A Way of Life

Put together as lovingly as Kettle’s Yard itself, A Way of Life takes the form of a guided tour with words and pictures, written and selected by Jim Ede himself.

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A Way of Life has been put together as lovingly as Kettle’s Yard itself. It takes the form of a guided tour; you enter the door and venture through the house, taking in the rooms one by one, seeing the light play on glass, china, wood, stone and canvas, and seeing how the art and the living-space bring each other alive. A series of remarkable black and white photographs catches the spirit that Jim Ede was trying to evoke, and the text comments on them in his own words. The visit is interwoven with Jim Ede’s account of earlier attempts to create the same wholeness in earlier houses in London and France. He has also placed in the spaces and intervals of the book his choice of poetic texts; an anthology which indicates the spirit in which he has worked. Three influences animate this unique book: the sense of the way of life that Jim Ede created at Kettle’s Yard, the spirit of the house itself, and the gentle but persistently creative spirit of the man who put it all together and then put together this book as the record of his creation in his own words. Originally published in 1984. This edition (reprinted in 2021) contains the introduction by former director of the Tate Sir Alan Bowness first included in the 1996 edition.