Ruskin's Fern

There are some lovely books in Jim Ede and in Helen Ede's library. I have taken photographs and am making watercolours of some of the illustrations.  A book on Eric Gill lists his likes as being:
"Persian Rugs, Bricks and Iron Girders, Tools, Steam engines, Folk Song, Caligraphy [sic], Toys (not some few modern ones tho.), Animals, Men and Women physically regarded, Hair, Lines, String, Plaited Straw, Beer & so on."

I wondered which of these Jim Ede also liked, there are a lot of persian rugs at Kettle's Yard, some of them came from the Fitzwilliam and were too tatty to display at the museum.  My friend, the artist Hayley Lock slept in Ruskin's bed last year and found it a very unsettling experience. Perhaps because her friend Lucinda Hawksley (Dickens' great, great, great granddaughter) has researched Ruskin thoroughly and it seems that Ruskin, like Gill may have loved little girls a little too much. I enjoyed making a cyanotype of the fern that Hayley brought back from Ruskin's garden, as Freud compares them to pubic hair it seemed very apt.

I would love to know what Helen Ede loved. Nature, food and her children so far I hear, collecting mushrooms in a wood and picking flowers in a field, lying down in a copse.

Ruskin, lover of nature but most certainly not of pubic hair on ladies.

Here are some of my likes: