ReCollection: Kettle's Yard Oral History Archive

1894

Helene (Helen) Schlapp is born on 9 January in Edinburgh. Her father was professor of German at Edinburgh University

1895

Harold Stanley ‘Jim’ Ede is born on 7 April in Penarth, near Cardiff.
Jim attends the Leys School, Cambridge. He leaves school early and goes to live in France for a year.

1910-14

Jim studies painting at Stanhope Forbes academy in Newlyn, Cornwall. He meets Helen in the spring of 1913, during a visit to the Edinburgh School of Art, where she is a student.

1914-19

Jim serves as an officer on the Western Front during the First World War. Having been wounded (and possibly suffering from shell-shock), he returns to Cambridge to recruit and train officer cadets at Trinity College. He is then posted to India for 18 months.

1919-21

Jim moves to London and studies at the Slade School of Art.

1921

Helen and Jim are married in January. In March Jim leaves the Slade to become Photographic Assistant at the National Gallery. Helen takes up the post of art teacher at King Alfred’s School, Hampstead. Their first daughter, Elisabeth, is born in November. After a number of moves they settle at 1 Elm Row, Hampstead bought for them by Jim’s father.

1922-36

Jim holds a curatorial post at the Tate Gallery and acts as Secretary to the Contemporary Art Society.

1924

Jim and Helen meet Ben and Winifred Nicholson and later, through them, Christopher Wood. David Jones also becomes a close friend. Their second daughter Mary is born in August.

1927

Jim purchases almost the entire output (including the correspondence) of the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

1929

Jim begins corresponding with Alfred Wallis and buying his paintings.

1931

Jim writes a book entitled ‘Savage Messiah’ about the life of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

1936

Jim resigns from the Tate Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society. He and Helen begin spending part of the year in Tangier, where they commission a house designed by Jim, White Stone. Elisabeth and Mary accompany them for a year 1937-8 then return to Great Britain to a boarding school in Edinburgh.

1937-43

Accompanied by Helen, Jim travels frequently to the United States to give lectures on art.

1943-45

The Edes return to Britain. They are involved in educational activities in support of the war effort.

1945

Jim and Helen move permanently to Tangier. At White Stone they habitually entertain small groups of soldiers stationed at Gibraltar. At some stage Jim and Helen move to Cardiff and Hampstead for a short while.

1952

In April Jim and Helen move to Les Charlottières, a farmhouse near Blois, in the Loire Valley, France. Jim travels to the United States for his last lecture tour.

1956

The Edes move to Cambridge, in part because Helen has a pre-existing heart condition which is getting worse.

1957

With help from the architect Roland Aldridge, Jim renovates four dilapidated 19th century cottages, converting them into a single house. At the end of the year, the Edes’ new home, Kettle's Yard, is opened to university students every weekday afternoon during term.

1958

Jim resumes collecting and over the following years he befriends and acquires work by new artists, including Italo Valenti, George Kennethson and Elisabeth Vellacott.

1963

Duncan Robinson, in his second year at Clare College, meets Jim and Helen, the start of a long friendship with the Edes and an intense involvement with Kettle's Yard, which included curating exhibitions and, later, in his role as Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, serving on the Kettle's Yard Committee until his retirement in 2007.

1966

Kettle's Yard is given to the University of Cambridge, with Jim staying as ‘honorary curator’.
Nicholas Serota and Richard Cork start visiting Kettle’s Yard as undergraduates at Cambridge.