Blog

How sketches of botanical plants by Isabella Crathorne have inspired an entire range called the Bloom Collection in the Harewood Shop.

A range of skincare products designed by Yorkshire-based maker Nathalie Bond is packaged in a gift box decorated with botanical sketches by Isabella Crathorne in 1787.

These delicate and detailed sketches come from a bound album of her work entitled Specimens of Botanical Plants held in Harewood’s libraries, containing 160 hand painted flower drawings. Complete with a full index, each entry is classified according to plant taxonomy and includes additional information, such as the location of the specimen and date of the find. Isabella did most of her collecting in North Yorkshire and occasionally Northumberland.

Botany emerged as a fashionable past-time in 18th century England, and was a science that women, in particular, had relatively easy access to: it was possible to collect plants, name them, draw and study them, all from the comfort of your own garden. Many women cultivated in-home herbariums and others, like Isabella, emerged as accomplished botanical illustrators.

Very little is known about Isabella, but her artistic skill was recognised in a portrait of her and her husband, Thomas Crathorne of Crathorne Hall in North Yorkshire, where she is depicted holding a pencil alongside an open sketchbook.

But how did Isabella’s album get to Harewood? Unfortunately the story here is not precise, however it is likely that there were familial links between Isabella and the Lascelles family. Isabella’s brothers, Henry and Edward Swinburne, as well as her nephew, Sir John Swinburne, were artists and patrons of contemporary art, commissioning individuals such as JMW Turner, Thomas Girtin and John Sell Cotman to paint their ancestral home. This is in much the same tradition as Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles and the 1st Earl at Harewood, and as such the two families were moving in the same artistic circles. It is almost certain that they would have known each other and it is quite possible Isabella’s album came into the collection through their shared love of art, as well as botany.

Visit the Harewood Shop to see the collection. 

There are many fascinating gardener pictures to celebrate National Gardening Week on the  Harewood servants database

Hugo Macdonald, curator of Harewood’s inaugural Craft Biennial, Useful/Beautiful: Why Craft Matters, pulls together his Top 10 Reads and shares why they have influenced and inspired him.

1. A coffee table read you return to again and again
A Frame for Life by Ilse Crawford. A former boss, an ongoing mentor and an endless source of inspiration.

2. A book that has inspired you
Wilding by Isabella Tree. The story of how Knepp Farm in Sussex was given back to nature is gripping, powerful and uplifting.

3. A book you enjoy/have enjoyed reading to children
Anything by Roald Dahl. The humour and imagination is timeless.

4. A book that has related to your career or life path
Ways of Seeing by John Berger. This opened my eyes and my mind simultaneously.

5. A book you would take to a desert island
The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford. A handy guide to mastering your own mind. It might be helpful.

6. A book you didn’t think you would like, but it surprised you
Just Kids by Patti Smith. Every bit as good as everybody says it is (unlike Normal People).

7. A very English book / favourite book by an English author
The Death of Grass by John Christopher. A typically polite and terrifying post-war English dystopia about what happens when grass crops fail.

8. Favourite Shakespeare play
A Midsummer Night’s Dream or King Lear. I’m a sucker for magic and horror.

9. A book that in your opinion everyone should read
Modern Nature by Derek Jarman. A poetic masterpiece about the struggle of man and nature, life and death.

10. A book someone passed to you and you passed on.
Fewer Better Things by Glen Adamson. The perfect handbook for our times of underwhelming overconsumption.

Read more about the Harewood Biennial. Planning for next year’s Biennial is well under way, with more details to be released towards the end of the year.

Don’t have a garden? You can make your own miniature garden at home.

Princess Mary was a keen gardener and enjoyed maintaining and developing her own areas of the gardens at Harewood, in particularly the Himalayan Garden and her beloved rockery.

Her love for gardens was such that she built up a small collection of miniature flower ornaments. Some of these are made by Beatrice Hindley, a miniaturist in the 1920s who was commissioned to make all the plants for Queen Mary’s Dolls House at Windsor Castle. It is quite likely that some of Princess Mary’s models were originally made for this purpose.

Hindley’s models are remarkably lifelike and delicate, having spent time experimenting with different metal alloys and surface paints, as well as studying real plant specimens at Kew. There is a small display in Princess Mary’s Garden Room Below Stairs at Harewood.

To bring National Gardening Week to life, Technician Roger Stark created a version of a bowl garden (top) and an activity with his daughter.

Watch this short ‘How to’ video.

Just over four weeks ago, my team and I were walking out of Harewood House, having just finished installing my latest exhibition, Menagerie. We knew then that the exhibition was unlikely to open as planned, but we had no idea quite what we’d be walking into.

We’d spent the last five days in an 18th century architectural bubble, the ideal place to unintentionally self-isolate. The house was shut to the public and operating a skeleton staff – as is usual for the early months of the year – so we were arguably in the safest place in Yorkshire. The install experience was unique and surreal, not just because of the stunning location, but because COVID-19 was unfolding outside the grounds and across the world as we worked.

We tuned into BBC News and listened to the updates echo around the vast rooms, wondering what would be on the other side when we finished. It felt like the beginning of a film: the air was ominous and full of tension, but the plot was yet to unfold. Day by day things seemed to escalate; we spoke to loved ones on the phone and tried to stock our cupboards remotely, but the gravitas of the situation and our surroundings made it seem dreamlike.

The exhibition had been years in the making; there was months of planning, of collecting materials and fabrication – all supported by a team of Harewood House volunteers who had meticulously prepared thousands of feathers. I’d borrowed works from collectors, experimented with new techniques and created new work in the studio. It was a great communal effort, and then…

On 17th March we finished placing my new installation, Cavort, it’s a vast sitespecific pheasant feather piece that now lays dormant in the Yellow Drawing Room. I walked around the empty house, passing Anima and Stifle in the Dining Room, Viscera, Turmoil and Quandary in the Gallery and my earlier installation, Discharge, specially adapted for the Main Library. Behind me, security guards closed the shutters, switched on alarms and prepared for a full lockdown.

I was left wondering if it had actually happened, or if the whole thing was an illusion. My work, so often described as uncanny, was the most normal part of this experience. For me, it was the familiar that was made strange.

Menagerie can be visited at Harewood once the House reopens to the public. For more information on the exhibition, read more here and visit Kate MccGwire’s website, www.katemccgwire.com