William Mitchell’s Autobiography – availaible very soon…

My friends Bill and Joy Mitchell have just emailed to let me know that the autobiography they have been working on for the last few years, has finally been given a publication date at the end of July and is now available for pre-order on Amazon…

This is most excellent news indeed. I’ve played a very small part in helping them in the final stages of the project and Bill has done me the HUGE honor of using one of my photographs for the front cover… (it’s a detail from the doors of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral)

Bill has produced a whole series of beautiful new drawings to illustrate the various chapters of his life… from childhood illness to service in the Navy, from Art School to his pioneering sculptural work for the GLC, from regular appearances on TV and hobnobbing with royalty, to his work abroad and long time Directorship at Harrods…

Without doubt, the man has had a pretty eventful life and produced some truly stunning and timeless art along the way. I’ve written about William Mitchell in these pages a number of times before (here and here for starters) and what’s more I shan’t stop until more people are aware of his name and the huge contribution he has made to our artistic, social and cultural heritage.

I’m happy to report that there is evidence that this is indeed starting to happen, as over the last year or so, several Flickr pages (here and here) and numerous write ups on personal blogs have started to appear and this autobiography is another exciting step towards the recognition that I believe Bill so rightly deserves.

If you are interested in his work, Bill’s own website is here, but keep your eye on these pages, as we are currently looking into the possibility of organising a number of supporting events later on in the year…

I’m now a Wikipedian…

I’ve just had my very first Wikipedia article created, which I’m rather chuffed about. Apparently that means I can now call myself a Wikipedian (should I ever wish to…)

I Initially found writing and editing in Wikipedia rather daunting I have to admit. The entry obviously all has to be done to conform with the familiar house style, which means formatting everything into an unfamiliar code that determines such things as text size, headings, sub-headings, web links and references etc. Printing out a copy of the style and layout manual undoubtedly helped, so that after some perseverance and lots of coffee, it finally began to make some sort of sense.

Perhaps unsurprisingly (for those that have visited my blog before) my first article is about my favourite artist and sculptor William Mitchell, a man who I believe is very deserving of finally having his own entry…

It actually took two goes to get the artcile approved. My first attempt was considered to be too subjective and that it “read like an advertisement.” But after removing some of the more gushing adjectives and the reference to his forthcoming autobiography (hmm) hey presto, a new Wikipedia page has come into being…

Now that it’s been created, the plan is to improve it by adding photos and images of Bill’s work and elaborating on some of his phenomenal achievements over the last 50 years or so…

You can get to the page by clicking the screen grab below… and as it’s Wikipedia, you can of course add to it yourself…

William Mitchell’s Lee Valley Water Company Mural gets Grade II Listing

What with one thing and another, I haven’t written about my friend William Mitchell for a while, so as I’ve recently learnt that one of his larger works, the fantastic cast concrete mural at the former headquarters of the Lee Valley Water Company in Hatfield, has recently been granted Grade II Listed Status, I thought I’d pen a few more lines to my favourite craftsman.

Bill is without doubt one of this countries most overlooked and under appreciated artists, a man whose highly idiosyncratic murals and sculptures reached a creative highpoint during the 1960′s and 70′s, gracing public spaces, civic buildings, subways and town centres right across the country.

This magnificent structure is one such example and it was created in a similar way to the Three Tuns Mural in Coventry, whereby Bill carved negative moulds out of polystyrene blocks (there is a similarly complex pattern on both sides of the wall) which were then contained within a timber formwork and concrete poured into the gap between.

The whole mural forms an intrinsic part of the building’s structure, effectively a freestanding feature wall holding up one side of the roof. Bill tells me it was the largest freestanding cast concrete structure of its kind in Europe when it was completed in 1965.

Being commissioned by a water company, Bill also ensured that water played a part in the murals design, and from what I can gather, it trickled down through the heavily moulded surface, ending up in a reflecting pool outside the main entrance. I’ve never seen this mural, but it sounds wonderful…

So, fantastic news for Bill. I think this is the ninth or maybe even the tenth of his works to be Listed and I’m very pleased that his work is finally getting the recognition it so rightly deserves…

I’ll leave you with another image of the Lee Valley mural from the Winter 1964 cover of The Concrete Quarterly Magazine, that’s Bill bottom right, looking up at his creation… (NB. the photo above was actually taken by Bill himself whilst the wall was being constructed, and he’s very kindly allowed me to use it, for which I thank him).

As an aside, for lovers of Mid Century design like myself, the Archives of CQ are a phenomenal treasure trove of images, information and idealism.

Go and have a look if you don’t believe me, you won’t be disappointed…

Three Murals… William Mitchell, Gordon Cullen & Dorothy Annan

A trilogy of Murals today… Starting with my favourite artist, William Mitchell and his fantastic mural at the Three Tuns pub in Coventry.

Little A and I went on an explore of my home city over the Christmas holidays and as well as visiting the Herbert Art Gallery to see the very excellent George Shaw exhibition, we also took lots of photos of some lovley mid century stuff……

The mural is an incredible thing. It dates from 1966, is about 11m long by 4 m high and is full of amazingly rich textures and a truly astonishing depth of surface. The whole thing was cast in concrete with a pebble aggregate and is two sided, offering a less modelled, but equally impressive view on the inside. I actually used to go to this pub in the early 1980′s (not very often as it was a townies pub and I hung around with students). It’s an Indian restaurant now and the inside wall has been painted white.

Frustratingly and like so much of this great artist’s work, I can find little about it online, so what I obviously what I need to do as we are now in contact, is ask the man himself how he made it and then update this post once I’ve spoken to him…

Until then, here are some close ups of what the Listed Buildings website calls his “distinctive Aztec style”.

The future of this wonderful work is somewhat in doubt as I write this. As recently as last week, Coventry Council announced plans to redevelop the Bull Yard area of the precinct in which this (quite rightly and thankfully) Grade II listed mural can be found. The city’s website for the huge £300m project is here and a flickr site of images is here, but I wouldn’t bother too much. It’s all fairly standard developer stuff; bland and non location specific, promising blue skies, bright colours and smiling people, but in reality delivering the same old, same old…

Still I have it on pretty good authority that the mural will be saved and incorporated into the new scheme, maybe on an inside wall somewhere so it can avoid the worst of the Midlands weather.

Which brings me neatly onto the next mural that’s caught my eye recently, this marvellous wall of cermic colour by Gordon Cullen, which is also in Coventry. Cullen was an architect by training but was also a very gifted artist and is perhaps best remembered as one of the pioneers of Urban Design through his seminal 1961 book The Consise Townscape, in which he set out his thoughts on how the urban environment might be visually organised to achieve a better overall coherence.

This beautiful piece used to sit in a prominent position in the centre of Coventry’s main shopping precinct and I remember it well from my younger days.. So called improvements to the precinct in 2002 (i.e. squeezing more shops in) resulted in the mural being relocated to a rather austere corridor somewhere “round the back” and although I knew it had been moved and was looking for it, it was quite by chance that we actually came across it…

The mural was designed by Cullen in 1958 to illustrate the history and spirit of Coventry and its Citizens and was considered an important part of Donald Gibson’s recently completed City Centre rebuilding works. It was originally much larger than as shown above, but a sign nearby informed me that “careless workmanship in the 1970′s” (I can only imagine) lead to the destruction of panels that included medieval maps of the old city.

Still the panels that remain give a good idea of Cullens style with their bold shapes and bright colours, referencing the new city centre buildings (including Spence’s Cathedral), bicycles (which the city was famous for manufacturing) and dinosaurs (although to be honest, I’m not quite sure where they fit in)… Bizarrely, this work is currently not listed, however it appears to be safe enough for the time being in its new home.

Which brings me to the third mural, which I have known and wondered at for many, many years but which I only found out last week was finally (as recently as November of last year) given Grade II Listed status. I think we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Twentieth Century Society for its tireless work in ensuring our recent heritage has at least a fighting chance of survival…

The mural is to be found on the old telephone exchange building on Farringdon Road in Central London and comprises nine stunning, hand painted ceramic panels designed in 1960 by the little known artist Dorothy Anann.

Although the work is untitled, and there is precious little about her on the net, I gather that Annan set out to depict various aspects of the communications and telephone industry, relating the work very much to the idea of Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” in a series of wonderfully stylised and abstract panels that although rather weather worn and grubby, are still in surprisingly good condition.

Interestingly when I went to take some photos on a bitterly cold evening last week, I was stopped by two security guards in hi-viz jackets who told me in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to take photos as it was a dangerous structure and I was on private property. Quite how this can be when both the footpath and the mural have clearly been in the public domain for more than 60 years is beyond me…

It was only later that we realised that their attitude was probably to do with the activities of the Occupy Movment, and that they assumed I was casing this huge building with a view to sleeping in it…

The building was designed incidentally by Eric Bedford, the Chief Architect of the Post Office Tower, and like so many telephone exchanges across the country has been empty for many years and is facing almost certain demoltion, as unlike the mural, it was not thought worthy of Listing.

Let’s hope the developers honour the Grade II listing status of Dorothy Annan’s fabulous work however, and find it a new home that is both appropriate and publicly accessible.

Neighbourhood No. 9 in The Shrieking Violet

I’ve touched on this before, but one of the best things to come out of writing this blog are the connections that I’ve made with people I might otherwise never have met…

A perfect recent example is Natalie Bradbury, who shares an interest in all things artistic and cultural and like me is also a fan of that great unsung British artist William Mitchell.

Based up in Manchester, Natalie has just published a highly impressive 17th edition of her excellent, award-winning blog & online magazine The Shrieking Violet in which she has very kindly included an article written by me, on one of my favourite subjects…

Entitled Neighbourhood No. 9: The Live Architecture Exhibition at Poplar (on pages 3 to 6), it takes a brief look at one of the lesser known aspects of the 1951 Festival of Britain, namely how contemporary ideas in Architecture, Urban Design and Town Planning might best be used to create new communities in a Post War Britain, an issue that still has repurcussions to this day and one that I think should be much more widley known about than it is.

I must say I’m pretty excited about being in The Shrieking Violet, as it’s the first time I’ve had something I’ve researched and written published.

There are some low quality screen grabs below (mostly for my own record purposes) but if you’re interested then you really should visit Natalie’s amazing site and read the whole magazine for yourself…

An amazing find… An original Basil Spence lithograph of Coventry Cathedral from 1957

I’ve written a number of times before about synchronicity & The Lattice of Coincidence, or how a sequence of events can be given greater significance than they may deserve (especially by me). Well here’s another one for you…

One of the most amazing things to have come out of writing this blog is that I’ve become friends with the Artist William Mitchell and his lovely wife Joy. After reading some of my posts, Bill got in contact with me and we’ve since met up a couple of times. He’s an amazing guy, still making art, still a bit of a raconteur. He’s obviously lived the life and worked all over the world, with several appearances on Tomorrow’s World and various other entertainment shows throughout the 1960′s, whilst latterly he’s worked for Mohamed Al-Fayed.

We got talking about his work for various Architects during the 60′s and 70′s and I told him I was struggling to finish an overly long post on the Architecture Exhibition of the Festival of Britain at Poplar, and that it had now divided itself into 2 parts, the second of which wanted to be just about Frederick Gibberd, one of our most succesful post war architects…

“Aahh Freddy”, said Bill “I knew him well…” and off he went telling stories of a perfect gentleman with a big moustache, who sounded like a thoroughly nice chap indeed and who he had worked with on several projects, including of course their Masterpiece, Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Bill also said that, amongst other respected names from this period, he’d worked with Basil Spence, and told me a story about visiting Spence’s home and seeing the fantastic model for the Coventry Cathedral, just sitting in his front room (I guess it was the one in this photo above which Sir Basil is showing to some school kids…)

It was this reminder of Basil Spence that prompted me to complete an unfinished idea for a post on some of his beautiful drawings, that I published on Saturday morning…

Anyway the following day, we headed off with some friends to Dulwich College to the Mid Century Modern Show to see if we could buy some more lovely (but unnecessary) things for our home. We all thought this years event was ridiculously rammed, and not as enjoyable as in previous years, but I’m so glad we went, because I quite literally couldn’t belive my eyes when I saw this…

It’s a truly wonderful, lithograph print of Spence’s beautiful chalk drawing of Coventry Cathedral, which I have only seen used by The London Midland Train Co. for their “Rebirth of Coventry” advert below. My print is about 700 x 940mm, is in perfect condition and is of a very high quality (in fact so good, I wasn’t initially convinced it wasn’t the original, so bright & life like are the chalk marks).

It came in what looks to my untrained eyes like a contemporary teak frame. I was told when I bought it that the picture was previously owned by the original organist of the Cathedral, and was given to him in the late 50′s when the prints were originally made. Of course I have no way of knowing if this is true (and don’t really mind anyway, it’s a nice story, but the print itself is more than enough for me…).

I just had to have it.. A huge, perfect Basil Spence print of Coventry Cathedral.. unbelievable.. I went and got A and asked if a) we could afford it and b) she would she want it up on the wall.. she said yes to both and after some slight haggling and a bit more worry on my part about the cost… I took the plunge and bought it.

Would I have been so keen to buy it if I hadn’t been thinking and writing about Basil Spence over the last few weeks.. possibly, I will never know. But I am so glad that I’ve got it, it makes me happy every time I look at it. And once I’ve reinforced the wall to take its ridiculous weight, it will look absolutely fantastic, taking pride of place in living room…

William Mitchell – An Unacknowledged Genius…

Back in April, I wrote about a trip to Liverpool and my discovery of the work of the brilliant sculptor William Mitchell.

Well, as I suggested at the end of that post, I haven’t been able to get his powerful work out of my head, and after some rooting around the internet and a couple of email responses to my earlier post, one to my utter amazement from the artist himself, and another advising that a piece of his work had recently been reinstalled into Kirkby Library in Liverpool, I’ve decided to write another, more detailed and dedicated post on one of our most underrated and unsung post war sculptors.

William George Mitchell was born in London’s Maida Vale  in 1925. After a childhood plagued by illness and missed schooling, he was apprenticed to a local firm of decorators, where he began to learn about materials and craft. The advent of WWII resulted in a stint in the Royal Navy after which he ended up working for the NAAFI (effectively the catering and retail arm of the Armed Forces) where he was responsible for creating painted murals and panoramas on the walls of refurbished club and canteen buildings, at many sites across the globe.

Despite being a naturally gifted individual, it seems that Mitchell was looking for a more formal training to help him focus his ability, and after deciding he wanted to be involved in the restoration of classical buildings, he studied at several colleges before graduating from the Royal College of Arts School of wood, metals & plastics in London, sometime during the mid 1950′s

Mitchell finally began to make a name for himself after joining the London County Council Architects Department in the late 1950′s, designing decorative works for the many new Post War Council Estates that were at that time springing up throughout London.

For me, one of the strength’s of Mitchell’s work was his seemingly unquenchable desire to experiment, and a quick look through his own website, throws up a huge range of materials, styles, processes and techniques which, when combined with his sharp eye for pattern and narrative, resulted in some truly wondrous things. As much of his work was carried out during the 1960′s and 70′s, cement and concrete were common materials, but Mitchell approached their use in unusual ways, such as casting and carving it whilst still in a wet state. A wonderful example of this technique (using Faircrete) are the Stations of the Cross at Bristol Cathedral, one of which “Crucified” is shown being carved by Mitchell above.

Other innovative techniques and materials included the use of recycled timber and furniture to create mosaics, the use of recycled glass, melted down and recast and textured to form new strips; inlaid chipboard, etched glass and GRP (Glass reinforced plastic) and GRC (Glass reinforced concrete), and the use of resin and polyurethane, images of which are shown below.

At the brilliant British Pathe Archives (themselves well worthy of a future post) I’ve found a short, wonderfully evocative film of Mitchell at work creating a cement mural for a Bermondsey Housing block. I love his almost nonchalant approach, as if he’s literally making it up as he goes along… carving the clay, in filling the mould with cement & reinforcement and them covering it all with coloured resin… Marvellous. (It’s interesting to note that the voiceover describes him as an industrial designer, rather than an artist. I wonder if that was his choice or the film company’s…)

Stylistically, Mitchell’s work seems to me to have deep roots in an almost folk tradition, harking back to more pagan and unruly times; the bold, geometric shapes, the rich use of textures bringing to mind rocks and the earth and an overwhelmingly strong belief in craftsmanship, all seem to suggest a man who was probably happy just to be commissioned to make his art and get it out into the public domain, rather than any selfish or considered act of trying to make a name for himself in the more accepted art circles. Truly a man with a sharply focused social conscious, and as he himself states on his website “Some of the projects I did were good, some were reasonable and most were controversial – none, however, broke the bank. These were the products of an exciting time, and one that I don’t think we shall see again. It was great to be part of it”.

Despite seemingly little “academic” recognition, Mitchell’s public sculpture during the 60′s and 70′s was radical, experimental, considered, generally beautifully made and hugely popular with the people who saw it every day, and although I suspect few people knew his name, many people will have enjoyed his highly theatrical and accomplished work.

Tastes change however and I fear that during the 80′s/90′s & 00′s, people will have seen his work as out of step with the times: too random or haphazard maybe, too dense, all in all too “concretey” and as such, I suspect that there are many of Mitchells works that have been quietly destroyed along with the buildings or urban spaces they inhabited. Thankfully this is starting to change now and a wider appreciation of concrete sculpture and murals is steadily growing. The Twentieth Century Society’s Mural Campaign is a case in point, as the opening lines of the above site state categorically that.. “Post War murals are an endangered species. Although paintings and sculpture from this same period are seen as fit subjects for gallery display and academic study, murals – often by the very same artists are still frequently ignored and often destroyed”.

Indeed it is very hard to ascertain with any degree of certainty using the web, how many of Mitchells’ works still exist, and even though there is frustratingly little regarding Mitchell on the web (other than his own site, where I acknowledge that much of the info and images in this post have come from), it’s obvious that he was a staggeringly prolific artist. His work for the LCC alone must have involved possibly 100′s of commissions, including decorative wall panels, community centre murals, free standing play features, subway decorations and large scale concrete decorative cladding panels to name just a few. He also completed some major installations in Harlow, Wrexham, Manchester and Liverpool as well as what looks like some significant overseas commissions.

Some of his work has recently been recognised and consequently listed; The Three Tuns Mural in my home City of Coventry and the Islington Green School murals are just 2 examples. Hopefully more will follow, as the art world finally wakes up to a criminally overlooked and disregarded aspect of our social and artistic heritage. If you’re interested, there is a good article here that refers to William Mitchell’s murals, and why they are so worth saving. In the interim, here is a small selection of his amazing work.