Air of family affair at V&A

Last Saturday, the Doyenne and I took ourselves down to Dundee for our first visit to the V&A, but particularly to see the Ocean Liners: Speed and Style exhibition. We went with mixed feelings, as not all our friends had come away from the museum with altogether positive experiences.

We’d previously seen it only from a distance, driving across the Tay Road Bridge. Our first proper impression walking along the waterfront of the River Tay, past RRS Discovery, was of the building’s sheer size.

Drawing on the city’s long maritime history I could appreciate architect Kengo Kuma’s vision to design the riverside part of the museum to look like the prow of a ship entering the water. He drew inspiration for the unusual cladding on the building from the cliffs of the east coast of Scotland, maintaining the imagery of land and sea.

The river lapping the waterline and two lagoons flanking the gangway bridge linking the concrete vessel to the shore accentuate the nautical theme the architect sought. The entrance is discreetly located in the stern of the ship, hardly breaking her lines. The impact on entering the building for the first time is its cathedral quality of height and space.

V&A Dundee has been created as the first dedicated design museum in Scotland and our first call was to the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Oak Room, the restored 1908 interior for Miss Cranston’s Tea Rooms in Ingram Street, Glasgow. We couldn’t miss that as our specialist decorator daughter, Cait, had recreated a cement render insert for the fireplace using Italian lime plasters. If she hadn’t told us to look out for it, we would have thought it to be an original.

Another surprise was finding Store Hus tea towels designed and printed by the Doyenne’s niece and great-niece on sale in the shop. It was getting to be quite a family affair.

Blown away

We were unprepared for the scale of the Ocean Liners exhibition.

The names of the ships, Aquitania, Normandie, Empress of Britain, SS United States, Queen Mary were all familiar, even though their heyday was the interwar years before we were born.

If you were wealthy you travelled in the most outrageous comfort and splendour.

The first-class decks of the biggest and most prestigious liners were built with an opulence no longer seen today. The Doyenne, who has been a decorator for more than 40 years, was blown away by the extravagant art deco style of the interiors. The liners were floating hotels, their interiors designed by the same designers of top-class hotels such as the Ritz in Paris.

Glorious decorative wall coverings and panels salvaged when the liners went to the breaker’s yard, and now restored, emphasise the no-expensespared policy of the shipping lines to attract the wealthiest travellers.

The glory days of the ocean liners preceded the days of quick trans-Atlantic long-haul flight. Unlike today’s cruise ships which are holiday villages sailing from port to port, the ocean liner passengers travelled on board their floating hotels to reach their destination as quickly as possible.

The first-class – which probably meant upperclass – passengers continued with their gilded lifestyles. The women changed their outfits several times a day and everyone dressed for dinner, necessitating the need for their Louis Vuitton cabin trunks and luggage. They lived much like film stars which many of the passengers, such as Charlie Chaplin, were.

The poet, Rudyard Kipling, described the ocean liners as monstrous nine-decked cities. The third-class, or steerage, passengers enjoyed no frills on the lowest passenger deck – for instance, the Aquitania had 1,200 third-class passengers sharing just three bathrooms between them. The engine room crew worked in even more wretched conditions, quite at odds with the highly idealised posters advertising ocean liner travel which form part of the exhibition.

Dundee distinction

In stark contrast to the luxury of the ocean liners was RRS Discovery sitting alongside the V&A. A work boat, Dundee-built, not for pleasure, but to undertake scientific research in the ice and stormy southern seas of Antarctica.

Other than the fact that they are all ships, there is little practical comparison between Discovery and the ocean liners. The most telling distinction, for me, was the wooden crow’s nest lashed to the top of Discovery’s mainmast.

The unfortunate crew member who drew the short straw climbed to the very top of the mast, crawled through the bottom of the barrel which is the crow’s nest and spent hours, exposed to the severest elements, on the lookout for land or hazards ahead. If you’d just had your breakfast, you wouldn’t have wanted to be up there in mucky weather as the ship see-sawed and yawed in the wild seas.

We thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition and recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it, but time is running out – it ends on February 24.

“Another surprise was finding Store Hus tea towels designed and printed by the Doyenne’s niece and great-niece on sale in the shop