At the Pheasantry, London, 1968
Birgitta Bjerke: At the Pheasantry, London, 1968 | Crochet clothing | Martin Sharp Archive | Philippe Mora |
Inside the Pheasantry, London, 1968
Artworks by Birgitta Bjerke
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| Birgitta Bjerke, Ibiza, 1968 |
Contents
- Who, what, where
- Artworks
- Sharp et al.
- References
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1. Who, what and where?
During 1968, or late 1969, a 27 year old Stockholm native by the name of Birgitta Bjerke was a visitor to The Pheasantry, a grand, three-storey townhouse complex on Kings Road, Chelsea. During that period it was occupied by a host of Australians, including artists Martin Sharp and Philippe Mora, writer Germain Greer and photographer Bob Whitaker. Cream guitarist Eric Clapton was also sharing the upper floor area with Sharp, and in the basement local up and coming rock bands often performed.
Bjerke had with her at the time a small sketchbook, and took it out one day to produce a collection of colour works recording the interior part of the building where Sharp, Clapton and Mora resided. Photographic copies of the works were taken by her in 2011 and forwarded in an email to Charlotte Martin and Mora on 26 September of that year. In that email Bjerke stated:
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| The Pheasantry, London. |
These are the drawings of mine which Bob [Whitaker] documented at that mini reunion we had in LA....... might have been mid' 19 eigthties.???? I remember well when I MADE these drawings, probably 1968?, not sure....... I sat on the backrest, feet on the seat of a chair, to get some height on the perspective, book in my lap and just drew it all free hand !!!!!!!.... two different size Rapidograph Pens...... When I was in London 2006 I walked into the Pheasantry, now a pizza parlor, and ambled up the stairs... trying to even remotely recognize what once was... not possible, but I took a picture... or two of what I presumed to be the stair case.... just then I was 'detected' and in stern words admonished to depart the premises.... so I did and continued.... to try to relocate the Chelsea Antique Market.... which had a For Sale sign on it.... (Birgitta Bjerke, email to the author, 26 September 2011).
The present writer subsequently contacted the artist and obtained some additional information relating to the works. All in all they represented a time capsule of Swinging London during 1968/69. The circumstances which bought her to The Pheasantry are not known. In the following film clip from 11 December 1968, Clapton can be seen wearing one of Birgitta's crocheted jumpers, as he plays live in a band featuring John Lennon (The Beatles), Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience) and Keith Richards (Rolling Stones).
Yer Blues, Dirty Mac, London, 1968, YouTube, duration: 4.14 minutes.
At one stage Sharp did a fashion shoot with Birgitta, wearing some of her crocheted clothing. Further examples are noted in the link above, though numerous images can also be found on any Birgitta Bjerke Google images search. The twelve artworks and a single photograph of Sharp from 1968 are reproduced below.
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2. The artworks
The following are images from Birgitta's sketchbook, taken at the Pheasantry sometime during 1968. The highly detailed and brightly coloured images are amazing, providing a brief glimpse into the vibrancy of an artists' studio and hive of activity. Additional images from inside the Pheasantry during this period are also included below.
1. Martin Sharp photograph by Bob Whitaker (left) and pen drawing by Birgitta Bjerke, Entrance to The Pheasantry, now a pizza place (right), 1968.
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There is a colour photograph of Martin Sharp in the same Spaceman cap, smoking a cigarette, in the book Australia in the Making (1971). The above line drawing of the front of the Pheasantry reflects known photographs from 1970 and 1974. The Australian photographer Robert Whitaker was resident in the Pheasantry and had come to England in 1964 at the request of Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles. He and Sharp worked together during 1967-8 on a number of projects, included a calendar featuring The Beatles.
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2. The Stairway. View from above, looking down three flights of stairs. Note the Martin Sharp designs on the left wall.
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3. Coming up the stairs, bathroom door right, kitchen door straight ahead. The portrait on the wall of the German actor Eric von Stroheim was by Philippe Mora.
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4. Looking into the bath room tub full of forgotten, so cold water. The art on the walls is by Martin Sharp and appears incomplete. Prior to his residency it appears that many of the walls in the building were painted white. This drawing reflects that, and reveals the stage at which they have been worked on. Some of these motifs appeared from 1968 in the series of posters known as ‘Smartiples. They were printed on mylar and published by Big O Posters.
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5. Inside window to the kitchen (yellow) as you pass the bathroom.
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6. Corridor, kitchen wall left and studio wall right.
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7. Kitchen.
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8. The studio.. I believe Martin is packing to return to Australia... my yarn Ibiza basket is under the table.
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9. Martin & Philippe Mora paintings, Martin's mirror-framed show stacked on floor.
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10. The room I slept in at the time.... note Eric's guitar case in the bg... same one I sent pictures of to you... there was gold wallpaper with a silver paper circle in it.. so I pasted a smallpicture of nude Eija... maybe taken with fish eye lense, or maybe mirrored in that gigantic silver xmas globe Martin had.... my 2 rolls of her and the Pheasantry are also lost... got one I think... but you know... time erodes...
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11. Martin gave me this painting which was immediately stolen from my rented room at Beaufort St. so was the mirror framed one and also "Babe Rainbow"... and the skirt Leonard Cohen gave me from Ulla's shop... I was just hauling out the last stuff so I had not locked... where did I moved to? Probably and perhaps to share with Michael Tickner on 15 Abingdon Rd off the High street. .... that makes sense....He created a restaurant, Parson's on Cromwell rd. Baghdad House was on the corner across from here.... was it not?
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12. For the longest time I had the actual painting that was in the wall of this unfinished portrait, where someone actually had started to cover Martin's decore... but that too got stolen from my house here in Colonias. It was in a whole box of treasures I had culled from a trunk in Sweden.... including the remainder of whatever art I had of Martin's... he art was a strong influence on me....
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3. Sharp et al.
Whilst resident in England between June 1966 and the end of 1969 Martin Sharp worked out of The Pheasantry - a grandiose, though run down, mid-eighteenth century, Georgian brick and stucco 3 storey building located just off the King's Road, London (Wikipedia 2016). The Pheasanty housed an old 1930s era nightclub in the basement and was the setting for the Oliver Reed film The Party's Over (1963). It was heritage listed in 1969, though demolition was a threat during the early 1970s. Fortunately it survives as both a pizza restaurant and jazz club.
The Pheasantry was a hive of activity during Sharp's period of residence. His neighbours included writers Anthony Haden-Guest and Germaine Greer - the latter engaged downstairs on her landmark book The Female Eunich; Australian photographer Robert Whitaker, then working with The Beatles; young Melbourne film maker and artist Philippe Mora; raconteur, print maker, jazz expert and associate of the Kray Brothers, David Litvinoff; and English guitarist Eric Clapton from the rock group Cream, who shared the upstairs studio with Sharp (Pim 2016). By the end of 1969 the whitewashed walls of the upper area were heavily decorated with art by Sharp, Mora, Clapton and others, with large areas of colour and assorted decorative elements. One party at the Pheasantry was noted as being reached through a snake-like tube. A sense of the decor can be gained from the photo-spread contained in the March 1970 edition of Italian architecture and design magazine Domus. Therein we see the red and gold painted walls and, through a doorway, Sharp working on one of his large paintings. In another room the walls and ceiling are painted with artworks and covered with photographs and posters.
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| Inside the Pheasantry, Domus magazine, March 1970. |
The gigantic silver ball seen in the above photograph from Martin Sharp's bedroom, later featured in the Magritte Room within the Yellow House, Sydney.
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3. References
A rainbow over London - Interiors in London, Domus - Magazine of Architecture, Design and Art, no.484, March 1970.
Alice Newell-Hanson, Rediscovering radical 70s fashion in San Francisco attics, i-D [blog], 18 February 2017. Available URL: https://i-d.vice.com/en_au/article/nennjb/rediscovering-radical-70s-fashion-in-san-francisco-attics.
Belvero, Glenn, Counter-Couture at MAD Museum of Arts & Design in New York, ASVFO [blog], 13 March 2017. Available URL: https://ashadedviewonfashion.com/2017/03/13/hip-hippie-hooray-counter-couture-at-mad-museum-of-arts-design-in-new-york-photos-words-by-glenn-belverio/.
BFI, Brigitta Bjerke, Film Forever [website], British Film Institute, 2019. Available URL: https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2bb169d165.
Brigitta Bjerke, Facebook [website], 2019. Available URL: https://www.facebook.com/birgitta.bjerke.5.
D'Allessandro, Jill, Terry, Colleen, Binder, Victoria, McNally, Dennis and Selvin, Joel, Summer of Love: Art, Fashion and Rock and Roll, University of California Press, 2017, 344p.
IMDb, Brigitta Bjerke, Internet Movie Database [website], 2019. Available URL: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0084799/.
Marks, Ben, Meet the Swedish Artist Who Hooked British Rock Royalty on Her Revolutionary Crochet, Collectors Weekly, 15 Mark 2021.
Miller, Patricia, Hooked - Rock royals were crochet artist's customer, Durango Herald, 13 February 2009. Available URL: https://www.jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=3179.
Penny Lane Crochet, Instagram, accessed 29 December 2024.
Seattle Recap, Communing With Fabric [blog], 16 January 2016. Available URL: http://communingwithfabric.blogspot.com/2016/01/seattle-recap.html.
Sillman, Marcie, Feathers, Fringe and Bright Shiny Beads: Hippie Fashion is Art, KUOW - Sound stories, sound voices [blog], 17 September 2015. Available URL: http://archive.kuow.org/post/feathers-fringe-and-bright-shiny-beads-hippie-fashion-art.
The Summer of Love Experience at the de Young Museum, Soul Documentary [website / videos], 2017. Available URL: https://souldocumentary.love/summeroflove/de-young-sol-experience/.
Vintage Crochet Legend: Birgitta Bjerke, Instagram, 2 June 2021.
Wright, Andy, Tracking down the lost fashions from the Summer of Love, San Francisco Magazine, 31 May 2017. Available URL: https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/tracking-down-the-lost-fashions-the-summer-of-love.
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Birgitta Bjerke: At the Pheasantry, London, 1968 | Crochet clothing | Martin Sharp Archive | Philippe Mora |
Last updated: 8 January 2025
Michael Organ, Australia
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