On these dark evenings that begin at five I'm at home cooking soup, drinking les Jamelles and reading some of Frances Spalding's writing on Bloomsbury. Her bio on Vanessa Bell and a newish book,
Insights The Bloomsbury Group (2005
).Above - one of Duncan Grant's fabric designs for the Omega Workshops. Like the Shakers, their designs were anonymous, stored in simple paper folders, and unlike the Bauhaus or William Morris, Omega had no political or industrial agenda. They didn't wish to revive craft. Their objects were meant to demonstrate an honest joy taken in existence and making things.
And below - Clive, Mary, Duncan and E.M. at Charleston.
Virginia Woolf in 1925 praised them for 'having worked out a way of life which was not by any means corruptor sinister or merely intellectual; rather ascetic and austere indeed; which still holds, and keeps them dining together, and staying together, after twenty years; and no amount of quarreling or success, or failure has altered this. Now I do think this rather credible.'
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and this week a farewell to Dear Natasha, and see you soon .
