Roses and Exhibitions

Wild Roses; Dog rose, burnet rose, field rose, yellow briar, cinnamon rose, one could go on as Margery Blamey's illustrations show.  These  shrubs of wild  roses emerge from our hedgerows in a cascade of white and pink, soon over, till we see their deep red hips.  They never achieve the splendour of the cultivated rose, but as the hawthorn blossom disappears the beautiful wild rose will make an appearance.  I have a feeling it is some what neglected because of the distinct blossoming of its cultivated mate at the same time. 

Why dog rose (rose canina)? well according to Grigson, a Roman soldier got cured of rabies by rubbing the root of a rose against the bite.  Gerard the 16th century herbalist, took up the term 'dog' to distinguish the wild from the cultivated.

Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix's illustration of the wild roses that appear in China... 

There is to be an exhibition at the National Potrait Gallery in Autumn, something we must go to, Fiona McCarthy is the curator....

NPG unveils its blockbuster autumn exhibition with Anarchy and Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, 1860-1960

Can you believe it? an erotic lawn roller by Eric Gill, it just made me giggle through breakfast.  Lawn rollers are not something you see nowadays, we had one for our lawn when I was a child, a great heavy concrete creature that stood in the corner, LS remembered the great steam rollers on the road that probably did more damage to the roads than that sticky black tar they rolled into place.

Plotting a creative arc from the Pre-Raphaelites to Terence Conran, the National Portrait Gallery's autumn exhibition on the life and influence of William Morris is nothing if not ambitious.

It’s also the first major exhibition to really explore the influence the great man had on British design – and ergo life – in  the twentieth century.

The curator of the show is also a coup, with Morris biographer Fiona McCarthy lined up to guide us through the fascinating world of Morris’s far-reaching politics, thought and design via portraits, furniture, books, banners, textiles and jewellery – many of them  brought together in London for the first time.

That McCarthy also counts influential and polemical tomes on Eric Gill and Edward Burne-Jones among her works merely adds to the expectation at the London museum, ensuring that the exhibition will raise some interesting questions about Morris’s enduring influence.