On Jim Ede's Kettle’s Yard
"A way of life"
Kettle’s Yard is a place I first discovered through the frequent visits of Welsh design gallerist and spiritual protégé of Jim Ede, Alex Tieghi-Walker (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
In Ede’s 1984 publication, “A Way of Life”, he says:
Kettle’s Yard is in no way meant to be an art gallery or museum, nor is it simply a collection of works of art reflecting my taste, or the taste of a given period. It is, rather, a continuing way of life from these last 50 years (1923–1973), in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability which more and more we need to recognize if we are not to be swamped by all that is so rapidly opening up before us.1
Most days, if I’m being honest, I wake up feeling 'swamped by the rapid unfolding' of everything around me. Yet, I’m glad to know I’m unalone in this feeling, Jim Ede felt it too. He used to say that another name for God could be Balance, since "with perfect balance, all would be well." Ede had an unconventional sense of balance—he gave pebbles the same importance as Brâncuși sculptures and adorned his house with all-white rugs but welcomed their constant use, saying, "Come in as often as you like; the place is only alive when used."
This reminds me of John Green’s essay on the Works of Agnes Martin, where he shares a story from Arne Glimcher, founder of Pace Gallery:
Agnes had a tiny little garden of roses in front of her door. I remember once there was a very beautiful rose in a bud vase and my granddaughter Isabel was looking at it. Agnes took the rose out of the vase and she said to Isabel, ‘Is this rose beautiful?’ And then Agnes put the rose behind her back and said, ‘Is the rose still beautiful?’ So the beauty is not the rose, the beauty is within you and the rose just makes you recognize that beauty.2
Martin was a great philosopher. I wonder if Ede encountered her work.
He initially tried to be a painter himself but switched to sculpture after visiting the otherworldly Carrara marble quarries.3 Kettle's Yard ultimately became the medium through which he developed and shared his way of life with the world. Everything had its place; everything harmonized with its surroundings, creating inseparable links between the artworks on display and the objects they conversed with, rendering the house a work of art in its own right.
Ede’s profound sensitivity to finding beauty in the intimate and informal relates to the avant-garde sensibilities of the great composer John Cage, who once said:
The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.4
Beauty manifests from the heart open to seeing it. Ede’s way of life led him to embrace materials as they were, never hiding anything. I imagine that living with this kind of openness spills over into how one perceives and interacts with the world, a continuous way of life.
In 1966, Jim Ede gifted Kettle’s Yard and all its contents to the University of Cambridge, where it has remained preserved unchanged ever since.
Postscript
A playlist of music performed at Kettle’s Yard over the last fifty years.
What Kettle’s Yard smells like.
Supplementary links about Kettle’s Yard.
Footnotes.
The Edes had Sir Leslie Martin design the large extension of Kettle’s Yard with music performances in mind. In 1970, the inaugural concert was performed by the husband-wife duo Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim. Now, there are about twenty concerts a year. When speaking on the relationship between music and art at the Barnes Foundation years prior Ede said:
“All the afternoon we studied forms of modern expression – Stravinsky, his traditions, his personal expression and Matisse as a parallel. We surrounded them with Mozart and Gluck, with Giorgione, Cézanne and Renoir – we saw quite clearly how all was ordered in their apparent disorder. This combination of music and painting is so right and so helpful, like alternating cheese with wine; but how surprised the public would be in our English Galleries if the lecturer suddenly turned on a jazz band or a Beethoven Quartet.”5
A playlist of classical and contemporary music performed at Kettle’s Yard over the past fifty years: Apple Music / Spotify.
Potpourri of Ede's own formulation was distributed throughout the house and incorporated a blend of fragrant ingredients as follows: ‘any strong strange blunt (not sweet) perfume I could find (travelers from the East bringing sandalwood, etc.) – also a few handfuls of incense from various monasteries here or in the East – lots of lavender plucked + dried – and when all this assembled quite a decent helping of Cognac...’6
If you’re looking for an equivalent, Santa Maria Novella is always a safe bet.
Jim Ede’s potpourri. Portrait of H.S. "Jim" Ede by Edward Wolfe in 1931. Wolfe maintained that Ede was working on his famous book, The Savage Messiah, at the time the work was painted.
Edmund de Waal on reading while surrounded by art. (1:11)
Cute Henri Gaudier-Brzeska replicas from the Kettle’s Yard gift shop.
Time-lapse of the pebbles in Jim Ede’s bedroom. (0:52)
Video of Gregorio Vardanega’s plexiglass ‘Disc’ in action at ‘the bridge’. (0:57)
Laura Freeman discussing her research and biography on Jim Ede:
On April 15, 2021 (45:18)
On July 15, 2023 (54:17)
Elizabeth Anne Fisher's PhD dissertation 'Kettle’s Yard: Anti-Museum'.
Below is a reference I shared when asked how to approach displaying art on an empty wall. Showing the Khmer Buddha from Prang Sam Yot Temple, and works by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mario Sironi, and Ben Nicholson.
Kettle’s Yard, downstairs extension. Photographed by Paul Allitt.
Ede, Jim. Kettle's Yard: A Way of Life. Kettle's Yard, 1984. ISBN 0521250625.
Glimcher, Arne. “Agnes Martin: Philosopher, artist, pioneer, recluse.” Christies, 2 January 2020, https://www.christies.com/en/stories/agnes-martin-413d86c216f2423a9c72ad54b5e397ba
Dr. Richard Stemp. “200 – Ede and Rie and Kettle’s Yard.” 3 August 2023, https://drrichardstemp.com/2023/08/03/200-ede-and-rie-and-kettles-yard/
Cage, John. "John Cage Quotes." University of Pennsylvania, n.d., https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html.
Kettle's Yard. "Celebrating 50 Years of Music at Kettle's Yard." Kettle's Yard, 16 December 2020, https://www.kettlesyard.cam.ac.uk/stories/celebrating-50-years-of-music-at-kettles-yard/.
Spindel, Eliza. "Tangier Days Part Six: from Whitestone to Kettle's Yard." Kettle's Yard, n.d., https://stories.kettlesyard.co.uk/tangier-part-6/.