Hever Castle
Tunbridge Ware Exhibition

On a somewhat murky Wednesday in late autumnal November your editorial team paid a visit to the Tunbridge Ware exhibition being held - for the whole of the month of November - at historic Hever Castle in Kent.

Hever Castle, which was once the childhood home of King Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn, is situated just outside the lovely Kentish village of Edenbridge and is only an hour’s journey from London.

The grounds of the castle, as you will see in our photos, are beautifully sculptured with plentiful examples of superb topiary displays – still wonderfully in bloom even in late November. A real treat for any horticulturists amongst you I would dare say.

Our editorial team arrived at the castle’s moated drawbridge precisely at 11. 00am and was greeted at the “still lowered” portcullis by Head Steward Jane Apps who, once the portcullis had been raised, conducted us to the Moat room to inspect the Tunbridge Ware exhibition.

Jane very kindly showed us around the exhibition and explained the historical significance of all the prominent and important Tunbridge Ware pieces on display.

It has to be admitted that the castle has a truly wonderful collection of unique and original early works dating from the very beginnings of the Tunbridge Ware style. That “new Tunbridge Ware” style turned out to be a very different way of working as opposed to the mosaic methods that preceded it which, although the mosaic method could display some delicate work, couldn’t hope to replicate the cleverly repeatable pictorial designs which are the hallmark of the Tunbridge Ware method.

This repeatable picture method is perfectly illustrated in this exhibition where the highly detailed Tunbridge Ware picture of Hever Castle in 1860 is replicated in several of the pieces seen on display. The design you see illustrated here on the face of a writing slope, appears yet again on the face of a sewing box – those examples really do demonstrate the versatility of the Tunbridge Ware method.

We really had to admit to being truly amazed at the delicacy of the design – the thin lengths of wood that had been used in this particular work were not those one eighth of an inch thick examples so often used today, these were, we would think, approximately one sixty fourth of an inch in thickness – certainly no larger than a thirty second at any part of the design as far as we could tell.

This observation then led us to wondering how they could have cut such delicate “match sticks” from their wood blanks well over 150 years ago when they didn’t have available to them those precision tools we use today.

Our conclusion, after much debate, was that they had used treadle powered saws with solid beds and guides or perhaps water powered belt driven saws of a similar type.

It’s a surprisingly interesting argument when you consider the delicacy of that early work – after all, we consider that high precision engineering is a privilege of today’s expertise, but this is a mistaken assumption, as is made obvious by just viewing the photo of the writing slope – they were not only craftsmen in the 1800’s, they were artists with the delicacy and ability of Swiss watchmakers! 

Alf Murtell put forward the theory that they may have just sliced strips off from sheets of veneer.

This idea could actually provide an answer to the enquiry we think, because veneers in those days were, in the main, somewhat thicker than the one sixty fourth of an inch thick veneers that we use today.

If you wanted to try to replicate the style of Tunbridge Ware seen at this exhibition we would think that a good quality guillotine would be a worthwhile investment for cutting those very thin and delicate veneer strips you will need for your pictures.
 

An interesting point to note with these historic Tunbridge Ware pieces is that, in the main, they all seem to retain a reasonable level of textural effects in their overall finish. What we mean here is that much of the grain’s character and tactile quality has been retained in these pieces – making them far more attractive and appealing to the eye than today’s clinical and cold, glass like finish that rather looks as if it was sprayed and then baked onto the work. After all, consider this, what is one of the first things anyone does when they encounter a lovely piece of woodwork? Why, of course, isn’t it just this that they run their finger tips over the piece to “feel the grain of the wood”? Well of course they do, it’s the most natural of things to do just that. It really does seem a shame that the deference to the natural quality of the wood that was so respected by those wonderful craftsmen of yore is now dismissed as shoddy workmanship by our hierarchy today just because it is not mirror flat. Perhaps it is time for texture’s re-emergence as an element of a well composed marquetry work if it is used with taste and care – it could hopefully lead to interesting artistic variations on our main marquetry themes.

We were more than pleased to find a generous amount of our Redbridge Group’s web site information on display in this exhibition (we had supplied a copy of our Tunbridge Ware master files for this exhibition a few months earlier) and we were indeed extremely gratified to note the amount of exhibition visitors who referred to that supplied information whilst we were there in the rooms.

We noted that the exhibition was extremely well attended during our visit, and Jane (Head Steward) told us that this had been the norm for every day of that Tunbridge Ware exhibition so far – and this was even after the exhibition had already been running for over three weeks! – I wonder how many of those visitors will feel inspired to take up the craft of Tunbridge Ware for themselves?