Adam Yamey's Blog: YAMEY, page 19

Who is or was the sculptor Ute Sturch?

THIS SCULPTURE STANDING in the foyer of the ActOne cinema in Acton is labelled “The Urchin” and dated 1968. The sculptor is named Ute Sturch. I have searched the Internet for information about the sculptor, but found nothing. Does anyone have any information about the life and work of this creator?

A cinema worth visiting in West London

JUST IN CASE you do not know about it, there is a wonderful independent cinema in West London’s Acton. Called ActOne, it is housed in what was once Acton’s public library. Built between 1898 and 1900, it was one of a series of public libraries financed by the philanthropist Passmore Edwards. Incidentally, the Bush Theatre in Shepherds Bush is also housed in a former Passmore Edwards library.

ActOne has two screens, both with comfortable seating and good sound systems. The public spaces in the library include a bar and a large room with shelves filled with books about cinema. All in all, ActOne is a lovely place to enjoy films.

At Kings Cross railway station

Twenty past five

Beneath the old clock, crowds board trains

At busy Kings Cross

Enticed by espresso from a Portuguese cafe

THERE IS A DENTAL practice in Golborne Road (North Kensington). One afternoon in late 1994, I went to meet its then owner, Mr M, with a view to working there. It so happened that he remembered me from his days as a pre-clinical dental student at University College London. At that time, I was a PhD student and once a week I taught (tutored) physiology to the pre-clinical dental students. I believe that I learned more about the subject than my students while I was teaching them.

Because both of us had studied in the Physiology Department and later at the College’s Dental School, we knew a great deal in common and had much to chat about. While we were talking, Mr M offered me a coffee. He ordered this from the café next door to the surgery. It was some of the best espresso coffee I had tasted for a long time. We reminisced for a couple of hours during which we had one or two more of the superb cups of espresso coffee. He offered me the job, and I accepted. I worked in the practice during the next five years, and then left for another one. Later, Mr M sold the practice, which is now owned by another dentist and is still in business.

The café next door to the practice, Lisboa Patisserie, is also still in business, and the quality of the coffee served there has never been less than excellent. This popular Portuguese establishment also serves a wide range of Portuguese baked products, both sweet and savoury. Although it is now about 25 years since I last worked at the surgery, my wife and I visit the Lisboa Patisserie on average at least once a fortnight.

Yesterday, 29 March 2025, I was standing across the road from the surgery and the café when I noticed the magnificent blossom on a tree standing close to them. Seeing this, brought back memories of how delicious espresso coffee helped to entice me to accept a job at Mr M’s dental practice.

Two men each with a beer mug in their right hands

I FIRST BECAME AWARE of Birra Moretti when I visited the city of Udine in northeast Italy in the late 1960s. This brewery was founded in Udine in1859, Its logo includes a man in a hat, holding a glass tankard of beer in his right hand.

Today, I visited a pub near Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Within the gents’ toilet, I noticed a sticker attached to a cistern. At first sight, it looks like the Birra Moretti logo, After a moment, I saw that it is a parody of the logo issued by a football (soccer) club in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Where the original logo is topped with the words ‘Birra Moretti’, the parodied version has the name ‘Steve Evans’.

And who, you might be wondering, is Steve Evans? Between 2022 and 2024, he was the manager of Stevenage Football Club. During his time in this role, the team won 57 out of 120 matches.

Three generations of artists in one family

SIR WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN (1872-1945) was born of German-Jewish parents in the Yorkshire city of Bradford.  His father was involved in Bradford’s textile business. Trained at the Slade School of Art (part of London’s UCL), William became a well-known painter and cultural figure. Between 1920 and 1935, he was director of the Royal College of Art. Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his work “Gitanjali” to William. One of William’s sons, Michael Rothenstein (1908-1993), who was born in Hampstead, became a noted printmaker. He married Betty Mona Desmond Ayers (née FitzGerald; 1915-2017), who was known as ‘Duffy Ayres’. She was an English portrait painter.

Michael and Duffy had two children, one of whom is Anne Rothenstein (born 1949). She is a self-taught artist, who lives and works in London. Until 12 April 2025, there is an exhibition of her paintings at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London’s Cork Street. Her attractive paintings, which seem deceptively simple when compared with those made by her grandfather William, depict portraits, interiors, and landscapes. However, they are far from simple. They are subtle and sometimes dreamlike. And as the gallery’s handout noted, her portrayal of perspective is unusual: the landscapes seem flattened. The paintings on display are oddly compelling and this along with their somewhat muted colouring, enhanced my enjoyment of Anne’s art.

As soon as we entered the gallery and I saw the artist’s name, I wondered whether she is related to the famous Sir William Rothenstein. When the gallery assistant informed us that she is from the same family, I was excited. Already, I knew of William’s connections with Hampstead and that he hosted Tagore, when the great Bengali visited London, but I had no idea that both his son and his granddaughter were artists (although far less well-known than him).

My first visit to Paris

WHILE SORTING THROUGH some old photographs, I came across some I had taken during my first visit to Paris. It was 1968 and I was 16. I travelled there with my parents on the overnight Silver Arrow, a train that was put on board a ferry to cross the English Channel. We stayed in a hotel on the Ile St Louis. Everything about the city both enchanted and amazed me.

Paris Gare du Nord

The photograph included in this post was taken through the window of my compartment in the Silver Arrow as soon as the train pulled into Paris Gare du Nord.

I have visited Paris many times since 1968, but it was during my first visit that the city impressed me most. Although the photographs I found brought back happy memories, I have no great yearning to visit Paris again in the near future.

A shared taxi and Greeks buried in Kolkata (Calcutta)

Having visited the Jewish cemetery in Kolkata, we hailed an autorickshaw to carry us to College Street. There was already one passenger in the three-wheeler that stopped for us. He moved from his seat in the rear of the vehicle to make room for us, and then sat next to the driver on his seat. After going a short distance, our driver stopped to pick up another passenger, who squeezed into the seat alongside us. She disembarked after we had driven a few blocks further, and handed the driver a few rupees. After we left the autorickshaw and paid the driver a modest fee, the other passenger continued his journey in the vehicle. Like most autorickshaws in Kolkata, the one we had just taken was a shared cab that ran on a pre-determined route.

On the way, our autorickshaw rushed past a gateway on Narkeldanga Main Road, which I noticed was marked “Greek Cemetery”. Established in 1777, it is India’s only Greek cemetery. In Henry Cotton’s encyclopaedic “Calcutta Old and New” (published in 1907), he noted that the first “eminent” Greek settler in Kolkata was Hadjee Alexios Argyree, who arrived in Bengal in 1750, and worked as an interpreter. Other Greeks in Kolkata were involved in trade and commerce. The city’s only Greek church was erected in 1780, and still stands near Kalighat on Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Road, along which we often travel between central Kolkata and Tollygunge to the south of it. The well-maintained building is neo-classical in style, and Greek Orthodox services are held there regularly.  Today, there are few if any Greeks left in Kolkata, and the cemetery in Narkeldanga, home to about 300 graves, is in a sad state of disrepair (according to a report in the online Times of India, dated March 2018).

A pensive heron

In Holland Park

A heron stands looking pensively.

At what I ask?

A museum of money in Kolkata (Calcutta)

BY TAKING A SHORT walk north of Kolkata’s 18th century Church of St John one reaches number 8 Council House Street, now home to the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) Museum. In an interesting article published online, Sudabhip Mukherjee wrote that the museum is housed in what was originally the building constructed for the now non-existent Alliance Bank of Shimla, which flourished from 1874 until 1923. In 2019, the ground floor of this elegant Victorian building constructed in red brick with white stone facings was converted to become the RBI Museum.

The aim of the museum is to give visitors an understanding of all aspects of money and banking from the beginning of time until the present. It achieves this very well using imaginatively designed displays, which render the subject of interest to visitors of all ages. Rather than being a dull museum with conventional display cabinets, the designers of this place have produced displays that are both original and artistic. The visually exciting features begin as soon as you enter the building. For example, the pillars in the entrance hall are decorated with patterns made using out-of-date Indian currency coins, and in the centre of one of the larger display rooms, there is a dramatic sculpture that depicts the circulation of money across the globe. Had we not walked past the entrance to this museum after visiting St Johns Church on a Friday morning in late December 2024, I doubt we would have got to know about it. Many of our friends in Kolkata had never heard about the place.