Hawkshead, again.

A week in the old farmhouse just outside Hawkshead, with our friends.  We were blessed with the most beautiful weather, unlike March when we never saw the sun.  The property is set in extensive gardens running up against woodland, so we were surrounded by birdsong.  Each evening we were able to sit out on the terrace overlooking the valley and eat our evening meal.  We enjoyed it all the more for its rarity.

Bluebells were out in force in the woodlands and we did many low level walks to tarns and beside lakes.

On the Monday we drove through Sawrey to the ferry across Windermere, and on, via a garage where our car needed some attention, to Blackwell, the Arts and Crafts house.

 We had seen that the current exhibition is of furniture made by The Rusland Movement.  My husband has made a bit of furniture himself, so we were interested to be able to hear their designer explaining some of the processes involved.  

Some of their pieces are just the sort of thing one could find room for.

Their clients commission pieces to fit specific spaces.  I don't seem to have a picture of the cocktail cabinet, with slate shelves and quilted lime-green leather interior but if you had a spare eighteen thousand you could order one.

This settle was made specifically for the exhibition, for the white drawing room. The back is not one piece of wood, but twenty layers of sycamore veneer glued together and bent in a jig to form that lovely curve.  Such ingenuity.