My hostess, Joanna Bird, had just taken off her uncomfortable bat wings when she opened the door of her Chiswick home, but blood-or something very like it-still trickled from the neck of Deborah Lanyon, an artist whose abstracted landscapes were on the walls.
I'm not a great one for Halloween, more of an American than British festival, but this one, I thought as I rustled through the brown leaves of the plane trees carpeting the pavements of west London, was going to be good. I wasn't disappointed. All was warmth and colour, in a house that's also a ceramics gallery. One guest arrived with a pair of splendid Hungarian Vizsla dogs: bulls may not get on well in china shops, but they only added to the decorative spirit of the occasion.
In the garden, a kinetic sculpture by the artist Rupert Newman blazed like a display of enormous jewels against the black velvet of the night. Seven large disks were illuminated by video images, each different, always changing, snatched visually from details around London. The technical challenge lies in exactly aligning the projectors. More curiosity, if less colour, comes on Monday, when Joanna opens an exhibition of Steffen Dam's glass, a shorthand for which might be jellyfish in jars, at Browse and Darby in Cork Street. I can't wait.
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Can't you hear me S.O.S? Our treasured native dog breeds are at risk of extinctionDo you know your Kerry blue terrier from your Lancashire heeler? A simple lack of publicity is often to blame for some of the UK's native dog breeds flying dangerously low under-the-radar.
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'There are architects and architects, but only one ARCHITECT': Sir Edwin Lutyens and the wartime Chancellor who helped launch his stellar careerClive Aslet explores the relationship between Sir Edwin Lutyens and perhaps his most important private client, the politician and financier Reginald McKenna.
