A PLATE called LEDA

In answer to a call by Elizabeth Wix to show favourite plates, I cannot resist bringing this one out again, published early in March this year, when I first began blogging.  

This is a pottery plate made by Quentin Bell.  Quite by chance I found it in a store in Cambridge, UK, in 2001.   

It shows a satirical hand drawn portrait of Lydia Lopokova, who married John Maynard Keynes in 1925, much to the surprise of Venessa Bell and Virginia Woolf.   They apparently thought her 'a goose, intellectually much inferior to Maynard and themselves'.   Bloomsbury gave them a hard time.     Hence, the title LEDA, and whatever else you might want to read into it.   Quentin's humour invariably infiltrated much of his prolific work as a lecturer, writer, artist and sculptor.

The love affaire between this unlikely couple - Lydia, one of the greatest dancers in Diaghilev's Russian ballet and Maynard, the famous British economist -  is recorded in LYDIA & MAYNARD, The letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes, edited by Polly Hill and Richard Keynes, published by Andre Deutsch Limited, 1989.  It is a good read.