State Banquet at Fred's

My wonderful neighbour David took pity on me and invited me round for dinner this evening at his house, charmingly called Fred's Cottage for a reason lost to time. Angus Council has recently banned all my friends from visiting me, and David picked up that the lack of human companionship was causing me to go downhill.

Our small group was literally treated to a state banquet: the first course was a watercress panna cotta with parmesan shortbread, the very dish that I knew had been served at the state banquet last Wednesday at Windsor Castle. I had been speculating what it might actually taste like, with no inkling that I would find out a few days later.

State Banquet at Fred's Cottage

I can report that it was delicious. I didn't expect a savory panna cotta let alone one with the very delicate flavour of watercress to work, but it did. David had made the panna cotta and the parmesan shortbread (à la Nigella) from scratch. Respect!

This starter and indeed the whole meal was genius: a salmon main with dauphinoise potatoes and ending with a sumptuous chocolate mousse pudding supplied by another guest.

Anyhow, I couldn't resist looking up the full menu at the actual state banquet. Wot - only 3 courses!  I would have expected a minimum of 12. State banquets since Queen Victoria have obviously gone downhill, but political correctness dictates value signalling through healthy eating and moderation. However, the after dinner digestifs are stellar.

It is nice to see the C R monogram, and the fact that some traditions  (e.g. the menu being in French) cannot be got rid of so easily.

A fellow guest suggested that actually attending a state banquet would be a dull affair. I beg to differ and wish to put it out there that I am receptive to invitations. :-)

It has not been reported whether King Charles III and President Trump made for good dining companions, but there is always someone on one's other side should conversation falter, and a back-stop of another digestif if, heaven forfend, both sides let you down.

Osbert's Scottish Baronial

In my previous blog entry, I presented Kieran's marvellous pen and ink sketch of the recently restored Great Hall at Balintore Castle. A friend called Mark said how much it reminded him of a mid 20th Century cartoonist called Osbert Lancaster. I was familiar with the name Osbert Lancaster, but had never studied his works, and Mark very kindly sent me a vintage copy of Osbert's book on the history of building interiors entitled "Homes Sweet Homes".

Osbert's Scottish Baronial Great Hall

You can can see at once how close Osbert's cartoon of the Scottish Baronial style is to Kieran's version of Balintore's Great Hall. Balintore Castle was designed in the Scottish Baronial Style, by the architect William Burn who essentially invented the style. Amusingly, all the stuffed creatures with horns look very happy to be there, but the bears are thoroughly resentful. 

Accompanying every cartoon of the different historic interior styles is some witty text by Osbert who was also a writer. I have to say that both the drawings and the text give me enormous pleasure. The drawings are charming and lightly amusing, whereas the text is savage: very much in the modern spirit of "throwing shade". Here's what Osbert has to say about Scottish Baronial:

His joshing tenet is that Scottish Baronial is pagan in its conception and I daresay he is right, although of course Scottish Baronial is also Scotland's take on Gothic, which is a style premised upon Christian cathedrals. Perhaps Osbert is saying there remains something of the heathen in the Scot? I will append the text of the Scottish Baronial article in a Rosetta Stone moment. :-)

What is fascinating are the categories and names of the interior styles. Some of these are no-longer recognised today, and some are now known by different terms. Here are the terms Osbert uses in chronological order with my modern translation in brackets where this exists.

• NORMAN
• GOTHIC
• TUDOR
• ELIZABETHAN
• JACOBEAN
• RESTORATION
• LOUIS XIV
• BAROQUE
• ROCOCO
• EARLY GEORGIAN
• CLASSIC REVIVAL
• REGENCY
• EARLY VICTORIAN
• LE STYLE ROTHSCHILD
• SCOTTISH BARONIAL
• VICTORIAN DINING-ROOM
• GREENERY YALLERY (Aesthetic)
• THE EARNEST 'EIGHTIES
• ANGLICAN
• DIAMOND JUBILEE
• TROISIÈME RÉPUBLIQUE
• ART NOUVEAU
• EDWARDIAN
• FIRST RUSSIAN BALLET PERIOD
• ORDINARY COTTAGE 
• CULTURED COTTAGE (Cottagecore)
• CURZON ST. BAROQUE
• LUXURY FLAT.
• ALDWYCH FARCICAL (Townhouse)
• STOCKBROKERS TUDOR (Mock Tudor)
• MODERNISTIC (Art Deco)
• VOGUE REGENCY (Hollywood Regency)
• FUNCTIONAL (Modern)
• EVEN MORE FUNCTIONAL (Brutalism)

I recognise the style "Curzon St. Baroque" from the illustration. This is a modern style of the 40's and 50's but looking back to the Italian past for ornamentation. I never knew this had a name before. :-) Most of the 20th Century styles Osbert describes have died. The one style that is still going very strong is CULTURED COTTAGE, this is very much alive in magazines like "Homes and Gardens" where the interior reflects a rural idyll. There is colour-washing, distressed-textures, but enough books and works of art scattered around to shout that educated, rich and arty people are in residence not yer actual country yokels.

Osbert's light touch is at one remove savage satire, but also betrays a deep love of his subject and is, in a paradoxical way, educational. One critic indicates that by stereotyping styles, in the fashion of a cartoonist, in a printed form Osbert almost defines these styles for future generations and I think this has some truth to it.

The book was first published in 1939, and when Osbert references the 'fifties he means the 1850's, and he still has the cultural memory that can distinguish the style of the 1870's from the style of the 1880's. We have lost this, so the book's time perspective is of an even greater historic value today. He casually refers to air raid precautions, and we tend to forget that life still went in throughout WWII. The book was republished in 1939, 1940, 1941, 1944, 1946 and 1948, which I presume is the date of my copy since it is the last date provided.

Osbert Lancaster is now out of fashion: he once held a much higher currency. However, I am delighted to report he is still in value.

SCOTTISH BARONIAL

THE official religion of Victorian England is usually considered to have been an evangelical form of Christianity suitably modified to bring it into harmony with a public school education and the principles of free trade, but one is sometimes tempted to wonder whether in large tracts of the country, particularly in Scotland, an older faith that blended ancestor worship with totemism did not reassert its hold on the upper classes from about the 'fifties onwards. How else can we explain the sudden appearance of those vast, castellated barracks faithfully mimicking all the least attractive features of the English home at the most uncomfortable period of its development, and filled with rank upon rank of grim-visaged, elaborately kilted forebears? What other explanation can be found for the presence of these enormous necropolitan menageries stuffed full of stags and caribou, bears and tigers-creatures which, however attractive in life, in death perform no function but the constant employment of legions of housemaids with dusters? What other reason can be advanced for the phenomenal popularity of Mr. Landseer whose only merit as a painter was the tireless accuracy with which he recorded the more revoltingly sentimental aspects of the woolier mammals?

Whether or not Scottish Baronial has its origins in primitive religion its popularity was soon assured in all classes of society. Tartan, stags' heads and faithful representations of Highland cattle in various media soon enlivened the Coburg simplicity of the Court as successfully as they added to the discomfort of cosy little villas in Tulse Hill or Twickenham where the rafters were unlikely ever to ring with the sound of the pipes. And to-day many a dusty hotel lounge, many a dentist's waiting-room with their ritual display of these old symbols, recall, like the mosques of Spain, the former domination of a vanished faith.

Kieran's Pen and Inks!

Kieran is one of the horologists who commissioned the longcase clock in the Great Hall at Balintore Castle. Getting the clock running for the Great Hall opening ceremony, was very much the icing on the cake. A ticking clock is one way in which a room can be said to come alive. If the Great Hall is the heart of the castle, then the clock is assuredly its pacemaker.

To quote Robert Burns "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley", and Angus Council banned the opening ceremony just a week before the planned event. However, Kieran was motivated by his visit to the castle to create some art and to write a novel inspired by the building, so there is always some form of a positive outcome, even in dire circumstances.

What Kieran perhaps did not know is that I am a great fan of illustration, particularly in the representation of architecture, and his pen and ink drawings of Balintore Castle are precisely my thing. He used an ink pen of the same vintage as Balintore Castle, and believes the resulting uneven and scratchy lines produced are an integral part of the work.

The Great Hall Banquet

Castle Bedroom

The Castle

Who am I to disagree?:-)  I mentioned his charming work reminds me of that produced by superstar illustrator twins Janet and Anne Graham Johnstone whose work I feature in an earlier blog post.

Another architecture illustrator I rate is Ruth Steed who did the drawings for the first edition of the novel "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith.

How architecture and atmosphere can be captured simultaneously in her "simple" line drawing below is a mystery to be celebrated.

the fictional Scoatney Hall

Dating Outlander Clock

After the first 30 seconds of the first episode of the first TV series of "Outlander: Blood of my Blood" (the "Outlander" prequel) a longcase clock is shown.

Outlander clock

I started in my armchair as there is an astonishingly similar one in the Great Hall at Balintore Castle.

Balintore Castle clock

I was told, by a horologist friend, that my clock dates from before 1770, due to the square date aperture. After 1770 round apertures become more common. I was delighted by the early date. I knew brass dials were earlier than the painted dials that we associate with the Victorian era, but did not know when they came in.  Google now tells me the transition between brass and painted dials is 1770 to 1800 - who knew?  :-)

Anyhow, the Outlander prequel begins in 1714 so could my clock be this early, or is the Outlander clock an anachronism?

Using google images, this is the closest to the Outlander clock I could find:

William and Mary clock 1795

It is pretty close even down to the silvered chapter ring and it is dated to 1695 i.e. William and Mary. So Outlander have got their props correct, their longcase clock is from the right era.

My clock has a maker "Jos Vervroegen à Anvers" a Flemish chap from Antwerp, so a simple textual look-up found this clock from 1770 in the Vleeshuis Museum in Antwerp, whose face appears an exact match. My wooden case is very much a later and inferior replacement. The revelation that my clock, £120 from a Glasgow auction house, is not of similar museum quality has not come as a major shock! :-) 

Antwerp clock 1770

I was slightly perplexed that the style of these brass clocks has not changed much from 1695 and 1770, perhaps one of these attribution dates is incorrect? 

However, the twin cherubs and crown style spandrels of the Outlander clock date between 1690-1720, so 1695 fits right in.

Branch style spandrels of my clock date between 1760-1780 which fits in with 1770. Arched dials appear after 1715, and as my clock has an arched dial, this again confirms it is later than the Outlander clock.

One friend told me that my clock dated between 1720 and 1740. I was enormously impressed by their erudition, and while my clock certainly matches the overall style of this period, the small stylistic differences in the detailing and the scanned page of the book above tell a different story.

This is precisely the same misapprehension I had when first visually comparing the Outlander clock to my own. The devil is in the detail.

I had not made the mental connection before between the "William and Mary" era, and the fact my clock is Flemish - both were imports from the Flemish region of Continental Europe. There was a time when things from the Flemish region were deeply fashionable in UK.

The opening sequence of "Outlander: Blood of My Blood" concerns the death of the chief of the MacKenzie clan and drama develops from the power vacuum created. The chief's longcase clock is stopped and covered with a cloth, a tradition which comes down to the 20th century in the form of W.H.Auden's poem "Funeral Blues" which famously starts with the line "Stop all the clocks,".

I have now watched the first 2 episodes of "Outlander: Blood of My Blood", and it is definitely growing on me, and I suspect, unlike most prequels/sequels, it has the same watchability as the original.

Here are the links I used to date the clocks. You are very welcome to continue the research.

https://ivaluations.net/antique-english-clocks-an-expert-guide/
https://www.pendulumpublications.com/latest-post/tips-for-dating-early-antique-longcase-clocks