Arty mixed bag

something for the weekend

Jun 12, 2026

David Hockney, 20 Flowers for 2025 (taken at Salts Mill)

Today is very much a mixed bag of Content in Brief…

Being English

There is a lot of rain in June (!!!!!) exasperation going around. I hear you. I even had to sink as low as putting on a sock yesterday which I was very cross about. But equally, you know what happens in June? Glastonbury. You know a place that is heavily documented to be a mud bath rain soaked nightmare? There you go. Nothing new to see here. The sun does seem to have come out momentarily! Who knows what might happen next week.

Netball news

I see New York has succumbed to the affliction of Arsenalification which spread through London recently. Everyone’s a Knicks fan now, eh?

The Rivals / The Pitt yin yang disruption

I had been very much enjoying the relief of Rivals after a tense instalment of The Pitt on Friday nights. But now there is a hellish months long wait until the second half of Rivals comes back in November (November!!!). A devilish scheduling move. What even is life.

Fashion pots

The later stage of fashion people often ends up in pottery. Enter Christopher Bailey, ex CEO and creative head of Burberry as ceramics newest recruit. He got to leave Burbs in 2018 with pots of money and seems to have been having a nice time ever since. On a personal level I still feel mild trauma recalling the time Paloma Faith ‘sang’ live in a giant (boiling hot) green house structure near the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. But I’m not sure quite how relevant that is?

Anyway, this week it was announced that he has bought Burleigh Pottery, the Stoke on Trent based ceramic brand founded in 1851 beloved apparently by (checks the internet), Timothee Chalamet? We shouldn’t hold that against it though.

Less lucky in patrons is Denby Pottery, the Derbyshire based, 217 year old ceramics house which has fired its last pot, documented on Instagram, as Roger, an employee of 54 years standing, pushed the last trolley of good out of the workshop to a standing ovation.

A failed campaign to save the pottery firm has resulted in around 130 redundancies and the loss of a British heritage brand and the associated skills honed within its walls. If however, you feel the nostalgic pull of the sort of plates your granny might have had, there is a very good clearance sale on its website. I might have snapped up some new plates. Is that the wrong attitude? Its the only one I have.

Last Hockney

The sad news of David Hockney’s death prompted me to turn the house upside down. Earlier this year I visited Salts Mill, the former mill turned art gallery/shop/restaurant outside Bradford. It houses the largest permanent collection of Hockney artworks. It’s a wonderful place which really tempts you to buy a giant sketch book and see what you can do when you get home. Anyway, it also has a brilliant collection of (Hockney) prints for sale and I treated myself to one. I realised I really must get it framed, then couldn’t find the thing, then spent the entire morning ripping the house apart to locate it. Reader, it had fallen behind a bookcase next to the washing machine. That’s also why this edition is a little tardy. Will be off to the framers with it next week.

Without being too trite, it always feels lucky to exist in the world at the same time as such brilliant humans. It feels a little less magical now without him in it now, but what a trove of wondrous things we are left with.

a terrible picture of the print I bought - isn’t she fab?

In other arty news

I popped into Sotheby’s earlier to take a look at the Lewis Collection, which will go on sale on 24th June. It’s poised to break all sorts of art world records. Clever/lucky old billionaire and former Tottenham owner Joe Lewis has amassed quite the gamut of treasures - Picassos, Degas, Freuds, Kilmt, Magritte, Modigliani. Nuts really. I mean to be bitchy, it’s all a little obvious, very, I went to the National Gallery once… Anyway, I was pleased my clever friend took me in there as I always forget that you can have a good old look at fabulous things up close in auction houses. Would recommend.