Innholdsfortegnelse for 19-Feb-2020 i Country Life

BRITAIN’S art and antiques trade is in good heart, despite concern about the impacts of coronavirus and political unrest in Hong Kong on Asian dealers and, nearer to home, uncertainty about Brexit negotiations. The virus, at least, should not be a longterm worry and, whatever transpires, Hong Kong is likely to remain an important centre of the art world. At home, fairs have been producing good sales and there have been eye-catching prices at auctions—and not only at the top end of the market. In difficult times, the middle market usually suffers most, but it seems to be in a better state than during past economic downturns. Last year, when the threat of no deal felt all too real, much work was undertaken by trade organisations the BADA and LAPADA,…

Flying badgers A badger that was hiding from Storm Ciara shocked Super-drug staff when it fell through the ceiling and scuttled under the perfume counter. The animal was captured by the Northamptonshire Badger Group and subsequently released Flimsy footwear Four men who were stranded on Ben Nevis have thanked their rescuers with whisky, wine and chocolate. The tourists got into difficulty while trying to climb the summit during Storm Ciara. Three of the men were wearing trainers when they were found by the Lochaber Mountain Rescue team Removal men Piano virtuoso Angela Hewitt is mourning the loss of her ‘best friend’ after clumsy movers dropped her grand piano. The Fazioli F278, worth £155,000, is damaged beyond repair. The Canadian musician took to Facebook, stating: ‘It’s kaput’ Phoebe Bath…

THE ‘ginaissance’ is far from over, according to forecasts from the International Wines and Spirit Record (IWSR), which suggests that consumption of the tipple is likely to rise by 50% over the next four years. There were fears that gin had reached its popularity peak, as sales of the beverage had nearly tripled over the past decade, from 24.3 million litres in 2010 to 61.7 million litres in 2019. By 2023, that figure is expected to be 92.4 million litres. The rise in popularity is believed to be down to the boom in flavours and the reframing of the spirit as a luxury drink. ‘It used to be a small glass, with a bit of ice, a tired slice of lemon, a tonic and a gin,’ Humphrey Serjeantson, research director…

Plums and prunes Morrisons, The Best Nerello Mascalese, Sicily, Italy 2018. £7.75, Morrisons, alc 13.5% A heartwarming Nerello Mascalese, one of Sicily’s star varieties. Aromas of dark plum and prune with hints of rose; sweet, ripe red-berry and black-plum flavours, as you’d expect from this sun-kissed island, the residual sugar well supported by fresh acidity and a decent tannin structure. A rich expression of Japan Château Mercian, Koshu Gris de Gris, Fuefuki, Yamanashi, Japan 2018. £15.99, Boutinot, alc 11.5% Skin-contact Koshus give a richer expression of Japan’s indigenous variety. Salmon pink in colour, this has candied-pear and strawberry aromas, juicy berry and yuzu zest on the palate, together with textured tannins and a citrus-peel-like finish. Gracefully mature Château Milhau-Lacugue, Les Curées, St-Chinian, Languedoc, France 2008. £19.95, Yapp Bros, alc…

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THEY’RE moody, they’re unpredictable and they smell terrible. Oh, and they weigh 2,000lb. This week, scientists revealed that cows, like humans, also experience puberty and undergo ‘a similar phase of emotional confusion that disturbs their otherwise stable personalities’, according to the Guardian . The research, conducted by the University of British Columbia in Canada, has focused on a previously unstudied section of the bovine lifecycle. It is hoped that the findings will improve animal health and farming practices. ‘Ideally, in the future, management practices would be tailored to the individual rather than the herd, so that all calves and cows have an opportunity to thrive on the farm and reach their full productive potential,’ said one of the authors, Heather Kneave.…

IT seems that there is now a new, named storm hitting Britain every weekend. We’ve just been battered by Ciara and Dennis and the next one will be called Ellen—the Met Office compiled the list of alphabetical names from suggestions by members of the public. Dennis reshuffled my garden with all the vigour that Boris Johnson showed his cabinet. He lost a chancellor; I lost a beech tree. The storm names don’t seem to be in sync with the horrors of flooding or the inconvenience of power cuts and commuting delays. We’ve got Hugh and Jan to come, who sound more like a couple you’d meet playing bridge than a destructive tempest. Only Noah has the proper ring to it. These storms are becoming more commonplace. There is, of course,…

THE old black pug in the photograph used to follow the two terriers every afternoon on their hunting expedition and would wait patiently beside the tree or rabbit holes, while the terriers worked, in hopes of a rabbit bolting his way; he seldom had any luck but he loved the game, and would fuss round in a very important way, like a clown at a circus, who makes a great show of helping everybody, but never does anything! Earth and rubbish would be sent out flying, full into the pug’s face, but he took it all as a visible sign ‘that something was doing’. When the terriers were too engrossed to take any notice, the pug walked gingerly round the tree two or three times and then took up his…

Sandycombe Lodge, which has recently undergone a most sympathetic restoration, was built in 1812–13 to Turner’s own design, on land that he had bought five years earlier. After several false starts, he settled on a tripartite form, perhaps inspired by Sir Robert Taylor’s Asgill House at Richmond, and incorporated elements that strongly suggest that Soane offered advice. The simple interior includes a painting room, a dining room, what may have been a small library, a kitchen and cellar below and two bedrooms above, one for the painter’s father and one for himself, from which he could then have seen the river. Until March 29, there is an exhibition in the lodge of five small oil sketches of the river lent by Tate. These are plein air works, painted on his…

Smart choice The hardwearing, water-resistant Regimental Stripe rug, from £52, is made from recycled plastic bottles, yet is surprisingly soft underfoot, from Weaver Green (01548 431902; www.weavergreen.com) Plant show Show off your plants in style: this elegant Tea Cart costs £255 from Sophie Conran (0333 240 1228; www.sophieconran.com) Take a seat A curved, woven back adds interest to the simple Taino bench, £545, OKA (0333 004 2042; www.oka.com) Stand to attention Made from natural rattan on black powder-coated steel legs are Vivi plant stands, from £185 each, from Vincent Sheppard (00 32 5646 1111; www.vincentsheppard.com) Seamless finish Lengths of cane are invisibly joined by Soane Britain’s rattan craftsmen to create The Rattan Ribbon table, £5,000 (020–7730 6400; www.soane.com) Take it outside From Nina Campbell’s first collection of indoor-outdoor endurance fabrics…

If shallots can be started now, so much the better. Soil conditions permitting, fork through the well-manured bed you should have prepared over the winter and bring it to an even tilth. Set a tight line and place each shallot set a foot apart along it. With a trowel, insert each shallot until its nose just pokes out above the soil. Remove the line and hoe out your footprints. Then busy yourself installing a low tunnel of netting over the lot, taking care to secure the ends and edges, or the birds and rodents will have them all out by morning.…

One of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery—determined by postcard sales, I believe —is Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Lake Keitele, and it is certainly one of my favourites. Now, the Finnish master (1865–1931) is also represented in the Musée d’Orsay, thanks to a private sale negotiated by Sotheby’s. The painting Palokärki (Great Black Woodpecker), also known as Wilderness, had been intended to go to auction in New York last November, when it was estimated at up to $2.5 million (about £1.9million). It dates from 1892–94, shortly before the death of his daughter from diptheria hardened the painter’s style and subject matter. Nevertheless, it represents a turn away from a romantic French realism towards the emergent Nordic symbolism in landscape. He was becoming a Finnish nationalist and, for him, the woodpecker…

George Eustice MP The MP is the new Defra Secretary, replacing Theresa Villiers in last week’s cabinet re-shuffle. Mr Eustice worked at Defra from 2013–19 and comes from a farming background (Agromenes, page 41) Making the best of it An Australian couple quarantined on a cruise ship have had wine delivered straight to their cabin by drone. Jan and Dave Binskin, from Queensland, have been stranded off the coast of Toyko aboard the Diamond Princess for the past week and sought comfort from the Naked Wine Club, which sent them two bottles of Pinot Noir Turtles Fossils of a turtle that was about the size of a small car were unearthed in Colombia and Venezuela last week. Stupendemys geographicus was first discovered in the 1970s—the fossils suggest the animal was…

A TRESPASSER has walked onto the line ahead of us. For their safety we must now proceed slowly.’ Hearing this announcement in a delayed train, crowded to bursting point by cancellations, I’m not sure how much sympathy there was among my fellow passengers for the trespasser. For myself, however, I felt completely inured to the inconvenience and annoyance of it all. That’s because this was the last leg of a long journey carrying me back from a magical week in Rwanda and I felt completely detached from the realities of London life. The sense of calm didn’t last long. I arrived home to find one of the children in bed. They looked ill for perhaps as long as 30 seconds after I came through the door and then began ricocheting…

Loose lips sink ships Q A good friend of mine overheard myself and another friend gossiping about her. I’m ashamed to say that we weren’t being very kind, but we do genuinely like and care about this person—I suppose we thought we were being funny. I fear that she’ll never speak to us again—how can we make it up to her? C. L., Lincolnshire A Whoops. I still break out in a cold sweat recalling a bunch of us in a BBC hospitality room, savaging the sound guy, quite forgetting that we were all still on live lapel-mikes. The chap’s face as he appeared in the doorway, coldly announcing that ‘I’d better turn these off, don’t you all think?’, stalks my nightmares. Even to savage somebody is an indication…

IN your excellent piece ‘Around Britain in 50 foods’ (February 12), the section on Patum Peperium claims that only one employee at Elsenham Quality Foods in Essex holds the secret recipe. Examining my latest tub of this wonderful delicacy, I see and regret to tell you that Elsenham is no longer mentioned and has been replaced by AB World Foods, with an address in Lancashire and the legend ‘Made in the EU’. I fear that the lone keeper of the secret recipe may have been relieved of his role—I do hope they didn’t have to resort to force to extract it from him. David Salter, Surrey The writer of the letter of the week will win a bottle of Pol Roger Brut Réserve Champagne…

STRATEGY documents, for all their importance, tend either to bore or irritate Athena. Let’s Create, published last month by Arts Council England as a strategy document for the decade ahead, is 20 pages long—if you omit to count 22 full-page illustrations and a concluding series of six spreads presenting blank writing paper, grid paper and musical stave—and falls decisively into the latter category. This came as a surprise to Athena because the central message is one with which she completely agrees: that culture is for everyone and can be a powerful force for good. She approves, moreover, with the idea expressed in the report that it is the job of the Arts Council to ‘support positive change and innovation in the cultural landscape, and to move everyone towards that vision…

‘There is a sublime and sensual beauty about all aspects of this painting. When I began studying in the 1970s, I fell in love with not only her beautiful face and eyes, but also the drawing of her hands, clearly seen within the white gloves, together with the depiction of extra material on the end of each glove finger. The blue silk bow and the cross from which it hangs are yet more marvels of painting and drawing, the bow being reminiscent of the delicate petals of an iris. The whole work to me demonstrates the highest level of painting’ John McEwen comments on The Lady with a Fan THE 19th-century French art historian Theophile Thoré-Bürger, famed for ‘rediscovering’ Vermeer, thought this portrait had no rival as the best of…

AIRY and elegant, Cobblers Cove encapulates the Caribbean colonial style as reinterpreted in the 1960s by the theatre designer Oliver Messel, who remodelled several houses nearby. Set in a lush garden flanked by beaches, the plantation-style Great House and its encircling chalets feel English yet tropical, unpretentious yet luxurious, evocative of another era, yet contemporary and chic. Lulu Lytle of Soane Britain has captured the essence in her redecoration of the principal rooms—ask for the Camelot or Colleton Suite—with pretty sprigged fabrics, rattan furniture and ‘Messel green’ paintwork. Designer Sam Godsal, whose parents-in-law bought the place in the 1960s, has refreshed the garden chalets, which have painted fretwork verandahs and boarded ceilings with long-sailed fans. Wicker furnishings and screen printed linens complement the Cobblers’ palette of pastel shades and brilliant…

THE organisers of the Open Art Fair, Thomas Woodham-Smith and Harry van der Hoorn, are approaching their first outing since buying the majority shareholding in what was the BADA’s annual fair with due caution. Anger among the association’s membership was largely due to the secrecy with which the negotiations had been conducted, rather than to the fact of the sale, as many exhibitors recognised it was time for change. It is sensible to make alterations gently and, as Mr Woodham-Smith tells me, this year’s fair, at Duke of York Square, King’s Road from March 18 to 24, will allow them to find out what will be necessary. A transitional period, might one say? The interior has apparently been redesigned—Mr van der Hoorn is the owner of Stabilo, stand builders…

THE biggest ever exhibition of paintings by Jan van Eyck, which recently opened in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, gets off to a slow start. You have to wade through five rooms of introductory exhibits and an explanatory video before you see an original van Eyck. When you finally clap eyes on the dazzling depiction of Adam from his Ghent Altarpiece, however, I guarantee you will stop in your tracks. Adam stands nearly life-sized, a mane of dark, curly hair scraped back from his temples, his brow faintly puckered with anxiety and a glint of sadness in his slightly downcast eyes. He has the grace, the poise and the physical beauty of youth. Yet he represents much more than that. Made in 1432, this is the first life-like…

THEY keep saying that vinyl’s making a comeback. I don’t know that I believe them. Izzy came back from Busby, the auction house where he works, with the news that a famously cool singer had put her record collection up for sale and I’m not surprised. Who wants to grapple with turntables and scratched records, like something out of Borgesian nightmare, when even a phone is a limitless jukebox? However even if vinyl is a busted flush, other old things seem to be forever on the brink of a return, such as milk bottles or Polaroid cameras. I googled ‘old stuff making a comeback’ just now and landed on an American website called www. familyhandyman.com that promises the return of, in order, wicker furniture (‘The first piece of wicker furniture…