioneered the concept of minimal living and whose network of residents helped to shape modern Britain.

When: Thursday 6th June, 6.15pm to 8pm
Where: The Ambrose Café, The Heal’s Building, 196 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 7LQ
Price: £5 (includes a glass of sparkling wine)

For more information and to book tickets, please visit the Heal’s website.

Batsford and Pavilion Children’s Books are delighted to announce the Batsford Prize 2019 winners.

The theme for this year’s award was ‘Being Human’ and the judges were set with the difficult task of selecting the winners from a record number of entries. The 6 categories are: Applied Art, Fine Art, Fashion, Illustration (UK), Illustration (International) and Children’s Illustration (Presented by Pavilion Children’s Books). The 2018 award was judged by industry professionals Neil Dunnicliffe, Vaughan Grylls, Emily Haworth-Booth, Cas Holmes, Frances Moffatt, Sara Mulvanny and Tina Persaud.

The winner of each category received a £500 ($500 for the international category) cash prize and books from Batsford and Pavilion Children’s Books. Art supplier Cass Art presented the ‘Cass Art Award’ to Lewis Darley, a further £500 cash prize.

The Batsford Prize is an annual award for students across the subjects Fine and Applied Art, Fashion, Illustration and Children’s Illustration.

The Batsford Prize 2019 winners are:

Applied Art

Winner: Joy

Daria Iwon, BA (Hons) Textiles, Arts University Bournemouth

Runner up: Haptic Memories

Ana Luiz-Wright, BA Fashion and Textiles: Print, University for the Creative Arts Rochester

Runner up: The Future Is Female

Lorna Robey, BA Printed Textiles and Surface Pattern Design, Leeds Arts University

Fine Art

Winner: The Punishment of Tantalus

Ziwei Wu, MFA in Computational Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London

The punishment of Tantalus from wuziwei on Vimeo.

Runner up: Familiar Unfamiliar

Jo Lauren, MA Photography, Norwich University of the Arts

Runner up: Wedding Series

Rosie Rendles, Fine Art, Sheffield Hallam University

Fashion

Winner: Fashion Collection ‘Makoto’

Jogaile Zairyte, Fashion and Textile Design, University of Portsmouth

Runner up: Happy Chaos

Courtney Hoare, Fashion and Textile Design, University of Portsmouth

Runner up: Skin Garments

Megumi Ohata, BA (Hons) Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts, London and Misako Sato, Kanazawa College of Art, Japan

Illustration

Winner: Dirt

Lewis Darley, Illustration, University of the West of England

Winner of the Cass Art Award

Runner up: Mr Anxiety and his Thorny Nightmare

Guhee Kim, MA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London

Runner up: The Giant of Grief

Fay Troote, Illustration, Arts University Bournemouth

Children’s Illustration, presented by Pavilion Children’s Books

Winner: A Grand Life of Tomatoes

Severus Shintsz Lian, MA Children’s Book Illustration, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University

Runner up: Being Human: Please Stand Behind the Yellow Lion

Alice Courtley, MA Children’s Book Illustration, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University

Runner up: Lascaux

Kate Winter, MA Children’s Book Illustration, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University

Illustration (International)

Winner: On the tube

Alexandra Dzhiganskaya, Graphics and Advertising, University of Applied Arts, Vienna

Runner up: Dis/Connect

Shoshana Gordon, Illustration, University of the Arts, Philadelphia

Runner up: Lady Chatterley

Jo Zixuan Zhou, Pictorial, School of Visual Arts, New York

Stop by The Maclaurin Art Gallery from Sunday 19th May to Sunday 7th July to see Colour and Line in Watercolour author Glen Scouller exhibit drawings and paintings alongside works by his family members, Carol, Kim and Lara. The four artists bring together their four different styles in the first exhibition to feature the family’s work collectively.

Glen Scouller’s paintings are full of vibrant colour and light. In Colour and Line in Watercolour – his first book – he explains how he achieves these effects. He combines traditional watercolour techniques with adding pen and ink, pastels and crayons to create paintings brimming with colour and spontaneity. Using step-by-step demonstration paintings, Scouller shows how he builds up his paintings, working first in watercolour and adding other media to create his original style.

Glen Scouller studied and has taught at the prestigious Glasgow School of Art and exhibited at the Portland Gallery in London, at many Scottish galleries, including the Roger Billcliffe Gallery in Glasgow, the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh, and with the Everard Read Gallery in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. He has been awarded several scholarships and is a member of The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour. He writes regularly for The Artist and Artists and Illustrators magazines.

When: Sunday 19th May to Sunday 7th July
Where: The Maclaurin Art Gallery, Rozelle Estate, Ayr KA7 4NQ
Price: Free

For more information please visit The Maclaurin Art Gallery website.

Nature Table with Owl by Glen Scouller, from Colour and Line in Watercolour, Batsford 2016.