Cathy's Art Diary

Delightful exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum showcasing the creativity and innovation of British art potteries and their artists. Ceramics were an essential ingredient of fashionable ‘artistic’ homes in the late 19th century and this show used pieces from the collection of Ian and Rita Smythe donated in 2018 to explore the genre. I liked the fact it was arranged by pottery with neat biographies of the artists. There were also a couple of interior settings which gave an idea how the pieces would work together. Closes 25 September 2023

Interesting online lecture from National Gallery looking at Jan Matejko’s role in the Polish arts and crafts movement, Young Poland. This was organised to compliment the current display of Jan Matejko’s “Copernicus” and Julia Griffen, curator of an exhibition at the William Morris Gallery on the Polish Arts and Crafts Movement took us through the artist’s career looking both at his paintings and his decorative work. She outlined the role of Matejko’s pictures at a time when Poland didn’t exist and how he used them to create a pantheon of national figures. She also looked at how the discovery of the tomb of King Casimir and the ancient crown jewels fed into this. She then went on to look in some detail at his work to de-Baroque St Mary the Virgin Cathedral in Krakow and to design a new Gothic interior. She had wonderful slides of the designs and the finished work, She also looked at how he influenced his main student, Stanislaw Wyspianski, Poland’s equivalent of William Morris.