On the tube back from Pimlico I noticed that the Victoria line went all the way to Walthamstow . . . which set me to thinking of the William Morris house there, which I had kind of assumed was difficult to get to. Wrong.
So off I went. It was once the Morris family home and has an enormous collection of all things Morrissy. The usual stuff – designs, furnishings, paintings, printing press, socialism – well presented and explained. Frank Brangwyn popped up again: he was one of the founders of the gallery and donated much of his collection to it.
The current non-Morris exhibition is on Mingei – the Japanese term for folk craft. The term was first used in 1925 by Yanagi Soetsu as a kind of reaction to Japan and Korea’s industrialisation and westernisation. It looked with new eyes at everyday objects created by nameless craftsmen using natural materials, and a movement towards simplicity, informed by Zen Buddhism and even the Arts and Crafts Movement, grew in contemporary crafts. The objects on display were simple and beautiful – even the ragged patchwork (boro), which spoke of poverty and the need to recycle everything. (There were as many layers of irony in the exhibition as fabric in the patchwork.)
The gallery was not exactly what one might expect in Walthamstow. The area is more urban than the urbane Islington I walked around yesterday. It reminded me of living in bedsits with shared bathrooms a couple of lifetimes ago around Finsbury Park, and I realised that I was quite content with my surroundings at the time. They were good enough: my wish to go to other places was not to escape but to explore.
Old Shoe Box 