Where chairs transform

These are some of the chairs we’ll be helping Kettle’s Yard to conserve over the next three years.

For those of you who aren’t aware of the Kettle’s Yard story, the now gallery was once the Cambridge home of Jim and Helen Ede, who, through friendships with artists and makers during the 20th century, gathered a remarkable collection that is still more or less as Jim arranged it - to allow subtle conversations between pieces from different times and places.

Jim believed art belonged to everyone, and in art’s ability to transform lives. He envisaged Kettle’s Yard as ‘a living place where works of art could be enjoyed…where young people could be at home unhampered by the greater austerity of the museum or public art gallery.’

The chairs at Kettle’s Yard, chosen and positioned to encourage unhurried contemplation, embody this. The guys at the front desk this morning told me that some people enter the house with the first morning tour, often with a book to read, and stay for the whole day.