Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1539834
Few rooms, except Helen's bedroom, were out of bounds. Each day, before opening, the house was tidied. Ede observed a strict routine, washing and polishing floors, tending to houseplants, keeping lists of visitors, and personally guiding them through the house. Sometimes he would place a sculpture into open hands. He instituted a loan scheme for students to choose and borrow a work for up to a year. Miriam Margolyes, studying English at Newnham College in 1961, chose a Gaudier-Brzeska drawing, then a Wallis painting. She recalled, 'The fact that you were allowed to take something like that into your own living space was such a present, an amazing kindness … it started me realising that art is something that is available'. 48 Already Ede had devised a scheme to endow travel scholarships by selling Brâncuși's Poisson d'Or for $30,000 to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The first group of students to benefit, in 1959, were from the University's Faculty of Architecture, supervised by Professor Leslie Martin. Ede encountered new artists, who in turn left their imprint on the collection. In April 1962, having seen John Blackburn's paintings at the Woodstock Gallery, he wrote that he had felt 'an immense vigour & sensitivity to texture & colour & a joy in the doing of it – really Painting.' 49 A month later he met the Indian- born artist Avinash Chandra, from whom he bought drawings and sold work. In September, in St Ives, he was introduced by Hepworth to Bryan Pearce. Born with the rare condition phenylketonuria (PKU), Pearce had been encouraged to paint by his mother. Ede so admired his 'instinctive' approach that he invited him to stay for a fortnight and arranged exhibitions of his work. 50 Among Pearce's paintings acquired by Ede are depictions of King's College Chapel and the Round Church in Cambridge. Decades earlier, T.E. Lawrence had cautioned Ede against allowing David Garnett too free an editorial hand over his Gaudier-Brzeska biography: 'Nobody else will really care as much for this book as you do. That's the way, always.' 51 Similar tensions soon began to surface at Kettle's Yard. Ede cared passionately about his collection, and would strenuously resist any attempt to 'edit' it or what it represented. He tried first to interest Magdalene College in acquiring it, then the University's Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts. Leslie Martin passed the offer to the University of Cambridge, who by August 1964 had agreed to accept the collection in totality, as Ede 48 Jo Caird, 'The art of borrowing', CAM, issue 101, March 2024. 49 Ede, letter to John Blackburn, 14 April 1962, Blackburn Archive. 50 Freeman, p.247. 51 T.E. Lawrence, letter to Ede, 26 March 1929, Kettle's Yard Archive, KY/EDE/1/9, quoted in Freeman, p.95. Jim Ede's bedroom with Moore, Nichoslon and Wallis. Photograph Jasper Fry 2022. © Courtesy Kettle's Yard. 17 17