BRADLEY OLIVER-WHITE

Thomas Cuthbertson's room

The Lounge

Entrance
The lounge:a warm, family room; a cosy cube. The objects inside it define this room’s purpose and the architecture is very basic. The room is a square, and where the wall meets the ceiling there is a white painted wooden trim to smoothen the corners.

Floor to left wall
You are looking at the room from a central passage. On the floor is a large rectangular rug with a cream silhouette of a thin stem with branches deviating from it, budding with unrecognisable fruit at the ends. The pattern goes from bottom left (nearest to you) to top right. A couple of inches from the edge of the rug is the wrap-around couch shaped like an upside-down L. It is a fluffy gunmetal grey design that flanks the left hand side and around the left top corner into the centre-point of the rug, resting against a radiator (attached to the left wall), the top left corner of the room, and the far wall. The couch texture is ridged and soft, with pinstripes as if hundreds of pipe cleaners have been inserted under the fabric in a continuous vertical formation of lines. Where the couch extends in the centre of the rug is where you lay your feet because there are no arms on the sides. In the top right corner of the couch, seven metal chutes are fanning out from one point behind the couch. They are long and vary in heights, and look similar to pond reeds. They are long stick-like stems with cylindrical translucent tubes at the tops that house a small light bulb.

Far wall to right corner
Looking over the couch is a large print of Picasso’s ‘Head of a women’ (1946), in a thin silver frame. The top of the frame is level with the top of the window space and drops down to just slightly under the middle of the windows. Its width is half it’s height. Cast down to the couch below and right to meet the leg extension: a small black cat is sitting in the exact centre of the picture, facing you on a folded leopard print cat blanket. The leg extension comes to the start of the window space. The sill is slightly lower than the couch and a hands length indented in the wall. The window is tall and nearly reaches to the ceiling, short of a few inches. This space is occupied by the curtain rail with curly ends, with a pair of ring top curtains that drape down to the floor, drawn back. You can’t see the bottom of the curtains because they drape down behind the leg extension of the couch (on the left) and behind the TV monitor and unit (on the right).

Right corner
The TV unit is facing towards the centre of the room, so at an angle to the corner. It is glass with a circular plate on the bottom to allow for rotation. The height of the unit is within the height distance of the window ledge and leg extension of couch. The width is a couple of inches wider than the 42” TV set, but from the top level of the unit to the floor is about the same height as the TV. If the TV were sat on the floor in front of the unit it would cover the unit. The unit holds two boxes on the first shelf, and another two on the bottom shelf, which is attached to the rotating base. There is a gap of a couple of inches between the bottom shelf and floor. Sitting high above the entire TV set and unit is a light fitting which has passed its time. However, it remains as an ornamental feature. It sits, on the right wall a foot away from the corner and ceiling, arched out from the wall curling upwards to point to the ceiling like an outreaching cupped hand. It is silver and is holding the light in its ‘palm’. This light fitting is a pair, the other sits in the same spot on the opposing wall, above a black, framed photograph with a dark beach photograph on it.

Right wall
Cast your mind’s eye down from the light fitting on the right wall to the right of the TV unit. You have a low plant in a pot, with large waxy green leaves with a burgundy coloured underside. Quaintly, it matches the rug. The plant is mostly obstructed by a glass nest of tables (set of three),  so you can only see the large palm leaves stretching out from behind it. On the top of the nest is a gold cup trophy with a wooden bottom. Behind it is a number of photo frames leant against one another to the wall. Beside the nest is a foot stool that matches the couch, and from there we are at the periphery of the photograph.