To celebrate the opening of Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors, our Retail and Buying Manager Charlotte Harding selects her favourite Bloomsbury-inspired items available now in the museum shop.
Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors Catalogue
£20
The Garden Museum’s latest catalogue weaves together the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, Vita Sackville-West and Lady Ottoline Morrell. The four Bloomsbury women – who although interlinked may not have met together in one place or time – were connected through their love of gardens, a vividly shared space between them. Over its pages, through paintings, archival photography, written extracts, and essays, the catalogue delves further into the role of these women’s gardens, how they transformed green spaces into portals through time, and in turn how these gardens forged their creative lives as a place of sanctuary, inspiration and expression.
The Journey to my Sisters House: Virginia Woolf on the South Downs
£13.50
For Virginia Woolf, writing and walking were inextricably linked. The countryside surrounding Monk’s House offered peace and solitude, and one of her walks, which she would have done countless times, took her to her sister Vanessa Bell’s home of Charleston. This pamphlet visually reimagines Virginia’s journey as she takes the reader on an imaginatively expressed and viscerally felt journey, offering readers an insight into the spiritually restorative nature of the landscape that she travels through.
Rush Matters Placemats
From £20
In the spirit of women creating, and being inspired by, the outdoors, we have a selection of Rush Matter’s handcrafted rush placemats in the shop. Felicity Irons is one of the last of her craft, a custodian of the ancient method of growing and weaving from freshwater bulrush, which her and her team harvest on the River Nene in Northamptonshire, along the length of the River Great Ouse, and as far as Smithey Fen in Cambridgeshire. The results are charming and nostalgic, and you can very easily see these one of a kind, intricate weaves dotted around the Bloomsbury women’s homes, and hopefully your own too.
Lora Avedian Embroidery Kit
£32
Lady Ottoline Morrell may be the lesser known of the Bloomsbury women explored in the exhibition, however her creativity found in her archive of photography and embroidery is just as powerful and felt.
Taking inspiration from Ottoline’s embroidered pieces found in the exhibition, we have commissioned artist Lora Avedian- who uses traditional embroidery and embellishment techniques- to create an embroidery kit in celebration of the exhibition, featuring an original design and all the pieces you need to create your own embroidered tea towel inspired by Bloomsbury. Look out for the kits at the start of June in the shop and online.
Persephone Books
£16
Persephone Books have made a very good case for not judging a book by its cover. Hidden beneath what may seem like a simple, grey tome, are the magical, thought-provoking, and beautifully written stories Persephone Books have carefully curated. Specialising in neglected fiction and lost classics of women’s literature, almost all their titles are originally published in the mid-twentieth century.
Among the selection in the Garden Museum shop is Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart, a 1938 book perfect for the keen gardener or the aspiring one. This work of hers is indeed a ‘nightcap’: a soothing tonic to take in small doses just before bed, covering many and variegated subjects, each piece only a few lines in length, yet tells the gardener far more than extensive essays or manuals may: ‘There is an hour just before dark, when the garden resents interference. Its work, no less than the gardener’s, is done. Do not meddle with the garden at that hour. It demands, as all living creatures demand, a time of silence…’
Bloomsbury Revisited Lampshades
From £90
Bloomsbury Revisited, founded by friends Jane and Jane in East Sussex, create original, evocative lampshades and bases inspired by the Bloomsbury Set artists. The lampshade’s painterly strokes and muted palettes emulate the work of artists like Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, reflecting the composition and ideas introduced by Roger Fry from European influences in the early 20th Century. We have a collection of sizes and designs available to buy in the shop for visitors to bring some Bloomsbury magic into your homes.