What drives art collectors? They often seem obsessive, driven to fill a mysterious lack, from Charles I, who amassed a hoard of Renaissance art that helped provoke his subjects to civil war, to Charles Saatchi, who had so many contemporary artworks he had to store them in a warehouse which caught fire. But there is also a mysterious category of collectors, such as John Soane and Rudolf II of Prague, who turn their collections into cabinets of curiosities haunted by their presence. Another of them was the 20th-century British collector Jim Ede.
The place Ede created is Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, an open, spacious home formed by joining four ruinous cottages which he filled with his collection of modern art by the likes of Brâncuși, Gaudier-Brzeska and the Anglo-Welsh artist and poet David Jones. Today it’s known for its adjoining contemporary exhibition space, but next time you go, do yourself a favour and visit Ede’s museum-home, which is still preserved as the livable, relaxed yet artistically sublime little world it was when he gave it to Cambridge University in 1966.
