Dennis Severs' House

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This apparently location-related article appears to lack geographic coordinates
You can help by adding them. Please don't be overly precise.
This article has been tagged since April 2007. This template was added by a bot.

Dennis Severs' House, 18 Folgate Street is a Georgian terrace in Spitalfields, East London, England. During the 1960s and 1970s it was lived in by Dennis Severs. He recreated the rooms in the style of former centuries. It is now open to the public.

Dennis Severs (1944, Southern California – 1999) was drawn to London by what he called "English light", and made his home in the dilapidated property in Folgate Street in 1979. He started on a programme to refurbish its ten rooms, each in a different historic style, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The rooms are each arranged as if they have just been used and the occupant has only just left. There are therefore displays of items such as half-eaten bread and different smells for each room. Severs called this "still life drama" and wrote:

“

I worked inside out to create what turned out to be a collection of atmospheres: moods that harbour the light and the spirit of various ages.

”

Woven through the house is the story of the fictive Jervis family (a name anglicised from Gervais), Huguenot silk weavers who lived at the house from 1725 to 1919. Each room evokes incidental moments in the lives of these imaginary inhabitants. Writer Peter Ackroyd wrote:

“

The journey through the house becomes a journey through time; with its small rooms and hidden corridors, its whispered asides and sudden revelations, it resembles a pilgrimage through life itself.^[1]

”

Jeanette Winterson, resident in the neighbourhood, observed, "Fashions come and go, but there are permanencies, vulnerable but not forgotten, that Dennis sought to communicate".^[2].

Severs bequeathed the house to the Spitalfields Trust shortly before his death. It is now open to the public, who are asked during their visit to respect the intent of the creator and participate in an imaginary journey to another time.

The motto of the house is Aut Visum Aut Non!: 'You Either See it or you don't'.

[edit] References

^ Severs, Dennis 18 Folgate Street: The Tale of a House in Spitalfields, 2002, Vintage, p xi
^ Severs, Dennis 18 Folgate Street: The Tale of a House in Spitalfields, 2002, Vintage