Charleston Farmhouse

Charleston Farmhouse is a country house in Firle between Lewes and Polegate in Sussex, England. It now houses a small museum dedicated to the Bloomsbury Group with a garden and a small souvenir shop.

History of the building and equipment

1916 leased Vanessa Bell and her lover Duncan Grant the farm house and went with the sons of Vanessa from London there. Charleston became the country meeting place for the Bloomsbury Group, whose regular visitors among other things, the younger sister of Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf, the economist John Maynard Keynes, the writer EM Forster, the biographer and essayist Lytton Strachey and the painter and art theorist Roger Fry belonged. Your social standards were revolutionary for the prudish and often bigoted Victorian era in which they lived. This meant that they lived a life free from traditional social restraints. This was also reflected in the love relationships of the residents who could assign from today's perspective as a relationship form of polyamory. At times, lived well as other members of the Bloomsbury Group in the country house, among them the lover Duncan Grant, David Garnett, as well as Vanessa's husband Clive Bell with his girlfriend. Duncan Grant's lover later married Angelica Bell, the daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

The interior of Charleston Farm House was designed by the artists among residents, especially by Vanessa Bell, but also of Duncan Grant, in which they own decorative style artistic design, inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post- Impressionists. How to find yourself in a room as a closet ornament designs by Pablo Picasso, as well as a painted greyhound under and a peacock on the window. Several walls and mantels, as well as the dining room table are decorated with circles, Vanessa Bell 's favorite subject. In the dining room a picture in the style of Henri Matisse depends. It can be found painted doors, bathtubs, beds, self-designed tableware, lamps and much more. Even the tiles in the kitchen stove have been a member of the House, Quentin Bell, a son of Vanessa Bell, customized. Several of the substances with which the furniture is based were designed himself. These are all reasons why the house and the furniture was later viewed as works of art and the farm house was bought in 1985 by the Charleston Trust. Today, an immense conservation effort of the originally intended only for the moment, but not for eternity art is necessary.

Events and Exhibitions

Every year in May for one to one and a half weeks in the garden of Charleston Farmhouse predominantly dominated literary Charleston Festival. Previous guests were there. Including Peter Bazalgette, Jung Chang, Michael Frayn, Patrick Garland, Stephen Poliakoff, Patti Smith, Sarah Waters, Polly Toynbee and Simon Schama It also houses an exhibition program that included up to now the following artists: Norman Ackroyd, Stephen Finer, Derek Jarman, Desmond Morris, Tom Phillips, photographs of Patti Smith, Sir John Tenniel, and others.

Furthermore, there is still an event, ' The Quentin Follies ', which takes place on a single evening and the proceeds will be used to works of art by members of the Bloomsbury Group to repurchase, which are privately owned. ' The Quentin Follies ' is by Quentin Bell, son of Vanessa Bell, named. It takes place in the form of a silent auction held, donated works of art to which an evening variety show is one whose range of opera performances to stand-up comedy enough.