A Georgian terrace in London defies a singular definition, having been described as a living museum, work of art, post-materialist project, or even a poetic interpretation of history.
Dennis Severs was born in 1944 and from Southern California. His passion for what he called 'English light' drew him to London, and he made his home in the dilapidated property in 1979. His way of making a home was a unique and highly personal endeavour. He wrote, I worked inside out to create what turned out to be a collection of atmospheres: moods that harbour the light and the spirit of various ages. Each of the ten rooms in the house evokes its own period of history, brought alive through sight, smell, and a deliberate sense of precariousness, that work within 'the space between'.
Severs called his medium 'still life drama', that allowed his visitors (or at lease those receptive to his medium) to imagine themselves in another time and place. Woven through the house is the story of the fictive Jarvis family (a name anglicised from Gervais), Huguenot silk weavers who lived at the house from to 1725 to 1919. Each room evokes incidental moments in the lives of these imaginary inhabitants. Writer Peter Ackroyd wrote that The journey through the house becomes a journey through time; with its small rooms and hidden corridors, its whispered asides and sudden revelations, it resembles a pilgrimage through life itself . In a similar vein, Jeanette Winterson observed that Fashions come and go, but there are permanencies, vulnerable but not forgotten, that Dennis sought to communicate , in her article for the Times newspaper.
Severs bequeathed the house to the Spitalfields Trust shortly before his death in 1999. 18 Folgate Street is now open to the public.
The motto of the house is Aut Visum Aut Non!: 'You Either See it or you don't'.
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