Interviews: Jim Ede

Harold Stanley [‘Jim’] Ede was born on 7 April 1895 near Cardiff. Jim met Helen when they were both art students, and they married in 1921. While working at the Tate in the 1920s and 1930s, Jim formed important friendships with Ben Nicholson, David Jones and other artists. In 1936, he resigned from the Tate and built a house on the outskirts of Tangier, Morocco. During the war years Jim travelled to the USA, with Helen, on lecture tours to raise funds for Allied War Relief. They also ran weekend retreats for servicemen on leave from Gibraltar in their Tangier home, where they lived until 1952. Following a brief period in the Loire Valley, France, Jim and Helen moved to Cambridge in 1956.  Here, they renovated four derelict cottages to create Kettle’s Yard, where they lived from 1957 to 1973.  When he left, Jim created a recorded lecture about Kettle’s Yard, from which extracts have been taken for this website.  Jim and Helen Ede retired to Edinburgh, where Helen died in 1977. Jim spent the last years of his life as a hospital visitor. He died in 1990.