Imperial Hotel Tokyo

2024 is the centenary year of Frank Lloyd Wright’s much lamented Imperial Hotel in Tokyo - commemorative exhibitions have taken place in Tokyo and Buffalo.  The Imperial was one of the most significant commissions of Wright’s career and a validation of his lifelong passion for the art of Japan with its decisive influence on the development of his personal aesthetic.  The job came his way via a connection between a Chicago dealer in Japanese prints and the General Manager of the Imperial Hotel to whom Wright was recommended. Wright began collecting Japanese woodblock prints in the 1890s and his first trip outside the US was a 3 month visit to Japan in 1905, travelling the country by train, recording shrines, temples and domestic architecture with a four-by-five camera.

Initial development work began in 1913 when Wright was in his mid-forties and about to enter a troubled decade of personal tragedy, fire and earthquake.  In August 1914 one of the servants at Wright’s Wisconsin home and studio, Taliesin, murdered Wright’s wife, her two children, a draftsman and three workmen before setting fire to the property.  Fire would follow Wright to Japan, striking twice during the construction of the new hotel, on one occasion destroying a temporary annex of Wright’s design.  Ten days after fire claimed the old Imperial Hotel building, the new building was struck by the earthquake of April 26th. 1922 - happily for Wright, who was working there at the time, damage was minimal. The completed hotel was due to be formally opened at noon on September 1st. 1923, the Kanto earthquake struck at 11.57 and went on to devastate the city with over 100,000 lives lost in the subsequent fires.  On this occasion Wright was back home in the US - he would never return to Japan.  The new hotel sustained significant damage (accounts vary as to the full extent) Wright promoted a legend claiming his building was almost untouched due to his innovatory floating foundations.  There was little basis to this claim - true, the building escaped destruction  but the floating foundations failed to prevent sinkage though the seismic separation joints and interlocking timber beams offered some protection. 

During and immediately after the war the hotel took further battering, suffering incendiary bombing and occupation by US forces and it was 1952 before it reopened to guests.  By this time the fabric of the building was in poor condition, some of Wright’s design features made updating almost impossible and the number of rooms was inadequate to cope with demand.  Its days were numbered, it was demolished in 1967 to be replaced with a modernist tower block. By this time Wright’s building was so compromised that there was no great agitation to retain it. The only portion to survive is a recreation of the main entrance and reflecting pool in the Meiji-Mura open air architectural museum near Nagoya.

 

Lilian Rowles (1893-1953)

Stanley Charles Rowles (1887-1979) was a landscape painter, printmaker, professional illustrator, poster designer (follow this link to see his Penzance poster for the Great Western Railway) and educator appointed as Headteacher at the West Bromwich Municipal School of Art where he married one of his students, Lilian Hall.  Lilian took her husband’s surname and pursued her own career as a commercial illustrator, specialising in books for children. There’s an account of her life’s work written by a relative at theclothshed blog.  Her proficiency in drawing children can be seen in her advertising artwork for Hovis Bread in the 1920’s that exploit the visual power of a silhouette suggesting some awareness of the work of contemporary illustrators like Coles Phillips.  When The Children’s Hour was published in the 1940s Lilian was credited as both author and illustrator.  The presence of a radio on the cover signalled its relationship with the BBC programme of the same name and played its part in evoking a cosy vision of childhood reinforced by the wonders of modern technology. The internal illustrations are saved from banality by some well observed and lively figure drawing and an educated eye for the untidiness of childhood hair.  Not a hint of dissension to be noted in these exceptionally well behaved children.  The format of the book is very much the same as the example shown on theclothshed blogspot.  For the most part Lilian’s work is featured alongside other illustrators in compendium volumes - opportunities to publish her own books were few and far between. It’s not that unlikely that her career was persistently disrupted by the arrival of children and she never had the chance to fully develop her potential. 

 

The Fabric of Democracy: Propaganda Textiles

An intriguing exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey provides a snapshot of the role of the visual arts in time of conflict.  When national survival is at stake everything must make a contribution to the war effort. Collective values come into play as even the most socially exclusive artists and designers strive to make a difference - nobody wants to be accused of lacking in patriotism.  There’s a change of tone from hauteur to something more demotic - extravagance is no longer acceptable while raising public morale is a new priority.  Working under this new set of constraints the fashion industry falls back upon formal simplicity, classic elegance and a colour palette that’s light, bright and uplifting. Textile designers responded with fabric prints devised around patriotic messages and texts displayed in jaunty settings.  Other nations were involved including a strong collection of kimono prints from Japan - more bellicose in their imagery but more refined in their visual language.

 

A Meeting on the Rhine

An intriguing studio portrait of a group of serious minded young women, on the reverse is a pencilled date of January 1894.  They are soberly dressed with padded shoulders and smocking to the fore and have the appearance of educated middle class women but there are no obvious clues as to the reason for their gathering. Some  look out of the photo with impressive self-assurance, others look more diffident or apprehensive. Perhaps it was a social event - a reunion of a sort - but there’s no evidence of frivolity. The studio responsible was located in Neuwied, a small town on the banks of the Rhine near Koblenz.  Germany in 1894 was a rapidly expanding industrial and military power and it may be no more than a coincidence but the nation’s first major group to campaign for the rights of women, the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (BDF) was founded in March of 1894. Needless to say, it ceased to exist in 1933.

 

School Bullies at Work

A series of 6 postcards sent over about 10 days in May 1907 from a mother in Witheridge, Devon to her schoolboy son who was staying away from home with his grandmother in Twickenham.  The cards form a sequence and mother’s messages display an unusual preoccupation with playground violence.  She has inscribed some odd captions on the illustrations but she really gets stuck-in on the reverse declaring  to young Master Maunder (known as Vennie):

When you come home you will feel so strong that you will want to fight all the boys at school …

Will you tell the other boys to scram?

The bobby has got one of the boys - how would you like to be one of them …

In other news from home:

Percy went up to Mrs. Cheyney’s and brought home 2 little birds in a nest - Annie took them back again because the poor little things would die without the mother to feed them …

Daddy is very busy making a meat-safe for me today in the play room - he cannot make out why you’re not homesick …

It has rained all day …

Witheridge is a North Devon village where  a chain of West Country butchers (Lloyd Maunder) was founded  in the 1870s - the business was later managed by Percy (who brought home a bird’s nest) and Venn Maunder (recipient of the postcards).  It continues to trade in the present day.

Wrestling and fisticuffs were generally regarded as character-forming rituals and it wasn’t unusual for boys’ schools to organise formal boxing contests.  An unspoken acceptance of the playground as war zone meant that hierarchies of status were determined by shows of aggression and brute force.  Today’s high-functioning school bullies are equally adept in the dark arts of psychological violence - their repertoire of dirty tricks vastly extended by the arrival of social media. At some future date, they and their colleagues will be serving in the Cabinet, replacing the present incumbents whose vindictive incompetence may be regarded as trivial compared with their successors.

 

Bridge Postcards of 2023

We begin the annual round up with less familiar views of London’s Tower Bridge followed by a pair of medieval-themed examples from Germany (Bonn and Berlin). The double-decker arched viaduct at   makes a splendid sight.  A pair of bucolic scenes from the Peak District (Monsal Dale and Hathersage) follow - I’ve a soft spot for Hathersage having first seen it from the top deck front seat of a Sheffield City bus in 1978 that had just made a spectacular winding descent from the viewpoint known as Surprise View that very much lives up to its name.  Next is a distant view of Saltash and the river Tamar followed by much steelwork on a single span railway bridge in Costa Rica. There are more rail bridges from Riga, Jutland, Porto, Florida and Texas.