Another Return to the Thames / May 23, 2018 by Sasha Ward

This set of windows are for bathroom fanlights for the same house (as my last post) in Oxfordshire. The shape of the windows, the function of the rooms and the local landscape all led me to return to the River Thames for my subject matter. Although I had walked, photographed and drawn along the path of the river a couple of years ago, I hadn't found a good enough way to show the reeds along the river banks and the general stripiness of the flat landscape before.

The photos of the windows installed, above and below, show the different colour of the light coming through windows and skylights in the bathrooms . The colours of the hand painted enamels are the same for each window, with the image of the blue river flowing to join the pictures together.

I spent a long time on the design for these windows, struggling with my riverbank drawings. The designs look very similar to the finished windows, as is shown in the photo of glass on top of the drawing below. Back in my studio the drawings are still on the wall, giving me ideas for the next piece of work.

Detail from window two: sample for window one on top of the sketch design.

The River Thames / December 22, 2014 by Sasha Ward

My third Kelmscott repeat design features the river and has been stuck at the stage above since August, so I returned to the river Thames for some winter drawing. Does it feel melancholy because I have read William Morris' descriptions of the place so many times?

"…though it has a sadness about it which is not gloom but the melancholy born of beauty I suppose it is very stimulating to the imagination".

"…and am writing among the grey gables and rook haunted trees, with a sense of the place being almost too beautiful to work in". from WM's letters to Louisa Macdonald Baldwin in 1871 and 1872.

The "Anarchy & Beauty" Exhibition includes May Morris' embroidery of the river. I chose this work to write about on The National Portrait Gallery blog of modern makers' responses to the exhibition.

Extract here :

This small embroidered rectangle by May Morris is the best representation of the River Thames at Kelmscott that I have seen. I love the dense overlapping stitches she used to show the plants and the flat landscape beside the water. I spent last summer drawing along the banks of the river and in Kelmscott Manor, the Morris’ country home just a stone’s throw away. The huge expressive stitches on the embroidered hangings in the Manor gave me an incredible sense of the presence of William Morris, his wife Jane and their daughters Jenny and May. I wondered whether they would have approved of what I was doing there as Artist in Residence as I found my own way of depicting the house and garden in the melancholy Oxfordshire landscape.

Return to Kelmscott / December 4, 2014 by Sasha Ward

The Thames at Kelmscott, click on the photos to enlarge them — The Thames at Kelmscott, click on the photos to enlarge them

I knew that Kelmscott would be even more beautiful in winter, and in the afternoon sunlight yesterday I took enough photographs to do a blog entry twice this length.

The staff loo : from outside above, from inside below.

I've never thought it would be appropriate to install any of my work in the fabric of Kelmscott Manor, but I wanted to leave some pieces behind as "visitors" to the house. The signatures panel fitted in the staff loo with its fixings hardly visible. We removed the curtain to reveal a view of the River Thames - if you peer through the transparent parts - and coloured light flooded on to the opposite wall.

The panels that 18 Kelmscott volunteers & 1 staff member helped make on a day of workshops in October happened to fit in the kitchen windows. They slide between the leaded casements and the steel window supports in a way that is so effortless I couldn't have planned it. Here, the colours are so bright that their reflection glows even on the dark tiles and work surface.