Supreme Court art: shades of white

Today's hearing is veiled in white. Vestergaard Frandsen A/S and 2 others v Bestnet Europe Limited and 5 others concerns insecticidal mosquito nets. Have trade secrets been misused? Must someone with an obligation of confidence know that an act complained of breaches that obligation?

Counsel has two default positions

Fittingly we're in Court 2, the white-painted box, which brightens the eye and sharpens the mind.

The justices are needling counsel. Every argument is dutifully brought out for inspection in the sunlight which filters through off-white flower-embossed blinds.

Counsel moves around a lot but doesn't ward off the occasional painful bite from the cloud of justices:

'It doesn't really help with the point we're on at all.'
'As such, no, my lord.'
'As such.'

Then, after under two hours, proceedings are brought briskly to a close: the court decides not to hear the respondents.

I wander along to the basement café. Sun streams down from the roof-window several floors above and bounces off the shiny white tables.



Such brightness demands a melancholy thought: The White Duck, an eighteenth-century meditation on white painted by Jean-Baptiste Oudry.

This rhapsodic still life was stolen from us all in 1992, from Houghton Hall in Norfolk, taken out of its frame. Does it have a loving curator? Is it rolled up and cracked? Can it hear rats? Will it be recovered before its keepers die?

Court 2 window blind. The direction of the
curves in the composition shows you
I am left-handed

There is no sitting this afternoon so I make my own entertainment.

In the basement there are two white marble bears, the gift of the Chief Justice of Canada, set under a glass table-top. They are a source of atavistic confusion to the Supreme Court's souvenir bear who peers in from above.

Then, in full sight of The Queen, he decides to cover everything with billows of white.