Ally Pally's mis-matched floor tiles

Palm Court at Alexandra Palace exhibition halls contains two fountains around which sit Egyptian sphinxes and obelisks. I stopped to admire them when I visited the excellent Fresh Art Fair a few weekends ago. As I was making my way out of the building I sat in this space to respond to some messages on my phone and happened to notice that an access plate near my feet had been mis-filled with tiles such that it looks like someone is rubbish at jigsaw puzzles.

Hmmm... it's almost correct. Considering there are many tile colours available out there, surely a better colour match could have been found? At odds with this, they had bothered to cut a V shape into a pink tile outside of the plate in a space that surely should be the lighter cream colour. Also, why are there random broken tiles? I looked sideways and noticed another cover place with horrible dark dirty tiles on it. Ugh!

I wondered if perhaps these plates belonged somewhere else within the forecourt, so I went to find some more...

Nope. They are clearly all 'created' by idiots in a hurry on a budget. Shoddy eh? There's actually a range of five or six cream through to beige colours used. 

Regardless of the colour, it also fascinates me that the replacement tiles, in many cases, do not align with the originals, never mind the continuing the floor pattern.

This final pair of examples are my favourites.  

It must admit that I do like the random patterns created here. But as art. as design, as abstract patterns inspired by Mondrian. 

I am reminded of the incorrectly-placed tiles that run around the top of the House of Barnabas on Soho Square and those hand-held games where you slide the squares to complete the picture.

Shoreditch – powerful architecture, marvellous metal and a helping hand

This actually follows on from this piece I wrote on my Substack – I continued my walk westwards from Norton Folgate towards City Road, entering this part of old Shoreditch at Worship Street.

Many years ago I recall being disappointed that the magnificent box girder bridge over the railway in Worship Street, used as a location in many movies as a prostitute pick-up zone, had been removed a couple of days before I had planned to go and photograph it for London The Way We See It*, a website set up by dicksdaily who nominated a street each week and we'd have fortnight to go and take photographs, then load up a max of three. It was a wonderful way to see different perspectives.

The bridge was later reinstated, and further along the street what looks like the love child of Nefertiti and Ming the Merciless appeared:.

I love it – look at those tapering corner columns, so redolent of Egyptian temple architecture, and the futuristic spaceship vibe, as if any second it might do a vertical take-off! It's actually the charging station for the loading bay mechanism next to it, allowing heavy items to be transported to the railway lines and platforms below.

I turned left into Curtain Road. The Horse & Groom pub is probably one of the oldest structures remaining on this section of the street. It's worth a visit for it's wood panelled interior, but be sure to check out the artwork and signage on the side:

As you can see, the large red letters show that here was a service station/petrol garage here back in the 1950s, indeed probably pre-that too – I'm judging by the type style here, I can't be bothered to research absolutely everything I write about unless it ends up being part of a guided tour!

Lower down on the wall someone has added some info about the QE1-era Curtain Theatre that used to be in the area behind the pub. I visited the site back in, ooh, er, about ten years ago when archaeologists were busy looking for clues and artefacts. I recall being really fed up that day which is possibly why I didn't take any photos let alone write about it on this blog.  Ah – found it in Londonist.

Then, via a few zig-zags, to the junction of Leonard Street and Paul Street where there is a building I have been watching for many years. Ironically, it's called Development House, which is amusing because it has been in a state of nothingness for many years, accessed only by graffiti artists. 

But it's the sculptural piece that adorns it. that I'm interested in.

The artwork It depicts two men scaling the building and reaching for a third person to join them. I wonder if another companion piece was originally installed in the gardens below...?**  

I have, on many occasions, tried to find out who created this marvellous artwork as I cannot see any marks that could be names on it – perhaps someone else with a better zoom lens can help me here. A visit to RIBA library would be helpful but it's gonna be closed for while yet. 

A proposed development was planned for here, due to be completed in 2022. But it now looks as if demolition has been shelved because the interior is currently available for rent, having been 'freshly refurbished' so perhaps the building and the sculpture is here to stay for the foreseeable future. 

I wonder if the change in plans has anything to do with the gaping great hole on the north side of Development House which has looked like this for as long as I care to remember:

Let's end on one my other favourite details in this area... from the open air basement car park, head northwards along Tabernacle Street and then turn left into Singer Street. A few paces in on the left side there is a gateway leading to the rear. I find it wonderfully uplifting that, even though the ground floor has clearly be refitted, they retained the gorgeous bit of fancy Victorian metalwork for Nos 5, 6 & 7.

 

*having just googled LTWWSI, I discover that top of the list is a project of the same name by Bob Marsden.  I think this might be the same Bob Marsden that I got chatting to a couple of years ago in Victoria Embankment Gardens where we were both admiring the military statuary and we have been following each other ever since. If it is indeed the very same BM, he's a lovely fella. 

** This reminds that there is another sculpture on a late C20th building that I need to find out about here on the side of 1 Putney Bridge Approach which is more abstract in form. 

Bricking it near the folly on the foreshore at Cubitt Town, Isle of Dogs

After my visit to The London Museum yesterday for the Mudlarking exhibition, I felt the need to be in the quiet open space of a foreshore at the water's edge, simply watching the boats and birds go by. I headed West towards the Blackwall side. 

To get there, I had to navigate the high rise hell of the Canary Wharf zone. I had to remove my baseball cap for fear of it being blown away by the wind whipping through the tall metal structures. I noticed there was not a hat to be seen anywhere except hard ones worn by workmen constructing the next lump. When I reached the Blue Bridge (which is actually grey) I stopped to take in the views West across at the watery expanse of South Dock, and East to The Millennium Dome (for that is/was its name when it was born!)

Just north of this bridge, on the river side at Coldharbour, there is a little enclave of houses evoking a time before the glass towers were built, although The Gun pub, a Grade II listed building, is not quite the working men's boozer that it would have been until the 1970s, but it's still a nice place to stop for a waterside drink. The map shown below is on the wall inside there and I'm showing it alongside a terrace of Victorian buildings that remains just south of the bridge, making a visual contrast between then and now:

The tall buildings replace a group of little streets on the north side of the dock that was previously Fenner Wharf and Pier Head Cottages, interesting because a tall modern neo-Deco building on the river side, at the junction with Stewart Street, is today called Pier Head:

Near here, at Folly Wall is John Outram's superb 1980's Deco Revivalist construction – hard to believe that this delighful concoction is actually the Isle of Dogs Sewage Pumping Station. I love it! An Egyptian temple jumbo jet hangar hybrid! The road name references Thomas Daver's folly, a little faux fort that was built here in the 1760s. 

And so to the foreshore... with easy access via a slipway or steps along the Thames path at Amsterdam Road. 

I really like this beach. I wandered down to the water's edge and spotted a fragment of brick tile that seemed to say BELGIUM. I took a photo. Two metres away I saw a yellow brick stamped with FARNLEY, a Leeds company:  

It reminded me of the many brick makers I spotted on the foreshore at Battersea 11 years ago 

and so I wandered about looking for more...

Oh, almost forgot... this area is called Cubitt Town, named after the man who made it possible, William Cubitt, brother of architects Thomas (Belgravia) and Lewis (KX station).

Tutankhamun exhibition at The Saatchi Gallery – it's good but it's not good

Last week I went to a preview of this exhibition and it's been playing on my mind ever since as to what to write here. I was initially excited to be going to see the exhibition, but for many reasons it's been troubling me. And will continue to do so.
The show is on tour "to celebrate the 100th year anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb". Hmmm... I think "celebrate" is a dodgy word here. "Commemorate" or "mark" might be better. But more of that later.

The 150 Treasures of The Golden Pharaoh are indeed amazing. The attention to detail, the fine handiwork, the quality of the artefacts, is truly outstanding. Most of the pieces on display look like they were made last week; they are so shiny and perfect. I am in awe of the craftsmanship of these ancient people.

I was intrigued as to how the Saatchi Gallery would manage to display everything being as the gallery rooms are not well-linked, as per, say, the Royal Academy where one room leads to the next. Let's just say it's not good. I was there before the exhibition opened to the public and I can't have been the only one complaining about the lack of signage or misleading information.
Here goes...

On entering the show you are treated to a short wide screen film about the location of the Valley of The Kings, what the Egyptians believed about death and gods etc, and an overview of the discovery of this particular tomb. You then enter the first gallery room which is full of gorgeous artefacts. All lovely items, yes, but I must admit that I rather thought the show might be sort of chronological and perhaps make it feel like we were entering the tomb as Howard Carter did to give a sense of discovery. But no – it's boom! bang! here are the shiny gold things!  I found it hard to place what I saw in context with the tomb.

More beautiful artefacts in the next gallery and the next. People faffing with the audio handsets which weren't explained properly – note that you need to enter the number that's on an exhibit and then wait a few seconds for a click and then a few seconds more for a voice. Shame there's no fast forward or rewind. I gave up. Though listening to the talking was preferable to the having to endure the dreadful ambient music. Is it supposed to sound as if it comes from 3000 years ago?!

I was constantly distracted by the display and info panels in the galleries. The walls are all plain grey or have printed panels attached to them. The doors between the galleries have been half-heartedly designed to look like temple doors but they are painted dark grey. Why not sandstone colour? And why aren't the walls of all the galleries designed to look like the inside of the tomb or an Egyptian temple? If IMG, the event organisers, can afford to get panels printed then why not choose or create evocative imagery for them?

Many of the printed info panels were crumpled and creased and poorly stretched onto the frames. Close inspection showed a range of different man-made oil-based fabrics some satin, some textured, some like neoprene, some rigid. But none appear to be very eco-friendly. Here's the Egyptians using wood and stone and natural components yet here in the 21st century are displaying them in a sea of plastic. And and don't get me started about all the exhibition-grade grey carpet also in use here that gets trashed at the end of every event... grr.

From a typography and design perspective, the information on the panels is also a mess. There doesn't seem to be a style guideline. Surely the same typefaces could have been used throughout as the event toured? I must have counted at least six different typefaces and sub-fonts yet none of them looked very Egyptian. Most text is set ranged left, yet smaller info panels are fully justified (a crime unless it's a text book!) with so many ugly hyphenations including proper nouns such as, get this... "Tutankha-/mun's", "Tut-/ankhamun", and "Neth-/erworld". Oh yuck!

I spoke to someone from IMG about the ugly signage and her excuse was that the exhibition had been travelling and they couldn't change it. Er, really? Another excuse for this evident lack of quality control was that the exhibition is now nearing the end of its tour. I assume she meant that it's too late to bother now. I didn't like to point out that I doubted that this wouldn't have been in english language when the exhibition was in Paris, for instance, and it's unlikely that all the exhibition spaces worldwide are the same height and width. The pharaohs would not have put up with this!

The galleries on the ground floor are full of lovely artefacts. It's then up a staircase (or use the lift) to get to the upper the galleries. On finally entering Gallery 4 there is, what I later understood to be one of the most impressive finds, the wishing cup. Yet it's sited in a dull room that looks like just a lobby to a better place. I sat at the bench there to write notes. An audio kicked in but I didn't really pay attention until I realised it was about the discovery of the tomb, so I watched it for a few seconds and then spoke to a steward to tell them that hardly anyone will stop and pay attention after they've seem rooms full of marvellous things. People will just want to move on and find more gold.

Ah, but there isn't any more gold after that, except for a gorgeous necklace/ pectoral chain with an interesting story that I as good as walked past without noticing, only returning when I realised that the room was all about Howard Carter's find and the layout of the tomb etc. Which begs the question, WTF is this doing on the upper floors?! It would have been better placed in the first gallery to tell the story and then have it followed by the wishing cup and all the other artefacts. And the diagram of the tomb would also be better placed down there. Actually, put the diagram in every room with a dot showing where each piece was located when it was found.

Gallery 5 has a big statue in it. I am being flippant here. It's marvellous. Impressive. I moved on to Gallery 6 and found it's not a gallery; it's a gift shop which continues through into the next room. So misleading. And the shop looks like it was thrown together last week. Well, it probably was.
There were a couple of red virtual reality pod things on the top floor – these are immersive experience thingies. I didn't get to try one out. Lots of them should, by now, be arranged in that room resembling the alien nursery in the first Alien movie. I think they should be turquoise blue pods rather than red – perhaps they are left over from an exhib about China?! Also on the top floor you'll find  some interesting work by artists in residence. I like the crochet reference.

Basically, I left the Tut exhibition disappointed and a bit annoyed/frustrated. It's clear to me that the Egyptians' attention to detail has not been followed through in these slap-dash modern surroundings.
If young King Tut is still looking over us (he believed he'd still be alive if we continue to speak his name) then he will be disappointed too. The stipulations in his will asked that his mortal body be buried forever with all that he needed for his next life. Is this really what he would have wanted?
When we ask to be buried in a certain place do we really want to be dug up by tomb-raiders masquerading as historians who are really on a treasure hunt for personal kudos just trying to prove how much cleverer they are than the ancients? These people don't "discover" the tombs, like some kind of fortuitous accident – they hunt for them, they track them down, like completing the hardest puzzle, solving the most complicated riddle.
I wonder... shouldn't all these artefacts be still in the Valley Of The Kings where they were designed to be? Thousands of years of years buried away until some bloke in a pith helmet bursts the bubble.

Walk like an Egyptian – join me on one or both of my guided walks in Central London – see the schedule here.

A walk around the Cheynes

Just some pics I took in the little area of Chelsea that borders the Thames.
It's a really interesting area close to the lovely Chelsea Physic Garden. The 18th Century houses of Cheyne Walk have had many famous residents including Rossetti, George Eliot, David Lloyd George and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger to name just a few. See a fuller list here.

A stink pipe, egyptian benches, Thomas More, Hans Sloane

Closed pub, birds and a lady

Metal street sign, lots of pipes, new development, old frontage.

Who's giving me the eye?

Can anyone help with this?

This Eye of Horus is embedded in the pavement on Hampstead Road, near Mornington Crescent Station. Find it in front of Harrington Square's* railings, directly opposite the Art Deco Carreras building.

I am thinking that due to its locations and the arrow, which points north, it might be part of an Egyptian-themed trail/route.
I have tried to find out more about this but have so far hit a brick wall.

Incidentally, why is the Carreras Building still registered as Greater London House, even though Ken and the boys were only in there for such a short while and moved out decades ago?!

*Harrington Square is triangular