Saturday Part II--Greyfriars

After a full morning on Saturday, I stopped by my flat to re-group. I headed back in to town to visit at Greyfriar's House, a late medieval merchant's home on Friar Street near the city centre.

I had visited the home once before to see a performance of Canterbury Tales a few weekends ago.  During that visit, I was restricted to the garden and the great hall.  I wanted to do a more thorough visit, so I returned and took my time going through the house at a leisurely pace.

This is the garden side view of the manor house decorated with various crests.

One of my first surprises when I listened to the docent was that the most recent tenants of the home were not owners, but rather conservators--a brother and sister named Matley and Elsie Moore.  Matley was a  school dentist. Both brother and sister were artistically inclined.  The Worcestershire Archaeological Society had persuaded the city to save the building, rather than demolish it as city councilors were inclined to do, and one of the Society's members purchased the building for 1,000 pounds.  It took another 1,500 pounds to weatherproof the site.  The upkeep was prohibitively expensive when the Moores came up with a solution. The Moores proposed to rennovate the home at their own expense provided they could live there for the rest of their lives. The Moores moved in to the home with their mother in 1949. The house had fallen into gross disrepair over the years with the house subdivided in to various apartments and shops.  There were 10 dwellings extending behind the building which were finally eliminated in 1955 when the Moores purchased them.  By that time, the "dwellings" were "slums". 

This is the Moore family crest.

The work they did on the house was phenomenal.  They bought tapestries and furnishings from various estate sales.  They were able to take things they found and incorporate them, copy them, or change them for use in the house.  Instead of being an authentic Tudor Manor, it's a Tudor built home that has been lovingly restored and refurbished as a liveable home with artifacts across the centuries.

The photo above is a sample of original wallpaper which Matley used as the pattern for embroidered upholstery.

The wallpaper is one of the earliest examples of wallpaper to survive.  There's a sample of this same wallpaper at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Elsie Moore boasted a wide range of artistic skills.  She restored and hung a number of embroidered pieces which had  been produced by members of her family and she embroidered some pieces of her own.

This piece Elsie embroidered hangs above the mantel in the great hall.

One of the Moores' great-grandmothers embroidered this piece.

It wouldn't be a Worcester house without porcelain.

Once again, as I had been when I went to the Porcelain Museum the first time, I was drawn to a peasant figure.

I love the detail and the celebration of daily life that this figure represents.

Elsie was a gifted painter.

Beyond the paintings themselves, Elsie was a calligrapher

and she also decorated windows,

lamps,

chandeliers

and wall decorations.  Most of these works incorporated her favorite colors of green, red and gold.

For his part, Matley also made and collected leather boxes.

 

The brother/sister pair also collected screens,

tapestries,

Grandfather, or "longcase" clocks,

This is a late-17th century Worcester-made clock with only an hour hand.  The docent explained that people of the 17th century weren't all that "fussed about" time.  Also, they didn't yet have the technology to incorporate a minute hand.

furniture,

door stops,

and Italian majolica tiles depicting scenes from the life of Moses.

In addition to the Moores' collection, there was another display of "modern" art called "Everything Old was Once New"--a collection of materials in the spirit of the Moores' predilection for recycling materials including these pieces.

This quilt was on a 17th century three-quarter tester bed.

The turned pole on the right could serve any number of purposes (bannister, chair rail, or...?) and rest beside a fireplace inlaid with an early 17th century headboard for a tester bed.

The artist generated this piece by adding a thick layer of paint, rendering it unusable.  It is reminiscent of hotel carpeting and includes Elsie Moore's favorite colors.

I apologize for the poor quality of this image; I had to photograph it from the catalog.  This is called "Hair Bonnet" 1997.  The catalog says "The hair in Hair Bonnet was purchased by the artist to match her own in colour and was spun and then knitted to create a hat out of the very thing it is designed to cover."  The commentary refers to uses of human hair in the past in mourning brooches and as family mementos.

Frankly, the "modern" art installation seemed a bit of a stretch in terms of its appropriateness within the house, but I appreciated the effort.

The garden is lovely. Matley designed it and Elsie selected the trees and shrubberies.

The guide book characterized it as English with Italianate influences such as this dolphin.

The guide book says that some of the hard surfaces contained materials from demolished houses.

Although the garden is being put to rest for the coming winter, there are still some lovely blooms.

This is a fascinating place with surprises everywhere.