www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk ISSN 2053-8715 (print) ISSN 2053-8839 (online) The Guild of St George The Companion No. 15 (2015) Number 14 (2014) (Above) St George’s Farm, Ruskinland, Bewdley. (Below) Three Guild Masters: Jim Dearden, Clive Wilmer and Julian Spalding at the Companions’ Weekend, Bewdley Museum. (Right) Ruskin Bread from Gerry’s Bakery, Walkley, celebrating RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD. INSIDE LOST COMPANIONS & THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GUILD … WHITELANDS RUSKIN LECTURE & MAY FESTIVAL … EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM … A STUDENT VISIT TO RUSKINLAND … THE JOHN RUSKIN PRIZE … WEALTHY WEEKEND … 42ND STREET … THE RUSKIN LECTURE … VENICE COLLOQUY & TOUR … AMERICAN NOTES … ROYCROFT CONFERENCE … PLATO’S LAWS … RUSKIN, NORTON & TURNER … GUILD MEMORIES … HOSPITAL ARCHITECTURE … FLORENTINE BINDINGS … TOTLEY … RUSKIN IN TRANSLATION … THE CRESWICK LINK … RUSKIN SIGHTINGS … NEWS … BOOK & FILM REVIEWS … AND RUSKIN in SHEFFIELD. THE MANY FACES OF JOHN R USKIN This edition of the magazine is, as I am sure difficulty of how to answer the thorny you. agree, another cornucopia, thanks to the questions that Ruskin’s life. continues to not present variety of reports, features, reviews and pose. Nobody should deny the existence of on that other contributions provided by Companions what a friend recently called Ruskin’s occasion. and friends of the Guild. It is also late, so I ‘sharp edges’, but I think Companions The trust that it is a gift worth waiting for. agree that it is Ruskin’s ideas, rather than Guild’s EDITORIAL I shall be sparing with my editorial his (lack of) love life, that are really tentacles are comments because you already hear enough interesting. That’s why I recently enjoyed reaching out from me. Thanks to the apparently ever- so much two lectures given by everywhere. growing number of Ruskin-related events, Companions, both very different but When the publications, items of news and so on, I am stimulating occasions. Marcus Waithe RUSKIN in never short of things to communicate with gripped an audience of about eighty SHEFFIELD you about in my capacity project was as Secretary of the Guild. I launched on Ruskin have very much 1st February, in Russia: Tatiana Nikitina’s Unfamiliar Ruskin (2014). appreciated the feedback I we were have received from so delighted to be joined by Chiaki Yokoyama, many of you in response one of our three Japanese Companions. Our to my frequent if irregular Russian Companion at Yasnaya Polyana, e-mail ‘newsletters’: Tatiana Nikitina, has recently written a book thank you. whose title in translation is Unfamiliar Ruskin, Last summer, not long introducing the sage who helped to inspire before the referendum, I Tolstoy to a modern Russian readership. It was in Scotland, and I includes a chapter on the Guild. Our Master, joined the audience at the Clive Wilmer, has recently been living and Edinburgh Fringe to watch teaching in Venice, strengthening existing Paul O’Keeffe re-enact, in connections and making new ones between full costume, one of Dr Marcus Waithe explores the history of St George’s Museum the Guild and Ruskin’s ‘Paradise of cities’. Ruskin’s lectures to an enthusiastic audience at Walkley Community Centre You still won’t believe me when I insist that originally given in that in February 2015. he really did turn 70 in February and I know impressive city. O’Keeffe’s memorable residents in Walkley, talking about Ruskin, he was grateful to the many well-wishers performance, which successfully captured St George’s Museum and the Guild in who got in touch to congratulate him from many of the mannerisms reported in Sheffield. His was one of the best public among the Companionship. journalistic accounts of Ruskin’s lectures, lectures on Ruskin I have heard. And The Companion, and the Guild, reflect the reinforced my belief that it often isn’t Cynthia Gamble engaged with an audience strength, diversity, vitality and enthusiasm of enough simply to read Ruskin. The lectures of Oxford medievalists at University those who contribute to its success. This is were, after all, performed, and to College to talk about Ruskin and Proust. our magazine, and our organisation, and I experience them is to feel anew the depth of They both demonstrated, like O’Keeffe, hope and believe that we all continue to look Ruskin’s insights. As Ruskin poked fun at his how far audiences are still stimulated by forward to working together to pursue the audiences, and often—deliberately—made Ruskin’s ideas in the 21st century. I know fruitful journey which Ruskin has set us on. them laugh, he challenged assumptions that that another example of this was Sara Stuart Eagles were not only deeply ingrained in the 19th Atwood’s talk last October at the Ruskin century, but which, despite his enormous Studio on Ruskinland, though sadly I was eloquence and influence, still persist in certain quarters to this day. I left the lecture theatre seeing the buildings around me through Ruskin’s eyes. If only recent film portrayals of Ruskin had achieved anything like such an effect. You’ll read a review of both Effie Gray and Mr Turner elsewhere in this issue (see pp. 30-31), but O’Keeffe got me thinking about other Ruskin in the thea- portrayals of Ruskin, too. Tom Hollander tre and on TV: Tom most recently brought Ruskin to us on the Hollander (above), small screen, in the series I like to call Carry Prof Bernard Rich- On Desperate Romantics in 2009. But who saw ards (near right) Ruskin’s take on contemporary news stories and Paul O’Keeffe in the same year, when he appeared on More4 (right-most). News courtesy of Companion, Prof. Bernard O’Keeffe reprised Richards? If only Richards or O’Keeffe had his role at this year’s Edinburgh been asked to reprise their roles by the Fringe. movie-makers, we surely wouldn’t have suffered the slings and arrows of this outrageous cinematic fortune. Many of us have wrestled with the 2 A LETTER FROM THE MASTER OF THE GUILD Dear Companions with Titians and Carpaccios in the Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s great painting The As I’m sure you’ll agree, the Master of background. She and Paul, who wrote the Allegory of Good Government at Siena— the Guild should be stable and trustworthy. very scholarly introduction, answered something more strongly felt in Italy than Alas, I’ve been something of a vagrant questions. There were speeches from a I’d judge it to be in England. Venice, he says Master recently—living in Venice for five number of scholars including Jeanne and in his new book, is dying. The evidence is in months, delighting in almost everything Donata Levi, and Paul took us to see some the population statistics—175,000 in 1951 that offered itself to my senses, and of those ‘principal pictures’. The great and to 58,000 now—and in the uncritical depending on Stuart Eagles and my fellow the good of Venice turned out in force. toleration of mass tourism at the expense of THE MASTER Directors to keep the Guild afloat. I did A few days later I went to another launch the interests of ordinary citizens. Venice have an excuse, however. Venice is so at which Ruskin (unsurprisingly) wasn’t will also die by drowning if something is not central to our first Master’s thinking that it named. But my goodness, he was present done soon to prevent the lagoon from (Right and centre,) In March, architecture students (Below) The Master at 70. In Venice with his from Sheffield University, led by Carolyn partner, Patricia Fara. February Butterworth, toured Venice 2015. with the Master. Photo: Gabriel Wilmer Photo: Carolyn Butterworth constantly inspired me and the Guild was never far from my flooding it periodically, and thoughts. I was there to teach Photo: Carolyn Butterworth MOSE, the new system of Victorian literature (including flood barriers, which would Ruskin, of course) in the be coming into effect just language department at Ca’ Foscari in spirit! The book in question was Se now if it were not for another of Italy’s University, and our Companions there— Venezia muore (‘If Venice dies’) by Salvatore massive corruption scandals, is already out we have two, Jeanne Clegg and Emma Settis, who has made something of a mark of date and anyway likely to endanger the Sdegno, with Paul Tucker an occasional in Italy’s recent life. He is a distinguished ecology of the lagoon in the process of visitor from Florence—are keen to make art historian and archaeologist, the author saving the city. Yet the triumph of Ruskin a presence in the University and in in particular of a book on Giorgione, and Venice—what makes it for many of us the the city itself. he retired in 2010 as Director of the Scuola most beautiful city in Europe and a source And he has begun to be just that. Emma Normale Superiore in Pisa. Now in his of constant pleasure when you live there— has long argued that there should be at least early seventies, he has become the focus is the practical harmony its people have one Ruskinian event a year at the University for a major challenge to the orthodoxies of achieved between city and nature, nature in and, if I may describe myself as an event, I modern politics. He is a conservationist, this case being the possibly threatening sea. suppose my term there was this year’s who speaks up for the necessity of art for The loss of Venice, Settis argues, would be offering. But there have been other civilised democratic life, beauty and the the loss of any hopes we have for that form happenings too.