The Quay, Exeter

The Quay, Exeter uses watercolour and collage to depict some of the buildings in this part of Exeter.  Prominent in the picture is the Custom House, the oldest extant such building in the country, and a place that was at the centre of Exeter’s woollen cloth export trade in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The image was published as the central image in an article entitled ‘Warmth in the West’ for Architectural Review, vol 96, 1944, but it is likely that the work was made on an earlier trip to Devon.

This work was selected by a member of the LGBTQ+ community as part of the Out and About: Queering the Museum at RAMM project. Listen to the attached audio (transcript available) to find out why.

Visual description: a collage of Exeter Quay. The Exeter Custom House, a dark red building with a white roof, dominates the scene. Its façade is marked by white rectangles and arches, illustrating the windows, doorways and brick detailing. To the right is a similar red building – the Harbour Master’s Office. Behind these two buildings, the rooftops and houses of Exeter are sketched in black ink. Above the buildings, there is a dark black sky.