I mention in passing that for the first time in many visits, I saw the point of the steel erection over the bus station at Vauxhall Cross. From a distance I had always thought it a bit gross, but from the middle of it, say gmaps 51.485938, -0.123745, and looking up, it looked rather good. Still not sure that it was worth the money, but it was good to get some value for once.
Back at the tent, the idea seemed to be to provide a west end showcase for provincial or suburban antique & fine art dealers, well above car boot standard, but not fancy enough to run to a west end showcase of their own. There was some stuff for hundreds of pounds, but most of the more striking items were going for thousands, say in the £5,000 to £15,000 range, with plenty above that if you wanted to splash out a bit. There was plenty of art porn with several entries from Sir William Russell Flint. But also plenty of odd items to catch our eye. A couple of gold thimbles, one with pearl trim one without. A walking stick from 1800 or so which doubled as a flute. Lenses from U-boat periscopes and other instruments of that sort (http://www.mcharpentier.com/). A cubic ceramic, maybe a six inch cube, decorated with a mainly red and black design trompe l'œil design of interlocking cubes, of a sort that I thought I recall seeing on the north corner of the ceiling of San Miniato, but cannot now confirm (see gmaps 43.759649, 11.264991). A striking painting of a head by Michal Lukasiewicz (http://www.storestreetgallery.com/) and illustrated above). Maybe four feet square, on canvas, gesso base followed by acrylic topping, according to the pretty minder. The minders that we spoke to all were very pleasant, clearly in wanting to make a sale mode.
All in all most entertaining, but we were left wondering who bought this sort of stuff. Like expensive cars, I cannot imagine chucking the sort of money needed at it, even if we had a lot more money to chuck around than we do. Most of the customers in the tent looked like reasonably well off, middling sort of people; the odd trophy wife but no footballers looking to stock up their new pad in Campden Hill.
From there to Wigmore Hall to hear the Tetzlaff Quartet for the first time. Mozart K421, Widmann String Quartet No. 3 and Schubert D887. Unusually the hall was only something over half full, but a half full which made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in numbers. And we got a better view than usual.
Mozart good, but they did not quite achieve the limpid serenity I expect from this sort of Mozart, granted more particularly from the violin sonatas. Widmann a bit of exuberant fun, with vocal effects and available on YouTube for the interested. Schubert as good as expected. But what with the tent and the concert we were quite tired by the finish.
But not so tired that we did not manage to pick up a couple of read-on-the-way-homes from the limited selection on offer at Wimbledon Station. Mine was a fat document from the Federal Conference Committee, the outfit which organises the Liberal Party Conference. Federal for the three mainland countries of our union, with the northern paddies not getting a look in. Inter alia, I read about things called specified associated organisations (SAOs) which are groups of party members that share, or support, a particular identity. Furthermore SAOs are approved by the Federal Executive and are entitled to submit motions to Conference. The section of the document on pastoral care and members code of conduct reminded me of the unseemly, recent row about senior party members touching up junior party members in bars, but, all in all, I was more reminded that the Liberals are good at looking after their grass roots.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/pied-piper.html
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