The Shelton Minotaur

Boys’ night out; 1970s – Ashford Street, Shelton

I finally thought I’d caught one of the above bad boys until this evening… it turns out that there are at least six of Shelton’s Minotaurs out there. The character below turns out not to be one of the above. I met him again today after first seeing him many decades ago. As a child, I never recollect being awake and frightened by this Minotaur – albeit I do remember a nightmare whereupon I walked along a forest path only for the same creature to leap out ahead. The forest, with dreamlike certainty, was Trentham(!).

The Shelton Minotaur – height 18″

I am aware that the late Jack Simcock owned one of Shelton’s minotaurs, and one was known to have spent time hanging out on the coffee table of Pat Phoenix. I have seen a smaller, less crafted version – presumably an earlier attempt – although my own opinion is that the Taurean party as per the uppermost photo are the finished article. He now sits on my own mantelpiece to bring nightmares to my own children.

Early Shelton turns up on eBay

I had a fantastic message on Friday night from a Facebook friend who has similar interest in Shelton, Cope and Berry saying that she had spotted an early painting by John Shelton on eBay.

John Shelton – London scene, 1951

John Shelton – signature; London scene, 1951

It is an early oil on board by John Shelton. Similar in style to a Potteries scene painted in 1950, this piece is most likely set in the capital as by 1951, Shelton was working at the Festival of Britain.

John Shelton – verso; London scene, (?pre-)1951

The verso provides further interest – an early circus scene by Shelton. While Shelton’s style radically changed throughout his career, the circus theme recurs in work across many decades. This theme is topical given the current Circus exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery which features two of Shelton’s paintings.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Clown (not) resting……

A couple of years back, I was lucky enough to start looking through the studio of John Shelton (1923-1993). In there were paintings, ceramic figures and his notes – including diary entries recounting his time in Fitzrovia in the forties.

 

One of the paintings stacked in his studio was Night Out With Robert – My Father and Me in 1928. Painted in 1988, this was a departure from the various styles adopted by Shelton throughout his life. His diaries suggest that this was purely an attempt to catalogue a vivid recollection of his father “before the memory fades“, regardless of style or genre.

Night Out With Robert – stacked in the preserved studio, summer 2011 (bottom left of rip-saw)

 

In the last two years the painting has had some life breathed back into it. It was restored by Julia Dalzell: the original staples were superceded by copper tacks, the original strainer was replaced and the canvas was tensioned into its new stretcher after being cleaned and varnished. Scrubbed up, the painting then featured in The Burslem Boys exhibition in Autumn 2012.

Night out with Robert (1988) – view from the stairs

The work is now doing the rounds in a Circus exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.

As an aside, I would have liked the exhibition to have featured more local circus themes, such as The Wakes, Hanley, an event which many of the oldest generation still recollect and which (in spite of the background embellishment) was the inspiration behind Shelton’s Night Out painting and which was of influence to other local artists such as Norman Cope (1925-1943). It would have been good to read more about the artists featured in the exhibition too. However, I digress.

 

Another Shelton painting is also on display – Clown Resting (1962). This was donated to the museum by a Mrs Lovatt in 1988 and has sat in the archives for much of the time since.

Clown Resting (in archive)

 

Much like the work of the Roberts – some of which sits in darkened archives rarely looked at – it’s good that the work is finally seen once more and that there is some rotation of the vast paintings sitting in perpetual darkness.

The exhibition runs from July until December 2013 and also features two pieces by Rowley Scott which form part of the Barnett Stross collection. Another story, but a taster for Barnett Stross can be found on Richard Warren’s blog here.

Circus exhibition, Potteries Museum & Art Gallery (July – Dec. 2013)

Live Like A Star – Pat Phoenix and the minotaur

Some time after his foray into Fitzrovia and upon settling back into his North Staffordshire homeland, John Shelton (1923-1993) developed a penchant for creating ceramic minotaurs. Family lore always had it that one of his bovine brethren found its way into the home of none other than Corrie star Pat Phoenix.

Amongst John’s notes and miscellanea, I found the following page, torn from what I assume was either the TV Times or the Ideal Home Magazine.

Pat Phoenix and the Minotaur

 

The article, Live Like A Star, describes the furnishing of Pat Phoenix’s luxury flat at the Navigation Inn, Derbyshire. On centre stage is the following beastie:

Minotaur – up close and personal

 

My own opinion is that John worked on his minotaur form for some time before perfecting it. There are some lesser versions out there, although the following menagerie is a collection of Shelton’s stronger Taureans – seen here mixing socially outside his brother’s house in Seaford Street, Stoke-on-Trent (possibly in the grounds of the now obliterated St. Jude’s Church).

Night on the town

 

One minotaur – quite a handsome character – is still in the family. I can only guess at where the above party dispersed to though. Speculating wildly, maybe Phoenix passed her minotaur on to her son-in-law, to be used in later years as a parliamentary paperweight. I have heard it said that the late Jack Simcock acquired one, though not directly from Shelton. The two were acquainted – at one encounter, Simcock telling Shelton that his limp gave him individuality!

 

Roundabout Wood in the snow

N.H. Paine: ‘Different Lives’ – New Vic exhibition, 2010

Given the snow outside, I thought I’d finally get round to writing up my scribbled notes from the N.H. Paine Different Lives exhibition which was at the New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme in the summer of 2010. These notes, along with some pics pieced together from various corners of the web hopefully capture the definitive list of work shown at the exhibition:

FIGURATIVE

One Who Could Understand

Personally Her Own

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

In A Moment

Waiting

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

Cafe September

I Intended

Night Cafe

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

As If They Had Been There Too

A Second Thought

French Tea

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

WORKING

Hometown

Middleport Moon

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

Nights Are Colder Up North

Harder

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

Open Bible

Angry Young Man

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
– . –

Dammit No Standing In This Area

 
 
 
– . –
There Used To Be A Town Here
Canal On The Edge of Town
Through Fields of Gold
Where The Sky Will Snow
Ghost Town
Winter Fox

 
 
 

SAP BO BI 4.0: The offspring of the Adaptive Processing Server

Excel spreadsheet gnashing of teeth and the BOE Servers

It is a fairly common requirement to want to pull in data from spreadsheet sources, usually as a tactical solution to supplement more strategic data feeds/reporting from sources such as SAP BW. The main “gotcha” is that however much it is claimed that multiple departments all use the same spreadsheet, subtle differences creep into column names, row/column positioning and the like, reinforcing the stance that raw spreadsheets are a poor source for operational data.

However, needs must sometimes. A recent requirement was to take in multiple versions of a spreadsheet, dependent on recipient and in spite of differing column formats on each version of the “same” spreadsheet.

This was fairly readily handled via a Universe (Information Design Tool, Data Foundation and Business Layer) sitting over ODBC connectivity to each version of the Excel spreadsheet. By including every version of the spreadsheet in the Universe and utilising a UNION ALL on a derived table, each version could be assimilated into one large table with an additional column denoting the spreadsheet source of that row. A WebIntelligence document could then use a standard prompt to determine which data to use – each data set being derived from its own version of the spreadsheet.

So far, so good. However, this all went swimmingly until the refresh button was hit and some dreaded generic BusinessObjects errors – WIS00000 and ERR_WIS_30270 – reared their ugly heads. WebI Rich Client was able to refresh its data, a symptom which will hopefully help others with this issue diagnose what is going on. The same snags were encountered though on saving that Rich Client report back to the repository and attempting to refresh/schedule this via LaunchPad/WebI.

After triple-checking the more obvious candidates, namely permissions on the Universe, permissions on the Universe Connection, permissions on the folders in which those entities lived and the ODBC/middleware/drivers (and after assorted calls to ex-colleagues), I noticed that the issue wasn’t just limited to Excel. That was the red herring. It also affected a .unx universe which I created based on the ever-faithful eFashion database. Switching tack from an “Excel/refresh“-based search of the forums, I stumbled on a very enlightening post which held the key.

 

The installation I was dealing with had its vanilla Adaptive Processing Server switched off, with this being split into multiple instances for performance reasons. The DSL Bridge Service lived on its own. By creating a new APS with both the DSL Bridge Service and the Adaptive Connectivity Service housed together (the former was not running on any of the APS instances), the Excel spreadsheets accessed via a .unx universe – and also, out of deference to old faithful, eFashion – could then be refreshed via bog-standard WebI.

Then I went home and had my tea.

 
 

Mark Finney is Lead Consultant for 20/20 DATA LTD. providing Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence expertise in the United Kingdom.

 

SAP BW reporting via SAP BO BI 4.0

There is a common need to take data from SAP BW and present this via SAP BO BI 4.0 (BusinessObjects for the old school). I thought I’d jot down a few bulletpoints relating to a recent project which required the production of a Financial Reporting and Contract Performance Pack. This utilised a new feature of BI 4.0 – BICS connectivity – to allow WebIntelligence to report from the underlying BEx queries which returned data from the SAP BW world. Information was supplemented by Excel spreadsheets which had its own issues (Excel was found to be innocent as the BOE Servers stepped forth with their own tale as covered here).

Publications vs Scheduling
One of the requirements was to consolidate multiple analyses into one multi-page PDF. While the Publication functionality lends itself to this very task given Crystal Report components, there is no provision to do this with WebIntelligence collateral.

The initial workaround was to create one WebIntelligence (WebI) document with multiple tabs. Publications would then be used to burst the information out to the multiple recipients (contracts). However, Publications did not preserve expanded hierarchical objects from BW at a set level. This was preserved though via the standard Scheduling. Given the relatively small number of contracts, scheduling of one multi-tabbed WebI document for multiple contracts (each having their own set of parameters supplied to the prompts) was used.

Charts going AWOL
When scheduling the WebI document to PDF format, charts would often be rendered as blank. This was only the case for contracts requiring higher volumes of data to be processed. Fortunately, this is a common complaint and one which was readily fixed in this case by reconfiguring the timeouts relating to the visualisation elements of the product.

Gotcha! Date sort orders
A disproportionate amount of time was spent figuring out the “gotchas” surrounding the nuances of how SAP BW and Business Objects really integrates. One such example is the sort order of calendar months (or in this case Financial Periods aligning themselves around calendar months). After some experimentation as to how best to meet in the middle, the following “how to” describes how in this case the financial periods were provided with a logical date order in WebI:

* Set the ordering in the BEx query;
* Use Dimension objects and not Attributes in WebI;
* Switch off any WebI sorting, driving it solely from the BEx query above;
* Ensure there are no superfluous default value entries in the BEx query (obscure).

Corporate colours
Given the impressive set of visualisations which are now in evidence – Bubble Charts, Heat Maps et al. – it is frustrating that something as fundamental as a Custom Palette requires server side config edits and a reboot of Tomcat, all for a paltry total of just one custom palette. Certainly a single version of the truth there. Hmmm… I only used a custom palette as a workaround to give me specific control of colours on one particular visualisation. Albeit at the cost of using the bespoke palette which could have been better used for its true purpose of implementing the corporate colours.

 

Save ££££££££s – merge your dimensions
Okay, more of a Billy Connolly reference, but utilising Merged Dimensions in WebI can often remove the need to re-engineer the Multi Providers sitting upstream in the BW world. Applying this in the reporting layer can therefore save much re-engineering work and development cost in SAP BW.

 
 

Mark Finney is Lead Consultant for 20/20 DATA LTD. providing Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence expertise in the United Kingdom.

 

Audrie – Burslem School of Art (1942/3)

Following on from the hitherto undiscovered folder relating to John Shelton (1923-1993), the following drawing from Shelton’s time at Burslem School of Art was also found in there, being made in 1942/3. The sitter’s name is Audrie although I have no idea who she might have been.

 

There are a few photos from the art school at the time below which could contain Audrie, if she was a fellow pupil as opposed to a sitter.

 

 

I’m aware of Monica Goddard and Betty Knapper who studied at Burslem at this time, so it is possible that they are on these photos albeit I’m not able to put faces and names together. I do know that Arthur Berry (with his foot on the chair) and Norman Cope (brush in hand) are on the bottom photo.

 

2013: The lost prints of John Shelton (1923-1993)

I had wondered, going into the New Year, whether I’d uncovered everything there was to find out about the Potteries artist John Shelton (1923-1993). As if by way of an answer, this gem of a folder came to light on 1st January 2013.

The folder itself was from Shelton’s London days – his 82 Northside, Wandsworth W18 address was written on the cover – having within it a business card from the Shelton Knight Studio, 237 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1. At first glance, it looked like Shelton had used the folder to store selected coursework from his class of 68/69¹. However, digging deeper, it turned out that there was much more inside, including photographs and details – in his own hand – of twenty-seven of his own lithographic ink works including (Two) Actors (1958) which is now in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery².

 
SHEET ONE
 

 
Top Row:
Bent Old Man (1959) – Litho Ink on Paper – 27.5″ x 20″
Humbug Seller & Child (1958) – Litho Ink & Dyes on Paper – 22″ x 12″
Rosette Seller (1958) – Litho Ink & Dyes on Paper – 22″ x 15″
Lame Paper Seller (1958) – Litho Ink & Dyes on Paper – 22″ x 15″
 
Bottom Row:
? (1958) – Litho Ink and dyes – 22″ x 12″
Old Man with Stick (1958) – Litho Ink on Paper – 19.5″ x 14.5″
Old Man with Rosette (1958) – Litho Ink on Paper – 20″ x 17.5″
Old Man with Stick (1958) – Ink on Grey Paper – 19.5″ x 14.5″
 

 

Two of the above pieces – Rosette Seller (1958) and Humbug Seller & Child (1958) – are alive and well, having passed through the Barewall Gallery in Burslem in 2010. These two, along with Lame Paper Seller (1958) can be seen in the Six Towns Magazine article of April 1965. (City) Rosette Seller (1958) was also part of The Burslem Boys exhibition in Autumn 2012.

 
SHEET TWO
 

 
Top Row:
? – in Blue Ink on Linen – 11″ x 11″
? (1949) – Ink on David Cox Paper – 14″ x 10.5″
Pigeon Flyer (?1947) – Litho Ink on paper – 18.5″ x 13.25″
Flower Seller (1958) – Litho Ink & Dyes on paper – 22″ x 15″
 
Middle Row:
Billiards Player (1958) – Litho Ink & Dyes – 22″ x 15″
People in a Bar (1958) – Litho Ink & Dyes on Paper – 22″ x 15″
Gossips (1949) – Ink on Paper – 14″ x 10″
Football Crowd (1959) – Chalk & Paint on Paper – 14.5″ x 11″
 
Bottom Row:
Girl Playing Chess (1958) – Litho Ink on Grey Paper – 22″ x 15″
Man with Glasses & Stick (195?) – Litho Ink on Paper – 19.5″ x 14.5″
Fortune Teller (1947) – Ink on Paper – 10.5″ [sic] x 9″
²Two Actors (1958) – Litho ink on paper – 24″ x 20″

 
 
SHEET THREE
 

 
Top Row:
Figures in a Crowd (1958) – Litho Ink on Paper – 20″ x 14.5″
Guitar Player (1959) – Lith Ink on Paper – 30.5″ x 20.5″
Miner (1959) – Litho Ink on Paper – 20.5″ x 20.5″
 
Bottom Row:
Young Actor with a Bodkin (1958) – Litho Ink on Paper – 19.5″ x 14.5″
Metamorphic Figure (1959) – Litho Ink on Paper – 29″ x 18″
Girls Seated (1959) – Litho Ink on Paper – 30.5″ x 20.5″
Blue Figure (1958) – Litho Ink on Blue Paper – 22″ x 12″
 

 
 
 
FOOTNOTE

¹ Newcastle-under-Lyme School of Art coursework: David Owen, Liverpool – 1968; P.J. Crowther, Leeds – 1969; Pauline Faulks – 1970; Anthony Moseley, Canterbury – 1969; L.J. Hope-Stone.

² The museum have the following catalogue listing which now needs updating to reflect the actual title of Two Actors –

STKMG: FA.1987.FA.38 print F2.34R : 8.2011 Shelton, John. – Actors / by John Shelton. – Lithographic print. – Dated 1958. – Signed by the artist. donated by Mrs Lovatt 1987

(Two) Actors (1958) – Potteries Museum and Art Gallery archives