Last week I was contacted by Andrew Edgecumbe, a successful and award-winning fashion photographer. He said that he'd like to do a photoshoot with me.
I pointed out that I am to fashion what lobsters are to ballet but he insisted. He's putting together a portfolio of portraits of creatives and, as it turns out, he first came across my art during lockdown when I created the Monster Zoo project (see here).
Anyway, I was happy to do so - it's quite a compliment really - and I agreed to meet him at Shardeloes near Amersham.
Shardeloes is a Grade I listed Palladian style country house that was designed and built by the excellently named Stiff Leadbetter. A previous manor house on the site was demolished and the present building constructed between 1758 and 1766 for William Drake, the Member of Parliament for Amersham. The interiors were designed by Robert Adam.
The mansion remained the ancestral home of the Tyrwhitt-Drake family until the Second World War, when the house was requisitioned as a maternity hospital for pregnant women evacuated from London. Around three thousand children were born there including lyricist Sir Tim Rice in 1944. Following the war the house seemed destined to become one of the thousands of country houses being demolished, until a local conservation society, the Amersham Society, assisted by the Council for the Protection of Rural England, fought a prolonged battle to save the house. Eventually a preservation order was put on the building preventing its demolition. The building fell into a state of neglect through the 1960s but was eventually purchased in the early 1970s by local property developer Richard Watson. He, completed a comprehensive renovation of the building and converted unused parts into apartments. Shardeloes today is a complex of private flats; the principal reception rooms are preserved as common rooms for the residents.
It also has extensive gardens, woodlands and a lake.
And it was to the lake that I headed, to be confronted by Andrew, his photography equipment, and a throne made from books.
Andrew is a lovely chap and a much sought-after snapper. The shoot went very well with lots of laughs - especially when he saw that I'd brought my felted owl hat. The idea was to capture 'Me' in one shot. The books represent my life as an author, of course, and - if you look closely - you may spot a pentagram among the foliage and one on my lapel to represent my interest in folk culture. The handmade hat, the art book I'm reading and one of my paintings represent my love of art. And my Cornwall lapel pin and one of my late father's walking sticks are hints to my heritage. I was also, quite appropriately, wearing a lapel pin of the Eccentric Club, of which I am a proud member and whose emblem is an owl and clock (I had a fob watch in my waistcoat pocket).
Like layers of an onion, eh?
A most enjoyable experience (how I didn't knock the books over into the lake is genuine miracle).
Oh, and the book I'm so intently reading is Jeremy Deller's Art is Magic.
Never was a truer word blogged.
