Earlier this year the Heritage Fund awarded a grant of £42,000 to the Sidney Sime Gallery in Worplesdon, near Guildford, in Surrey.
The artist Sime is best remembered for his fifteen-year collaboration with the fantasy and weird-fiction writer Lord Dunsany. Sime illustrated many of Dunsany’s books beginning with The Gods of Pegāna in 1905. He also contributed frontispieces to volumes by Arthur Machen.
Sime lived in Worplesdon in later years and his wife established the little gallery there with a bequest in the 1950s. It houses a collection of 88 hung works and hundreds of catalogued items, including letters, notebooks and memorabilia. The grant is intended to support the gallery “through the creation of a sustainability plan including options appraisal, business planning, audience development and financial planning.”
The suitably eerie photograph of Sime at the top of the post was taken by E.O. Hoppé for The Sketch magazine in 1910. It was recently brought to light by Douglas A. Anderson at A Shiver in the Archives.
Nick Louras 