The Eric Ravilious ‘Country House’ Greetings Card Collection.

Three country views from three different counties (Sussex, Powys, and Oxfordshire) from Eric Ravilious. Hereford’s Knob is more properly known as ‘Twmp’, translating to hump or tump in English. I’m also pretty sure it makes a guest appearance in Bruce Chatwin’s ‘On the Black Hill’ under the name of ‘Bickerton’s Knob’. Though the building in the foreground is a church, it could technically be described as a house of god, and if that won’t do you, then there’s another little one on the hillside. The shepherd’s cottage is in Beddingham, a hamlet in East Sussex, very nearby to Furlongs, a favourite dwelling of the artist, and home of Peggy Angus. Eric and Tirzah spent a couple of nights in Buscot Park in the summer of ’38. He described it as the grandest house house he’d ever been in, and mentions a whale’s jaw in the grounds. Whale jaws (often from the Fin or Bowhead whale) were not an unusual dight, acting as decorative arches or frames. Many examples still exist around the country, perhaps most prominently at Whitby in Yorkshire. ‘Shepherd’s Cottage (The Lay)’, ‘The Duke of Hereford’s Knob’, and ‘Buscot Park’ are also available as single cards. Eric Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was an exceptional watercolourist, wood engraver and designer. He grew up in the shadow of the Sussex Downs in the coastal town of Eastbourne, the surrounding landscape of which heavily influenced many of his best known works. His instantly recognisable style, palette and choice of subject have an almost universal appeal, a blend which has increased in popularity with the passing of time.