Friday, November 17, 2006

Dinner chez Arne Jacobsen




After staying the night there last week, this week I had dinner at St Catherine's college - where form meets function (according to a college poster spotted on the way in) - the guest of Andrew Barry, fellow of the college and member of the Oxford Centre for the Environment. Given Oxford's history and much of the existing architecture, it was a radical decision to appoint an architect such as Arne Jacobsen for a new Oxford college. He paid a great deal of attention in the design to the forms both of the buildings and the gardens, and to details of fittings like door handles and the furniture in the senior common room (SCR) and the cutlery at high table (shown here). My hosts indulged me and let me take some pictures and even went as far as asking the steward to show me the two soup spoons - one for the left handed and one for the right handed.

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