When Home is... the Art of Afternoon Tea

“No afternoon tea party is complete without a gorgeous teapot... I pounced on this divine silver-plated teapot in Venice and lugged it around for three months, much to my husband’s dismay...”

And so begins Alexandra Nea Graham’s personal journey into the world of afternoon tea. With her exquisite drawings, she captures a world that revisits the old tradition of taking the time over simple pleasures: cooking, brewing tea and sitting down to have a chat and enjoy homemade food with friends and family.

It’s also a world that encapsulates fashion designer Al’s lifelong passions: collecting, baking and drawing. And it’s a private world she has recently begun to share through her blog, The Art of Afternoon Tea.

So what came first? ‘I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember and I started collecting china teacups when I was around 13’, Al tells me while pouring us tea in the sun-filled kitchen of the 1890s worker’s cottage she shares with her husband, Jim, in Sydney’s inner west.



‘Mum is a great cook and was always getting my sister and I to help her in the kitchen when we were very young. I don’t know why but I’ve always loved the baking side of cooking.’

As she slices the decadent looking raspberry and hazelnut cake, she continues, ‘I think it appeals to me because it’s so visually attractive.’

Holding a Mother-of-Pearl handled fork in one hand and a vintage, hand embroidered napkin in my other, I’m inclined to agree with her. The whole table is so visually attractive it deserves to be captured before our plates become filled with crumbs, cups tea-stained and saucers splattered with milk.



Thankfully, Al has already captured 62 such vignettes and still has many more recipes to bake, and china, cake stands, cutlery and napery to draw. Each week she posts a drawing, writes notes on the collectables, the origin of the recipe as well as the recipe in full.

Aside from her love of drawing, she has another incentive to keep her project going; ‘There is a ban on me adding to my teacup collection until I have drawn them all’, she laughs as we look at the dresser with its shelves of stacked teacups, plates, vintage tins and cut glass cake stands and silverware.



Al can’t remember how the idea for the blog came about, ‘About three years ago I was looking for a reason to draw. While I love fashion design, art is my other main passion and I had been thinking about ways to move towards an illustration career. One day I made a cake, pulled it out of the oven and decided to draw it. It worked out well and I thought I should keep doing it. Then I drew a stack of teacups and it went from there.’

Generally, Al will bake on a Saturday and set up the scene to draw on the Sunday. ‘I draw here,’ she says, pointing to the kitchen table we are sitting at, ‘because the light is so good.’

The illustrations are drawn with mix media; the main material used being coloured pencils and other medias often used are the pantone markers (as traditionally used in fashion illustrations) and graphite pencils.

Al will complete the picture in one sitting. ‘It takes about eight or nine hours to draw a full afternoon tea scene. Once I’m involved in drawing I don’t want to be doing anything else until I’ve finished.’

Realising she could have the makings of a visually different cookbook, she sent word out to friends and family asking for any afternoon tea recipes, particularly any involving family traditions. The response she got was ‘fantastic’.

Using the blog as a showcase for her work has given her a reason to draw and without purposefully setting out to do so, she has managed to create a project that ‘has all just come together. It’s a combination of all my loves through the years coming through really nicely.’



A culmination of her life experience so far too: five years ago, Al and Jim moved to London and spent two years living, working and travelling around. Weekends were filled with trawling through markets, hunting out antique stores and unearthing more pieces for her collections.

If forced to pick a favourite cup and saucer, it would be a Shelley one her husband gave her, ‘Jim found it in a shop I always visited. Bizarrely I had already seen it, loved it but not told him about it and then on my birthday I discovered he’d found it anyway.’



Having bought their house three years ago, it’s only since moving her 'drawing things’ from her childhood home and creating artwork here that this house has really felt like home. It also helps having all her collections around, ‘Everything I’ve collected overseas was bought with the intention it would have its place. I always knew that one day we would have our own home and they would have their own place on my dresser in my own kitchen.’



'Every piece we have here has a story attached to it. Every object was loved and wanted and has helped create our home. I can look around and remember that I lugged that teapot around in a suitcase or I found those cups at a flea market in Paris.’

Al points to the old meatsafe in the kitchen now home to her pantry, ‘I like remembering that we bought this while on a trip to Adelaide for a friend’s engagement party and we organised for it to be brought back to Sydney on the back of a truck.’



Our afternoon tea is nearly finished when she picks up the old lace placement underneath the cut glass vase of roses, ‘I like the story of old things and the intricate nature of them. Look at this piece of lace. Someone spent a long time hand-sewing this and all these years later I appreciate all the work that has gone into it.’

This small and delicate piece of material encapsulates Al’s feelings about home and life perfectly; ‘I don’t like cutting corners with anything, I like to take the time and maybe ultimately that is what appeals to me.’

To see more of Al’s work, visit The Art of Afternoon Tea here.

Artwork ©Alexandra Nea
Photography ©Sophie Leece

At Home with ... Children’s Illustrator Mandy Sutcliffe

A few months ago I was looking for a card for my cousin’s 40th birthday. She is one of those innately stylish people and I expected to find her a very sophisticated, ‘grown-up’ card. Then I saw a child’s birthday card illustrated by Belle and Boo creator Mandy Sutcliffe and I no longer wanted to be thinking like a grown-up.

The card was an illustration of a little girl with long brown hair sitting on a branch of an enormous tree. There was an expression captured in the little girl’s face: one of utter contentment, perhaps daydreaming of a future where anything is possible.



Instantly I saw my cousin as a child and our lives as an extended family. While we grew up in different cities, we would spend every second summer together when my aunt and uncle would bring my three cousins to Sydney to stay with our grandparents. Those were long days filled with playing on the beach and evenings spent in the house where my mother, my cousin’s mother and their two brothers grew up.

This illustration had managed to send me straight back to that time and childhood home. Indeed, all Mandy’s illustrations carry a similar power as she expertly captures simple moments in time and the emotions of childhood. How does she do it?

Mandy Sutcliffe studied Illustration at Leeds Metropolitan University but it was during a university exchange trip to France that she discovered a passion for capturing such moments of childhood.

‘Aesthetically children are really pleasing to me: the bigger head, masses of hair, huge eyes, small nose, rose bud mouths, turned in toes, skinny arms and legs and rounded belly, what could be cuter to draw? I also like the freedom that drawing children gives you. A little boy in a paper boat or riding a winter woolly is more acceptable to the viewer than if an adult was doing it, as it ties in with the imagination of a child.’



As a child, Mandy’s imagination was captured by the book Milly Molly Mandy. ‘This was the book I was read most as a child. I was given it because of the name and weirdly I did look a lot like her. I wonder now if I liked it so much because Milly Molly Mandy was an only child and had the full attention from her extended family of adults; parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents. My little sister arrived when I was three-years-old which must be a shock for all first-borns!’



But it was also the sense of adventure closely tied to the security of home that Mandy remembers, ‘I loved the map printed at the beginning of the book as I could see where she was at all times during the stories. For Milly Molly Mandy to be able to go camping or into the woods on a big adventure and for me to see from the map that it was just next door to her home or the village shop was reassuring.’



Mandy grew up with a similar sense of freedom and it was also these childhood experiences that have informed her work. ‘Friends of ours had a house with a huge plot of land, with a wood, a field, a pond with an island, a pool, a river running through it with a beach and a bridge and, and, and... I am sure if I went back it would seem much smaller, but I remember endless summers of playing made-up games with lots of kids of all ages. We felt free, creative and alive, but very aware our parents were nearby in an emergency.’

The illustrations in Milly Molly Mandy spoke so strongly to Mandy that she now hopes to recreate those same emotions for children looking at her own work. ‘Of course the illustrations were a HUGE factor in my enjoyment. I still think they are stunning and constantly look at them for reference. In one of my books I have coloured them in with felt tip pen. I wish I could remember how I felt when I was doing it: did I know I wasn't meant to but had an overwhelming feeling that I must? Or was it just complete happiness in the moment?’

‘I am about to launch the first Belle and Boo activity book, which is designed for kids to colour in. I have spent ages on the line drawings and it is printed on good quality paper as I think children appreciate quality as much as adults.’ (For those of us in Australia, thankfully this book as well as all other Belle and Boo products, are available through Lark)



Mandy’s children exist in an era long gone but it’s an era that symbolises for her much about the magic of childhood. ‘I want to capture the sense of family and simplicity, quietness and nature rather than all the technological rush and business of today.’ She hopes that for children and adults the illustrations evoke feelings of innocence, happiness, safety, escapism and beauty in the minutia.



Inspired by the toys children played with the blurred photos that exist of that time, Mandy also loves capturing ‘the big floppy hair bows, the wrinkled down ankle socks, shorts for boys, dresses always for girls, the colours, the material and the hair styles.’



Such real people to her, Mandy says ‘you will often hear me talking to one of my illustrated children when I have got them just right, saying "ooohhh you are so cute" or "I love your shoes".’

It’s unsurprising then that the physical space Mandy first considers home is her studio. ‘We had it built three years ago in our back garden and it is wonderful to have a place to work & even more wonderful to be able to lock the door and leave it behind. I used to work in the lounge room, so I never switched off. My flat is now lovely and calm and tidy, my studio on the other hand is always in a huge mess!’



But first and foremost, home for Mandy is being with Russ, her partner of 16 years. ‘He makes any place home: we have travelled, house swapped, rented and moved a lot, and all I need is him and a few good friends. A great art shop, book shop and cafe nearby also help!’



To find out more about Belle and Boo, visit their website
If you are in Australia and wish to see more Belle and Boo products, visit Lark
If you would like to visit Mandy's blog, click here
All photos © Mandy Sutcliffe

At Home... with Artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove

Artist Lizzie Buckmaster Dove is described in her most recent catalogue essay in the words of American writer and curator Lucy Lippard as ‘a nomad with a serially monogamous passion for place’. It is this juxtaposition between a desire to be home and a desire to be away that has fuelled her creative life.

‘I have always been a nomad – it was inflicted upon me as a child and then it must have gotten into my bones as I have continually chosen movement.’

Growing up in country Victoria and NSW, Lizzie has also lived in Sydney, London and Spain. ‘There is something in me that compels me to move. My husband and I describe ourselves as compulsive travellers. We will, at the drop of a hat be off. We have an enormous appetite for new experiences of people and place.’

After finishing art school, Lizzie worked in creative fields for a decade but not as an artist. In 2005, the couple was living in Spain with one son and another on the way. It was during this year that a couple of major life events occurred: a month before becoming a mother for the second time, her father died.

‘This really brought to the fore my own mortality and it gave me the opportunity to examine my creative life. I realized that although I defined myself as an artist I had never said it out loud and didn’t feel as though I had the right to because to the outside world there was no evidence of it. I was kidding myself.’

Soon after, planning to return to Australia to live, Lizzie’s husband Mike put voice to her thoughts, ‘he said to me that when we returned to Australia I shouldn’t get a job, I should make art. I was dumbfounded and overwhelmed and tearfully replied “… you really understand me”. He has continued to be an enormous support and champion of my practice.’

Living in three countries has had profound impact on Lizzie’s art: it defines it. Being away from her homeland gave her the opportunity to see the Australian identity, as a culture and as an individual, in a different light.

Cacophony: Rip Rack Roar Rumble

‘When we returned to Australia it was as if I had never taken notice of my natural surroundings before – the flora and fauna appeared so harsh and aggressive. I had empathy for how hard it must have been for the early colonialists to settle here as well as how inappropriate it was for them to impose their culture upon this wild dry continent.’

The Shape of Things

Following her return, she created her first show based on this premise. Exhibited with NG Art Gallery in Sydney, it was named Into the Woods; an inversion of out of the woods and it was all about coming home. ‘I literally felt as though I was diving into a knowing of this land, and through that a knowing of myself. It was my first solo show since having enacted a professional practice so it was also the action of going deep into the unconscious of my own creativity. (And I was not afraid!).’

Cacophony: Toot Tweet Twitter Trill

Since that first show Lizzie has gone on to create many others, all focussing on work that explores identity, connection and place with direct reference to Britain, Spain and Australia; those countries which have shaped her and her family. ‘I think I have always desired to belong to a ‘place’. I think it is a very human desire.’

Lizzie’s early years were spent on a cherry orchard farm in Gruyere, at the foothills of the Dandenongs in Victoria. With grandparents living on one side and her aunt and uncle on the other, Lizzie wonders whether being surrounded by family fuelled this ‘passion for place’.

Being a ‘country girl at heart’ and after a long stint in London, Lizzie and her husband felt ready to live out of a city on their return to Australia. Lizzie had always loved the Illawarra escarpment in NSW and after a drive through it one weekend, her husband was equally impressed. They now live in this area, surrounded by nature. ‘We have the escarpment, bush and sea at our feet. It is very grounding to be locating our family in this setting. After many years of travelling, we are putting down roots. From this grounded place, I feel as though we can continue to explore other places but that we have a real sense of place to return to, a place in which we belong.’

Lizzie’s latest body of work focuses on this connection to place. An interactive project, Tide Project, Things to be Forgotten, is about identity, connection and place. It sprung as an idea after a trip to Mexico in 2008, ‘While in a supermarket I stumbled upon a stand of paint swatch cards coloured a most extraordinary range, which seemed to encapsulate the Mexican identity. I became intrigued by the concept that the range of colours available in paint could represent the identity of a culture.’

Towards the end of 2009, Lizzie travelled back to Britain, where her first son was born and Spain, the birthplace of her second, looking for swatch cards. ‘In Britain I found Farrow & Ball where the colours are demure and subtly graded, in Spain, Arts & Claus that are bold and strong and in Australia, (where her third child will soon be born) Taubmans where the colours encompass an entire spectrum from pastel to bold.’ All coincidentally colours which seemed to define each country’s identity.

For one lunar month, beginning with the new moon on January 15 and ending on February 13 2010, Lizzie’s friends Anna in London and Chris in Barcelona emailed daily a photograph of a piece of ‘flotsam or jetsam along a daily route’. From these images Lizzie cut a silhouette through each of the three sets of swatch cards. ‘The backbone to the project was about connection and place. Perhaps the biggest connection experienced by all of us was a connection to place. The project insisted we interact with the place we were in. For Anna and Chris this was the city, for me, it was predominantly the beach and nature.’

Tide Project, Things to be Forgotten, Australia ii

Tide Project, Things to be Forgotten, Britain ii

Tide Project, Things to be Forgotten, Spain ii

While a connection to many places fuels Lizzie’s work, she also says, ‘I have always loved being at ‘home’ and long to be settled and in a routine. As an artist, ‘home’ is the solid base from which I can create. It is by having the support of a loving family that I am able to and have the confidence to make art.’



Speaking as a wife and mother, ‘home is a place of refuge. It is a place from where my children garner their values and morals and from where I hope they have the confidence to be truly themselves.’ When asked which area of her house most says ‘home’ to Lizzie, she answers that it would have to be her sons’ bedrooms, ‘If they are not happy, I can’t be happy.’





But it’s belonging to a ‘place’ that is more complicated for Lizzie, ‘I think you can create a ‘home’ anywhere. ‘Home’ is something that is transportable as long as you have the right ingredients. I found I could be away for a while but eventually I grew tired of always longing and thinking back to Australia. I felt divided. Our existence in the UK and Spain could sometimes feel as though it didn’t penetrate the surface; that our lives were on hold. It could only be remedied by returning here.’

Given the need to be away from her homeland to create it is no surprise that Lizzie is quick to add ‘This isn’t to say we will not leave again! Though I suspect we would never give up our base here. We would make it very easy to step back into.’

*Photo of Lizzie taken by Miho Watanabe for NG Art Gallery; all other photos © Lizzie Buckmaster Dove

For more information about Lizzie's art, visit

http://www.ngart.com.au/

http://www.flg.com.au/