Latest news with #PowderhamCastle
BBC News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Devon exhibition to look at the bigger picture of the colour blue
Describing them as never-ending "jigsaw puzzles", Jane Perkins creates huge collages out of tiny found toys, buttons and everyday things are recycled and carefully placed to make striking portraits or recreate grand artist Gillian Taylor has collected 2,000 pictures of the sky every day since the Covid-19 they are both taking part in a new exhibition called The Coolest Colour - dedicated to the colour blue - being held at Powderham Castle in Devon. Jane realised she had a talent for making the collages after making a picture of Queen Elizabeth II. Portraits of other famous faces including Adele and Ed Sheeran followed. Jane said making pictures of recognised people was a sure fire way of making sure the collages said: "It's a bit addictive. I just keep thinking I will put in one more piece, one more piece."It's so hard to stop... it's taken over two bedrooms."Each picture reveals a carefully curated world of tiny objects; some nearly new, some vintage, but all with their own a step back, and the pieces combine to create a recognisable face, or famous work of art when viewed from further said: "I used to think I had to do famous recognisable people, so people would get the humour of seeing someone really familiar but created in an unusual way." It was a commission from Time Magazine of the singer Taylor Swift, to announce her as their Person of the Year for 2023, that marked Jane's work out as having an international said: "It was top secret at first... I was just bowled over I couldn't believe I had been contacted by Time Magazine."They wanted all the things that she was known for included in the portrait; things from her songs, that her fans would recognise."So I included, amongst other things, a clock set to midnight, a red scarf, and a seagull." As well as portraits of famous people, Jane has also recreated the work of old of her collages can be seen at the new art replicating the work of van Gogh and her portrait of the current blue-eyed Earl of Devon are all in the said: "People enjoy identifying things. Also some people give me things they'd like included." Looking carefully at the portrait of Charles Courtney (in the gallery above) and there are little nods to his picture includes a fallow deer often seen on the estate, and even a Powderham Castle said: "Lots of the paintings we have at Powderham, even the grand ones by people like Thomas Hudson and Joshua Reynolds, were from Devon."Devon has a long tradition of great portrait artists, with Jane joining it, despite her being very modest and shy. The exhibition is in partnership with artist Gillian Taylor, whose love of the colour blue is also evident in the photos she took of the sky every single day since the Covid lockdown. Collecting nearly 2,000, the most vibrant form her piece Sky News, making up a window in the castle for the said: "I took a photograph of the sky and it was a perfect rectangle of blue."I posted on social media and said at least we have blue skies and I got lots of comments."I did the same the next day, and the next, and I just sort of got addicted to it." Both artists have been collectors of either many images or objects to create their pieces and concentrate on their favourite colour continues to take photos of the sky daily and Jane now has to professional collectors seeking out and finding items to include in her Coolest Colour exhibition is on at Powderham until the end of October.
BBC News
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Powderham Castle's attic 'treasures' make £540k at auction
Unusual "treasures" from a Devon castle's attic have been sold at auction for more than half a million Earl of Devon detailed some of the items discovered at Powderham Castle, which were auctioned on Tuesday, including canon and some pieces from Charlie Courtenay said: "We had a famous uncle who was the commander of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in about 1900, [he] went off to Peking during the Boxer Rebellion and managed to bring back a bunch of treasures from China including the carrying poles of the sedan chair of the last emperor of China." The chair poles were expected to receive between £8,000 and £12,000 at auction but achieved £40,000, auctioneers Dreweatts said. Lord Courtenay said the process of deciding what would stay and what would be auctioned had been "really fun".He said it was "giving old objects new life". "These things will be really interesting and will be an absolute star of the show in their home, whereas at Powderham they've been sitting sort of undisturbed in an attic for 60 or 70 years." Of the sedan chair poles, Lord Courtenay said: "We figured it's probably about time that they returned either to China or to some Chinese enthusiast rather than being hidden away in the corner of a castle in Devon."He added: "There are so many things squirreled away in the castle attics and in the tops of the towers. There are a few real treasures."He said items that would not be auctioned included a crusading coin of Jocelyn de Courtenay, which was found in a picture frame, and a banyan silk dressing gown that had belonged to the third viscount. The auction on Tuesday achieved a total of £540,890, which will go towards restoring parts of the castle."We reroofed the castle during the pandemic, built the new welcome centre but there's a whole bunch of rooms that sort of require refreshing," Lord Courtenay added the upstairs library "got quite damaged a couple of years ago but [we] managed to do the major repairs and now we need to do the interiors."It's jobs like that, where you are sort of restoring heritage. And you know if we raise sufficient funds we'll be able to put some of those projects in place."
Telegraph
01-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
‘You don't build a medieval manor house with a great hall to sit on your own'
Charlie Courtenay, 19th Earl of Devon, has been having a clear-out. At his home, Powderham Castle near Exeter, 'up in the attics and roofs there's what we refer to as the 'wild archives',' he says, 'just a bunch of stuff that we never really get to'. Now the wild archives are no more. Next week Dreweatts auctioneers will sell 209 pieces from the Powderham attics, as well as 172 lots from the Earl of Yarborough's Brocklesby Park in Lincolnshire. It isn't a downsizing sale; more of a consolidation. 'Powderham spends a lot of its time being used for public events, and every time you do that you're lifting and shifting, so it's not nearly as fully furnished as it once was,' says Lord Devon. The castle is open six days a week, nine months of the year, with a vibrant events calendar. This summer it will host Duran Duran as well as comedian Frank Skinner, food festivals and Shakespearean productions. This is exactly what it ought to be doing, says Lord Devon. 'You don't build a medieval manor house with a great hall to sit on your own and not see people. You build it for the purpose of entertaining and bringing people together. I'm strongly of the view that Powderham does today what Sir Philip Courtenay intended to do when he built it in the 1390s.' The auction is an eclectic mix. Lots range from a pocket telescope (est. £80-120) to a George VI coronation chair (est. £300-500), a pair of three-metre tall mahogany and parcel-gilt cabinets (est. £5,000-10,000), and a pair of rare Chinese imperial Qiangjin and Cloisonné sedan chair poles (est. £8,000-12,000). Lord Devon has long had 'a bit of heartburn around sales'. In August, it will be a decade since he succeeded his father to both the earldom and Powderham, and the same week he will turn 50. With this has come a realisation. 'It's very easy to sit there and do nothing, and hold on to everything like the dragon in Lord of the Rings,' he says. 'But that's not creative. I've done a lot of work retaining stuff and it's time to get my arms around the collection and responsibly manage it. That requires letting some stuff go to make room – and hopefully raise some funds to assist in our programme of works.' Lord Devon's father Hugh was born in the state bed at Powderham in May 1942, on the night the Luftwaffe bombed Exeter. Since it was wartime, no beacons were lit nor cannons fired in recognition of his arrival, and his mother Venetia was heard to remark: 'poor little heir. No church bells. No fireworks.' Post-war, Venetia and her husband Christopher Courtenay, 17th Earl of Devon, poured all of their efforts into Powderham. First, they established a finishing school, before in 1960 the house opened to the public, with Powderham's 116-year-old tortoise Timothy in tow with a label attached that read: 'My name is Timothy. I am very old. Please do not pick me up.' 'They were very enterprising,' says Lord Devon of his grandparents. 'I often think that I run their business, which my dad did a great job developing.' The Devons were totally wedded to their titular county. Christopher never once spoke in the House of Lords in his 63 years as a member, nor did he partake in much of aristocratic society – possibly since his 1939 marriage to Venetia had been preceded by scandal. The pair had met when Christopher was still at prep school, and Venetia was the young bride of his second cousin, Mark Pepys, 6th Earl of Cottenham. After Venetia attended Christopher's coming-of-age in July 1937, the pair fell in love, and when Mark Cottenham sought a divorce from Venetia, he cited Christopher as a co-respondent. Following both this, and his experiences in North Africa – where he was shot through his helmet on Christmas Day – Christopher retreated to Devon with what would likely be diagnosed now as PTSD. He pursued a policy of never opening any of his post and, as his stepdaughter Lady Rose Pepys remembered, 'set about becoming an old man,' in his 30s. Finances were tight. By the time Christopher succeeded his father the Reverend Frederick Courtenay, 16th Earl of Devon, in June 1935, there had been a succession of deaths meaning that Powderham came with triple death duties. The Devons' estate, which had been over 53,000 acres in the 1880s, was severely reduced. Today, it is just 3,500 acres. The Courtenays' legacy is ancient: they were founding members of the Order of the Garter; fought at Poitiers, Agincourt and Bosworth; and had William of Orange to dinner on the first night of the Glorious Revolution. Lord Devon is the 19th earl dating from the fifth creation in 1553, but his ancestors have been earls of Devon, one way or another, since the 1140s. When both his father and aunt Lady Kate Watney died within two months of one another in 2015, Lord Devon became not only head of the family but also 'the authority,' he says. 'I was always the one asking the history questions and I thought, 'there's no one I can go to to tell me whether that's right or wrong'. That was a big loss.' He is also almost the last of the line, only his 15-year-old son Jack, Lord Courtenay, is in line to succeed him. 'Despite being a very long-established title, the earldom of Devon is a very weedy one.' He feels strongly about his role, and was elected to the House of Lords as a cross-bencher in 2018, becoming the most visible Lord Devon for several generations. 'I had a real interest in what the earldom meant and it wasn't until I got into the Lords and started offering some of the stories in the context of providing perspective to our legislative process that I realised there aren't many of us who are feudal earls with that sort of continuity,' he says. He believes that part of being a hereditary peer is to have a role in the Lords, though when the remaining hereditaries exit the upper chamber, he will remain a 'flag-waver' for Devon. 'I am fortunate to live in and run a business in the county of which I am the earl,' he says. 'We call Powderham 'the home of Devon'. Just because I'm not able to contribute to the legislative process, there's still that ability to provide a sense of perspective for the country – and a sense of identity for the region.'
