Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
Saltaire village is full of imposing architecture and you see something more each time you come. Victoria Hall is impressive as is your first view of Salts Mill. Salts Mill is so much more than a gallery for a collection of Hockney paintings. Here is a part of the ground floor Art and Architecture book shop........(there are at least two more bookshops, an excellent and large antique centre, HOME, and so much more).......... ........with almost life-size paintings of Hockney's friends on the wall. And there's no Boojee at Salts Mill.........real flowers! I don't think we had seen this particular section before - some of his early Malibu Abstraction paintings...... In another 'hall' was this marvellous ceramic mural by Philippa Threlfall and Kennedy Collings which originally hung in the foyer of the Bradford and Bingley head office, and was rescued when they moved. Salts Mill features very appropriately in the circumstances. Lunch at the Mill is excellent and very good value, a reason enough to come here. The Mill has no parking so you have to drive around to find a space on the street or in the two very small car parks. After 3 hours a trip to move the car is needed, and gives the opportunity for fresh air and more photos of local buildings. Back in the Mill we admire recent i-pad paintings again. also And although we have seen it before, you never tire of the fabulous exhibition of 'The Arrival of Spring'. each image portrays a specific day between January 1st and May 31st 2011 of Woldgate near Bridlington. The roofscape gives just some idea of the scope of Titus's business, in fact there are three huge sheds like this....... And on the opposite side of the canal another huge mill building we hadn't seen before (which is now an NHS building). The canal - the Leeds and Liverpool - along with the railway on the front of the mill were integral to Titus Salt's vision for Saltaire. And the presence of the Aire was extremely important in his decision to build here. Industrial machinery in the mid-19th century required huge quantities of water to power it. At Saltaire, this could be easily drawn from the river, with the canal and railway offering more direct routes for trade with other towns and cities. Here a view of the NHS building from the bridge over the Aire connecting the mill to the beautiful Roberts Park. And I did like 'Olly' let's call him, part of a sculpture trail. But we had come to buy a clock we had seen before in the excllent (if expensive) HOME part of the mill. It was produced to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of De Stijl and to celebrate its lasting influence. De Stijl, the Netherlands-based art movement, embraced an abstract, minimalist aesthetic grounded in the basic visual elements of simple geometric forms, lines and primary colors. The movement’s central figures were the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.
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August 2023
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