- Feb 26
- 5 min read
My Grandmothers Kitchen By Georgie Finn
I received an interesting message on Instagram after sharing images from The Englishwoman’s Kitchen. Georgie Finn (@ginginfinn) got in touch, prompted in particular by the first photograph, a room entirely wrapped in strawberry wallpaper, walls and ceiling alike, with curtains to match. It immediately reminded her of her grandmother’s ‘cherry’ kitchen from the 1950s.
She sent me photographs, not just of the kitchen but of the whole house, an old Victorian vicarage in the Fens where her grandparents lived from 1940 to 1965. Her grandmother, clearly someone who cared deeply about interiors, had photographed every room and assembled the images into a small homemade album made from thick watercolour paper, each page separated by protective tissue leaves. It feels like a quiet act of documentation, preserving a carefully considered home for posterity and, for Georgie, a lasting reminder of her grandmother’s creativity.
For me it felt like opening a time capsule of domestic taste. And yes, the cherry wallpapered kitchen made my heart particularly happy.
The little album that I shared with Charlie, so carefully made, reflects the care that my grandmother took in curating and designing the rooms in the vicarage, often on a shoestring but with a sort of homemade grandeur. I never knew these rooms, they existed before I was born, but I knew of it through this little album and Gran often spoke fondly of that kitchen. She loved the colour red and she loved cherries! I can only imagine how thrilled she must have been when she found that wallpaper and I dare say the whole scheme for that kitchen, with its red paintwork and cherry striped curtains, would have stemmed from that initial purchase.
My grandmother, Vera Laura Payne, was a vicar's wife in the Fens from the 1920’s until the mid 60’s. They lived in a number of parishes but their last, in the village of Littleport, was Grandpa’s longest incumbency and for 25 years they enjoyed family life in the large Victorian vicarage that sat across from the church of St George that he served. Clergy life was not a wealthy living, especially in the post war years, and my grandmother was adept at making a silk purse out of a sow's ear! She was a regular at the local sale rooms in Ely and Wisbech, picking up furniture for a song, chairs for reupholstering and furniture for painting and, like many women of that time, was a skilled seamstress able to make all her own soft furnishings.
I only knew my grandmother in widowhood. My grandfather died shortly after I was born, my christening being his final service, and on his death she was required to vacate the vicarage. How hard it must have been to be both bereaved and to lose her family home all at once. There was little in the way of savings and over the next decade she lived in various small rentals in and around Cambridge until she inherited a terraced house in Wymondham, Norfolk. All of these homes were humble and yet she always managed to make each one of them beautiful, filled with the treasures she’d acquired over the years and her own art and crafts.
Released from the duties of parish life my grandmother threw herself into her creative practice. She had already learnt to weave at Littleport and had a wonderful large treadle loom that, in spite of her constricted living quarters, she always made room for. She proceeded to learn to spin and macrame, this was the 70’s after all! She made wallhangings and rugs, cushions and bags, and patterned braids to turn into belts and ties. She painted too, landscapes, still lives and portraits… but also beyond the canvas to folk painted furniture and Bloomsbury style platters which she painted with whatever was to hand; eggshell, gloss, oil paints.
These decorated platters lined her dresser, but one was always my favourite. It was simpler than the rest, a plain white background with a large bunch of cherries, still with their foliage attached, as if plucked straight from the tree. I still have it, on a shelf leaning up against a wall that is papered in pink and white stripes, like the old striped sheets that were so popular in the 60’s. I chose this wallpaper 33 years ago when we first moved into our cottage and there was reason behind my choice. One of the few pieces of furniture we moved in with at that time was a brass bed inherited from my grandmother. This was not just any ordinary brass bed, this was The Sleeping Beauty Bed as my sister and I had called it in our childhood. Adorned with frilly lace drapes and with curtains and covers made from those same candy striped, pink and white sheets, it was a young girls dream! The drapes and covers have long since perished but the bed remains as does a little bit of the wallpaper and it always reminds me of those magical sleepovers at my grandmothers as a child.
In fact, in pretty much every corner of my own home you will find reminders of my grandmother, her paintings, collages and wallhanging have their places on our walls, her pottery bird on the sideboard, the miniature polka dot coffee cups that she let me play with as a child on my shelf of special china. I even have the red and white striped curtains from the sitting room at Littleport with their wonderful scalloped pelmets, they must be all of 70 years old! But more than all of these my most treasured possession is her wind-up gramophone. Painted with maypole dancers, angels and flowers in the Fraktur style of Pennsylvanian folk art it has never ceased to fill me with joy, from my earliest memories of playing her crackly 78 records on it up until now.
For me my grandmother was and always will be my artistic muse. I was fortunate to visit her weekly as a child and she would often help me to make something. I’m sure this was formative, my earliest artistic training, but really the inspiration was just all around me, in her beautiful surroundings and in her creative being.
Postscript:
A few years ago I went back to art school to do a Masters in Children’s Book Illustration. My final piece was a picture book called ‘My Grandmother Was An Artist’ celebrating not only the many and
varied works of my grandmother, but the domestic arts of so many women which have, for too long gone unrecognised and undervalued but which have enriched our lives and our homes for generations. My grandmother was a true folk artist who’s work primarily served to make her environment more beautiful and through that, was an inspiration to all of us who were lucky enough to know her.
So beautifully described, she was a wonderful woman, ahead of her time and continuing even now to give such joy. Much missed, never to be forgotten… Joe