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Ellie, 8, describing the paperweight on the table by the library


Children

Transcript
Hello, my name is Ellie and we are in Kettle's Yard. We are upstairs near a book place and they've got a nice sculpture what I really like and it's like round and it looks like its got some bubbles in it and like a swirl, and it looks like it's got a really big bubble and it's like you can feel like emotions in your head, like you’re in a swirly place.

Jim writing Savage Messiah in 1931 and Helen's support


Elisabeth Swan

Transcript
I've got 1931 for Savage Messiah and when did Jim resign from the Tate? '36. So it was near the end of his time at the Tate that he was writing that book, which will have added to his burdens. Helen helped a great deal with the book. I mean, in every department, Jim always got a lot of common sense and encouragement from Helen although at the same time she sometimes... she got very fed up and hard pressed by the sort of things she was made to do and she must have been very exhausted and often longed for a more normal life and yet she knew he wouldn't be happy living a normal life. She was totally loyal but at the same time suffered a good deal.

Visiting with only one staff member and invigilating in the mid 1970s


Mike Tooby

Transcript
You went past the person on the door and then you were on your own. Now, I do realise that... I mean, in retrospect, I gradually discovered that that was particular to that moment but, at the time, that was one of the great joys of it. The job of the person down at the door, I later discovered, was to establish that the person was welcome, sign the book, any routine things like, 'Would you like to leave a bag and a coat?' Later on we introduced a photo permit. The overwhelming impression was of it being quiet and free of people. You might meet one or two other people there. Quite often the people that one met would be people who, like me, would just find somewhere to sit and sit there, maybe read a book, maybe bring a book with them to sit and read. The invigilator down at the door might occasionally, if they felt confident, go up and have a walk around and see where whoever was in the house had got to, but of course if you did that you got too far away and you couldn't hear the bell. What worried one was that someone would turn away if the door wasn't opened straight away so you tended to stay by the door.

Walking in Tangier, 1937/38, and Helen's love of literature


Elisabeth Swan

Transcript
Their house was up on the mountain and one got very fond of the scenery, I mean, it was really Mediterranean scenery with wonderful views of the sea. We went every evening for a walk round the back which was quite a rough walk and we'd go to the Mediterranean coast and Mummy was always quoting, 'Nobly, nobly Cape St Vincent to the North-west died away; sunset ran, one glorious blood red, reeking into Cadiz Bay'. You know, she came out with quotations at the drop of a hat. She was so familiar with English literature really and poetry. So we really loved those walks and then we often had a session of being read to from a nice book before we went to bed.

Developing an exhibition across the house and the gallery in 2007


Edmund de Waal

Transcript
There is always the difficulty, what can you possibly bring into Kettle's Yard? How can you possibly dare to move something around in Kettle's Yard? So that would have been a kind of project which would have been very difficult, would have framed me entirely within Jim's aesthetic, but to get the chance to do something in the gallery as well, meant that I could show where I got to with my thinking and also have a conversation with Kettle's Yard and that was wonderful, absolutely wonderful and it's been by far the most complicated and stimulating exhibition I've ever had to do and it's moved me on in lots and lots of ways. What I wanted to do was to reflect my own experience of the house so there were three or four different experiences I wanted to bring out, my own conversation with the house. So, for instance, one of my great conversations with Kettle's Yard is about reading, reading and pots, so that the piece in the library was very much about... instead of sitting down and reading a book, you sat down and had a pot there instead of a book.