internet find #1
large citrine pendant 1974
THIS was the very first piece that came back to me through the power of the internet, in 2012. My daughter spotted it on ebay and my partner bought it for me. It’s a special privilege having work that has had a whole other life and will continue to have, through my family, for years to come. Its an early piece of Bill’s work and a design I had never seen before, which made it all the more special a find.
My father’s design style is highly recognisable and his hand unmistakeable in the quality of the finish on his pieces. Sometimes we’ve lost out on pieces at auction - a really nice oval pink moss agate brooch that came up at the same time, so may have belonged to the same owner - went to a buyer abroad. But most that come up for auction are small items including SNP pins that my father produced for the party in the early days. I had the oportunity to tell FM Nicola Sturgeon when she visited my workplace, about the gold SNP emblem pin Bill had made for the party’s first leader Winnie Ewing, in 1968.
WH is a quite common mark and there have been a few instances where I have had to contact a seller to tell them when a piece comes up that is incorrectly attributed. It’s an easy mistake to make, but the hallmark for Bill’s work will have a mark for the year date and the mark for the Edinburgh Assay Office along with the WH. Occasionally the marks appear WH & LR as for a brief period the hallmark was adapted for work that both my parents produced.
I hope if you come across his work this site and archive will be of interest.
bill abroad
louisiana
denmark
Bill was awarded a travelling scholarship on graduating from GSA in 1959. Over 12 weeks he travelled to the great cities in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Italy viewing art and architecture. This image was taken in August 1959 on the steps of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art that had only opened the year before, in 1958.
He and my mother exchanged letters every day. He journalled his experiences through these letters and with the aid of a 35mm camera loaned to him by his mother, Mary. Bill was obliged by the terms of the grant to write a report of his travels. Rosemary, being the more organised mind of the two, typed up his report of his trip for him [on a typewriter that his parents gave him for his 21st birthday and that he would use for business to the end of his days] from the content of the many letters he sent to her at home in Cumbernauld.
the firemaster’s son
Bill was not a studious type and like many neuro atypical creatives, only excelled at things that he took an avid interest in. He was accepted to Glasgow School of Art despite gaining only one Higher - in Geography - on the strength of his portfolio, something quite unthinkable today. It was unusual enough for the son of a Clydebank Fireman to go to art school that it was mentioned in the local paper. Bill’s parents permitted him to go, on condition that he agree to do teacher training after graduation.
The prospect of doing National Army Service was also still a possibility for him in 1959 but was thankfully abolished just in time. He talked about this ‘Near Miss’ often and told me that he had ‘no intention’ of becomng a teacher or picking up a firearm and that if it came to it, he’d take off from Inshinnan on the family boat and just disappear.
His fierce singlemindedness when it came to his integrity, and propensity for following his own mind at all cost, that was so in contrast with his quiet nature, makes believe he would have, if it came to it.
‘venice is a letharical joint’
Bill’s character and wit shine through his letters home and provide a magical insight to the everyday of the great european cities of culture, post war and pre the dramatic societal shift of the 1960s. I still have a set of the extremely fine Venini glasses he mentions here that he brought home in a rucksack, which my mother claimed as a miracle. The monk he mentions as ‘Brown and White’ would be of the Dominican order and Johnnie Millar would have been one of their teachers at GSA.
Letter from Bill to Rosemary
Seminario Santa Maria del Salute, Venezia 18 Sept 1959
Darling, I spent the morning visiting the academia which ‘has a fine collection of paintings’. There were tons and tons of Tintoretto, Veronese, also Canaletto, Tiepolo, some perspective illusion frescoes, an odd Titian or two, Giovanni Bellini, Lazzaro Bastiani, Jacopo da Montagnana, Giorgione + Piero. I must find the difference between them - Jacopo and Domenico Tintoretto. I don’t know how I’m going to approach this collection in my report. I found it dull after the Uffizi and I just don’t like Tintoretto, Veronese, Tiepolo or Canaletto anyway.
They had some interesting cases for displaying miniatures, I must remember a display stand I saw in a shop today. That and coffee took up the entire morning. Venice is a lethargical joint. After dinner, I’m on full pension at this place, 1500 lire a day. Anyone can stay here but its reduced to that for students. The food is not bad but the interior dec of the dining room is unfortunate - rather clinical - it makes you think of steam and fat on top of soup. Well, after dinner I went a sightseeing walk from church to church. The ones I visited were Santa Barnaba, S Polo [I think] and [Basilica de Santi] SS Giovanni e Paulo. The latter is on Percy’s list. It has the Verrocchio monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni outside – you must have drawn that man’s head in Johnnie Millar’s. It has a sacristy with a Veronese ceiling. I was claimed there by a monk who put on spotlights for me and handed me a pair of opera glasses. There was nothing I could do but comply – he stood at my elbow + muttered. ‘It’s a wonderful thing – a miracle’ probably the only English he knew. He approached for an offering towards the church but he suddenly realised I was a student. Well he said the Italian word ‘studente’ I said ‘si’ so he shook me by the thumb instead; not my hand, just my thumb. He was brown and white. I don’t know what order they are. There were quite a lot of interesting paintings there. I remember a Giovanni Bellini. They seem to have buried the Doges there. I had coffee outside in the campo – under an umbrella.
Next I looked inside San Lorenzo and then I made my way to the Piazza San Marco to get the Vaporetto home. It’s strange coming home to a place that’s got fifty percent population of priests – but they are very human in Italy. They all drink Chianti and some of them smoke. They just touch their head and shoulders with their forefinger as they lean forward to pick up their knife and fork. It’s so unobtrusive a gesture that I didn’t notice it at first, I thought they just ‘fell to’ and thought that strange. It’s late and I’m going to bed now, I am being eaten alive by mosquitos – last nights rain must have brought them out.
[Saturday 19th]
I’m up early and I’ve had breakfast – I’m going to go to Padua for the day to see Giotto’s frescos. I won’t be able to report tonight as this is the last letter – according to my calculations – you should get it on Monday or Tuesday morning. I will make notes diary-wise but I will be able to tell you when I get back. It’s a terrific day here – windy + hot. I have been looking at the shops since I got here – but they are pretty horrible – they sell mostly glass and leatherwork. The better glass is of course Murano and Venini but I saw Venini glass that I liked better in Kobenhaven although some of the stuff in their showroom was quite nice. It seems rather expensive though - for tourists. Things seem to be more expensive than in Florence. I’m not going to be outrageously well off when I get home – I think I will have about £5 Sterling in hand – that won’t last long. I don’t want to cut it any finer in case I run into difficulties. I wrote last night and told my folks that I was coming home. I don’t know if they’ll send Fiona to meet me – your guess is as good as mine. That’s all darling, it’s only three more days until I see you again.
Sam [Bill]
looking for bill
london 1960 - 1963
I have wanted to find time to create this archive for my parents work for some time. Ironically it is the Covid-19 Pandemic that has given me the opportunity to do this, the great era-defining scourge of our time that is making visible the vulnerability of those who work for themselves and make up a significant proportion of the creative industries sector in Scotland. I do not know what Bill would have made of the world today. He often struggled to know what to make of the world as it was when he was alive, before social media had the influence it has today over our culture, politics and society.
The image above is the only one I have of my parent’s time in London. Bill would be about 23 in this picture. They married in Hackney on Christmas Eve 1960 and both worked as jewellery designers in Hatton Garden. Bill for Whitehorn Bros and Rosemary for a firm nearby, G Music and Sons. They returned to Scotland around 1963 to live in Cumbernauld before moving to the Isle of Bute in 1968 with their two small daughters, Janie and me, Josephine.
I think the other man in the picture is called Tommy [Heron?] He and his wife Mairi were my parents friends from Glasgow Art School. As far as I recall, the four of them shared digs in London when they first arrived. My mother would have taken this picture. She had a natural flair for photograhy. My father loved cameras, collected and could even repair them but could never quite master the art of a good shot like my mother did. There was always a hint of a competitive edge in everything they did.
hardwick hall
family day out in dundee oct 2005
Bill’s middle name was Hardwick. His father [for reasons known only to him] gave all four of the Hall siblings [Bill, Fiona, Kitty and Bob] the same middle name. There is a much disputed family myth that we have some ancient and dodgy connection to Hardwick Hall in Derby and Bess of Hardwick. It is the consensus that grandfather Frank had a vivid imagination when it came to the family history.
All the time we were growing up, Dad chose not to tell us his middle name as it was a source of annoyance to him. This and my mothers date of birth remained the firmest family secrets. But in the end it was ironically the distinction of such an unusual middle name that enabled my sister to get him a state pension for the last few months of his life, which is around the time this image was taken at Broughty Ferry Castle in Dundee. Being the only ‘Hardwick’ handily distinguished him from the thousands of other William Halls in the HMRC database then and today allows him to be more easily found through the power of the search engine.
bill and rosemary in tarbert 2000
the ephemera of jomaire and sam
glasgow school of art 1959
My parents were gifted and complicated, like many creative people are. For better or worse, they were an inseparable pair. After my mother’s death in 2002 my father really didn’t care too much to carry on without her and passed away in 2006. When they met, they had both been top of their year at Glasgow Art School. Bill was awarded the travelling scholarship on graduation in 1959 and Rosemary won the Goldsmith’s Hall medal for design the same year. Owing to many factors, their life together did not quite live up to the promise of the heady days of art school in Glasgow and their career beginnings in London. They moved to the Isle of Bute in 1968 where my sister Janie and I grew up. Bill and Rosemary lived a modest and fairly reclusive existance together from there on, making jewellery and other things, enjoying their grandchildren and drinking coffee at 11am, 3pm and 9pm every day like clockwork [and if the weather was good, in their garden] by the sea shore.
When my father learned that he was going to die, his first thoughts were to the letters he and my mother exchanged while he toured Europe for his scholarship. He asked me to get rid of them because no-one would want them and he couldn’t bear to think of them fluttering across the coup [rubbish tip] in the breeze. He had a flair for pathos, did Bill. But I kept them. I have only read one or two over the years but I am so glad I didn’t throw them away. They are a record of the extraordinary young people they both were, once upon a time. His nickname was Sam, from the music hall song popular at the time ‘Sam Hall’ and she was ‘Jomaire’ which is what her younger sister Violet called her, when she was too young to say ‘Rosemary’.
For mum and dad - eternally ‘Jomaire and Sam’