At the Angels’ Table
Across the table sits a blue-eyed angel, muse and goddess, drinking Earl Grey tea. Tomorrow she is 86 years old, but surrounding her are images and incarnations of her immortality. These include two that I encountered in 1996 amongst the stacked chairs and broken printers in the entrance hall of Fison’s, a fertiliser manufacturer in Ipswich, England. Now, as then, they bend the light and appear to move and shimmer between the dust motes, fooling you to think someone or something is there. They were the three Roman goddesses of agriculture, Flora, Pomona and Ceres, a larger-than-life trio engraved on clear glass panels.
Made in 1961, and now rescued from that entrance hall, and grace the living-room windows of The Studio Barn in Clifden Hampden, Oxfordshire, the home of their late expatriate creator, John Hutton. The living goddess, his wife and muse Marigold Hutton, finishes her tea and comments on the circular nature of life. These two are the only full-size panels she has of her husband’s, and yet they are the ones I first encountered. They are typical Hutton figures of the period, inspired by the distortion in medieval French gothic cathedral stonework, elongated bodies with confident sharp slashes, curves and shading. These form strong design elements, exploring the engraving tools’ abstract mark-making qualities within a
