Kettle’s Yard is in no way meant to be an art gallery or museum, nor is it simply a collection of works of art reflecting my taste, or the taste of a given period. It is, rather, a continuing way of life from these last 50 years (1923–1973), in which stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space, have been used to make manifest the underlying stability which more and more we need to recognize if we are not to be swamped by all that is so rapidly opening up before us.¹

Agnes had a tiny little garden of roses in front of her door. I remember once there was a very beautiful rose in a bud vase and my granddaughter Isabel was looking at it. Agnes took the rose out of the vase and she said to Isabel, ‘Is this rose beautiful?’ And then Agnes put the rose behind her back and said, ‘Is the rose still beautiful?’ So the beauty is not the rose, the beauty is within you and the rose just makes you recognize that beauty.²

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.⁴

• A playlist of music performed at Kettle’s Yard over the last fifty years.
• What Kettle’s Yard smells like.
• Supplementary links about Kettle’s Yard.
• Footnotes.

• The Edes had Sir Leslie Martin design the large extension of Kettle’s Yard with music performances in mind. In 1970, the inaugural concert was performed by the husband-wife duo Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim. Now, there are about twenty concerts a year. When speaking on the relationship between music and art at the Barnes Foundation years prior Ede said:
  

  “All the afternoon we studied forms of modern expression – Stravinsky, his traditions, his personal expression and Matisse as a parallel. We surrounded them with Mozart and Gluck, with Giorgione, Cézanne and Renoir – we saw quite clearly how all was ordered in their apparent disorder. This combination of music and painting is so right and so helpful, like alternating cheese with wine; but how surprised the public would be in our English Galleries if the lecturer suddenly turned on a jazz band or a Beethoven Quartet.”⁵

  
  

• A playlist of classical and contemporary music performed at Kettle’s Yard over the past fifty years: Apple Music / Spotify

• Potpourri of Ede's own formulation was distributed throughout the house and incorporated a blend of fragrant ingredients as follows: ‘any strong strange blunt (not sweet) perfume I could find (travelers from the East bringing sandalwood, etc.) – also a few handfuls of incense from various monasteries here or in the East – lots of lavender plucked + dried – and when all this assembled quite a decent helping of Cognac...’6

• If you’re looking for an equivalent, Santa Maria Novella is always a safe bet.
  

• Portrait of H.S. "Jim" Ede by Edward Wolfe in 1931. Wolfe maintained that Ede was working on his famous book, The Savage Messiah, at the time the work was painted.

• Edmund de Waal on reading while surrounded by art. (1:11)

• Cute Henri Gaudier-Brzeska replicas from the Kettle’s Yard gift shop.

• Time-lapse of the pebbles in Jim Ede’s bedroom. (0:52)

• Video of Gregorio Vardanega’s plexiglass ‘Disc’ in action at ‘the bridge’. (0:57)

• Laura Freeman discussing her research and biography on Jim Ede:
  
• On April 15, 2021 (45:18)
• On July 15, 2023 (54:17)

• Elizabeth Anne Fisher's PhD dissertation 'Kettle’s Yard: Anti-Museum'.

• Below is a reference I shared when asked how to approach displaying art on an empty wall. Showing the Khmer Buddha from Prang Sam Yot Temple, and works by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mario Sironi, and Ben Nicholson.