Sitting down to write and contemplating the striking pair of portraits we have recently hung in the showroom at Haunt I am reminded of a visit to Knole house long ago during a year spent in Sussex. I was very keen to visit Knole given that it was the family home of Vita Sackville West - I had been reading voraciously about the Bloomsbury group at the time and was enamoured with the writing of Virginia Woolf and fascinated by her entanglement with Vita. Another long standing fascination of mine is the Knole settee and Knole house is of course, the home of this definitive settee - the original, circa 1660, is on display there housed in a glass box with its original faded red silk velvet upholstery and passementerie miraculously still intact.
I remember crunching over fallen acorns as we made our way from the carpark to the imposing stone structure that is Knole. Knole sits heavily upon the earth - bearing the weight of six centuries of history it endures as a valuable touchstone to the past. The interior is a treasure trove and I was unexpectedly spellbound by the Brown gallery with its astonishing collection of 16th and 17th century portraits. Through the creak and musky scent of English oak a long row of muted Renaissance chairs emerged from the almost crepuscular light, arranged along the wall like an improbable waiting room. A crowd of exquisite portraits lined the panelled walls - an immutable audience from the past quietly observing the present. I moved slowly and self consciously through the gallery and imagined these lives lived so long ago, the intricacies and circumstance long forgotten but the very fact of their existence archived eternally.
Over the following years I have visited countless historic and civic buildings populated by a host of portraits. Painterly eyes follow you as you ascend staircases and wander shadowy hallways - like gilt framed ghosts these individuals from the past continue to inhabit the buildings where they once lived, worked or visited. You get the sense that if you could string them together like a supernatural stop motion animation you could perhaps bring history to life.
The desire to have our existence witnessed and recorded is, I imagine, a touching attempt to preserve our identity and sense of self beyond the confines of mortality. Whilst portraiture was traditionally the domain of the privileged, today “ the selfie“ fulfils a similar yearning in a less refined but more egalitarian spirit I suppose - expressing the hope that our existence might have some small impact that is more far reaching than the frustrating brevity of our allocated life span.
A sense of self can be a confusing and fragile thing and it is helpful if it is reinforced by others. Jean Paul Sartre described the existential gaze - the gaze of others being a device that defines and proves our existence albeit making us feel uncomfortable. A portrait is this significant gaze transferred to canvas and an antique portrait is effectively a decorative and skilfully executed “ kilroy was here ” from the past.
This charming pair of portraits date from 1902 and dignify the existence of an anonymous husband and wife. Graphically pleasing and supremely atmospheric these portraits would grace the walls of any modern interior.
While I am exploring a philosophical theme yet not having previously thought about furniture as being remotely phenomenological, I can’t help but notice the amusing similarity between this elegant pair of 1940’s lucite consoles and Schrodinger’s cat. The consoles are translucent, visually they scarcely occupy any space yet the lucite reflects light and shadow defines their shape. They are sophisticated and beautiful and like the aforementioned and celebrated cat they are both there and not there at all.