![]() ![]() In a carefully orchestrated journey from outside to in, the visitor passes through a glazed antechamber into a timber-lined reception and shop. Once inside the reason for this slight snub becomes immediately clear. Otherwise, there is a sense that the buildings have turned their back to the land and the approaching visitor. The only compromise to the inscrutability of its public face is an illuminated sign sitting in a timber-lined entrance space. ![]() It is this dark cladding that is most striking as you approach the museum across a large tarmac drive – sized, one presumes, for the anticipated coach-loads of visitors. ![]() In this architectural retelling, Windermere is also a place of manufacture and industry, gravel extraction and copper mines, of the elements and the elemental. It is carefully crafted narrative of industrial heritage and boat husbandry recounted with refinement and design rigour. Story-telling continues in the design of this new museum, by architect Carmody Groarke. In the centre of an exhibition hall a 15-metre lacquered teak steam launch, Branksome, fitted out in Victorian splendour, with walnut panelling, velvet upholstery and carpets, tells a tale of privileged access to the waters. Elsewhere, Arthur Ransome’s sketch illustrations for ‘Swallows and Amazons’ describe a place of adventure and innocence. A catastrophic storm and a stilled surface are given a full romantic rendering in a pair of eighteenth-century paintings by Philip James de Loutherbourg. At Windermere Jetty – a ‘Museum of Boats, Steam and Stories’ – the stories recounted each describe a different aspect of England’s largest lake. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |