Bristol

Five early pieces: 2

Here's a second re-posting, another early piece from 2007, to celebrate the fifth birthday of this blog. I've included a second photograph, so that you can see some of the tiled decoration on the building more clearly (clicking on the pictures opens a new box in which they display larger, by the way).

Bristol is rich in interesting buildings, in spite of the fact that swathes of the city were bombed during World War II. Some of the survivors, like the cathedral and the vast church of St Mary Redcliffe, are justly famous. This is one of the less well known. It’s the former printing works of Edward Everard in Broad Street. The interiors have been changed out of recognition, but the wonderful street frontage, covered in Carrara-ware tiles produced by Doulton and Company, survives and gleams.

Gutenberg and William Morris, both working at their presses, stand on either side, looking inwards towards an angelic Spirit of Literature. Below, the company’s name is spelled out in letters designed by Everard himself, while above, a figure representing Light and Truth looks down.

W J Neatby, senior designer at Doulton’s, was the creator of these stunning tiles, and the whole composition, from the heart-motifs on the turrets to Everard’s swirling letter forms, conjures up what was most fashionable in English design around 1900. It’s rather like the early volumes in Dent’s Everyman’s Library, with their Art Nouveau bindings and title pages – a delight to the eye promising a feast for the mind.

Postscript 2012

Neatby has become a hero of this blog, and I’ve also admired his work in London, Norwich and Leicester. He worked at a time when Art Nouveau was wrapping its sinuous tendrils around everything from vases to furniture, and when architects weren’t ashamed to apply decoration to buildings and to use colour in profusion. When World War I finally ended in 1918, there no longer seemed to be a place for such exuberance. Architects looked to styles such as revived classicism or pared-down neo-Georgian – or espoused the caused of modernism and turned their back on ornament. I’m pleased that some of Neatby’s work has survived to remind of us of what came before.

This posting of Neatby's elegant evocation of the history of printing is especially for Emma Bradford, designer of beautiful books and creator of lovely paintings and prints.

Hollen Street, London

High above Hollen Street, in one of Soho’s unregarded corners, a group of putti are making music. It seems a strange decoration for this otherwise industrial-looking building in a Soho side street. But this plaque, and another up the street that depicts putti churning out pages on a printing press, are a clue to the building’s origins. This was the printing works of the music publishers Novello’s, just around the corner from their offices (now Chappell’s) in Wardour Street.

Both these buildings were designed by Frank L Pearson, who was the son-in-law of the company chairman and the obvious choice for the job. The printing works came first, in 1898, and were followed in 1906 by the offices, all in brick with stone dressings. The office building has a beautiful small concert room on the first floor, done out in the style of a 17th-century hall – the kind of oak-panelled room you find in a country house or Oxbridge college of the Commonwealth period or just after. It’s not normally open, but can be glimpsed, often lit up, from the comfort of the pub opposite in Wardour Street. Among the neon-lit media offices and restaurants of Soho, the concert hall and the charmingly decorated printing works form a throw-back to another time.

Everard's Printing Works, Bristol

Bristol is rich in interesting buildings, in spite of the fact that swathes of the city were bombed during World War II. Some of the survivors, like the cathedral and the vast church of St Mary Redcliffe, are justly famous. This is one of the less well known. It’s the former printing works of Edward Everard in Broad Street. The interiors have been changed out of recognition, but the wonderful street frontage, covered in Carrara-ware tiles produced by Doulton and Company, survives and gleams.

Gutenberg and William Morris, both working at their presses, stand on either side, looking inwards towards an angelic Spirit of Literature. Below, the company’s name is spelled out in letters designed by Everard himself, while above, a figure representing Light and Truth looks down.

W J Neatby, senior designer at Doulton’s, was the creator of these stunning tiles, and the whole composition, from the heart-motifs on the turrets to Everard’s swirling letter forms, conjures up what was most fashionable in English design around 1900. It’s rather like the early volumes in Dent’s Everyman’s Library, with their Art Nouveau bindings and title pages – a delight to the eye promising a feast for the mind.