Where would we be without furniture, eh? Sitting on the floor looking stupid, that’s where. Economist of yore John Maynard Keynes knew the value of a good bit of furniture, and even went as far as to write an essay, albeit unpublished, that went further in it’s thoughts about the topic than one might expect from a gentleman and scholar of his era. The 1909 paper Can We Consume Our Surplus or The Influence of Furniture on Love now sits in the library at King’s College Cambridge, and the gist of it is a musing on whether furniture and the rooms therein can “suggest to us thoughts and feelings and occupations”. I haven’t read the whole thing but I’ll speculate that he thought the answer was yes.
So to the Wysing Arts Centre down the road from Keynes’ alma mater, and the exhibition The Influence of Furniture on Love put together by curator Lotte Juul Petersen and artist Giles Round. It’s being held in the Centre’s 17th Century farmhouse, rumoured to have been built with timber from wrecked Spanish Armada ships, and is composed of work by artists who have all stayed in the building during the Centre’s 25-year history. Round was himself in-residence at Wysing in 2011 before founding decorative arts company The Grantchester Pottery, and the other contributors are as follows: An Endless Supply, Ruth Beale, Juliette Blightman, Ben Brierley, Céline Condorelli, Seb Patane, Florian Roithmayr, Phil Root, Laure Prouvost, Cally Spooner, Philomene Pirecki , Elizabeth Price, Mark Aerial Waller, Neal White, and Lisa Wilkens. Dates for the diary are 14 September to 2 November.
Installation view of Artist Decorators,
The Grantchester Pottery at ICA, London, 2013.
Photo, Mark Blower
Installation view of Studio Wares,
The Grantchester Pottery at David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, 2013
Photo, Max Slaven
Installation view of Artist Decorators,
The Grantchester Pottery at ICA, London, 2013.
Photo, Mark Blower
Bottle, The Grantchester Pottery, 2013
Glazed stoneware
Photo, The Grantchester Photographic Society
Wysing Farmhouse, 2014
Photo, Michael Cameron
