Perfect parades
From Bristol to Brixton, these cheery rows of houses have an intriguing past
WOuLd you want to live on a parade, if given the chance? The answer, if you have your wits about you: yes and no. Some of the best addresses in the country are parades. Think of Marine Parade in Brighton, a handsome seafront terrace dating back to the late 18th century. Grand Parade in eastbourne enjoys a similar cachet. Inland, the Parade in Royal Leamington Spa is at the epicentre of a muchloved Regency town, while King’s Parade in Cambridge, named after King’s College, attracts visitors from around the world.
But not all parades, alas, are equally distinguished. Living on a bog-standard suburban shopping parade might mean settling for a dingy bedsit above a fishandchip shop. Some of the least prepossessing streets in the country have ‘parade’ in their name.
Over time, the word has changed and evolved and so have the architectural connotations that go with it.
In the late 17th century, the word ‘parade’ was applied, naturally enough, to public spaces close to barracks and used for military parades or processions. But by the end of the following century, its usage had been extended to fashionable, paved residential streets in spas and seaside towns. North and South Parades in Bath, built in the 1740s, are still two of the best addresses in the city.
It was no longer soldiers doing the parading, but social butterflies keen to see and be seen. Like ‘walks’ and ‘promenades’, two other newcomers to the architectural lexicon, parades conferred status on those lucky enough to live on them.
After all, if you had time to dress up and strut along the parade in your finery, you were a cut above the residents of mere lanes, streets and alleys.
In West Bristol, Redcliffe Parade is a fine example of just such a prosperous Georgian terrace, enjoying an elevated position overlooking the old harbour. Some of the merchants’ houses on the street were built by a wealthy local shipbuilder, and one can imagine the owners watching their ships returning to port laden with merchandise from the New World. Social status and hard-headed commerce went hand in hand.
Redcliffe Parade has just been renovated into 16 beautiful one and two-bedroom apartments ( changerealestate. co. uk/ projects/redcliffe-parade-west-bristol), starting at £325,000, and is sure to attract keen interest. The area is comparatively quiet but, with its spectacular views of the city and its iconic Floating Harbour, is going from strength to strength.
But the world has moved on, for better and worse, since Redcliffe Parade was built. In the 19th and 20th centuries, as urban Britain developed, parades started to move steadily downmarket.
The name started to be applied to terraced streets where fishmongers and butchers, drapers and shoemakers lived above the shops where they worked. They were too busy to parade anything except their wares, but the functional shopping parade became part of everyday life. GIveN
IVEN their convoluted history, it is hard to generalise about parades, which is what makes them so intriguing. If Regent Parade in Cheltenham, built in the 1820s, is posh and proud of it, effra Parade in Brixton, built in 1855, is the opposite and also proud of it.
In 1984, it was in the news when Lambeth Council had to send in 200 policemen to evict people squatting in terrace houses on the street.
Connoisseurs of parades, and the history attached to them, are in their element in Oxford, where there is a North Parade and a South Parade within a mile of each other, running off the Banbury Road. All well and good, except that North Parade is due south of South Parade, suggesting that whoever named the streets, which grew up in the 19th century, had been overindulging in one of the local taverns.
Why the geographical anomaly? There is one theory that, during the Civil War, South Parade marked the southern front of the Roundhead army, while North Parade marked the northern front of the Royalist army. That would root the parades firmly in the days of marching armies. But nobody knows. The two parades, lined with trendy shops and cafes, are appreciated for what they are.
And no doubt the renovated Redcliffe Parade in Bristol will be admired for what it is: a highly desirable address with some quirky local history thrown in.
For the first time, Tate Modern has launched an exhibition devoted entirely to textiles. The subject is the weaver, printer and author Anni Albers (1899-1994).
Viewing her works in a gallery as you would art is fitting because Albers specialised in pieces known as ‘pictorial weavings’, designed to be looked at rather than sat or walked on.
‘She wanted to see herself as an artist,’ says curator of the exhibition Ann Coxon.
That’s not to say her work wasn’t practical. She was also famous for developing a soundproof fabric in 1929 and for creating loose weaves to filter light through the large, modernist windows which were fashionable at the time.
She made draperies shot through with glitzy copper thread for the rockefeller Guest House in New York, plus room dividers and bedspread fabric for the dorms in Harvard Graduate Center.
‘Like any craft it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art’, she wrote of her work. Albers loved to experiment, even creating jewellery from washers, corks and bobby pins.
Later in life, when arthritis affected her ability to weave, she took up silkscreen printing.
She was the first textile designer to be shown at New York’s MoMA in 1949 and her work continues to be a source of inspiration for designers today. Weaving, meanwhile, is having a renaissance.
Christopher Farr has an official collaboration with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and produces rugs from her designs. You can see Anni’s love of geometric patterns in rugs such as Camino real, 1967, based on her rich red tapestry for the lobby bar of Camino real Hotel in Mexico City. It was fresh and contemporary then and it still works today.
Christopher Farr/ Cloth, founded by Christopher Farr, Michal Silver and Matthew Bourne in 2000, is releasing two new designs based on Anni’s prints to celebrate the exhibition. ‘Anni was an artist so her work stands the test of time,’ says Silver.
orchestra is based on Anni’s orchestra series, completed in her 80s and inspired by her concert visits in Salzburg. The colours are uplifting and the designs are screen printed onto Belgian linen in London.
ochre — a navy blue, soft blue and mustard combination — was taken from Anni’s work and it fits right in with this season’s palette (from £150 per metre, christopher farrcloth.com).
BUT you can also enjoy the print as silk scarves which the company has produced for the Tate Modern shop (from £60). Albers never intended to be a weaver, but at the egalitarian Bauhaus, where she studied, women were encouraged to take up the craft and the studio became known as the Women’s Workshop.
She loved the rigour and discipline, which gave her a framework within which to explore. She was always more interested in structure than colour, wanting the threads to speak for themselves. Like many of us, she was inspired by her travels and often went to Latin America. She and her husband, the artist Josef Albers, collected ancient Andean textiles, objects and figurines which gave her work new direction.
Weavers busy reviving the craft include Catarina riccabona who, mindful of the damaging effects of the textile industry, uses secondhand yarns and recycled linens from a spinner based in Bradford. She weaves cloth from her London studio. And talks about how handmade cloth has a ‘presence’.
‘ Even if you don’t know the person who made it, there is evidence of the human hand, which gives it a warmth. It’s not sterile,’ says riccabona.
Certainly there’s nothing nicer than cosying up in a soft throw, though her alpaca one created for the New Craftsmen to chime with the exhibition will set you back. It’s £ 1,200 while her wall panels start from £1,900, thenewcraftsmen.com.
Eleanor Pritchard also creates gorgeous geometric cushions and blankets, which have more than a nod to the Bauhaus aesthetic. Her Dovetail blanket in indigo, black and tobacco would make a statement while her brilliant yellow Charlock cushion would pep up a tired sofa (blanket £296, cushion, £132, eleanorpritchard.com).
Margo Selby continues Anni Albers’s pictorial weaving tradition. Along with rugs, throws and cushions, she creates hand-woven artworks from her Whitstable studio.
She describes Albers as a ‘hero’ because ‘she was passionate about creating well-designed textiles as well as indulging in intricate handmade wall hung work’. She, like Albers, enjoys the constraints of weaving as they present a challenge within which to work.
‘The Bauhaus weaving studio, where Albers lectured, is a great example of weavers working together, and in a similar vein there is a small team of weavers at the Margo Selby studio,’ she says.
Selby mixes colours on the loom and her Pick by Pick series includes colour combinations used by Albers — rainy day greys mixed with piercing yellow. Her artworks start from £555, margoselby.com. n Anni Albers is on now until January 27, 2019, at Tate Modern, tate.org.uk