The Passage

The Wedgwood pink lustre tea service on a shelf near the entrance to the hall was painted by Thérèse Lessore (1884-1955), the wife of the painter Walter Sickert. She was herself an accomplished artist, as can be seen by her painting Hop Pickers (no. 141), which hangs above.

The pair of giltwood side-tables are Italian and of late eighteenth-century date. On one are five pieces of contemporary glass sculpture. The two coloured pieces, each entitled Aesculus, are by Stephen Gillies and Kate Jones who combined their skills to create these natural forms inspired by the horse chestnut seed. The mirrored pieces, Resolving Significance (on the left) and Degrees of Separation VIII (on the right), are by Sally Fawkes, whose great gift as a glassmaker is for producing work employing extraordinary reflective qualities. In between these pieces is a work by her partner Richard Jackson, entitled First Intention VII and acquired in 2017.

On the other table are two alabaster Egyptian canopic jars and a bronze by Philip Blacker (1993) of the racehorse Remittance Man with his inseparable companion, Nobby the sheep. Beneath this table stands a large Caltagirone maiolica vase from Sicily, dated 1730, and under the other is a Japanese Imari vase.

The marble statue of the goddess Diana, is of the Hellenistic period (late 1st-early 2nd century AD), but has been much restored.  It stands on a Roman funerary altar commemorating a girl of sixteen.  On the pedestal sits a Renaissance-costumed bronze, Love’s Coronet, by the Arts & Crafts sculptor-metalworker Sir William Reynolds-Stephens (1862-1943). One of his most important works, it is dated 1902 and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1902 and 1903.
 

The Estate Office,

Buscot Park, Faringdon,

Oxfordshire SN7 8BU.

Telephone: 01367 240786

Email: estbuscot@aol.com