Benches at Penshurst Place

Bench couture

Reading my three month old copy of Vogue Magazine, I was excited to see a new trend. Bench fashion... not one, or two, but THREE fashion ads based around benches. Here's the Longchamp one..



But it seems even benches are vintage these days. Here's perhaps the most beautiful bench photograph I've seen, from a fashion photograph of the 1940s, if you would believe it...

Look what gardenhistorygirl is giving away...

... on her blog.

Back to back benching at Hampton Court palace

and I can't resist some others too...

Guest bench...

Taken in the snow last month by Sam Mitchell (one of my daughter's friends as she apparently spent some time being 'Rachael's Mum' and looking at benches)

Take a break on the 'book bench'...

aka the well-named book blog from the New Yorker.

Looking forward ...

The past and the future meeting in two different ways - benches at the University of Kent at Canterbury (where I teach creative writing).

good workmanship

Not really a sitting bench, but I find this inspirational, how to make your own bird bench.

Bench poem

From fellow bench lover and excellent writer, Chrissie Gittins:


Benches, Tresco


They’re placed at considerate intervals –
curved hurricane pine,
some weathered and scored,

some lichened and worn,
some with holes –
where the trunk swallowed a branch.

From a bench I saw a blackbird with an orange beak,
the promise of protea in fat downy buds,
the chequerboard bark of an endless palm.

From a bench I saw wagtails surrounding a horse,
the stripes of shelduck tipped up in a lake,
the oblique flight of pheasants.

From a bench I saw Atlantic waves
drawing breath, raising their shoulders
and spewing their seething froth right back to the shore.

From a bench I saw an insect in flight,
the blades of its wings whirred away from the island,
it carried me back to rumbling ground.



Chrissie Gittins, from I Don’t Want an Avocado for an Uncle (Rabbit Hole, 2006)

Virginian porch benches