Bloomsbury Homes Cards

British artist Amanda White has produced a series of notecards and holiday cards featuring cut paper collages of historic houses of writers and poets. This set of eight cards (four each of two different images) features two pivotal figures of the Bloomsbury Group, artist Vanessa Bell and her sister, the writer Virginia Woolf, at their respective homes in the English countryside.

On the back of each card is printed a brief essay relating the dates the women lived in the house, the works that were created there, and other information about the location, including what each loved about the setting and how it inspired creativity. The entire descriptions from the back of each card are below.

After the Waves (Virginia Woolf)

Virginia Woolf’s “writing lodge” stands under a chestnut tree at the far end of the garden at Monk’s House, the Woolfs’ Sussex retreat.  The author of A Room of One’s Own opted for a shed of her own, a place to which she walked every morning, an experience described as a vital part of her creative routine.  It was here, with glorious views over the downs, she wrote parts of all her major novels, from Mrs. Dalloway to Between the Acts.  And it was here, in July 1931, that her husband Leonard came out to tell Virginia that The Waves, the manuscript he had just finished reading, was a masterpiece. 

“There is a quietness, a regularity to life at Monk’s House that helps my mind to settle as it never can whilst we’re in London… But in Sussex I often feel trance-like.  The current of sensations and ideas, and the slow but fresh change of down, of road, of colour.  All churned up into a fine sheet of perfect calm happiness…For the moment how sweet life is with Leonard here in its regularity and order, and the garden, and the room at night and the music, and my walks, and writing easily and interestedly.  Here at last I found a room of my own.”

— Virginia Woolf

Plein Air in Charleston Farmhouse Garden

Charleston Farmhouse was the idyllic Sussex country home of Vanessa Bell, the artist and sister of Virginia Woolf, whose own country retreat, Monk’s House, was just four miles away. It was in 1916 that Bell and fellow painter Duncan Grant moved into the house with his lover David Garnett, two children, a nurse, a housemaid, and the dog, Henry. The pair immediately set about making their mark – quite literally – by decorating every surface of the interior in a style now recognizable worldwide. Here we see Vanessa seeking inspiration and Duncan providing it in typical Charleston fashion.

[Vanessa} “hovering peaceably in front of her easel, her dress protected by a flimsy French apron, her feet in flat-heeled espadrilles, and on her head a broad-brimmed hat to shade her eyes from the glare. Her presence was betrayed by a smell of oil and turpentine.”

—Angelica Bell

Set of eight (four each of two images)