Tag Archives: V&A

V&A East Storehouse

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Another whim. I’d never been to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, despite years of going past it on the train to Manningtree and Harwich and watching the site being developed for the Olympics, so getting off at Stratford International was a first. It’s a fairly unlovely place – the River Lea is brown and the architecture bland – but on a fine day it didn’t matter.

The V&A Storehouse is indeed a storehouse – similar to the Boijmans van Beuningen Depot in Rotterdam but without the exterior wow-factor. You wander around as you wish; there are a few labels, some QR codes and heavy large-print catalogues. It’s very Instagrammable from certain angles, but I confess – much as I was charmed with it – I did come away with the impression that the V&A could have a clear-out. I appreciate that you’d have to hang onto a piece of Chinese tapestry-woven silk (1368-1644, which is quite a range), and a bit of the façade of the now-demolished Robin Hood Gardens tells its own story . . . but the moth-damaged vintage Harvard trucker baseball cap, date, location and maker unrecorded? Really?

While looking for somewhere for lunch, I passed the old Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street and noticed above the door the mirror images of Mercury taking messages east and west, which reminded me of the image above the entrance to the Radio Kootwijk transmitter building.

V&A

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The brilliant sunshine of the last couple of days has been replaced by cold rain, and I went to the V&A simply because I was deterred by the long queue outside the Natural History Museum. It wasn’t second best however: it’s always good to get lost in the V&A for an hour or two. This time it was mostly amongst the ceramics. My goodness, but the museum has so much stuff! And not all of it what one would care to keep. As I looked at the tall glass cabinets of china ornaments I almost expected to see a replica of my parents’ souvenir of Helensburgh or a novelty ashtray.

Inevitably I drifted towards what was familiar and ended up in front of tableware designed by Eric Ravilious. There were also designs by Vanessa Bell – looking unstructured beside Ravilious’s neat delicacy. En route I was waylaid by monochrome Chinese pottery (which brought back the Burrell Collection) the composition of different types of earthenware (having forgotten what I picked at the Bowes Museum a couple of years ago) and a pile of misfired Delft plates. I am sure I first learned about these in the Delft museum, but I took no photographs and can’t rely on my memory.