Barbara Hepworth and John Lewis
Barbara Hepworth’s Winged Figure sculpture is 50 years old this week. It’s the sculpture that graces the side of the John Lewis store in Oxford Street.
I love this sculpture. It’s always been a reminder of home to me in the Big Smoke. In May 1961 Barbara was invited by the John Lewis Partnership to design a sculpture for their headquarters. They asked her that the work ‘have some content that expresses the idea of common ownership and common interests in a partnership of thousand of workers’. What a sentiment. How can you argue with that?
The sculpture was built in her workshop in St Ives, then hauled through the narrow streets to be transported to London.
I know this street in St Ives so well. You can barely fit a car down it, so this photo fascinates me on a logistical level. I think of it every time I pass John Lewis on the bus.
And I just love that this 19 foot tall aluminium figure, sitting above the fumes of Oxford Street, made it all the way from a granite studio at the far end of Cornwall. Hepworth said, of the ‘stringed’ sculptures she was making at this time, “‘the strings were the tension I feel between myself and the sea, the wind and the hills.” If you’ve ever visited West Cornwall you’ll know what she’s talking about. And by taking a trip to John Lewis, you can access that feeling here in the city too.
It’s a beautiful sculpture, the old images are simply fantastic, I’ve been around that John Lewis a few times, never really thought about how they got it down there…
Good stuff!
Aren’t they wonderful? I stumbled across them in a book in Harrow library years ago and was delighted. Thank goodness for the magic of the internet etc x
How nice to see those photos of Barbara Hepworth’s “Winged Figure” in its birthplace, not to mention the cool St. Ives blokes in their tight sixties trousers and pointy shoes hauling the sculpture through the streets.
I expect seeing that kind of thing was an every day occurance when you and dad moved down. Artists in pointy shoes…
How interesting. I came upon this post somehow and was delighted to read about how the famous Hepworth sculpture was transported from St Ives. It still looks modern, young and stark and yet it is fifty years old. Charming photographs from a truly different era.
Thank you. Yes, I find the same about this sculpture – of its time but not at all dated. Glad you enjoyed the old pictures. x