Barbara Hepworth, St Ives: the Trewyn Garden-Studio, Kept As It Was

Barbara Hepworth bought Trewyn Studio in 1949, in the heart of St Ives, Cornwall. She lived and worked there from 1950 until her death, in a fire, in 1975. The place became a museum the following year, as she had wished; the Tate has looked after it since 1980. Nothing has moved.

The studio

A granite house, workshops running one into the next and opening onto a sloping garden and, over the wall, the bay. The carving workshops have been left as they were in 1975: smocks on their hooks, tools put away, blocks waiting, plasters in progress. The garden, laid out with her friend the composer Priaulx Rainier, was planted for the bronzes: palms, bamboo, a pool, a greenhouse.

What you see there

Bronzes placed by Hepworth herself among the plants: pierced forms, hollowed ovals, standing groups you walk around like standing stones. In the workshops, the taut strings that run through her sculptures of the 1940s, the guarea wood she loved for its warm colour, Cornish stone, gouges and rasps. The house keeps simple post-war furniture, books and ceramics — Bernard Leach ran his pottery a few streets away.

The palette

White of the walls, deep green of the garden, verdigris and brown of the bronzes, grey of the granite, shifting blue of the sea. White first: she wanted the St Ives light, famous among painters, to reach everywhere.

What to take home

Put an object outside: a solid form in a garden, however small, changes the way you walk through it. Leave a corner of work on view, with its tools, rather than shut in a cupboard. Choose a wood for its colour and leave it bare. Accept rope, copper and raw stone as materials for the living room.

Spotted a piece in this spirit? Scan it on Beyit: an edition bronze, a turned wooden form or a studio ceramic — the app identifies the object and gives the prices.