Language Hat has a post, Millrind, about English and Russian technical terms for the parts of a millstone. I wrote in a comment: I love that broken millstone that’s now being used as paving. It reminds me of a lovely little device Lutyens used in a garden he designed with Gertrude Jekyll. He placed small bull’s-eye decorative circles in an area of sandstone paving. He made them from the concentrically-placed rims of different-sized broken clay flower-pots, filling the gaps with sand. I can’t find any pictures on the internet, unfortunately.
But I have a picture in a book*:
Now I’m not sure if it’s Edwin Lutyens or Gertrude Jekyll who invented it, not that it matters very much. As I thought, it’s at Hestercombe (the house is now occupied by the Somerset Fire Brigade). Jekyll & Lutyens used millstones too, here at Munstead Wood, Jekyll’s home:
and elsewhere:
I like the tile edges in the bottom one. Apparently Robert Louis Stevenson got the name of his novel Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde from Gertrude’s brother, who was a friend of his. I suppose it ought to be pronounced “Jee-kill” like their name, but it’s too late now. I remember a modernist professor at my architecture school complaining that another professor, a postmodernist, was preoccupied with the work of third-rate British architects (meaning Lutyens). I thought at the time that that “third-rate” was unfair and nothing has changed my mind since. The modernist died having produced nothing that comes remotely close in quality to Lutyens’ work. Neither, for that matter, has the post-modernist.
*A Photographic Garden History, by Roger Phillips & Nicky Foy.
The two lower pictures are from Gardens Of A Golden Afternoon. The story of a partnership: Edwin Lutyens & Gertrude Jekyll, by Jane Brown
A Bad Guide 
Surely the real flower pot persons are Bill and Ben.
http://www.televisiontunes.com/Bill_and_Ben_The_Flowerpot_Men.html
Excellent. I spent some time trying to google this one and it’s not what I imagined. You can see what looks like turning marks on the terracotta circle, as if it had been turned on a wheel. The colors are very subtle, I wonder what plantings would work with them. I’ve gotten fond of the salmon colored impatiens, even if they aren’t as vigorous as other colors, but maybe a contrasting color would be better.
I have some gray limestone pieces I want to use as a mowing edge for the garden I’m trying to put in the back, if I can ever get out all the stone mulch, but I don’t know how everything will work out–the people here are very fond of plastic fru-frus, and it’s not my place, it’s theirs. “Tile edges”–I’m not even sure what “tiles” are, but yes it looks nice. Labor intensive though, with the concrete work. I imagine it would be hard to work in concrete, and maybe expensive. Mostly I use found materials that don’t cost anything. I also use things that are easliy moved, since I like to do things in increments to as not to disturb people with abrupt changes (some tenants are very territorial), for instance enlarging a garden border by a few inches every year.
I was thinking the tiles were terra cotta roof tiles, I could be wrong.
I’m still not sure if they’re real, but thank you very much for the Flower Pot Men theme music, M. Canehan.
Roof tile isn’t very common here, although you do see it once in a blue moon. I kind of wanted to see Munstead when I was in England, but there was time to see Stonehenge and then it was winter and the Berlin Wall came down, then I ended up leaving quickly on the last ferry out of England before a lengthy French train strike….
Here’s another one or maybe the same one again,
http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/image68995-.html
the two preceding photos are fun too, a knot pattern in stone.
That’s another one. The centre is an upside-down pot.
I’d bet that Lutyens came up with the shape and Jekyll knew the right material. That was the genius of their collaboration, which epitomized the Edwardian ideal that Vita and Harold aimed for at Sissinghurst, “the strictest formality of design with the maximum informality in planting.” After Jekyll and Lutyens drifted apart, her gardens are too wild and his designs are too something, don’t you think? (Though random bits of Delhi Order around London bring a smile.)
The museum thingy isn’t bad, is it?
http://www.ramsa.com/project.aspx?id=95
Lots of brick and stone. I can’t say I’m a big fan of steel and glass.
They probably have to fill the hole in the mill stone with something.
I remember a huge stone in my grandmother’s garage that was for sharpening. It had been on the farm. It was white, maybe a yard across, there was a seat (old tractor seat?) and some foot thing for turning the wheel. Also a water reservoir at the bottom since it was a wetstone. You had to drain the water when you were done or it would dissolve the stone and make it flat on one end.
The museum isn’t bad, for a Bob project. I like one or two of his shingle-style houses the best, the ones that try to look completely authentic. His books (all co-authored) are better than his buildings; he’s a good & knowledgeable teacher, funny too.
Except for Delhi, I’m not nearly as fond of Lutyens public buildings as I am of his houses and of course it was the houses he did with Gertrude Jekyll. Architects who don’t like Lutyens usually disapprove of celebrating houses for the rich. My interest in baroque architecture doesn’t affect my opinions of the Jesuits and on the grounds of ownership you’d have to disqualify many significant buildings. I’ve never liked his Somme memorial, perhaps because I don’t really “get” what his intention was. It imitates the pomposity and terror and the precariousness of that 1914-15 period, but who wants to be reminded of that unpleasantness when you’re remembering the lives of those who died?
Wonderful images, I’m glad you found them.
I’m glad you like them too.
The memorial reminds me of the Arc de Triomphe, or maybe the many Hadrian’s arches scattered around the world. Kind of ironic to have it filled with grave markers.
It looks vaguely deco and reminds me of some of the multi colored brick work we have around here.
Talking of public spaces and post-modernism, are interesting things going on at Bjørvika? This morning’s bacn includes a pointer to commonlands.net, but the site and its copy are a bit too artsy. What little Wikipedia says looks like it was maybe written first in Norwegian, like some Atmel data sheets at the day job.
God knows what that Commonlands thing is all about.
Bjørvika, for anyone who doesn’t know, is just to the east of Oslo town hall, on the fjord–a prime spot in the city. It was a bleak-looking container port until Snøhetta built the new Oslo Opera there. The Opera is a hugely successful building. You can kind of walk up the outside of it, in a sloping, handicap-ramp-angled spiral of huge planes; the roof is whitish marble, and as you reach the top there’s a lovely outlook towards a medieval castle across the bay. At the moment there’s a Robert Moses-type road parallel to the coastline that is cutting the area and the water off from the city centre; the road’s being put in a tunnel, but the full impact of Bjørvika won’t be felt until it’s ready.
The next big event at Bjørvika is in May, when the last of the artworks for the Opera, by Monica Bonvicini, is put in the water. She had the clever idea of making a big 3-d representation of Caspar David Friedrich’s Das Eismeer. It’s all lit up, internally and externally, and will fit beautifully with the central metaphor of the Opera building itself as shards of ice emerging from the fjord.
The Munch Museum is going to be moved to Bjørvika. Currently, it’s in a building that looks like a bit of Lincoln Center that’s been dumped in a drab part of Oslo. And the main library is being moved there too. I don’t find either of these proposals very exciting compared to the Opera, but we’ll see. When the whole is finished it will link to the Astrup Fearnley Museum of contemporary art and all the galleries and other museums that are in the city centre, on the other side of this big road.
The much-discussed trade-off for all this new public space is the so-called Barcode Buildings, a bunch of office towers being built between the Opera and the town hall, most of them are being designed by Snøhetta.
Oslo airport used to be 10 mins from the centre, on the fjord. When they moved the airport ten years ago they turned the old site into a park (plus some office & residential). The Nansenpark has recently been completed. I’m hoping in the end this will be linked into a long promenade along the fjord (Bygdøy – Oslo rådhus – Akershus festning – Bjørvika).
There’s also a plan to bury the whole bloody 15km of freeway that runs along the west side of Oslofjord outside the city. It cuts off the fjord, so it would be good to get rid of it.
Bjørvika, for anyone who doesn’t know, is just to the east of Oslo town hall
and
The much-discussed trade-off for all this new public space is the so-called Barcode Buildings, a bunch of office towers being built between the Opera and the town hall
I think you may mean the main railway station.
Another tradeoff is the gradually diminishing plans of opening up Gamlebyen and the Medieval ruins to the fjord. They did create a body of water along the old shoreline, but there’s going to be a continuous row of high-end office and residential projects outside it. (I shouldn’t complain. My current project is one of them.)
a building that looks like a bit of Lincoln Center that’s been dumped in a drab part of Oslo
I like that part of the city. Kampen, Tøyenparken, Torshovdalen. Where we’re above the city basin, catching a strike of air and a free view. On all the eastern main roads there are spots where the city is folded out below me and I’m struck with the beauty of it. Every time. I don’t get that feeling inside it, and rarely from the west.
Also, since the idea was that placing the Opera in Bjørvika would pull the city life eastwards and help tear down the divide between east and west, it’s somewhat odd to follow that up by moving the only eastern tourist attraction down town.
But I do believe that the three buildings will make a magnificent waterfront.
I think you may mean the main railway station
No, I don’t. The Opera is to the east of the town hall. I’ve been looking at those Barcode buildings (I suppose they’re closer to the station), and in fact there’s only one that Snøhetta is doing. The rest looks pretty bad.
Nijma: I remember a huge stone in my grandmother’s garage that was for sharpening. … a water reservoir at the bottom since it was a wetstone.
Do you mean a whetstone? Nothing to do with wet.
In my hometown there was a man who appeared once every few months with a similar apparatus (not as sophisticated – no seat) and set up on a small plaza waiting for people to bring him their knives and other instruments to sharpen on the rotating stone. He must have been making the rounds of the surrounding farms and villages too. This was at a time when few people had cars (I am sure that he did not).
For some reason I think of whetstone and wet stone as two different things. They both google and you can buy either one, but for some reason I think of a whetstone as a sharpening stone that is used with hone oil. I also think of them as being pronounced differently, maybe in the accent.
I pronounce whet and wet differently, aspirating the former, just like which and witch.
The rest looks pretty bad.
Indeed. I’m still hoping that the full row will somehow be better than its single constituents, but as it is now they’re all just single buildings meant to shout louder than the other.
As for the library and the Munch Museum I meant ‘magnificent’ to be ambiguous. I believe the city chose as they did partly for the illuminated waterfront, partly to have something big and calm built between the opera and the gaudy office blocks, but I have no idea how it will work. Both buildings are pretty massive, and may turn out just as loud as their neighbours.
Yes, I agree. I don’t know how it will work. I don’t find either building especially interesting. It’s too bad we couldn’t get a more interesting library when we’ve got Snøhetta in our own backyard.
Some people pronounce wh as if it were hw, but most in my experience pronounce it the same as w.
When you whet your appetite you are sharpening it, not wetting it, though a drink before dinner can be just the thing.
I’m not terribly impressed with the proposals either. I certainly wouldn’t want to work in a building like that. You would think a country like Norway would have some good urban planning departments in its universities, but maybe as in other places it’s the developers who get the final say. New Urbanism isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but you have to admit there’s something in the idea of walkable neighborhoods and green space.
We are lucky in Chicago to have the inspiration of Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. Right in the middle of pages and pages of unreadably muddy, decorative prose, Burnham suddenly states simply, “The Lake front by right belongs to the people.” And so it does. We have miles and miles of public beachfront that everyone can enjoy. (But of course you have to own a reproduction of the book to enjoy the feel of the pages and the colors of the drawings.)
I was impressed on my last visit to Minneapolis to see so many people out walking on the Stone Bridge in the evening–it’s beautifully lit–as well as the riverside restaurants north of downtown with everyone sitting outside enjoying the weather. And of course there is the tree-lined East River Road and West River Road that bicyclists use to get to work, in case you have been following the publicity about the effect of urban planning on health and obesity.
New Urbanism isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but you have to admit there’s something in the idea of walkable neighborhoods and green space.
This isn’t about old versus new urbanism but about commercial interests. The commercial interests of the national railways NSB and Oslo’s port authority, no less. There’ll be green walkability all the way, and I’m confident that the streets and promenades will be exquisite, even if the first plans I saw had much more of them.
But that’s about the whole area. The problem with the Barcode blocks is more in the size and expressive monumentality of the buildings and how none of them seem to relate to the streets around them. Closed fronts mean that people are supposed to drive into the basement (or walk directly in from the railway station), take the elevators, and interact very little with the surrounding city before they go home. And all the buildings seem to be designed to be seen immediately, with nothing of that understated, elegant simplicity that will grow on you over time. (With the possible exception of Snøhetta’s building. The pictures I’ve seen makes it hard to grasp the whole house. But I do like the surface.)
(I’ve quickly grown to dislike those grey-shaded 3D illustrations. I think they’re used to keep the reader from asking questions because the architect obviously understands far more. By accentuating certain elements they disguise more than they illuminate. I mean, green corridors drawn in grey, orange and cyan?)
But this may have been utterly unfair. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong.
One of the reasons I moved to this part of Chicago, even though it’s an obviously economically depressed area, is that it has a central commercial district–a focus for neighborhood identity–not just a depressingly anonymous strip of nationally recognized chains connected by parking lots.
Byrom i Bjørvika: It looks like they know the vocabulary and the expectations (at least as far as I can understand the Norwegian through Google Translate), but the result somehow still doesn’t satisfy. Municipalities here use a “comprehensive plan”. You can usually google one for your city. I was thinking of the plazas around some city in California I once saw–I wish now I had saved the links for that class–but now I don’t remember it. Here is a different example, this one from a suburb of Washington DC picked from google, that, even if it’s not a huge city, seems to me typical of some issues that might come up. Here they have some hearings on the proposed Comprehensive Plan and a local association (not sure who they are) says specifically what it wants to see changed. Here’s the corresponding government website where you can see the comprehensive plan and the proposal.
I agree their graphics are horrible. I have seen a lot of different ways for representing plans for urban areas–maps, watercolor renditions with little buildings and cars sketched in, and sometimes for the larger companies, panoramic photographs of an area where you can click something and see the “before and after” of the proposal. And of course everyone falls in love with Daniel Burnham’s sketches–I mean, I like looking at them, but the urban planning students’ eyes glaze over like they have seen a burning bush with God speaking from it. Burnham knew how to excite the imagination.
“Barcode buildings” reminds me of the Cook County juvenile detention center in downtown Chicago (can’t find a photo of it) designed to look like an IBM punch card (remember them?) to represent the dehumanization of becoming nothing but a number when entering the corrections system.