Anke: Royal Tunbridge Wells

The Art of Erica Adams

After discovering the Pantiles Signs book many months ago I conducted a bit of research and discovered that the author, Erica Adams, was quite the artist too. Now, you know me by now. I'm something of a fan of anything Tunbridge Wells, and this goes especially for anything in paint form.

After contacting Erica about her book she dropped me an email with the fabulous artwork you see below. How could I resist asking her to meet me for a cup of tea.

Close-up snippet of one of Erica's saucy paintings.

Erica was a Wells resident for many years but today she lives in Crowborough, so I trudged to the top of the mountain and paid her, and her husband Maurice, a visit.

After a nice cuppa I took a tour with Erica around the studio in her home. Walking the hall and climbing the stairs there was not a spare inch of wall space with paintings of every style and subject you can imagine. There were quite a few nudes especially and lots of her husband, Maurice, although not nude I hasten to add.

One of the more unusual methods that Erica uses is to crush local sandstone into the paints to give a mottled texture to the work. It certainly makes for an interesting effect.

What brought you to Tunbridge Wells?
"When my husband was offered a job near Tunbridge Wells over thirty years ago I hadn't a clue where the town was, let alone anything about it. We lived in Bushey, Hertfordshire, at the time. 'Let's go and take a look at it,' said Mr A. So that's what we did and when I clapped eyes on The Pantiles I was completely bowled over. In fact, in love. And the feeling has never left me. Whether it be summer, winter, early morning, late evening, misty, icy, snowy, sunny, filled with joyous people enjoying the Thursday jazz evenings, or eerily quiet and devoid of people, the Upper Walk still holds its magical grip on me".

Erica in her home studio.

"Going back to that first visit to Tunbridge Wells, I urged Mr A to take the job so long as we could live on or near The Pantiles. So we wandered up Linden Park Road which was the nearest road to the colonnaded walks that we could see. Two houses up (a Victorian house then stood where the auction rooms are now) I espied a modern-looking house called Edensor. That house looked interesting, I said, wandering back and making a note of its name. 'But it isn't for sale,' observed Mr A.

Back home in Bushey, I wrote a letter addressed to the Owner of Edensor explaining that we were going to move to TW in a year's time (by then Mr A had accepted the job but I had one more year of college to complete) I asked if he/she was thinking about selling the house. A bit of a long shot, you might think. And a bit of a cheek. However, he wrote back and said he was Mr Radford and he had designed and built the house himself. Your timing is perfect, he stated, going on to explain that his planning application to develop the area had been turned down for the final time so he would be putting it on the market in a year's time. Amazing. Wonderful. The price was agreed on and we bought the house and moved in on 4th July 1977. Quickly I got cracking on the beautiful Pantiles, creating a book of water colours and the I-spy photograph Pantiles Signs books".

What's your favourite part of Tunbridge Wells to paint?
"It would have to be the Pantiles."

Who is your favourite Tunbridge Wells artist?
"Marianne Cox, a marvellous painter, and Gill Brown and Ian Milner two outstanding sculptors".

One of Erica's saucy paintings.

What kind of person usually buys your artwork?
"Absolutely anyone, I've sold works at Liberty of Regent Street and sent paintings all over the world. Even Prince Charles has one of my paintings, it was a picture of the Queen and Prince Phillip on their Anniversary".

I asked her husband Maurice if he liked to paint and he said that he just lets his wife do the painting. Although he did say that he picked up the brushes once and sold the resultant painting for thousands, pesetas that is, he had a go on a painting holiday whilst accompanying Erica.

I read that you were not allowed to attend Art College, what happened there?
"Simply that my father wouldn't let me. He encouraged me to go the secretarial college instead. But in hindsight I think that not having a rigid artistic education was an advantage. I had always wanted to paint so I went out and bought myself some oil paints and an old trowel and just began painting. To my surprise people loved them and began buying them".
"I inherited an easel from a very good friend, Johnny Hooper, who had gone to art college and had died, I like to think that when I paint using his easel that he is watching over me and helping me".

Bridgette and Terry at the Tunbridge Wells Art Society's Winter Exhibition.

What are you up to at the moment?
"The TW Art Society Winter Exhibition opens this Saturday. I have two framed pictures in it and some greetings cards. It should have been three framed pictures but just as I was getting the third one ready to go I saw that when I'd screwed the D-rings in the back the points had peeked out of the front of the frame. So that was blooming well that. So it is still at home awaiting a bit of filling and gilding.
I'm very excited at the moment because I've just published my new novel The Sea with Diamonds on Kindle Amazon. I started writing it the day after 9/11 when the horror of the atrocity was still raw in everyone's minds. It is the story of a fictional young American woman, newly married, newly pregnant ... newly widowed. It's available on Amazon".

Erica has exhibited at The National Society and The Guildhall London and she had a one-man exhibition at The Camden Art Centre. Her paintings were sold at Liberty of Regent Street and also regularly each year at the Hampstead Open Air Exhibitions. Since retiring, she has published three saucy, comic novels (The Pig and I; The Pignapper; Going the Whole Hog) all still available from Amazon UK. Going the Whole Hog was launched at Waterstone’s and has been made into an audio book. She has continued painting throughout and, since 2006, has been running the Tuesday morning Portrait Group sessions at the Tunbridge Wells Art Society.

The Art Society's Winter Exhibition is on until Saturday so go pay them a visit, it really is an ideal place and time to pick up that unique Christmas present.

The Mortuary Cross

Along with my great friend David, as part of the Tunbridge Wells Project, we were privileged enough to be allowed to see inside, and photograph, the Mortuary Chapel underneath St. Barnabas Church. Whilst under there we were both drawn to the simple wooden cross hanging on the wall, upon further investigation there seems to be more to it than we first thought.

The cross on the wall of the Mortuary Chapel. Click to go to the Project Gallery.

St. Barnabas was built in one of the poorer parts of town but it still attracted a few of the wealthier families to its services. One of these was the Ranking family, they were a medical family and many of them served in the Indian Army.

Captain James Ranking was serving in India with the East Lancashire Regiment and the 26th Punjab Infantry. His language skills whilst there enabled him to work with the Foreign Office in Bushire on the Persian Gulf. Persia wasn't offically involved in the First World War but had a lot of secret agents from both sides stationed there. One such agent was the German, Wilhelm Wassmuss. Wassmuss was attempting to provoke the British Army by stirring up anti-British feeling and laying the foundations of a revolt by forming an army of Tangistani warriors to fight against them.

Wassmuss's intention was to attack the vulnerable British Residency at Bushire which was only lightly defended by inexperienced Indian troops. The Tangistanis, several hundred strong, planned to attack from the East and South, taking the residency by surprise. However, on the morning of July 12th 1915, a Tangistani scouting party was seen advancing across the desert and a small British patrol was sent out to investigate, led by Major Oliphant and Captain Ranking.

The crucifix watches over the Mortuary Chapel and Captain Ranking's cross. Click to go to the Project Gallery.

The patrol unfortunately ran into a far larger enemy force than they could cope with. In the ensuing battle Captain Ranking was mortally wounded and the major died in an attempt to save him. A few of their Indian colleagues survived to get back home to raise the alarm.

The Tangistani raid on Bushire lasted until September 1915 and ended in defeat, and Captain Ranking was buried in the Tehran War Cemetery in Iran.

What is rather special though is that the temporary wooden cross placed over his original burial plot was not destroyed when the permanent stone was erected. Instead, on the 25th May 1928, there was a citation to bring the cross back to England and place it in the Mortuary Chapel of St. Barnabas in his memory. And there it has remained ever since.

You can go and see it for yourself during Heritage Open Weekend this year from the 8th to the 11th of September, and I highly recommend you do, or you can click to see all 450+ photographs in the St. Barnabas Church gallery on the Project website.

Tunbridge Toys

Today, the 18th of July, is, or would've been, the 200th birthday of legendary Vanity Fair author William Makepeace Thackeray.

Thackeray's illustrated view from Rock Villa.

Born in Calcutta, India in 1811, William moved back to England in 1817. During the summer of 1823 he stayed with his mother and step-father in a small cottage on Mount Ephraim which they had rented for the season. Many years later he revisited the scenes of this childhood holiday and together with his two daughters spent the months of August and September, 1860, at Rock Villa on London Road. Rock Villa now houses a famous local restaurant named in his honour.

William Makepeace Thackeray pictured during the Tunbridge Toys period.

Whilst here, Thackeray was the editor of the Cornhill Magazine, to which he contributed a series of essays called the Roundabout Papers. His stay at Rock Villa inspired him to pen the delightful “Tunbridge Toys” essay. Thackeray had some talent as an artist and illustrated many of his works, at the beginning of “Tunbridge Toys” there is a fabulous engraving of the inspiring view of Common and Belleville Cottage as seen from Rock Villa, it is pictured at the start of this post.

Tunbridge Toys really is a truly wonderful piece of work and really beautifully describes the view of the Common. It's enough to bring a lump to your throat.

An extract from Thackeray's Tunbridge Toys describes the view perfectly.

To celebrate Thackeray’s birthday download your free copy of Tunbridge Toys.

Object of the Month

Last month I was very privileged to be asked to select an item from down in the depths of the Museum’s archives to be their Object of the Month.

Thomas Sims. Photographer, experimenter, and Mr Anke forerunner.

As a blogger and photographer I could either venture into the archive and find some ancient blogging tools or something photography-related. Photography seemed the wiser choice.

I wanted to choose an object from a photographer that was a lot like myself, one who likes to experiment and who enjoys all aspects of the craft.

I finally settled on this photograph you see here, which might just look like any other old antique photo but it is an image of local photographer, and one of the first professional photographers, Thomas Sims (1826-1910). It is also an example of one of his experimental techniques.

Sims set up in business in Weston-super-Mare in 1847, in 1849 he married Frances Wallace, sister of the distinguished naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, co-pioneer with Darwin of the theory of evolution. Sims photographed both Darwin and Huxley through this family connection.

One of Thomas Sims's Ambrotypes.

Sims was a photographer on the leading edge. He loved to experiment with different techniques, beginning with the earliest available, the daguerreotype, which produced a positive image on silvered copper.

In 1847 he began experimenting with calotypes, the earliest method of printing images on paper, this process could create multiple positives from a single negative. The drawback was that the paper negatives did not record as much detail as the daguerreotype. From 1851 he worked with a third new technique known as the collodion process, whereby glass plates coated with light-sensitive chemicals were exposed to create negatives. Bleached and mounted on a black background, these plates could be used to make detailed images called ambrotypes, the photograph on display in the Museum is one of these made with this process.

Thomas experimented on his family members, this is his mother-in-law.

In 1852 Sims showed examples of his work at Britain's first photographic exhibition organised by the Society of Arts in London.

In 1853, having established his reputation, Sims moved to London. Not long after his arrival, he became involved in a legal dispute with another pioneer, Henry Fox Talbot, who claimed that his patent on the calotype covered all photographic processes. Fox Talbot's solicitors asked for a patent rights fee of £350 for licensing Sim’s two studios. Sims refused, saying the amount was equal to his rent, and would put him out of business. Fox Talbot then issued an injunction and Sims was forced to close his business anyway. He was soon able to re-open when in 1854 Martin Laroche, a fellow professional, successfully contested Fox Talbot's claim in the courts.

Sims moved here to Tunbridge Wells in 1868, working first in St John's Road and later in Grosvenor Park. He remained active as a professional photographer until his death in 1910.

I have looked at this image for quite some time and pondered over the many similarities between Thomas and myself, perhaps one day some of my images will grace this fabulous museum.

A close-up of the gold embellishments on the mother-in-law.

Why not take ten minutes out of your day this month to pop along to the Museum and have a look at the objects in person, they really are fantastic. Don't forget to drop a few coins in the collection box too. You can also see the object on the Museum's website.

Arthur Ellis, an Artist with a Difference

Arthur Ellis, a local artist, used to spend hours painting and perfecting portraits of his family and work colleagues for a few pounds per picture. Today his images hang in many offices and homes and sell for hundreds of pounds. Arthur no longer paints portraits, his art is a lot different now. Arthur lost his sight in 2006.

Wellington Rocks, one of Arthur's favourite memories drawn especially for me.

I was so intrigued when I first heard about Arthur and his work that I sent him an e-mail asking if I could pop round for a chat, he kindly said that of course I could and so here is his story.

It all started one weekend with a feverish headache and having to reluctantly drive to the doctor’s office to get it sorted. Nine months later Arthur was in a very different world. He’d been struck by Bacterial Meningitis, losing his sight, smell, sense of balance and most of his hearing.

Death Mask, Pre-sightloss.

Before that fateful weekend Arthur had worked in the print finishing industry and spent his spare time painting commissioned portraits to perfect his technical skills and sketching wonderfully bizarre surrealist images “to keep him sane”.

Arthur’s artistic skills ranged from ink drawings of family to watercolours of landscapes, from pastels of street scenes to intriguing personal interpretative sketches of his favourite musicians. He enjoyed pretty much every aspect of art.

Fast forward to 2006 and Arthur’s world is now filled with some of these surreal hallucinations that he used to paint. The images his brain now conjures up are calmed a little with medication but Arthur’s world is now a place where you see monsters teasing you from behind corners that you can never walk around, flickering television screens on brackets that tease you from the corner of your vision, and the paralysing fear of standing atop a Cornish clifftop looking down into the bay below. His brain, he tells me, cannot work out these images and the unusually warped perspective that they create. Despite this, his passion and desire for creativity continues abound and Arthur now spends his time turning these images into artworks.

Smiling Ghoul, Pre-sightloss.

His paintings show his thoughts and memories on the page rather than the physical appearance you and I would normally see. There are some interesting techniques he uses to create his images as he can no longer use the materials and skills he used to. He creates now mainly using coloured pens which enable him to leave the pen in contact with the paper at all times to have a reference point. Arthur attaches the pens to elastic bands to give him a position to return to and he also likes to draw around objects such as plates and cups to give his pictures a boundary.

The interest in his work has sky-rocketed since he began painting post-sightloss. One of his first public exhibitions was in our local Library on the Big White Wall from which he sold a few paintings causing his confidence to grow in his work. He has since exhibited in London and has work hanging in the offices of the Kent Association for the Blind amongst other places.

Arthur spends his time releasing his creative urges in other ways too. His family bought him an electric chisel for Christmas (not as scary as it sounds) which enables him to sculpt into wood and stone to create tactile works for all to enjoy. He has also taken up playing the tenor saxophone and gave me a rather pleasant rendition of Satin Doll. Arthur learns the notes via his carer who reads them to him to memorise as he finds it too difficult to learn with Braille.

Aside from the art, Arthur also loves to walk around Dunorlan Park and Haysden Park and especially loves a walk to the Spread Eagle pub for a pint and a plate of fish and chips, the best in town he says.

Another of Arthur's memories drawn especially for me.

Arthur has been compelled to begin painting his memories of Tunbridge Wells after our initial conversations by e-mail, something which he had never done before and the first of which I am proud to say are shown exclusively here on the blog. I asked Arthur what his favourite views of Tunbridge Wells were that he’d like to get down onto paper. He said his most memorable view is that of Wellington Rocks on the Common and the other that sprang to his mind was the view from the top of Safeway’s car park over Hooper’s to the trees and countryside beyond. A view I will have to go and experience for myself.

There is a local arts festival coming up in September called the Electric Lantern Festival. It looks at this stage like Arthur will be exhibiting there so look out for him.

It was one of the most thoroughly humbling and fascinating couple of hours I have ever spent talking to someone over a cup of tea. It would be really lovely, if you’ve liked this post, to drop Arthur a message. You can do so via his Twitter account, on his website, or in the comments here.