The sign on the wall commemorates the 26 people who died and the 150 who were injured when a V-1 flying bomb destroyed Highbury Corner in 1944.Now, it's a roundabout, and there are plans to reroute the traffic and make a square, in front of the station. The grand station was destroyed when the Victoria Line was built in the 1960s. Click here to see a photo of the area round about 1900.
I'm amazed to see that it used to have trolley buses going round - in the early 1960s.
But enough of this local lore - two minutes' walk and you get to an "Italianate villa" converted into a museum/gallery (with bookshop and cafe). The ceramics are in two rooms, with lovely views to the autumnal scene outside -
I immediately got out my sketchbook - or would have, had it been in my bag. Instead, I had to use pages of the diary. You can see many of the pots in the show here. But not the one that most fascinated me, a "black box with bits" by Guiseppe Spagnulo. On the right, by an amazing coincidence, is my quick sketch/aide-memoire of a textured pot by Pompeo Pianezolla - on the actual day, 1 October, I was in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin drawing, among other things, other pots by him (though not the one shown in this post).
Spagnulo also did "Testa" -
The arrangement of three pots by Fausto Melotti appealed to me - and indeed he's done a lot of figurative work, and had a retrospective in New York last year.
This tiny picture gives you some idea of the glazes Melloti uses -
Hi, nice stuff... but I think it was a V2 rocket that destroyed the station (during the 2nd World War) not the building of the Victoria Line! Nigel
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify - the rocket destroyed the building where the garden is now (roads have been re-routed over the years) and the huge station building was pulled down when the Victoria Line was built, almost 20 years later.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely right Margaret - the 1870s Italianate station building was badly damaged by the bomb (it was a V1, rather than a V2, which sadly made little difference to the people beneath it) but continued in use until the mid-1960s when like most stations along the North London Line it was demolished and replaced with much simpler buildings, avoiding the substantial rennovation costs of the Victorian masterpieces. I suspect we wouldn't imagine doing this now, but the structures were dark, damp and unloved at the time, and the investment needed to keep them in good condition just wasn't there. There is an amazing chain of correspondence from various people who remember the building on my Flickr page:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/13256979@N08/2766618080/
I love your trolleybus photo - I'll see whether I can get a contemporary shot from a similar angle.
Lovely pages/blog.