WALKING WITH BOLLARDS

 

When I first got back to England after 15 years or so living in Los Angeles, I rented a small flat in London and walked the streets noticing things, and sometimes taking photographs. For some of us, walking and noticing are inseparable: that’s what walking is for.

       And among the things I noticed and photographed in London were bollards.  Now these are surely not a uniquely British thing: it seems that people all over the world would want to use something or other to block streets and traffic, but London seemed to have more than I’d ever seen anywhere in the States, though it seems that the American usage generally refers to posts on the side of a river or wharf, the things that boats are tied up to.  I stand to be corrected on this.

 

After a while, having acclimatized to London and England, I sort of forgot about bollards – well, I didn’t really forget, I just got distracted by noticing other things - though not before the inamorata had given me the fine print seen beside me in this picture (thanks young Caroline).  It’s attributed to Matt Brown/Londonist, and the highlight of the print is the J.G. Bollard.

 

But lately I’ve been reading Edwin Heathcote’s On the Street: In-Between Architecture, a book about street furniture.  It’s full of great pictures, many taken by EH on his walking travels, along with photographs by some of the greats – Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Leavitt, Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, Eugene Atget and others.

Heathcote is a great noticer and his noticing often overlaps with my own minor obsessions - public benches, discarded gloves, manhole covers, Thomassons, and as it happens, bollards. He confirms that bollards are indeed international and cites examples in Rome, Siena and Amsterdam, says that they’re ‘the ultimate symbol of defence and defiance’ and concludes that ‘the future is absolute bollards.’

 

Suddenly I started to find bollards interesting again. Even so I felt they were a big city thing, but finding myself in Mistley, a somewhat picturesque village on the Stour Estuary in Essex, though one with a maritime and light industrial element, they seemed to be everywhere.

And then, on Mistley Quay - which is a highly contested place – we can talk about it elsewhere – there were these bad boys:

 

A local information sign referred to them as bollards, ie the things that boats are tied up to as per the American usage. So much to learn, so much still to notice.

 

 

HOBBLING WITH OBELISKS

 As I’ve said before, I accept that not everybody is as moved by and as interested in obelisks as I am.  But once you start looking for them they pop up all over the place – you’ll be walking along and boom – there it is, often in the least likely place.  

 

Let’s say, for example, one afternoon you’re ambling in Mistley in Essex, just up the road from where I live, and you see a garden containing a tall, green topiary obelisk, well you’re going to be impressed by that: but wait. 

Then you walk a little further up the street and you see that behind the live, growing obelisk there’s a wooden garden obelisk, as they’re called.  These aren’t really obelisks in any real sense – they're not made from one piece and they lack the all-important pyramidion –  but they’re still a good thing.

 

And then say, one night having been to a lecture by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan on the lost gardens of London, and you’re walking along the Albert Embankment between Lambeth and Vauxhall, and you see this thing tucked away behind a hoarding.  I took a picture, not sure what I was taking a photograph of.  A spot of Photoshopping helped a little, but only a little.

Some online research reveals that it’s standing tight beside the headquarters of the International Maritime Organisation: 

and further messing about with Google streetview indicates it’s actually in a car park.  

More than that I don’t know, but I’m inclined to think it must be some kind of ventilation duct, most likely for the Tube, like this one in honour of George Dance the Younger, who laid out the Finsbury Estate in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Frankly it seems to me that if you’re going to have a ventilation duct for a subterranean railway, then why wouldn’t you have it in the shape of an obelisk? 

And then, and I don’t want you to think my life is glamorous or colourful or anything, but last week I was given a personal tour of the Charles Jencks’ Cosmic House (currently under refurbishment).  My guide was Edwin Heathcote, who writes about architecture and design in the Financial Times, and is also ‘The Keeper of Meaning’ at the house – a job title that’s hard to improve on. (I get to call him Eddie).

 

And as we walked through the postmodern and indeed cosmic wonders of the house, there were obelisks galore, small ones, decorative objects, many of which if I understood Mr. Heathcote correctly, were bought by Jencks on souvenir stalls around the pyramids in Cairo. 

 

There was also this marvelous and unusual tableau, someone working at a computer while bracketed by obelisks.  I may have to find a way of doing that myself.