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AUBUSSON
For a change one year we had crossed the English Channel from Southampton to Cherbourg, then had driven up to Paris and down to Italy, but the traffic had been so bad we decided that we would take a different route home. When we reached Lyon we headed west over the Massif Central and then north up through Poitiers to Cherbourg and avoided Paris. We planned our route by using the Michelin Guide ’s list for three-star hotels. The road happened to pass through Aubusson where the guide said there was an old hotel with a good restaurant, so we decided to stay there the night and see the town’s famous Tapestry Museum the next morning. We arrived in the late afternoon and fortunately the Hôtel de France had room for us. Everything was well over a hundred years old, including the bathroom. The floorboards creaked magnificently and the enormous bed had a valley in the middle. It was all perfect and once settled in we went for a walk around the ancient town perched on the banks of a gushing river. I can’t remember how I became intrigued by tapestries in the first place, but I think it was probably from a visit we had made to The Cloisters in New York to see the fabulous Unicorn, woven in the Netherlands in 1500.
The Unicorn in Captivity
Aubusson became a centre for tapestries in the 17th century when a Flemish Princess married the owner of the town’s castle and, as part of her dowry, she had brought a retinue of weavers with her and set up a workshop. Very soon the town became famous for its tapestries, which presumably she had woven to hang on her damp castle walls. The Hôtel de France was owned by a family, the father being the chef. He was a wonderful old character and could he cook! His 'lamb’s brains in black butter' was a dish to be dreamt about for ever. Dinner was so good it required another walk around the old town before turning in. Next morning we went to the museum and found it shut! We discovered several shops that sold printed copies of tapestries but nothing done on Aubusson looms. Disappointed we returned to the hotel to pay the bill and leave. When I went to the desk I found the chef behind the counter and he asked if I had enjoyed the museum. I explained that in fact we were really disappointed, because it was closed. He picked up the telephone, spoke, and said, “My friends would be delighted to show you their atelier.” The chef drew a map and we drove to Madame Suzanne Goubley’s atelier. We were greeted at the door by a very stylishly dressed woman in her late seventies, who took us on one of the most intriguing tours we have ever made. The three-storeyed mill in which the Goubleys lived was also the workshop, the top floor being where the looms were housed. The south wall of the loft was all glass, allowing sunlight to flood the enormous room.
Tapestry by the monk 'Dom Robert'
On arriving home I started to think seriously about a tapestry design. I had had some ideas about Spring , Summer , Autumn and Winter , but had rejected them as not being possible. I then thought of Water Planet based on the 'I Ching'. Once I started, all sorts of subjects popped into my mind, such as, Galaxies , Time , Love Union , Trust Bonds , Tribe , and Beyond Light. The problem was which one would I choose? I sat by our pond looking at the water lilies as the goldfish swam beneath them. Tranquillity. It was impossible. I would do all the designs on graph paper with Golden Mean proportions of 36 inches by 58 inches and then make up my mind as to which ones should be woven as tapestries.
Tranquillity
Trust
While I was working on the tapestries a letter arrived from Australia asking me if I would be interested in entering a competition to do a sculpture for the marble foyer of the newly built Bank of New South Wales in Melbourne. I
accepted the challenge and to my utter surprise won the commission to do the 15-foot high sculpture I called The Universe. This meant that I now had money to spend on the tapestries, so maybe I could have three or four done if the price was right. In fact this commission also allowed me to have several of the Symbolic maquettes enlarged as well, so The Universe completely changed my life in all sorts of ways. I drew the spiral on the floor of Enzo’s studio in Pietrasanta using a paint tin and a length of string attached to a pencil. Margie and I drove down to Italy to see the sculpture before it was polished. We took our friend Sue with us and laughed all the way, some nights all crowding into the tent, but mainly finding wonderful small hotels. Seeing the sculpture propped against the foundry wall for inspection was one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me and something I shall never forget. The circle is the Chinese symbol for the Universe, the spiral symbolises Consciousness and the stick figure is Man.
'The Universe', Fonderia Mariani
Madame Suzanne gave us a great welcome the next morning. I was feeling very nervous as I unrolled the paper cartoons of not one, but 12 tapestries! What would she say? Would they be possible to weave? How much would one cost and how many could I afford to do? We spent all of that day in the jewel box of a room choosing colours. Yes, she would like to do them and would work out a price that evening. It was a wonderful day and whatever happened it had been an incredible experience watching Madame use her expertise to match my choice of colours to her wool samples.
'Love Union' , Parliament House, Canberra
Spring Autumn
Centre for Computational Biology, Montana State University
Next morning we returned to hear the verdict on how many could be done before having to make the choice of which ones to leave out. Yet more coffee and gâteaux, but this time with pencil and paper. Madame Suzanne announced that she thought the cartoons would make a fine series so I should have them all woven and she could then give me a special price! We accepted her offer and she told us to go away and come back in one year’s time. We returned a year later to collect the tapestries. What an exciting moment! We went into her storeroom and there on the table was a stack of tapestries. As each tapestry was revealed I saw for the first time the vibrant colours that had been added to my designs.
Time
As a stream running through a meadow
It was all a bit overwhelming. Running my hands over the finely woven wool was an amazing feeling. Because many of the designs are made up of straight lines and circles, the weavers had found the cartoons very hard to follow, but they had done a fantastic job and not one stitch was out of place. I couldn’t wait to take some photographs so Margie and Monsieur Goubley took them outside for me, one at a time, into the winter sunlight. Unfortunately Madame Suzanne refused to be photographed so I only have my memory of this marvellous old lady.
I had been asked to give an exhibition of my Symbolic Sculpture maquettes in the Wells Cathedral Chapter House, built in 1306. I was delighted by this request as it meant that I would show the tapestries for the first time in the most glorious medieval cathedral in England. The maquettes would sit on the vicars’ seats and I could hang the tapestries above them.
Wells Cathedral Chapter House
Every day I would drive over to Wells and sit on duty with the tapestries and gaze in awe at the colours of the wool. The tapestries turned the room into a colourful jewel box. What an experience and what a privilege!
Winter
Milky Way
This was the second time that I had had an exhibition in the Cathedral. Four years earlier Dean Patrick Mitchell had asked me if I would show my figurative maquettes in the Chapter House and the Acrobats in the Cloisters, in an attempt to raise money for the restoration work that was being done. I had agreed and it was because of this that Patrick had then asked me if I would do some work on the 14th century sculptures on the West Front.
Wells Cathedral
The West Front of England’s finest medieval building –
the Twelve Apostles are above the central windows
My job was to copy in plasticine four of the heads of the Twelve Apostles that stand in a row below the top centre statue of Christ. The whole of the West Front was covered in scaffolding as the entire face was being cleaned. Some of the finest 14th century sculpture remaining in England is on this wall, as fortunately Cromwell and his Puritan Army did not use the Saints for target practice as they had done on many other cathedrals. In Victorian times the authorities realised that some of the sculptures were loose so they had decided to cement them to the stone wall behind them. The problem now was that the stone used for the sculptures was softer than the cement making it impossible to remove them and put them in a museum. The only thing left to do was to put lime soaked cotton wool poultices on the stone and try to strengthen it against the pollution caused by the traffic’s exhaust fumes and acid rain.
Galaxies
Thank goodness I had agreed because on the very last day of the exhibition just before closing time as I was about to leave, a couple arrived in the Chapter House who changed my life. After walking around the exhibition they started to question me and soon found out that I was an Australian. They introduced themselves as Ron and Betty Beaver and told me that they came from Canberra where they ran the Beaver Gallery. Ron asked me if I would like to show my Symbolic Exhibition in Australia. I replied, "If you can arrange a suitable venue I would be delighted to ship everything out to you." So began an unbelievable adventure and my friendship with a marvellous man.
Beyond Light
Before branching off into the Beaver story I must finish the Cathedral episode by mentioning Dea and Bernard Sterner’s visit. Most of my visitors were casually-dressed sightseeing holidaymakers, so I was taken aback when an amazingly elegant woman swept in followed by a small thick-set man. They turned out to be a couple who lived near the town of Menerbe, not far from Aix-en-Provence. He was a South African and she was an Italian, but had grown up in Luxembourg. In the war Bernard had worked for the Secret Service as a locksmith, and this had led him to designing a foolproof lock for sealing the dispatch cases carried by British couriers. The outcome of the Sterners’ visit to the cathedral was that they asked us to call in on them and stay a night when we were returning from our next trip to the foundry in Italy. I agreed as we were due to do a trip a few weeks later to collect some new sculptures. We were still using the tent and so a night in a bed with a bath on the way was always very welcome not to mention a free dinner! The little town of Menerbe is on the north side of the mountains that shelter Aix-en-Provence from the Mistral wind. The map showed a road over the mountain and the Michelin Guide said that there was a good restaurant just before you started to climb up into the foothills. I knew that the mountains were actually just a long limestone escarpment as we had driven past them several times. My map also said that it was a national park, so I thought that we would be able to find a place to pitch our tent without much trouble after dinner without anyone knowing for the night before we were meant to arrive at the Sterners’. We found the restaurant and after a very good meal we set off under a full moon into the park to look for a tent site. Feeling very happy we soon discovered a sidetrack and some way down it we found a flat space for the tent. However, we had not taken into account the Mistral or that it was impossible to get the steel pegs into the rocky ground to keep the tent from blowing away! We gave up the unequal struggle and returned to the road that led down to the town of Apt to the north. Just outside the town we saw a sign pointing to a campsite that we decided to investigate because it was getting very late although the sign said it was closed. We found the gate was unlocked so we crept in and soon had the tent up as there was not a breath of wind and the ground was soft. We crawled into our sleeping bags very ready for a well-earned sleep, but it was not to be as the night was full of the song of nightingales. We had never heard anything so beautiful and lay awake for half an hour listening to them singing. Next morning we were up and away before anyone discovered us and headed into Apt for breakfast. We weren’t due to reach the Sterners’ home until mid-afternoon, so we spent the day exploring the little fortified medieval town of Menerbe that was in those days still undiscovered. I had read about the town in the book by my heroine Françoise Gilot, the model for the life-size Mother and Child figure that I had done at Marwood on arrival in England. Picasso had owned a house in Menerbe when he was married to Françoise, but like many French towns, during the day all the shutters were locked tight and the streets completely deserted so we found no one to ask which was his house, but it was fun to walk around trying to imagine where they had lived. After the war Bernard had been very clever and bought a little wood- covered hill. The valley has several of these hills dotted along it and he had obtained permission to bulldoze the top off one and build a house amongst the scrub oaks. It was a lovely spot with incredible views, but thankfully when it
Tribe
As a shoal of fish
The Aubusson Tapestries now hang in the Houses of Parliament in Canberra and the offices of both Peat Marwick and North Broken Hill in Melbourne. A complete set hangs in Dr John Miller’s Centre for Computational Biology, a department of the Montana State University. A set was bought by C T Bowring and Co and hung in their new offices by the Tower of London. This was an in-house purchase by my step-brother, Peter Bowring, who was then chairman of the company!
Bonds of Friendship
But now I must write about my friend, Ron Beaver. Our chance meeting in Wells Cathedral played such an important part in my life it is fitting that I should start Volume II with his story, because he changed my life from top to bottom.
Acrobats
Australian Institute of Sport, Canberra
