Few cities around the world are as distinguishable by their building material as Bath. The Georgian city in the south-west of England is full of honey-hued town houses with towering columns and cornicing, all in local Bath stone. Recognisable by its warm colour, Bath stone is a type of limestone formed 150mn years ago, when the city was under the sea.
This material is being celebrated at Francis Gallery, which opened in a Grade II-listed town house in the city in 2019. The exhibition, titled (Of) Bath MMXXII, features architectural photographs by Rich Stapleton, alongside laptop-sized stone fragments hung like paintings and sculptural stone furniture.
The stone creations were made from salvaged slabs by London-based design studio James Plumb. “We found them all in what is known as the graveyard,” says co-founder Hannah Plumb. “There’s an enormous yard where all the broken pieces, offcuts or over-ordered bits of stone get stacked,” she says.
Architects and interior designers would usually source fresh, clean blocks from nearby quarries rather than a reclamation yard.
“Hunting around in the dust, we uncovered all these accidental artworks; these images in the stone that have patinated over time because of the weather,” says Plumb. The offcuts had been left exposed to the elements for about a decade, creating patterns and texture in their surfaces.
“We were hypnotised by them, to us they were abstract artworks,” says James Russell, Plumb’s husband. The duo met at Wimbledon School of Art in 1999 and founded James Plumb studio together in 2009; today, they create designs including lighting, objects and interior spaces.
The 22 works in (Of) Bath MMXXII are their first foray into art. Pieces in the exhibition include A4-sized bricks, imprinted with angular markings in black and grey. Others are covered in pastel-coloured lime-wash paint, saved from old walls pulled down during renovation works. Some were affixed to legs, forming sculptural coffee tables and benches. After sealing and stabilising the surfaces, they cut them down to size.
Viewers are invited to look closely at the surface of the stone as an object in itself, rather than as part of a larger structure. “They reminded us of grainy photographs, or works by Rothko or Robert Neuman,” says Russell. Glimpses of iron ore, mottling from lichen or little fossils of shells can be seen.
“The value we’re placing on it is different to the construction value per cubic tonne of stone,” says Russell. Conveying that to the stonemasons was novel.
“We kept calling them every day, saying, do you really understand?” he laughs. “We were saying, ‘This is the side that’s important to us, this is the face.’ It wasn’t just, ‘Can you cut this block 25mm?’ ”
While they’re heavy, he says, hanging stone is no different to affixing large mirrors to the wall.
As a material, it’s warm and inviting, almost powdery, with a gentle tactility that feels cosy compared with other stones. “It’s a very porous stone, so it’s nice acoustically,” says Plumb.
In Francis, which is decorated more like a home than a traditional “white cube” gallery space, a triptych hangs above a stone fireplace designed by Fred Rigby; the table is on a stripped wooden floor, which is covered with rugs.
Rosa Park, Francis’s owner and curator, plans to hang one of these textural stone pieces in her Spanish colonial home in Los Angeles; she’s also installing the material in the floors of the gallery’s LA outpost.
“As a material it’s so timeless,” she says. “It can either feel grey, cool and elegant or have this radiant warmth, depending on the light.” Bringing it inside, she says, “changes the dynamic of the space”.
In 2019, Russell and Plumb designed the Aesop store in Bath, installing hand-hewn stone sinks and jagged-edge shelving. “Stone is really robust so it works well inside,” says Plumb. Indeed, during the exhibition installation, the duo’s toddler was clambering over the coffee table. “The stone has survived this long, it’s not exactly going to get broken,” she laughs.
In the gallery, these works feel prehistoric yet modern. On some lime-washed slabs, viewers can see multiple layers of chalky pastel paint, the remnants of interior decor. Others are punctured with nails or covered in splatters of paint.
“The thing about these stone pieces is that nature created them,” says Park. “They were found and cut, and are quite literally one of one.”
Until September 10; francisgallery.co
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