Does anyone still have a beach cape? If so, Ghislaine Wood, curator of the Sainsbury Centre’s new exhibition, would like to hear from you. Beach capes—voluminous, tent-like robes that allowed the (female) wearer to change into a swimsuit without any loss of modesty—were an essential accessory of the 1930s seaside.
Brightly coloured and strikingly patterned, these once ubiquitous garments seem to have been thrown out, together with the knitted bathing dresses over which they were worn, once fashion changed. Elaborate evening dresses had a more obvious value; the exhibition contains some sleek and shimmering examples borrowed from Southend Museums. (One of the aims of the show has been to draw on out-of-London collections.)
Architecturally, Art Deco found a natural home at the seaside. Bold, eye-catching and cheap to build, it was particularly suited to cinemas, lidos and hotels. There were some masterpieces, such as Oliver Hill’s Midland Hotel in Morecambe, Serge Chermayeff and Erich Mendelsohn’s De La Warr Pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea and Joseph Emberton’s Blackpool Pleasure Beach—not that the architects would have seen themselves as working in the Art Deco style, as the term was only coined in the 1960s. Billy Butlin’s first holiday camps (Skegness, 1936; Clacton, 1938) used the style to catch the eye of the middle classes.
Denne historien er fra March 04, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 04, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds