Honor Clerk

Jim Ede and the glories of Kettle’s Yard

Laura Freeman celebrates a great collector with an unerring eye for good ‘stuff’

‘Pier Hotel, Chelsea’, by Christopher Wood, 1927, from the Kettle’s Yard Collection. [Bridgeman Images] 
issue 13 May 2023

Jim Ede started early. At the age of 12 he used £8 of his hard-won savings to buy a Queen Anne desk. No bicycle, air pistol or football for him: this solid piece of old furniture was the thing, the first step in a long life of acquiring objects that lived, breathed and spoke to him.

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