Jim Ede and the glories of Kettle’s Yard

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. To call him a compulsive collector is to understate the passion that over the years saw the desk followed by an avalanche of stuff, from porcelain and glasses to pebbles and feathers, textiles and above all paintings, drawings and sculpture. Each acquisition admired, loved, cherished and shared for its uniqueness – what Gerard Manley Hopkins would have called its ‘instress’.

Beyond the things, Ede also collected people – painters, sculptors, other collectors, students, servicemen – and houses.  In Hampstead, in Tangier, and above all at his Kettle’s Yard home in Cambridge, he arranged his collections and entertained people in exquisite spaces.