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CONTENTS NOVEMBER 2018
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BOOKS
Reading on art, architecture and design
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TRAVELLERS’ CHECKS
Tartan smartens and plaid will make you glad, says Miranda Sinclair heading north
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SERIOUS PURSUITS
Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities
74 COVER The fuchsia’s orange? – warm saturated hues mingle in Seán and Dalila Shanahan’s spicy bedroom near Como. As the couple roll out the red carpet, get marooned on page 116. Photography: Fritz von der Schulenburg
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ANTENNAE
What’s new in style, decoration and design, chosen by Nathalie Wilson
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UNITED WE WEAVE
The Vaughan clan ties up the world’s warp and weft in one collection, learns Amy Smith
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ANTENNAE ROUNDUP
Our selection of the best door furniture
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SUNNY DELIGHTS
Hot-hued stuff turns your placid house into an acid house. You’ll be ecstatic, raves Max Egger
SEASONED IN THE SUN
Puglian salt flats bring out the full flavour of Milan’s furniture. Add a pinch of Jessica Hayns
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Periodicals postage paid at Rahway, NJ. Postmaster: Send address corrections to ‘The World of Interiors’ c/o Mercury Airfreight International Ltd Inc, 2323 Randolph Avenue, Avenel NJ 07001, ‘The World of Interiors’ (ISSN 0264-083X) is published monthly. Vol 38, no 11, total 434
CHECKS AND BALANCES
Seán Shanahan is known for his monochrome canvases, but in the Italian house he shares with his wife, Dalila, he’s unleashed a slew of eye-popping paint effects, finds Lee Marshall
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QUAY PLAYER
No spitting, profanity or mobiles are allowed in this Welsh sailors’ institute, where nautical knickknacks mingle with marine memorials. Landlubber Ruth Guilding minds her ps and qs
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ROOMS TO REFLECT
Be it oeil-de-boeuf windows or Chinese mirror paintings, Nicole Altero’s Rive Gauche flat showcases her love of antique glass. Marie-France Boyer looks through it all
ADDRESS BOOK
Suppliers in this issue
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96
Ennui with life in Normandy saw Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent retire to Tangier. Their friend Madison Cox recounts how he helped create a refuge from the social whirl
NETWORK
Merchandise and events worldwide
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INSPIRATION
How to recreate some of the design effects in this issue, by Grace McCloud
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EXHIBITION DIARY
Vuillard’s mama, visions of Vishniac, Gothick ‘gewgaws’, plus Charlotte Edwards’s listings
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JOURNAL OF A HISTORIC-SHOP
OWNER Bodenhams in Ludlow trades from a
wonky 1405 timber frame – that’s a challenge
HAVEN CAN’T WAIT
ART & ANTIQUES
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GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT
Ornaments in straw, from bells to springs to woodlice, became the preserve of Swiss villagers from the 1830s on, fuelling the mode for hats. Marie-France Boyer is all ears
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CURTAIN CALL
Pauline Caulfield, ex-wife of the late painter Patrick, silkscreens hangings that are graphic and bold in colour. But, discovers Jessica Lack, she had to train herself out of timidity
INTERIORS
FROM THE ARCHIVE
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FAMILY GATHERING
Having once walked from Gdansk to Istanbul together, Kate Harris and Jason Goodwin now move house regularly but, says Ruth Guilding, carry their illustrious parents’ heirlooms in tow
WEATHERED OUT WEST
From shipyard pilings to dismantled chicken coops, JB Blunk used old wood to make his art and build his Californian cabin. Barbara Pallenberg nails it. First published: June 2000
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antennae What’s in the air this month, edited by Nathalie Wilson
1 Weaving is as much an art form as
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a domestic craft for Catarina Riccabona, whose work features ecofriendly materials that are often plant-dyed or second-hand. Take the throws (from £840) at her Building with Thread exhibition, hosted by the New Craftsmen, which are made from yarns passed down from her grandmother. Until 31 October. Ring 020 7148 3190, or visit thenewcraftsmen.com.
2 Inspired by traditional designs, O&G Studio’s seating is handcrafted in its Rhode Island atelier by artisans often using 18th-century methods. For all that, it’s far from olde-worlde. Shown: ‘Atlantic’ settee (from £5,880) and ‘Wayland’ high-back armchair (from £1,224), which are available in 19 colours. Ring Staffan Tollgård on 020 7952 6066, or visit tollgard.co.uk.
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self-taught Grace Horne uses to make her folding knives and scissors were employed 100 years ago. Which, incidentally, was about when her workshop was built as a loo for the tram drivers of her adopted city of Sheffield. These ‘Silk’ shears with a glove-leather sheath (which are made in collaboration with Joshua Burrell) cost from £1,500, the ‘Dark Notes’ pocket knife from £500. Ring 07812 672788, or visit gracehorne.co.uk.
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4 The title of Moissonnier’s new ‘Miss’ diffusion range conveys its comparative modernity. It features cleaner lines and a more restricted palette of finishes than the main collection. The craftsmanship, however, remains unquestionably the same. Shown: ‘James’ candlestick floor lamp (£1,610 approx) and ‘Cary’ armchair (£1,878 approx). Ring 00 33 4 74 23 15 31, or visit moissonnier.com.
5 Oka’s red-and-white-striped ‘Rander’ 5
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(£150) and black-polka-dot ‘Dige’ (£175) handmade ceramic stools will lend some fun to your interiors. Ring 0333 004 2042, or visit oka.com.
PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC EGGLY (POINT SEVEN STUDIOS) (3); SIMON WITHAM (6, 10)
3 Many of the skills and tools
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6 Like the proverbial stone, no shade of green in the National Trust’s houses is left unturned. Working with the organisation, Little Greene identified 20 colours, which together with 11 pre-existing ones make up the company’s latest colourthemed collection. Emulsion from £22 per litre. Ring 020 7935 8844, or visit littlegreene.com.
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While wearing his Greater London Council’s Historic Buildings Division hat in the 1970s, Robert Weston rescued a scrap of Chinese paper from 17thcentury Swakeleys House in Ickenham, which was built for the Lord Mayor of London. The standardbearer for historic wallpapers revisited the 18th-century remnant not long before he died, creating ‘Swakeleys Chinoiserie’ (£33.30 per m). Ring Hamilton Weston on 020 8940 4850, or visit hamiltonweston.com.
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8 In homage to the Uruguayan architect Julio Vilamajó Echaniz (1894-1948), Matteo Fogale and assorted collaborators in Montevideo produced a furniture range inspired by the great man’s drawings of his home-turned-museum (pictured). ‘Hilos Invisibles’, which includes these concrete-and-glass ‘MCV’ tables co-designed with Rafael Antia (£2,250 for the pair), are on display at the Aram Gallery in London until 27 October. Visit matteofogale.com.
9 ‘There were a few late nights poring over colours and weaves,’ says interior designer Adam Bray of his collaboration with Christine van der Hurd. Their ‘Waver’ collection of wool flatweaves and hemp durries works well with the heritage shades and mixture of antiques and mid-century design he favours; £705 per sq m. Ring 020 7313 5400, or visit vanderhurd.com.
10 Comprising eight designs in various colourways, Nina Campbell’s new ‘Trianon’ collection is a veritable smörgåsbord of trimmings. ‘Fringe NCT511-06’ and ‘Cord NCT510-06’ are yours to devour for £15 and £12 per m respectively. Ring Osborne & Little on 020 8812 3123, or visit osborneandlittle.com. r
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antennae 1 The scooped-out form of the ‘Flindt’ interior/ exterior LED wall light (from £380) allows for a gentle, multidirectional glow akin, designer Christian Flindt hopes, to the ‘certain warmth and ambience… we all enjoy once the sun goes down’. Ring Louis Poulsen on 020 8397 4400, or visit louispoulsen.com.
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2 The ‘Seychelles’ lamp (£1,180), by Pierre Dubois and Aimé Cécil for Roche Bobois, evokes oldfashioned hand-held oil lanterns – although at 70cm high it’s a good deal larger. More chic too, with its glossy black base, glass shade in a choice of three colours and squared-off brass handle. Ring 020 7751 4030, or visit roche-bobois.com.
3 Self-confessed sun chaser Laurence Leenaert pursued the rays to Morocco three years ago. Here the Belgian works with local materials and artisans to create fashion and home accessories, such as these particularly novel ‘Eyebrow’ and ‘Picasso Eye’ mirrors (£206 and £215 approx respectively) and ceramics (from £13 approx). Ring LRNCE on 00 212 627 298 113, or visit lrnce.com.
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4 Contemplating the form an outdoor shower might take, Belgian architect Hans Verstuyft arrived at ‘a pure line, with no further frills’ made from no-maintenance brass, which patinates nicely. ‘Grace’ costs £5,350 approx and is available from Miami-based Purificare-US. Ring 001 305 699 5333, or visit purificare-us.com.
5 In its pursuit of ‘unique and exclusive materials that can go beyond the functionality of the product’, Sicis has managed to surpass itself with the Arabesque designs in its ‘Crystal Mosaic’ collection (from £170 per sq m). Use them exclusively, or mixed with the company’s vitreous paste wares, to bejewel your interiors. Ring 00 39 05 44 469 711, or visit sicis.com $ 4
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UNITED WE WEAVE From Ghanaian kente cloth to Indian block prints, a whole commonwealth of textiles meets in the Vaughan clan’s new collection – shot here in the trove-like home of Peter Adler, a kindred fan of all things tribal. Diverse as they are, one thing looms large: exquisite craftsmanship by artisans affected by globalism. Amy Smith picks up their yarn. Photography: Jan Baldwin r
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Peter Adler’s west London drawing room is filled with the spoils of a lifetime’s collecting. Lucy Vaughan found the block-print fabric on the sofa during a trip to India and now sells it by the metre. ‘Red lifts everything,’ she says
LIFESTEEL SOFA
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‘WE ARE a tribe,’ Lucy Vaughan, the owner and creative director of Vaughan Design, explains of the brand’s new collection. ‘Tribal’, which features patterned lampshades, cushions and an upholstered slipper chair, is the first collaboration to involve her daughter Emma. Vaughan has been a family affair from the outset: founded 35 years ago by Lucy and her husband, Michael, an artist, the brand started out producing contemporary takes on the column lamps that the couple had been selling in their stampsized antique shop in Putney. Emma joined in November 2017 after stints at Sotheby’s and an antique jewellery dealer on Bond Street; ‘Tribal’ is a way for her to make a mark on the company. The name also alludes to the origins of the fabrics that make this collection so distinct, as well as extensive. There are more than 250 pieces in total, from lampshades to cushions, made using textiles that the Vaughans have accumulated over the years or have sourced from small-scale producers around the world, many of them also family concerns. Each handcrafted fabric reflects the textile traditions of the region in which it is made. In the northern Indian city of Jaipur, for example, Vaughan is working with a family that has been creating wondrous block-printed designs using the same technique and natural dyes for generations. The Ghanaian kente cloth that is seen in a number of cushion designs, on the other hand, is woven on a horizontal strip loom, creating bands of fabric that are then assembled. Historically associated with the sacred and ceremonial dress of the Ashanti and Ewe kings, every kente pattern has a title, sometimes ascribed by the weaver, sometimes by chiefs and elders. (In an echo of this tradition, each piece in the Vaughan range is named either after its producer or people who work for, or have collaborated with, the company – acknowledging an extended ‘tribe’ of contributors.) Currently, Emma and Lucy are working with eight fabric suppliers – from China, Pakistan and the UK, in addition to France, Ghana, India and Uzbekistan – and the hope is that this network will expand. As with Vaughan’s lighting range, most of which is assembled in Britain from foreign components, all of the ‘Tribal’ lampshades and the bulk of the cushions will be made in Britain. Though Vaughan’s designs largely leave the fabrics to do the talking, there are some nice touches: a flash of contrast silk edging in r
From top: the slipper chair is upholstered in fabric formed from hand-loomed Indian strips that were bought individually and stitched together; cushions made using Burmese fabrics surround one covered in chequerboard kente cloth. The 18th-century ‘tree of life’ palampore hanging behind them belongs to Peter Adler
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imperial purple finishes a patterned yellow lampshade, for example. The muted palette of a range of hand-dyed French linen cushions meanwhile creates a subtle but sumptuous foil to more vibrant designs. The oak slipper chairs, which are a regular feature of Vaughan’s furniture range, are also handmade in Britain. These can be upholstered in a variety of cloths, including an Indian embroidered cotton that is available by the metre. In addition, a number of cushions are one-offs or limited-run made from found lengths of fabric no longer in production. For WoI, the ‘Tribal’ collection was photographed in the London home-cum-showroom-cum-Aladdin’s cave of Peter Adler, who began dealing in tribal crafts in the 1970s. A love of textiles has taken him to Africa many times – in particular to Ghana, to research the fabrics of the Ewe and Ashanti (‘they use colour with a confidence that’s mind-boggling’), about which he has written two books. In addition to the war-chest of artefacts he has managed to amass – West African Bamileke feather headdresses; a Korean chaekgeori screen; an 18th-century ‘tree of life’ palampore, originally traded by the Dutch East India Company, with hand-painted floral arrangements straight out of a Flemish still life – every surface of his front room is covered by a literally dazzling array of crystals and minerals. These are used in the jewellery inspired by antique pieces that he sells through his company, Pebble London. Peter explains that cheap Chinese and South Asian imports have flooded African markets in recent decades, contributing to the same sort of decline in traditional production that hit the British textile industry. He recalls a Ewe chief weaver telling him in the 1990s that the problem he faced was not lack of skills, but lack of commissions. As local markets contract, collaborations such as Vaughan’s can be critical to small-scale manufacturers. There is an irony in the fact that the forces of globalisation that have ravaged craft textile production also present it with an alternative means to survive. But the Vaughan ‘tribe’ – which, after all, has been using many of the same component manufacturers to make its lamps for 35 years – is deeply invested in heritage; with Emma’s first collection, the brand is ushering in a new tradition of its own $ Prices from £60 for a cushion. Vaughan. Ring 020 7349 4600, or visit vaughandesigns.com. Pebble London. Ring 020 7262 1775, or visit pebblelondon.com
From top: two cushions in Ghanaian, left, and Burmese textiles sit on an armchair that is covered with a length of kente cloth from Peter Adler’s personal collection; a multicoloured beaded corset made by the Dinka people of Sudan towers over two white bobbled Yoruba headdresses from Nigeria and a Vaughan slipper chair
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T H E WO R L D OF I N TER I OR S 쮿 P ROM OT IO N
IN GOOD SPIRITS FROM ITS FARM IN HEREFORDSHIRE, CHASE DISTILLERY CRAFTS QUALITY SPIRITS USING TRADITIONAL MAKING TECHNIQUES THAT EMPHASISE THE INGREDIENTS Having farmed potatoes for 20 years, William Chase decided to try his hand at spirits with the launch of Chase Distillery in 2008, producing quality vodka and gin. Set in a 400-acre estate in Herefordshire, boasting some of the richest farmland in the world, the Chase family grows all of its own King Edward, Rosetta and Lady Claire potatoes for the distillery. Every batch of spirits is signed off by a member of the family, and today, William’s sons play a key role in the business. Harry, his eldest, runs the farm in Herefordshire, while James, the global brand ambassador, travels the world to spread Chase’s message. Chase adopts traditional methods, which involve using a bespoke copper batch pot – one of the world’s tallest rectification towers standing at 21m – and a beautiful carter head-style still called ‘Ginny’. Unlike other distilleries, no neutral grain spirit is used in the production process, and each bottle is made on site, ensuring an entirely single-estate process from field to bottle.
Chase makes a wide selection of vodkas and gins. The exquisite Chase Vodka is made from home-grown potatoes and water from Chase’s own borehole. About 250 potatoes go into the making of every bottle and it is distilled 114 times for a pure, rich taste. The vodka is so versatile that it can be paired with virtually anything, but Chase recommends combining with soda water, fresh lemon juice and Chase Elderflower Liqueur for a particularly refreshing tipple. The aromatic and full-bodied Chase GB Gin packs a punch. Its driest of dry finishes is made by adding juniper buds and berries to Chase Vodka in the belly of ‘Ginny’. Wild botanical infusions of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, almond, coriander, cardamom, cloves, liquorice and lemon give the gin its distinctive spicy flavour. It is perfectly served as a classic GB&T with plenty of ice and a slice of fresh ginger to enhance the natural flavour of the botanicals. For more information, visit chasedistillery.co.uk $
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antennae roundup Looking for door furniture with real pulling power? Miranda Sinclair has a whole lot of leverage
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1 Ebonised-wood beehive knob, £45 per pair, Holloways of Ludlow. 2 ‘Chidswell’, £1,080 per pair, Drummonds/Kirkpatricks Company. 3 ‘Gaudí’, from £97 each, BD Barcelona. 4 ‘Louis XV’ lever, £354, Beardmore. 5 ‘Harun’, £1,100 per pair, Van Cronenburg. 6 ‘Studio PPOR28’, by Daniel Podva, from £236 approx, Série Rare. 7 From top: ‘Sea Urchin’, £316; ‘Moonsnail’, £112; both Collier Webb. 8 ‘Benjamin’, by Oliver Knights, £356 per pair, SDS London. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
Introducing the
Collection
VAUGHAN 020 7349 4600 Visit our new website
vaughandesigns.com
antennae roundup
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PHOTOGRAPHY: LIAM STEVENS (1)
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1 ‘Anemone CK807’ pull handles, £2.50 each, These Please. 2 ‘Caliph’, £432 per pair, Charles Edwards. 3 White ceramic knob, £22 per pair, Willow & Stone. 4 Natural-horn pull handles, £13.50 approx each, Emery & Cie. 5 ‘Sembla’, £219.56 per pair, Allgood. 6 Barrel knob with leather insert and backplate, $720, H. Theophile. 7 Fossilised-wood ‘FWTH’, £140 per pair, Chloe Alberry. 8 ‘Designer’ leather latch set, £1,038 per pair, Rocky Mountain Hardware. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
antennae roundup
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1 ‘Onda’ pull handles, from £11.99 each, Dowsing & Reynolds. 2 ‘DK2017’, from £367.50, SA Baxter. 3 ‘72850’, $269, PE Guerin. 4 ‘Bauhaus 1306’, from £385, The Nanz Company. 5 ‘Moscow’, from £520 per pair, House of Eroju. 6 ‘Cubist’, by Augustin Granet, from £225 approx per pair, Objet Insolite. 7 ‘René’, suppliers’ details see Address Book $
8 ‘ALL02’, by Adolf Loos, from £297.33, Izé. All prices include VAT. For
AUTUMN SALE Discounts up to 40%
SALE STARTS SATURDAY 20TH OCTOBER 587-589 Kings Road, London SW6 2EH | sales@georgesmith.com | 0207 384 1004 View available stock at georgesmith.com
SHORTLIST 1 ‘Caribe’ table, by Sebastian Herkner for Ames, £499, Mint. 2 ‘Portobello’ diary, £210, Smythson. 3 ‘Housewives’ glass, £173 approx per pair, La Double J. 4 Cushion made using absinthe ‘Orissa Silk’, £35 per m, James Hare; trimmed with ‘Dolce Pom Pom Fringe 985-4549425’, £50 per m, Samuel & Sons. 5 Cushion made using carnival ‘Aeneas’, by Gert Voorjans for Jim Thompson, £196 per m, Fox Linton. 6 Tassel-trimmed cushion, by Peter Pilotto, £770, Matches Fashion. 7 ‘Katzsic’ sofa, £6,336 (excluding fabric), Max Rollitt. 8 ‘Twister’ cabinet, £5,528, Julian Chichester. 9 ‘Cruiser’ record player, by Crosley, £89, Urban Outfitters. 10 Colbalt-blue ‘Tall’ lamp, £215; topped with ikat lampshade, £395; both Melodi Horne. 11 Small wine table, from £129 (unpainted), Scumble Goosie; painted in ‘FFT-006’ emulsion, £24.15 for 1 litre, Mylands. 12 ‘Stripe’ market bag, £1.95, Re. 13 ‘Chelsea’ chair, £1,940 (excluding fabric), David Seyfried; covered with ‘Brera Lino’, £62 per m, Designers Guild; trimmed with ‘Fru Fru’, by Gert Voorjans for Jim Thompson, £58 per m, Fox Linton. 14 Cushion made using ‘Roses’, £214 per m, Bennison. 15 ‘Skinny Newport’ console, by Oomph, £2,516, Nina Campbell. 16 ‘Moroccan’ vase, by Hay, £65, Silvera. 17 Plastic mats, from £14.50 each, Re. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
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SUNNY DELIGHTS Vivifying bursts of saturated colour do wonders for the mood and home. From riotous rugs to neon-classical consoles, have we got hues for you. All together now, says Max Egger: red and yellow and pink and green‌ Photography: Neil Mersh
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1 Indian mica pictures, c1880, £8,500 for 20, Max Rollitt. 2 ‘Eames DSW’ chair, by Vitra, £365, Heal’s. 3 ‘Chiavari’ chair, £2,010, Gucci. 4 ‘Shift’ lounge chair, by Jonas Forsman, £871, Moooi. 5 Cushion made using ‘Asafo Stripe’, by Raoul Textiles, £419.80 per m, Turnell & Gigon; trimmed with ‘Marabou’, £51 per m, Zimmer & Rohde. 6 ‘Blow’ folding chair, by Seletti, £52, Amara. 7 Turkish felt flatweave, c1970, £2,500, Robert Stephenson. 8 ‘Bancou’ rug, from £650 per sq m, Christopher Farr Cloth. 9 Vintage Moroccan kilim, £460, A New Tribe. 10 Vintage Boucherouite rug, £600, Larusi. 11 ‘2209’ rug, £525, Felt. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
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1 ‘How the Leopard Got His Spots’ print, by Lucy Kirk, £50 (unframed), Print Club London. 2 Small ‘Flora’ wall mirror, £800, Balineum.3 ‘Jimi Hendrix’ original painting, by Michaela Gall, £345, The Shop Floor Project. 4 ‘Bhaji on the Beach’ print, by Rose Electra Harris, £60, Print Club London. 5 ‘Moroccan’ vase, by Hay, £65, Silvera. 6 ‘Empire’ table, £519, Scumble Goosie; painted in ‘Atomic Red 190’, from £22 for 1 litre, Little Greene. 7 ‘Oriente Italiano’ dinner plate, by Richard Ginori, £79.95, Harrods. 8 ‘Stripe’ market bag, £1.95, Re. 9 iPhone 7/8 case, £95; leather heart hand sticker, £20; ‘Victory’ hand sticker, £45; all Anya Hindmarch. 10 ‘Square in Square’ durrie, from £827 per sq m, Vanderhurd. 11 ‘1850’ rug, £1,550, Felt. 12 ‘Castellar’ rug, by Eileen Gray, £2,049, Aram. 13 Vintage Middle Atlas Berber rug, £700, Larusi. On wall: ‘La Musardière 03015-15’ wallpaper, by Manuel Canovas, £69 per 10m roll, Colefax & Fowler. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
SHORTLIST 1 ‘Bon-Bon’ wall light, by Melina Blaxland-Horne, £258, Melodi Horne. 2 ‘Type 75’ floor lamp, by Anglepoise, £3,200, The Conran Shop. 3 ‘Lucia PL321’ rise-and-fall pendant, £450, Hector Finch Lighting. 4 Neon-green lighting cable, by Factorylux, £4.80 per m, Urban Cottage Industries. 5 Amaranth ‘Artemis Daley’ lampshade, £140, House of Hackney. 6 ‘Take’ table lamp, by Kartell, £80, Amara. 7 Side table, by Tina Frey Designs, £447, Amara. 8 ‘Spring’ resin lamp with shade, by Marianna Kennedy, £490, Pentreath & Hall. 9 ‘Radon’ lamp, £332, Republic of Fritz Hansen. 10 ‘London’ table light, £469, Original BTC. 11 ‘1850’ rug, £1,550, Felt. 12 ‘1885’ Boucherouite rug, £1,690, Larusi. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
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1 ‘Housewives’ glass, £173 approx per pair, La Double J. 2 ‘Italia’ glass, £15 approx, Mario Luca Giusti. 3 Casserole pot, by Le Creuset, £209, Harrods. 4 ‘Bona’ decanter, £45 approx, Mario Luca Giusti. 5 ‘Oriente Italiano’ plates, by Richard Ginori, from £57.95 each, Harrods. 6 Eggcup, £8.95; spoon, £3.50; both Re. 7 ‘Fantasia’ dinner plate, by Bordallo Pinheiro, £15.20, British Colour Standard. 8 ‘Full Field’ linen napkin, £30, Summerill & Bishop. 9 Neon plastic cutlery, £7 per 48-piece set, Hobbycraft. 10 ‘Leighton’ table, £5,300, Soane Britain. 11 Cushion made using ‘La Chasse 5551-1’, £95 per m, Marvic; trimmed with ‘Marabou’, £51 per m, Zimmer & Rohde. 12 Plastic mats, from £14.50 each, Re. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
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SHORTLIST 1 ‘FAB28YO1’ retro-style refrigerator, £1,199, Smeg. 2 Ornamental heron, £39.99, Waitrose Garden. 3 Neon balloons, £1.50 per pack of ten, Hobbycraft. 4 ‘Balloon’ string lights, £12.95, The Glow Company. 5 Plastic mats, from £14.50 each, Re. Throughout: backdrop painted with Little Greene emulsion (‘Trumpet’, ‘Green Verditer’, ‘Leather’ and ‘Marigold’), £22 for 1 litre. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
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Gilded lilies, mud-brick maverick, the Panton pantheon, the god squad, Magnum’s great leap forward, here be drag acts
GREAT ENGLISH INTERIORS (by David Mlinaric; Prestel, rrp £39.99)
This large, square, glossy volume is too well written to become a mere object in a (coffee) tablescape. The word – it’s a good one – was invented by David Hicks to describe the little treasures he would gather together in a carefully edited group to display an owner’s taste and discernment. David Mlinaric and photographer Derry Moore cover five centuries of English interiors, starting with the gorgeous Long Gallery of 15th-century Haddon Hall, with its bleached panelling and wide floorboards, and finishing with a 21stcentury pool and party room on one level of a three-storey basement under a Nash house on the edge of Regent’s Park in London. Mlinaric, an interior decorator for more than 50 years, is an insightful guide. Each section starts with his introduction to the period, followed by the places the duo have chosen to represent it. Chatsworth, Knole and Burghley are among the houses that illustrate the earlier era. But for the 19th century, the scope widens to include properties such as the restaurant at the Ritz, and a beautiful conservatory designed by Charles Fowler in the 1820s, the interior delicately cobwebbed with shadows thrown by the fine metal struts. As Mlinaric points out, this was a period of extraordinary ambition, triumphant engineering and innovative architecture, when iron and glass were used in ways that had never been tried previously. Building projects were large in both scale and ambition – so large indeed, and employing so many people, that the army could not find enough recruits to fight in the Crimean War.
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Occasionally, there is an opportunity to see the same room at different periods in its history, and this is when the book becomes especially intriguing. A contemporary watercolour of the Lower Library at Chatsworth shows it in its Regency clothes, an uncluttered ensemble of white and gold. A photograph of the same room, as used by the eleventh duke, shows much of the work of John Gregory Crace, the go-to decorator of the 19th century, still in place: a very busy interior with leather-bound books lining the walls, and dark, solid furniture. A generation on, under the present duke, the desk and the carpet remain the same, but the leather-bound books with their gold-tooled spines have been replaced by modern ones, volumes to be consulted and read. This is a book about the pursuit of perfection – in the design and execution of flawless interiors. Gilding, carving, cabinetmaking, upholstery, décor – all had their expert practitioners. The taffeta curtains in Pauline de Rothschild’s Albany drawing room were altered 12 times before they were ‘deemed acceptable’ by the baroness and her decorator, John Fowler. Precision – the exact drape, the exact shade of paint – mattered. So what are we to make of two adjoining photographs of David Hicks’s own drawing room in Oxfordshire, with its pink walls and matching curtains? Is the pink that matters the shade shown on the left or the paler tone in the picture on the right? These are troublesome thoughts. No matter. This is a luscious, wonderful book $ ANNA PAVORD is the author of ‘Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places’ (Bloomsbury) r
To order Great English Interiors for £33.99 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
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G A R DENI A Prints & Embroideries romo-gardenia.com
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HASSAN FATHY: EARTH & UTOPIA (by Salma Samar Damluji and Viola Bertini; Laurence King,
rrp £65) Once, in the office of a world-famous architect, I was struck by the objects placed carefully about. Some sculptures, a grand piano, the catalogue raisonné of a Renaissance painter and a few other clues told visitors this was not just the workspace of a celebrity builder, but the inner sanctum of a highly cultured thinker. The difference between the contrived sophistication he presented here and the expensive, vulgar international monoliths he produced hung heavily over the encounter. Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) was the complete opposite to such starchitects, insisting on traditional, local architecture with a palpable respect for historic building techniques. He poured his skill and idealism mostly into producing modest, harmonious dwellings for the Egyptian poor. Born in Alexandria to Egyptian/Turkish parents, Fathy studied architecture in Cairo, graduating in 1925. A visit to a farmhouse just a year later triggered an interest in rural housing, which eventually saw him curate an exhibition of mud-brick farm buildings in 1937, when he was a professor in the faculty of fine arts at Cairo University. This in turn led to commissions that allowed him to explore the use of earth as a building material, and in 1941 an encounter with traditional Nubian architecture set the course of his professional career. In 1945 he began designing New Gourna, a village near Luxor, to resettle several thousand people who were being reluctantly moved from archaeological sites. Engaging the villagers in both the design and construction of their new homes, Fathy creatively deployed his wide knowledge and experience of traditional Egyptian construction, ancient city plans and urban modernity to make what is considered his magnum opus. He advocated the use of natural, local materials, co-operative labour and hitherto forgotten building styles and techniques, while understanding the importance of civic engagement and environmental sustainability. When the University of Chicago Press republished his account of building Gourna as Architecture for the Poor in the 1970s it became an instant classic in more than 20 languages. Declaring himself ‘not concerned with the people with millions’, he empathised with the rural Egyptian poor, producing affordable projects that, in formal language, elevated the human condition while being congruent with nature. Unfortunately for Fathy, he emerged just as architecture in the Middle East aspired to modernity. Mid20th-century Egyptians regarded concrete as a sign of prosperity, with mud construction derided as ‘poor’ building. This well-researched and accessible volume shows that, although sometimes criticised as invoking a simplified past, he was avowedly modern in his progressive, complex projects. If the region’s architecture nowadays evokes only the sleek, bleak skyscrapers and artificial islands of Dubai, then this book will be a welcome corrective. Fathy – hailed as Egypt’s greatest builder since Imhotep – quietly revolutionised construction, earning a place in the pantheon of 20th-century architects able to synthesise local traditions, characteristics and historical expertise to create a distinctive modern style. Think of Charles Correa, Luis Barragán, Béla Lajta and Jože Plečnik – architects whose impact on the evolution of certain cities becomes more obvious with the passing of time $ DAVID GLEESON is a freelance writer r To order Hassan Fathy for £55.25 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
A NEW WALLPAPER COLLECTION IN COLLABORATION WITH ARTIST
SALES: +44 (0) 161 230 0882 | paintandpaperlibrary.com | LONDON SHOWROOM: +44 (0) 20 7823 7755 Image shot on location in the Isles of Scilly
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VERNER PANTON (by Ida Engholm and Anders Michelsen; Phaidon,
rrp £69.95) When the great names of 20th-century Danish design are listed, they usually include Hans J. Wegner, Børge Mogensen, Finn Juhl and Arne Jacobsen, along with the Pouls, Kjaerholm and Henningsen. Verner Panton, on the other hand, is often given second billing, described as an avant-garde maverick or enfant terrible, even though his ‘Panton’ chair, made by Vitra, is one of the most recognisable pieces to have emerged from Denmark over the past 60 or so years. As this book shows, his work – which included furniture, lighting, textiles, interiors and even architecture – straddled various schools, from Bauhaus to Postmodernism via Pop Art. He didn’t fit neatly into the Danish tradition of woodwork, unlike the generation of students trained by Kaare Klint at the Royal Academy, but instead moved abroad and embraced foreign manufacture and more high-tech materials. Panton was at the centre of Danish Modernism in the 1950s; he worked under Arne Jacobsen as part of the team that created the ‘Ant’ chair in 1952, and he married the stepdaughter of lighting designer Poul Henningsen, who taught him the tricks of that trade. Above all, he poured singular ambition into every project: while the ‘Panton’ chair is now an effortless staple of modern interiors, it took almost a decade for production to become possible in 1967, such was its complexity. The idea of a chair made from a single piece of moulded plastic harked back to what the early Modernist designers tried
to do with plywood, which, as it happens, was the first material used for the ‘Panton’. Others have remarked on its similarity to prototypes by other Danish designers of the time – Poul Kjaerholm, for example – but we shouldn’t forget that it was Panton himself who, through sheer stubbornness, actually pulled it off. Panton frequently developed his designs as part of Gesamtkunstwerk interiors, where furniture, textiles and lighting formed a whole. While these schemes – often restaurants – might seem dated today, tellingly his designs still work well as stand-alone objects, which explains why so many manufacturers have reintroduced them: Vitra, Verpan, Montana and & Tradition, to name a few. Not so long ago, Prada chose his 1969 ‘Cloverleaf’ sofa for several of its shops around the world. Panton met his second wife, the Swedishborn Marianne Pherson Oertenheim, in 1962 and they married two years later. Marianne came to work as her husband’s business manager but also as his muse; she appears in many of his advertisements, looking strikingly glamorous. We learn here that Panton also used her eyes and mouth as the basis for textile designs, much as Warhol did. Along with their daughter Carin Panton von Halem, she now looks after the Panton estate and guides it into the 21st century, ensuring that the great man’s designs are neither distorted nor forgotten. This book shows why their work is important $ MAGNUS ENGLUND is a co-founder of Skandium and a director of the Isokon Gallery Trust r
To order Verner Panton for £59.45 (plus £8 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
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FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN: MYTHS IN ART FROM CLASSICAL TO CONTEMPORARY (Phaidon,
To order Myths in Art for £33.95 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
£39.95) Greek and Roman legends present the gods as larger-than-life versions of humans endowed with magical powers. The emotions they experience are human ones writ large – desire, lust, love, envy, greed, hatred, loss and betrayal. These superhuman beings flirt, seduce, fight battles, inflict gruesome tortures on their enemies, and transform their rivals into animals, plants or constellations. No wonder stories about them have provided an endless source of inspiration to artists, writers, musicians, analysts and filmmakers. The 220 works of Western art in this book illustrate some of the ways that Greek and Roman myths have been translated into visual form over three millennia. Although it contains plenty of classical vases, sarcophagi, frescoes and statues, most of the art is postRenaissance, reflecting the sudden upsurge of interest in antiquity that took place then. In 15th-century Italy knowledge of classical mythology became essential for anyone with claims to sophistication and scholarship, and patrons clamoured to commission works that would show off their erudition. One literary work, the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with its extraordinary tales of shape-shifting, was the go-to source book for many artists. Since that time, the myths of Greece and Rome have remained a mainstay of Western art. Artists have found that not only are they a repository of dramatic episodes, but they provide a handy opportunity for depicting the nude: luscious reclining women could be Venuses or Danaës; femmes fatales might be Medea or Helen of Troy; muscle-bound men could be Hercules, and beautiful youths Apollo or Narcissus. But mythology doesn’t stand still. The thoughtful introduction by James Cahill shows that the legends themselves have metamorphosed and shifted shape like Ovid’s characters, as successive generations have seized on different aspects of the stories and repurposed them. The large number of contemporary works in the book makes the case that these legends have lost none of their allure in the 21st century, though today they are more likely to be viewed through the lens of psychoanalysis. Twenty-five myths are explored in 12 chapters, starting with the creation of the Titans, the battles of the Olympians and the legend of the Minotaur, and ending with Oedipus and the Sphinx. Along the way we see images of Prometheus having his liver pecked out by a giant eagle as punishment for having given mankind the gift of fire; Orpheus rescuing his wife, Eurydice, from banishment in the underworld; Persephone being abducted by Hades; and the many and varied amorous adventures of Zeus. All the famous works you would expect are included – Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus, Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus and Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne – but there are also some surprises, and some startling juxtapositions of ancient and modern. A classical sculpture of the flayed satyr Marsyas set alongside Marc Quinn’s rubber sculpture of the same subject, with the tortured satyr’s skin sagging lifelessly above him, works particularly well. For anyone who wants to brush up on who’s who in the classical pantheon there’s a useful cast list at the end of the book showing how all the gods are related $ CAROLINE BUGLER is editor of the ‘British Museum Magazine’ r
SAFETY IS THE MOST PRECIOUS GIFT
MILAN LONDON MOSCOW SHANGHAI
www.agresti.com
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(eds Colin Pantall and Zheng Ziyu; Thames & Hudson, rrp £48) It was 1938 when Picture Post called Robert Capa ‘the greatest war photographer in the world’ and the same year he wheedled his way into China. He intended to document the Sino-Japanese war; instead the Hungarian was put under near-constant surveillance and saw no combat. He zeroed in on life during wartime: food shortages, winding trails of refugees, victory parades, political rallies and the terror of the next Japanese air raid. He was there for eight months, time enough to reflect on an idea he had half formulated, of a collective, a group of likeminded photographers who would work together to open a window on to the world and report what they found with humanity. Nine years later, in 1947, Magnum Photos was set up. A year after that, co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson was the earliest member to enter China and became caught up in the nascent civil war – and history in the making. When Mao Zedong took Beijing, he fled on the very last plane out – destination Shanghai – that had to take off in a vertical spiral because the Communist forces were massing on the runways. Werner Bischof, the first new member of Magnum (and the first to die on assignment, in the Andes, a week before Capa in Indochina), documented the end of the road in Hong Kong for thousands of displaced Chinese mainland refugees. Thus did China exert its relentless pull on succeeding generations of Magnum photographers. They returned time and again as the country opened itself up to scrutiny – sometimes unwillingly as many pictures in this exhaustive, magisterial survey reveal. Marc Riboud was there on the eve of the Great Leap Forward in 1956, and back again in 1965 for the dawn of the Cultural Revolution; two complex, brutal misadventures. In 1973, Bruno Barbey witnessed Mao’s China stutter its last. Inge Morath, accompanied by her husband, Arthur Miller, found China under Deng Xiaoping asserting itself as world power. ‘The faithful,’ wrote Miller, ‘were emerging from the fallen temple with blinking eyes.’ Eve Arnold’s kind-hearted images reflected her expansive heart. Stuart Franklin’s ‘Tank Man’ image in Tiananmen Square, 1989, defined an era, while serving as evidence of a brief corrective to China’s programme of reform. In 1997 the Chinese were not exempt from the full-blown, brilliant Technicolor glare of Martin Parr. Their burgeoning engagement with conspicuous consumption is beautifully overstated. Timelines, foldout maps, lists of Magnum photographers’ migratory routes and essays by Sinologist Jonathan Fenby give this already large and beautifully produced book added authority $ ROBIN MUIR is a curator and photographic historian r MAGNUM CHINA
To order Magnum China for £40.80 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
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LIVING MAPS: AN ATLAS OF CITIES PERSONIFIED
(by Adam Dant;
Chronicle Books, rrp £26) ADAM DANT’S MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND (by Adam Dant; Batsford, rrp £30) When did you last look at a map? By which I mean one that you hold in your hands, printed in a book or on a ludicrously folded piece of paper. Over time, maps have undergone a quiet but radical transition, from semi-fantastical interpreters of unknown lands to pixels on a screen. Today, you’re less likely to use one to explore the land of anthropophagi than to track a minicab driver. Through these axonometric ruins rides artist Adam Dant, with two books that blend physical geography with its less-explored counterpart: the metaphysical. Living Maps is presented as a collection of beautifully illuminated, hand-drawn charts from the library of an imagined character, the slippery Dr London. Alongside the maps, each city is given Dant’s neo-Hogarthian treatment via gnomic and comic vignettes, drawn in burnt-sienna ink, like his work as the official general-election artist in 2015. Each city is different: Manhattan is pinned down and peeled back like a lab rat; London is reimagined as a supine giant, ingesting, digesting and crapping (from Whitehall, Watling Street and Whitechapel, respectively). If London’s parks are its lungs, Dant asks, where is its spleen? Those familiar with the artist’s work will recognise his sharp observation: Early Modern-style borders, scrolls and lettering are exquisitely drawn; arrayed around his map of London’s financial heart he imagines the contemporary logos of financial institutions as heraldic blazons. Beijing’s Forbidden City is reinvented as the ultimate marketing slogan, mocking the promises of ‘exclusivity’ offered by property developers’ billboards. Alongside this book, Batsford is publishing Maps of London & Beyond, a beautifully produced collection of the artist’s work over the past 20 years. Here Dant reminds us of the subversive role of the mapmaker, from London Enraged, charting 2,000 years of the city’s rebellions, to his ‘underneathist’ projections that challenge the bird’s-eye hegemony of Google Maps by depicting subjects from below. The artist has a keen eye for pop culture and absurdity, which gives each artwork an unexpected zing. It’s difficult to imagine another context in which King Cnut and Myleene Klass are presented as two milestones of a cultural history, as they are in his narrative map of Rotherhithe. Dant himself is now part of this history: having arrived in east London just as the YBAs were colonising the area, he’s recently been threatened with eviction by the next wave of gentrification. We can look forward to his future books plotting out the city’s psyche from a different part of the map, wherever he ends up $ MATTHEW OLDHAM is a non-fiction writer who lives in Shoreditch To order Living Maps for £22.10, and Maps of London for £25.50 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
london 020 3026 4781 new york 212 203 0726 plainenglishdesign.co.uk
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1 ‘Kilt Gold 3435-04’, by Jean Paul Gaultier, £139, Lelièvre. 2 ‘Culloden Ancient’, £55, Lochcarron
of Scotland. 3 ‘Alpilles 39440321’, £135.30, Casamance. 4 ‘Chelsea Check LW3909’, £56.86, Lewis & Wood. 5 ‘Square Dance 3681-06’, by Gert Voorjans for Jim Thompson, £142, Fox Linton. 6 ‘Paros 10686-214’, £131, Zimmer & Rohde. 7 Orange ‘Overdrive’, £110, Dashing Tweeds. 8 ‘Donegal Check SQ22113’, by Sequana, £164, Tissus d’Hélène. 9 ‘Sullivan 34946-4’, by Clarence House, £153.80, Turnell & Gigon. ‘Panama’ travel-pass holder, £95, Smythson. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
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T R AV E L L E R S’ C H E C K S Join us on a wee excursion around Scotland, taking in the bonniest, most bankable woven cloths, from heather-toned tweeds to punchy plaids. Just mind how you criss-cross, says your guide Miranda Sinclair. Photography: Sean Myers
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1 ‘Milton 233245’, by Sanderson, £88, Style Library. 2 ‘Engadine 10617-50’, £84, Nobilis. 3 Magenta ‘Melville’,
£100, Designers Guild. 4 ‘Kildonan FD716-V157’, by Mulberry Home, £79, GP&J Baker. 5 ‘William MD218A401’, by Backhausen, £152.50, Colony. 6 ‘Scotch Flannel 3036-04’, by Pollack, £292, Altfield. 7 Fuchsia ‘Samburu Plaid’, £228, Ralph Lauren Home. 8 ‘Playful Plaid T15015’, £140, Dedar. 9 ‘Sinclair Modern Red Tartan Silk CL-KIBSN’, £70, Kinloch Anderson. Prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
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1 ‘Cape Town 10252-022’, £160, Rubelli/Donghia. 2 ‘Caribbean Check 10450-594’, £105,
Zimmer & Rohde. 3 ‘Belford 7783-06’, £66.50, Romo. 4 Aquamarine ‘Check PV15-001’, £60, Harris Tweed Hebrides. 5 ‘10587P’, by Jennifer Shorto, £148, The Fabric Collective. 6 ‘Lowick Plaid F4628-01’, £95, Colefax & Fowler. 7 ‘Expedition ZFXP-01’, by Zak & Fox, £206.70, George Spencer Designs. Prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
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1 ‘Elya Check’, £26.25, Volga Linen. 2 Graphite ‘Kilgour Check’, by Zinc Textile, £77.50, Romo. 3 ‘Sullivan 34946-7’, by Clarence
House, £153.80, Turnell & Gigon. 4 ‘Granville GRAN02’, £114, Evitavonni. 5 ‘Plaid Chocolate’, by Commune, £115, Christopher Farr Cloth. 6 ‘Crosshatch Check M436-03’, by Mark Alexander, £142, Romo. 7 Champagne ‘Gigi’, by Nicole Fabre Designs, £48, Tissus d’Hélène. 8 ‘Zelander Check A5824BRS’, by Loro Piana, £214, Fox Linton. 9 ‘Poleng 133N23’, by Raoul Textiles, £276.80, Turnell & Gigon. 10 ‘Calli F7200-06’, £68, Osborne & Little. Prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
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1 ‘Dalbeattie B-8499’, by Kathryn Ireland Textiles, £314, Tissus d’Hélène. 2 ‘Nestor 07943003’, by Boussac, £228, Pierre Frey. 3 ‘Ragamuffin’, £242, De Le Cuona. 4 ‘Gentleman Prince of Wales 152503’, by Piero Castellini Baldissera, £219, C&C Milano. 5 ‘George Check 379-02’, £104, George Spencer Designs. 6 ‘Hutton Plaid F4629-01’, £85, Colefax & Fowler. 7 ‘Fitzgerald F6554-
03’, £87, Osborne & Little. 8 ‘Victoria Plaid BF10655-1’, £98, GP&J Baker. 9 ‘Clan Highlander T18032’, £139.50, Dedar. 10 ‘Macallan 30260-2’, £173, Rubelli/Donghia. 11 ‘Harrigan 34947-3’, £154, Turnell & Gigon. Flask, by Thermos, £24.95, Utility Brighton. Throughout: vintage posters supplied by Railway Posters. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
lobby velvets
SERIOUS
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Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities, chosen by Grace McCloud
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The history of Islam must be one of the world’s richest and most complex, abounding in dynastic conquests, crusades and controversies, architecture, poetry, music and myth. The second-largest religion, it’s also one of the oldest; in the seventh century, an illiterate merchant named Muhammad received his first revelation of the Qur’an, and the culture of his followers has blossomed across the globe ever since. No wonder, then, that the galleries dedicated to its art and artefacts are as sumptuous as its past. And as of 18 OCTOBER, those of the British Museum are set to be even more so, as the ALBUKHARY FOUNDATION GALLERY opens, redisplaying the institution’s Islamic collection – from a Medieval Damascene incense burner to a 19thcentury Sudanese lyre – in a new space created in the shell of two historic Victorian rooms by Stanton Williams. Much to our pleasure, the curators are no slaves to the past, either, introducing contemporary works on paper to the displays – and, with them, a dialogue between cultures old and new. There’s much to see and much to admire. Details: 020 7323 8299; britishmuseum.org.
1 Ottoman Iznik basin, c1545, British Museum, 18 Oct. 2 Alphonse Legros, Torse de femme nue, 1890, Galerie Chaptal at Fine Arts Paris, 7-11 Nov. 3 Pippin Drysdale, The Devil’s Marbles – Lizard Warming, 2017, Adrian Sassoon at The Salon Art and Design, 8-12 Nov. 4 Karel Vaca, poster for Jules et Jim (Czech release), 1967, Orson & Welles at Midcentury Modern, 18 Nov.
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BRITAIN 18-21 OCTOBER EVOLUTION, BATTERSEA PARK, LONDON SW10 AFFORDABLE ART FAIR.
Featuring work by more than 1,000 artists, including Marc Quinn and Turner prize-winner Richard Deacon. Details: affordableartfair.com. 25-28 OCTOBER BONHAMS, NEW BOND ST, LONDON W1 CURE 3. Box clever: every artist/designer involved in this charity exhibition is given a Perspex cube to work with as they wish. The results (by Ron Arad, Andrew Logan and more) are varied, vibrant and very good. Details: cureparkinsons.org.uk. 18 NOVEMBER DULWICH COLLEGE, DULWICH COMMON, LONDON SE21 MIDCENTURY MODERN. Jules in the crown: a Czech film poster for Truffaut’s New Wave masterpiece, selling at Orson & Welles, is a highlight. Details: modernshows.com. 29 NOVEMBER-7 DECEMBER LONDON LONDON ART WEEK. Robilant & Voena serves the ruff with the smooth, exhibiting an exquisite portrait of a frill-necked Florentine grandee. Details: londonartweek.co.uk. OUTSIDE BRITAIN FRANCE 23 OCTOBER ARTCURIAL, RONDPOINT DES CHAMPS-ELYSEES, PARIS REPERTORIO SOTTSASS. Ettore de force: powerful, playful pieces from the designer’s oeuvre
take centre stage in this specialist sale. Details: 00 33 1 42 99 20 20; artcurial.com. 7-11 NOVEMBER LE CARROUSEL DU LOUVRE, RUE DE RIVOLI, PARIS FINE ARTS PARIS. Drawing, sculpture and painting from 40 galleries. Details: finearts-paris.com. 15 NOVEMBER CHRISTIE’S, AVE MATIGNON, PARIS LES AMES EN RESONANCE. An auction exploring Japan’s influence on Western art, from shimmering shoji screens to sparkling silverware. Details: 00 33 1 40 76 85 85; christies.com. USA 27-31 OCTOBER PARK AVENUE ARMORY, PARK AVE, NEW YORK, NY TEFAF NEW YORK
Luxor-y item: Charles Ede exhibits a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus mask with elegant painted make-up found in the Egyptian city (known in ancient times as Thebes). Details: 001 646 202 1390; tefaf.com.
FALL.
8-12 NOVEMBER PARK AVENUE ARMORY, PARK AVE, NEW YORK, NY THE SALON ART AND
From work by Miró and Max Ernst to the striking ceramics at Adrian Sassoon, the fair’s array of noteworthy numbers is second to none. Details: 001 212 777 5218; thesalonny.com $
DESIGN.
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5 Santi di Tito, Ritratto di Francesca Gambereschi Baldovinetti, late 16thcentury, Robilant & Voena at London Art Week, 29 Nov-7 Dec. 6 Ettore Sottsass, Empty Room, 2004, Artcurial, 23 Oct. 7 Charles Boutet de Monvel, Art Nouveau ruby and silver belt buckle, c1902, Christie’s Paris, 15 Nov
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From left: ‘Broken Mirror’, by Snarkitecture, £4,450 approx, Gufram. ‘Babylon’ light/side table, by Harry Paul, £298, Dedon. ‘Pink Lady’ sofa, by Studio 65, £5,775 approx, Gufram. ‘Julep’ armchair, Jonas Wagell for Tacchini, £2,410, Silvera. Terracotta-and-metal ‘Materia Mater’ console table, £4,000 approx per unit, Architetti Artigiani Anonimi. ‘The Others’ floor lamp, by Stephen Burks, £1,074; with interchangeable set of decorative eyes, by Stephen Burks, £496; both Dedon. Large ‘Futuristic Flowers’ sculpture, by Giacomo Balla, £3,470 approx; ‘Marcel’ armchair, by Kazuhide Takahama, £3,740 approx; ‘Marcel’ pouf, by Kazuhide Takahama, £1,600 approx; all Paradisoterrestre. ‘Viola’ dining table, £2,850 approx, Victoria Episcopo. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
SEASONED IN THE SUN Europe’s largest salt flats stretch out for miles along the Adriatic coast in Puglia, and the marshes nearby are an important stopover for many migratory birds, including pink flamingoes. Other rare species, first seen at the Milan furniture fair, are perched in the processing plant’s crystalline wilderness – here Jessica Hayns has captured their beautiful plumage. Production assistant: Viola Lanari. Photography: Bill Batten
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SEASONED IN THE SUN
From left: ‘Louisiana’ armchair, by Vico Magistretti for De Padova, £4,695 approx, Boffi. Small ‘Hexagon’ table, by Tokujin Yoshioka, £515 approx, Desalto. Titanium ‘Albert’ armchair, by Gigi Radice, £7,440, Minotti. ‘Catilina’ armchair, by Luigi Caccia Dominioni, £3,200, B&B Italia. Silk-upholstered ‘Art.5404’ armchairs, by Martin Eisler and Carl Hauner, £24,100 approx for the pair, Nilufar. ‘Pietra L’ side table, by Piero Lissoni, £710, Salvatori. ‘Floyd-Hi’ sofa, by Piero Lissoni, £5,995 approx; ‘Floyd-Hi’ coffee table, by Piero Lissoni, £1,150 approx; both Living Divani; topped with handmade plaster ‘Plato’ table lamp, £950, Viola Lanari. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
Clockwise from left: ‘Twisted’ chair, by Ward Wijnant, £1,195 approx, Rossana Orlandi. Gold and silver ‘Haly’ chairs, £425 approx each, Chapel Petrassi. ‘Alamo’ table, by David Lopez Quincoces, £5,423, Lema; topped with brass ‘Bilia’ table lamp, by Gio Ponti, £555 approx, Fontana Arte. ‘Twisted’ armchair, by Ward Wijnant, £1,425 approx, Rossana Orlandi. Folding small ‘50250’ armchair, by Adriano and Paolo Suman, £2,540 approx, Giorgetti. Pink ‘Haly’ chair, £425 approx, Chapel Petrassi. ‘N2’ coffee table, by Rooms, £6,100 approx, Rossana Orlandi. Small ‘LA Sunset’ table, by Patricia Urquiola, £1,500; medium ‘LA Sunset’ table, by Patricia Urquiola, £1,680; both Glas Italia; topped (and bottomed) with ‘Ventosa’ lamps (re-edition), by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, £66 approx each, Flos. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
SEASONED IN THE SUN From left: ‘Lux Gstaad’ chair, £3,920 approx, Fornasetti. ‘Tadao’ bed in primitive wood, by Vico Magistretti, £6,565 approx; ‘Special’ spring mattress, £610 approx; both Flou. ‘Leopards’ beach towels, £425 each; ‘Savana Dance’ beach towels, £425 each; both Hermès. Lacquered ‘Esagono’ low stool, £4,005, Armani Casa; topped with ‘Lotus’ table lamp, by Serena Confalonieri, £610 approx, Mason Editions. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
Hanging Sculpture: Timothy Horn, Silver Stardust, 2015, nickel-plated bronze, foil-backed cast crystal Dining Chairs: Alex Roskin, Tusk Chair, 2018 (in two sizes), bronze, rosewood, pony hair Console: Alex Roskin, Heron Console, 2018, bronze, rosewood Sculpture: Joanna Manousis, Distilled Portrait, 2018, taxidermy magpie, cast crystal, stainless steel, mirror 80 Lafayette Street, New York NY 10013 // www.toddmerrillstudio.com // 212-673-0531
SEASONED IN THE SUN
From left: ‘Ile’ sofa, £9,984, Minotti. ‘D.859.1’ table, by Gio Ponti, £7,164, Molteni & C; topped with ‘B-4’ table lamp, by Greta Grossman, £267 approx; gold flower pot, by Mathieu Matégot, £88 approx; black bowl, by Mathieu Matégot, £142 approx; all Gubi. ‘Ile’ armchair, £7,356, Minotti. ‘9602’ floor lamp, by Paavo Tynell, from £845 approx, Gubi. French-cane ‘C-Chair’, by Marcel Gascoin, from £800 approx, Gubi. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
Matki EauZone Plus Slider T h e e p i t o m e o f l u x u r y. B e a u t i f u l l y e n g i n e e r e d i n t h e U K
F O R A B R O C H U R E A N D N E A R E S T B AT H R O O M S P E C I A L I S T C A L L 01 4 5 4 3 2 8 811 | W W W. M AT K I . C O. U K | M AT K I P L C , B R I S TO L B S 3 7 5 P L
SEASONED IN THE SUN From left: ‘Guise 3 Spray’ console, by Odd Matter, £7,225 approx, Nilufar. ‘Alanda’ coffee table, by Paolo Piva, £1,263, B&B Italia. Aluminium-andenamel ‘ML 1.2’ chair, by Massimiliano Locatelli, £3,300 approx; aluminiumand-silver ‘ML 1.2’ chair, by Massimiliano Locatelli, £3,300 approx; aluminiumand-antique brass ‘ML 1.2’ chair, by Massimiliano Locatelli, £3,300 approx; all Nilufar. ‘Plopp’ stool, by Oskar Zieta, £855 approx, Dilmos. ‘Beugel’ chair, by Gerrit Rietveld, £900, Cassina. ‘See’ side table, £1,340 approx, Reflex. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
Made in Birmingham, England
Presented By
SDS LONDON www.sdslondon.co.uk
SEASONED IN THE SUN Clockwise from left: ‘N1’ coffee table, by Rooms, £4,410 approx, Rossana Orlandi. ‘Jane Large’ armchair, by Jean-Marie Massaud, £3,200 approx, Poliform. ‘Butterfly’ chairs, by Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan and Jorge Ferrari-Hardoy, £1,044 each, Knoll. ‘LL04’ chaise-longue, by Maarten van Severen for De Padova, £5,626, Boffi. ‘Rolling’ side table, by Tyler Hays, $10,000; green-painted chair, by Tyler Hays, $2,000; ‘Campaign’ chair, by Tyler Hays, $2,000; all BDDW. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
THE HOME OF LUXURY INTERIORS www.thesofaandchair.co.uk
SEASONED IN THE SUN
From left: ‘Caryllon’ coffee table, by Cristina Celestino, £3,910 approx, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna. Orange ‘Chambre d’Ami’ multifunctional bed, wardrobe and side table, by Matali Crasset, £2,490 approx, Campeggi. ‘Tree Trunk’ lamp, by Richard Woods, £3,255 approx; ‘Tree Stories’ low table, by Richard Woods, £6,730 approx; both Dilmos. ‘Feltri’ short armchair, by Gaetano Pesce, £4,758, Cassina. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
ICONS
DECEMBER 2018
WHO SHAPES THE WAY OUR LIVES LOOK? his December he World of Interiors answers the question by honouring the famous igures and under-the-radar radicals who deine how we design and decorate today. Looking back over three centuries of creativity, this special issue will outline the architects and artists, decorators and home makers, trendsetters and trailblazers whose decisions still inluence our choices. If you want to ind out what makes taste tick, don’t miss the December issue.
ON SALE: 8 NOVEMBER
#theworldofinteriors
SEASONED IN THE SUN From left: ‘Fanny’ armchair, by Federico Carandini, from £4,100 approx, Fendi Casa. ‘Nova’ chair with armrest, £725 approx, Epònimo. Bespoke ‘Couture’ bench, from £2,600 approx, Lorenza Bozzoli Couture. ‘Sexy Beast’ sofa, by Alberto Colzani, £5,210 approx, Epònimo. Bespoke ‘Couture’ pouf, £1,300 approx, Lorenza Bozzoli Couture. ‘Uni’ chairs, by Matí, £1,510 approx each, Staffan Tollgård. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
SEASONED IN THE SUN
From left: Ash ‘LCX Cantilever’ chair, by Florian Hauswirth, £1,430 approx, K. Winkler. ‘Bolognese’ side table/stool, by Tino Valentinitsch for Spolia, £1,555 approx, Manfredi Style. Oak ‘N01’ chair, by Nendo, £572, Republic of Fritz Hansen. ‘Barrow’ coffee table, by Marcel Wanders, £1,430, Natuzzi. Made-to-measure ‘Lars Zech’ console table, by Heerenhuis, £4,795, Different Like a Zoo; topped with brass ‘Unterlinden’ table lamp, by Herzog & De Meuron, £445 approx; aluminium ‘Unterlinden’ table lamp, by Herzog & De Meuron, £420 approx; both Artemide. Walnut ‘LCX Cantilever’ chair, by Florian Hauswirth, £1,700 approx, K. Winkler. Small ‘Matera’ table, by Paola Navone, £1,695 approx, Baxter. Cast-brass ‘Escargot’ floor lamp, by Le Corbusier for Nemo, £12,165, Via Domenico. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
SEASONED IN THE SUN From left: ‘Eda-Mame’ daybed, by Piero Lissoni, £5,148, B&B Italia. Rectangular-top ‘Twistable’ coffee table, by Massimo Castagna, for Henge, £1,379; round-top ‘Twistable’ coffee table, by Massimo Castagna for Henge, £1,530; both Global Luxury London. ‘Dadamaino’ bench, £3,033; ‘Triennale’ sofa, £6,500; both Rubelli/Donghia. ‘T-Gong’ coffee table, by Giuseppe Bavuso, £2,916, Alivar. Small ‘Futuristic Flowers’ sculpture, by Giacomo Balla, £490 approx, Paradisoterrestre. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book. Shot on location at the Saline Atisale in Margherita di Savoia (BT), Italy. Visits to the salt mine and nature reserve are by appointment only. For details, ring 00 39 08 8365 7519, or visit ceamargherita.it $
I NSTAL L | ADV ISE | PR O CUR E | CO N ST R UC T | DE CO R ATE | MA N AG E
By a ppointment onl y
DESIGN CENTRE STUDIOS CHELSEA
www. l o o p 3 .co. u k
ADDRESS
book
A New Tribe, 92a Chatsworth Rd, London E5 (07815 534545; anewtribe.co.uk). Alivar, 118/14 Via Leonardo da Vinci, Tavernelle Val di Pesa, 50028 Florence (00 39 055 807 0115; alivar.it). Allgood. Ring 020 7387 9951, or visit allgood. co.uk. Altfield, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 5893; altfield.com). Amara. Ring 0800 587 7645, or visit amara.com. Anya Hindmarch, 118 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7493 1628; anyahindmarch.com). Aram, 110 Drury Lane, London WC2 (020 7557 7557; aram.co.uk). Architetti Artigiani Anonimi, 68 Via Giulio e Corrado Venini, 20127 Milan (architettiartigianianonimi. com). Armani Casa. Ring 00 39 02 7231 8475, or visit armanicasa.com. Artemide, 106 Great Russell St, London WC1 (020 7291 3853; artemide.com). B&B Italia, 250 Brompton Rd, London SW3 (020 7591 8111; bebitalia.com). Balineum. Ring 020 7431 9364, or visit balineum.co.uk. Baxter, 8 Via Costone, 22040 Lurago d’Erba (CO), Italy (00 39 031 35999; baxter.it). BD Barcelona. Ring 00 34 93 4570052, or visit bdbarcelona.com. BDDW, 5 Crosby St, New York, NY 10013 (001 212 625 1230; bddw.com). Beardmore, 321 Fulham Rd, London SW10 (020 7351 5444; beardmore.co.uk). Bennison, 16 Holbein Place, London SW1 (020 7730 8076; bennisonfabrics.com). Boffi, 254 Brompton Rd, London
SW3 (020 7590 8910; boffiuk.com). British Colour Standard. Ring 020 7620 2091, or visit britishcolourstandard.com. C&C Milano, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3583 3303; cec-milano.com). Campeggi, 8 Via del Cavolto, 22040 Anzano de Parco (CO), Italy (00 39 031 630495; campeggisrl.it). Casamance, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (0844 369 0104; casamance.com). Cassina, 238-242 Brompton Rd, London SW3 (020 7584 0000; cassina.com). Chapel Petrassi, 19 Ave du 11 Novembre, 94170 Le Perreux sur Marne, France (00 33 6 37 57 27 72; chapelpetrassi. com). Charles Edwards, 19a Rumbold Rd, London SW6 (020 7736 7172; charlesedwards-acrosstheroad.com). Chloe Alberry, 84 Portobello Rd, London W11 (020 7727 0707; chloealberry.com). Christopher Farr Cloth, 15 Lots Rd, London SW10 (020 7349 0888; christopherfarr.com). Colefax & Fowler. Ring 020 8874 6484, or visit colefax.com. Collier Webb, 68 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7373 8888; collierwebb.com). Colony, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 3232; colonyuk.com). The Conran Shop, 81 Fulham Rd, London SW3 (0844 848 4000; conranshop.com). Dashing Tweeds, 47 Dorset St, London W1 (020 7486 6882; dashingtweeds.co.uk).
From left: ‘T.54’ armchair, by Fratelli Monti/Historic Archive Bonacina for De Padova, £6,322, Boffi. ‘Tango’ floor lamp, by Francisco Gomez Paz, £915 approx, Luce Plan. ‘Uragano’ chair, by Vico Magistretti for De Padova, £1,405, Boffi. Prices include VAT
ADDRESS
David Seyfried, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7823 3848; davidseyfried.com). De Le Cuona, 44 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7584 7677; delecuona.com). Dedar, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 9939; dedar.com). Dedon. Ring 00 49 41 31 22 44 70, or visit dedon.de. Desalto. Ring 00 39 031 78 32 211, or visit desalto.it. Designers Guild. Ring 020 7893 7400, or visit designersguild.com. Different Like a Zoo. Ring 020 7625 2705, or visit differentlikeazoo.com. Dilmos, 1 Piazza San Marco, 20121 Milan (00 39 02 2900 2437; dilmos.it). Dowsing & Reynolds. Ring 0113 819 9985, or visit dowsingandreynolds.com. Drummonds/Kirkpatricks Company. Ring 020 3155 3000, or visit kirkpatricks.company. Emery & Cie. Ring 00 32 25 13 58 92, or visit emeryetcie.com. Epònimo, 3 Via Luigi Razza, 20124 Milan (00 39 342 809 7477; eponimo.it). Evitavonni, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (0800 170 7050; evitavonnilondon.com). The Fabric Collective, 9 Langton St, London SW10 (020 7384 2975; thefabriccollective.com). Felt. Ring 020 8772 0358, or visit feltrugs.co.uk. Fendi Casa, 20-22 Brompton Rd, London SW1 (020 7893 8855; fendi.com). Flos, 2 Via Angelo Faini, 25073 Bovezzo (BS), Italy (00 39 03 024381; flos.com). Flou, 12 Via Cadorna, 20821 Meda (MB), Italy (00 39 0362 3731; flou.it). Fontana Arte, 13 Corso Monforte, 20122 Milan (00 39 02 8721 3872; fontanaarte.com). Fornasetti, 21a Corso Venezia, 20121 Milan (00 39 02 8416 1374; fornasetti.com). Fox Linton, Design
Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7368 7700; foxlinton.com). Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, 23/H Via Foggia, 10152 Turin (TO) (00 39 011 013 3330; gebruederthonetvienna.com). George Spencer Designs, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7584 3003; georgespencer. com). Giorgetti, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 8616 9100; giorgetti.eu). Glas Italia, 29 Via Cavour, 20846 Macherio (MB), Italy (00 39 039 232 3202; glasitalia.com). Global Luxury London, 87-89 Wigmore St, London W1 (020 7486 8445; globalluxurylondon.com). The Glow Company. Ring 0345 505 9090, or visit glow.co.uk. GP&J Baker, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 7760; gpjbaker.com). Gubi, 19 Møntergade, 1140 Copenhagen (00 45 5361 6368; gubi.com). Gucci, 18 Sloane St, London SW1 (020 7235 6707; gucci.com). Gufram, 26 Via Alba, 12060 Barolo, Italy (00 39 0173 56102; gufram.it). H. Theophile. Ring 001 212 727 0074, or visit htheophile.com. Harris Tweed Hebrides, 25 North Beach, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis HS1 2XQ (01851 700046; harristweedhebrides.com). Harrods, 87-135 Brompton Rd, London SW1 (020 3626 7020; harrods.com). Heal’s. Ring 03332 121915, or visit heals.com. Hector Finch Lighting, 90-92 Wandsworth Bridge Rd, London SW6 (020 7731 8886; hectorfinch.com). Hermès, 155 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7499 8856; uk.hermes.com). Hobbycraft. Ring 0330 026 1400, or visit hobbycraft.co.uk. Holloways of Ludlow, 121 Shepherds Bush Rd, London W6 (020 7602 5757; hollowaysofludlow.com). House of Eroju. Ring 020 7738 9374, or visit houseoferoju.co.uk. House of Hackney, 131 Shoreditch High St, London E1 (020 7739 3901; houseofhackney.com). Izé. Ring 020 7384 3302, or visit ize.info. James Hare. Ring 0113 243 1204, or visit james-hare.com. Julian Chichester. Ring 020 7622 2928, or visit julianchichester. com. K. Winkler, Holzbiegewerk, 25 Bahnhofstrasse, CH-5316 Felsenau (AG), Switzerland (00 41 56 246 16 40; holzbiegen.ch). Kinloch Anderson, 4 Dock St, Edinburgh EHY 6EY (0131 555 1390; kinlochanderson.com). Knoll, 91 Goswell Rd, London EC1 (020 7236 6655; knolleurope.com). La Double J. Visit ladoublej.com. Larusi. Ring 020 7428 0256, or visit larusi.com. Lelièvre. Ring 020 7352 4798, or visit lelievreparis.com. Lema, 183 King’s Rd, London SW3 (020 3761 3299; lemamobili.com). Lewis & Wood, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7751 4554; lewisandwood.co.uk). Little Greene, 3 New Cavendish St, London W1 (020 7935 8844; littlegreene.com). Living Divani, Strada del Cavolto, 22040 Anzano del Parco (CO), Italy (00 39 031 630954; livingdivani.it). Lochcarron of Scotland. Ring 01750 726080, or visit lochcarron.co.uk. Lorenza Bozzoli Couture, 54 Foro Buonaparte, 20121 Milan (00 39 02 7201 8776; lorenzabozzoli.com). Luce Plan, 40 Via ET Moneta, 20161 Milan (00 39 02 662 421; luceplan.com). Maison Vervloet. Ring 00 32 24 10 61 50, or visit vervloet.com. Manfredi Style, 22 Viale del Poggio Imperiale, 50125 Florence (00 39 329 33 97 995; manfredistyle.com). Mario Luca Giusti. Ring 00 39 055 732 2641, or visit mariolucagiusti.it. Marvic. Ring 020 7352 3119, or visit marvictextiles.co.uk. Mason Editions. Ring 00 39 0423 723103, or visit mason-editions.com. Matches Fashion. Visit matchesfashion. com. MaxRollitt, Yavington Barn, Lovington Lane, Avington, Hants SO21
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1DA (01962 791124; maxrollitt.com). Melodi Horne. Ring 020 7041 6364, or visit melodihorne.com. Minotti, 77 Margaret St, London W1 (020 7323 3233; minotti.com). Mint. Ring 020 7225 2228, or visit mintshop.co.uk. Molteni & C, 199 Shaftesbury Ave, London WC2 (020 7631 2345; moltenigroup. com). Moooi, 23 Titchfield St, London W1 (020 8962 5691; moooi.com). Mylands. Ring 020 8670 9161, or visit mylands.com. The Nanz Company, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3300 0099; nanz. com). Natuzzi, 80-81 Tottenham Court Rd, London W1 (020 3219 7840; natuzzi.co.uk). Nilufar, 32 Via della Spiga, 20121 Milan (00 39 02 780193; nilufar.com). Nina Campbell, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 9518; ninacampbell.com). Nobilis. Ring 020 8767 0774, or visit nobilis.fr. Objet Insolite, 89 Rue de Sèvres, Paris 75006 (00 33 1 42 22 98 86; objetinsolite.com). Original BTC, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 2130; originalbtc.com). Osborne & Little. Ring 020 8812 3123, or visit osborneandlittle.com. Paradisoterrestre. Ring 00 39 05 1025 3291, or visit paradisoterrestre.com. PE Guerin, 23 Jane St, New York, NY 10014 (001 212 243 5270; peguerin.com). Pentreath & Hall, 17 Rugby St, London WC1 (020 7430 2526; pentreath-hall.com). Pierre Frey, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7376 5599; pierrefrey.com). Poliform, 28 Via Montesanto, 22044 Inverigo (CO), Italy (00 39 031 695701; poliform.it). Print Club London. Ring 020 7254 9028, or visit printclublondon.com. Railway Posters. Ring 01449 720068, or visit railwayposters.co.uk. Ralph Lauren Home, 1 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7535 4600; ralphlaurenhome.com). Re, Bishop’s Yard, Main St, Corbridge, Northumberland NE45 5LA (01434 634567; re-foundobjects.com). Reflex, 17 Via Madonnina, Brera, 20121 Milan (00 39 02 8058 2955; reflexangelo.com). Republic of Fritz Hansen, 13-14 Margaret St, London W1 (020 7637 5534; fritzhansen.com). Robert Stephenson, 1 Elystan St, London SW3 (020 7225 2343; robertstephenson.co.uk). Rocky Mountain Hardware. Ring 001 208 788 2013, or visit rockymountainhardware.com. Romo, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (01623 756699; romo.com). Rossana Orlandi, 14-16 Via Matteo Bandello, 20123 Milan (00 39 02 467 4471; rossanaorlandi.com). Rubelli/Donghia, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7349 1590; rubelli.com). SA Baxter, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 8196 2410; sabaxter.com). Salvatori, 26 Wigmore St, London W1 (020 7486 8491; salvatori.it). Samuel & Sons, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 5153; samuelandsons.com). Scumble Goosie, Griffin Mill, London Rd, Thrupp, Glos GL5 2AZ (01453 731305; scumblegoosie. com). SDS London, 183-189 Northcote Rd, London SW11 (020 7228 1185; sdslondon.co.uk). Série Rare, 6 Rue de l’Odéon, Paris 75006 (00 33 1 55 42 92 10; serierare.com). The Shop Floor Project, The Warehouse, Buxton Place, Ulverston, Cumbria LA12 7EF (01229 584537; theshopfloorproject. com). Silvera, 241-245 King’s Rd, London SW3 (020 3196 7960; silveraltd. co.uk). Smeg, 14 Regent St, London SW1 (0344 557 9907; smeguk.com). Smythson. Ring 020 7629 8558, or visit smythson.com. Soane Britain, 50-52 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 6400; soane.com). Staffan Tollgård, Grosvenor Waterside, Gatliff Rd, London SW1 (020 7952 6070; tollgard. co.uk). Style Library, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3903 3700; stylelibrary.com). Summerill & Bishop, 100 Portland Rd, London W11 (020 7221 4566; summerillandbishop.com). These Please. Ring 01435 817153, or visit theseplease.co.uk. Tissus d’Hélène, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 9977; tissusdhelene.co.uk). Turnell & Gigon, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7259 7280; turnellandgigon.com). Urban Cottage Industries. Ring 020 7193 2119, or visit urbancottageindustries.com. Urban Outfitters. Visit urbanoutfitters. com. Utility, 28a North Rd, Brighton, E. Sussex BN1 1YB (01273 626222; utilitygreatbritain.co.uk). Van Cronenburg. Ring 00 32 93 36 37 34, or visit petervancronenburg.be. Vanderhurd, 17 Portobello Rd, London W11 (020 7313 5400; vanderhurd.com). Via Domenico. Ring 020 8373 2434, or visit via-domenico.com. Victoria Episcopo. Ring 00 39 0339 3615 818, or visit victoriaepiscopo.com. Viola Lanari. Ring 07774 084103, or visit violanari.com. Volga Linen. Ring 01728 635020, or visit volgalinen.co.uk. Waitrose Garden. Ring 01344 578811, or visit waitrosegarden.com. Willow & Stone. Ring 01326 311388, or visit willowandstone.co.uk. Zimmer & Rohde, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 7115; zimmer-rohde.com) $
network Sophia Salaman chooses the best merchandise and events worldwide
Farrow & Ball has launched nine new paint shades – including a pink, a deep red and a blue – to replace nine existing colours. Charlotte Cosby, the company’s head of creative, says: ‘An extraordinary amount of time and thought goes into each colour, working with our expert craftsmen.’ Farrow & Ball, 249 Fulham Rd, London SW3 (01202 876141; farrow-ball.com).
Fiona McDonald has been sourcing mid-century pieces for more than 25 years now, all of which she displays in her showroom in Fulham Palace Road, London. Alongside these antiques, you will also find her own range of furniture, mirrors and lighting, which is itself inspired by 20th-century greats. Ring 020 7731 3234, or visit fionamcdonald.com. Savoir Beds celebrates craftsmanship – and shows the possibilities of bespoke design – with its ‘Kiku’ collection, a collaboration with Fromental. Inspired by Japanese art, it incorporates hand-painted silk panels featuring delicate embroidery of chrysanthemums. Savoir Beds, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 0302; savoirbeds.co.uk).
‘Chevallerie’ is a new passementerie collection for Samuel & Sons by interior designer Timothy Corrigan. His 18th-century French château provided inspiration – as well as the name – for the range, which comes in a variety of historically accurate colours. Samuel & Sons, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 5153; samuelandsons.com).
Liaigre has unveiled a new showroom in the eighth arrondissement of Paris. Housed in what was an antique dealer’s shop, it is spread over four levels and covers 800sq m. The space gives clients the opportunity to enjoy the sleek luxury for which the company is renowned. Liaigre, 77 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris (00 33 1 70 64 14 84; liaigre.com) $
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FAMILY GATHERING From charity-shop bargains to inherited objets d’art, Kate Harris and Jason Goodwin’s Dorset farmhouse accommodates a richly diverse miscellany. Heirlooms from Jason’s parents, Jocasta Innes and John Michell, huddle alongside Kate’s china collection, paintings by friends, Ottoman ephemera and an abundance of books. It all makes for a joyously heterogeneous household. Ruth Guilding brings it all together. Photography: Tim Beddow
A partition was removed to create the long kitchen-cumdining room at the back of the house. On the rear wall, Kate displays her china along with a mÊlange including a turtle shell, and her children’s art; her vases brim with blooms. The painted bentwood chairs were bought locally at auction
Top: this Regency gilt convex looking-glass in the sewing room belonged to Jason’s birth father, John Michell. Above: over the chimney in the same room is a diagram of a comet painted on fabric, originally used in a schoolroom. Right: by the sewing-room window stand twin harmonographs that were built by the couple’s son Isaac. These mechanical devices use pendulums to draw a precise geometrical image
The drawing room’s blue painted desk belonged to Jason’s mother. The bust of Homer on the marble-topped desk by the window is also a family heirloom, while the portrait on the wall, titled The Geometer No. 2, is of John Michell. Dating from 1972, it was the final painting created by his friend Maxwell Armfield
Top: hanging over the drawing-room bookcase are 18th-century Etruscan vase prints that belonged to Jocasta Innes. Above left: some of John Michell’s painted mandalas overlook the stairs. Above right: more of the ritual symbols, and natural-history specimens, top the hall bookshelves. Opposite: the sill-length floral chintz curtains in the window bay also came from Jason’s mother
‘CAN’T YOU just say “nestled in the hills of West Dorset” and be very, very cryptic about it?’ asks Kate Harris. We are standing in the long kitchen/ dining room of the farmhouse that this family rents from the local estate. Kate and Jason Goodwin, their four children, dogs and chickens have lived in this part of the West Country for over a decade and through four house moves, transporting an ever-growing accumulation of pictures and books and china and beautiful miscellaneous things with them from place to place. After each removal, possessions resettle into yet more appealing combinations, but the rooms remain in flux, mutating around new accretions and the departures and arrivals of grown-up children. The magician-cum-curator of all this enchantment is Kate. Occasionally a spell fails to complete and things remain stranded on floors and stairs or are flung in a wide arc over the grass outside. Kate is a painter, with an artist’s eye for her daily surroundings, rearranging, hanging and occasionally cupboarding her collections. A decade ago she was a regular at local auctions and recently she began cataloguing textiles for her friend Hugo Busby at his eponymous saleroom in nearby Bridport. Pictures, textiles, books and china are her specialities. ‘Most of the china I have rescued,’ she says, ‘bringing it home from charity shops or fêtes – and auction houses – although not so much now. But we use it all.’ She taught herself about old textiles at auctions and from books, of which there are hundreds shelved and piled everywhere, on the treads of the main staircase and underfoot. They come from the residues of several libraries, including that of Jason’s natural father, John Michell – the philosopher of Earth mysteries – and his mother, Jocasta Innes (WoI Mar 2014) – stylist and author of Paint Magic. A few more boxes came from the sale of Combe Florey House in Somerset, formerly home to Evelyn and then Auberon Waugh; the rest Kate categorises as ‘every stray book from a jumble sale’. As well as the many paintings created by friends and their children, there is a high quota of pictures representing fencers, landscapes and goats hanging on the walls here: ‘Fencing, because the children did fencing when they were little,’ Kate explains. ‘Goats, I had a bit of a thing for. But I never had one – it would have involved too much responsibility. I feel somehow that we’re too liberal and so the goats would probably take advantage of us.’ Kate and Jason came to Dorset after spells spent living in London’s Bethnal Green, Sussex and France. Chasing the chimera of perfect light in high-ceilinged houses, beyond the range of noise and traffic, they have instead settled on a succession of lovely temporary abodes. ‘This house is absolutely freezing,’ says Kate, ‘it’s long been known as the coldest house in Dorset. The light is good, except in that back kitchen, but the trouble with rented houses is that you can’t make the lighting as nice as you’d want to.’ The pair
are both exceptionally good cooks and so preparing food is important. However, ‘that end of the house is so cold, but we’re too poor to switch the Rayburn on’, and so the smaller back kitchen/scullery functions only as a chilly pantry and sluice room. The rest of the books here belong to Jason, a writer with a sequence of crime novels and a cookbook to his name (all featuring the enigmatic fictional character of Yashim, a eunuch in the service of the Ottoman state in 1830s Istanbul) and a weekly column in Country Life magazine. Jason was brought up by his mother’s first husband, the film producer Richard B. Goodwin, who taught him myriad practical skills – how to manage a barge and how to make anything – only meeting John Michell when he was in his twenties. From John he has inherited a marble bust of Homer, a quantity of topographical views of Stonehenge by the antiquarian William Stukeley and about 50 of the dozens of mandalas that John drew and painted – intricate, tessellated designs that express the magical symbolism of Platonic geometry. ‘He went back to Plato and Plato described all the truths of the world in geometric terms, so John would unpack them by following what Plato said, really,’ Jason explains. From his multi-talented mother Jocasta, he learned more practical skills, culled from her classic 1976 ‘how-to’ book of household management, The Pauper’s Homemaking Book, and her own favourite of all her titles, The Country Kitchen, published three years later. ‘Essentially it’s about storing and preserving, pickling and brining. We learned to do all those things, and my son Izzy was inspired to brew beer thanks to that book,’ says Jason, ‘and that is why we are republishing it under our own imprint in the autumn.’ While the hastily tidied kitchen table seen in these photographs looks unnaturally bare, on every other day of the year this large room is a laboratory of cooking and brewing, all its flat surfaces piled with a battery of crocks, bottles and sharp knives, stockpots and spice pots, dried pulses and freshly picked greens, cascading on to the stone floor. Here the recipes used by Jason’s mother and others they collected on their travels in eastern Europe are tried, refined and eaten. Jason and Kate met as undergraduates at Cambridge and then tested their relationship by completing an epic journey together on foot from Gdansk to Istanbul in 1990. The spices and methods and ingredients in this kitchen are predisposed towards the Ottoman empire, like the little Staffordshire spill holders – sitting on the drawing-room bookcase and modelled on a cross-legged Turk – that Kate gave Jason one Christmas, the Islamic inscription on the chimney piece, the rugs and suzanis. The oldest of Kate’s tumbled sofa cushions is an ancient piece of shattered Ottoman fabric from Jocasta’s house in Spitalfields. ‘What do you do about the moths?’ I ask Kate. ‘I catch them and squash them,’ she replies $ ‘The Country Kitchen’ will be published in Nov 2018 by Argonaut (argonautbooks.com)
Opposite: Jocasta Innes’s four-poster bed stands in Isaac Goodwin’s bedroom. The curtain on the left is printed with an avian design taken from Thomas Bewick’s 18th-century wood engravings of British birds. Kate then chose a selection of bird prints and paintings to accompany it. The mirror and heraldic hanging were found in the course of trips to jumble sales and auctions
W E AT H E R E D OUT WEST Using timber abandoned or salvaged from local sawmills and the like, sculptor JB Blunk built this cabin in a wild corner of California. Surrounded by slabs of redwood and cypress, it’s the perfect setting for his life and work – a career that’s grown richer with each passing season. Text: Barbara Pallenberg. Photography: Annabel Elston. First published: June 2000 Opposite: looking through the house from the front door. Beside it is an almost perfectly spherical, river-rounded rock that JB retrieved from the banks of the Stanislaus. Above: on a ridge near Inverness, in northern California, the cabin sits behind a fence fashioned from seasoned wood. JB constructed the cabin without a clear plan, using salvaged windows as his starting point, then building up the walls around them with disused timber
This page, clockwise from top: the sculpture on the plinth is JB’s Madonna No. 1, 1978, with a Wolfgang Paalen painting to the left; the ingeniously ‘sliced’ bedroom doorknob; this spoon was carved from a ram’s horn by the Haida people of British Columbia; in the main room JB turned pieces of left-over wood into an architectural feature, with an Oaxacan gourd in the niche. Opposite: the kitchen table-top was made from seven pieces of fir
Above: JB’s sons Rufus and Bruno added the bedroom to the top of the cabin 15 years ago. Both the chair and the erotic stool were crafted by JB. Opposite: in the bathroom, these plants are held up by monofilament attached to strips of wood. The window is an old doorframe turned on its side
AN UNMARKED turn off a country road, into a forest. Up a narrow dirt road, eventually arriving at an inscrutable gate – whose is it? Why is it there? The landscape is the same on either side, and there are no fences or hedges that further enclose whatever is being closed off. You have to get out of the car to open it and then close it again after driving through. You proceed past endless forks in the trail, hoping you’ve taken the right one, trying to memorise the way in reverse and fearful that you’ll have to do it after dark on this late November day. Finally, you arrive at the ridge-top home of sculptor JB Blunk and his mate of many years, Christine Nielson. The path leading up to the cabin is defined by pieces of JB’s sculpture from the 1960s, 70s and 80s – elegant arches made out of cypress or black-stained redwood, some of them looking eerily like menacing elephants; monoliths that seem to remember the trees from which they came; chairs roughly carved from tree trunks and burls with a chainsaw, JB’s tool of choice. His large site-specific works, for which he is most widely known, are also made of found redwood trunks and burls up to seven metres in diameter, which metamorphose under that same chainsaw into unique conversation pits, the seats, armrests, steps and depressions all following the natural forms of the tree. Surrounding the house, too, are the raw materials of Blunk’s art, all found in nature – slabs of redwood and cypress, basalt stone and sensuously rounded river rocks. The almost perfectly spherical one that rests in pride of place on a big stump next to the cabin’s front door was found by JB when he and Christine first got together. Walking down to the banks of the Stanislaus river, he spotted it immediately and then looked for others, because he knew the circumstances that created one – a sort of catch basin where the rock spun endlessly in the current – should have produced others. But it was the only one, and for JB a sign that he and Christine were meant to be. Though he looks and sounds like a taciturn, Gary Cooper-like outdoorsman, it is he who tells this romantic story, not Christine. JB had no plans, no drawings when he built the cabin with his first wife, Nancy Harlow Waite. Warmed by a franklin stove, it was a one-room home where they lived, ate and slept. Later, once Christine had moved in and their daughter Mariah had been born, JB’s sons Rufus and Bruno added a second storey, which became the couple’s bedroom. JB began by buying windows, all salvage, and working around them. Although always an artist, he had a lot of fine carpentry experience and, of course, he was intimately familiar with that dangerous tool, the chainsaw. Anyway, fearless and no doubt careful – minus no digits, as far as I can tell – JB set about scavenging for materials. Or maybe that’s too inorganic an idea for a sculptor who uses what nature provides and man has abandoned. What really happened was this: he’d hear about a defunct lumberyard in Petaluma, and –
much to the consternation of the owner – would request all the weathered, warped pieces from the tops of the woodpiles, because he wanted to use no new wood for his cabin. Or someone would tell him about a sawmill in redwood county, where the crane needed to move the huge logs broke and they closed down rather than make repairs. Or a guy in the neighbourhood would be tearing down his chicken coops and giving away the lumber. Best of all was when English expatriate artist Gordon OnslowFord, a close friend and neighbour, informed him that they were replacing the redwood pilings at the old Sausalito-Marin Shipyard, where ships were built during World War II. Blunk pulled up the blackened beams, which made up the ‘ways’ – the slopes down which completed ships were launched, with only the aid of some logs to roll on – and took them up to Inverness. The most ingenious use of what, to most people, would be trash is in the doorknobs of the bedroom door. They are made of melted-down-andcast lead from the sealers of wine bottles. Ever inventive and practical, JB sliced off the top portion of the outside knob (which works on a lever system) so that if he was carrying a load of materials he could merely push down on the flat surface with his elbow to open the door. Aside from smaller sculptures brought inside for protection from the weather, two larger artworks stand out. The first is by the Austrian artist Wolfgang Paalen, a friend who disappeared mysteriously in Mexico years ago, like the novelist B. Traven. The work is painted on Transite, a kind of cement construction board. A distinctive medium for Paalen, it lives in its rustic-cum-building-materials surroundings comfortably. The other is an architectural feature by JB himself – a puzzle of wood, the pieces leftovers from various sculpture commissions and carpentry jobs. Most interesting are the lengths of redwood where the grain is wavy rather than straight, because of a genetic mutation. JB says that when it’s wet or green – that is, recently cut – you can split it vertically layer by layer. The present pieces came from a fire-charred tree nearly seven metres long and 50cm in diameter (JB remembers the dimensions of his materials like ordinary American men remember the specs of their very first cars), which someone let him have for free, as usual. JB’s reputation as an artist dimmed for a while, but like anything singular and truthful to itself, is starting to make a comeback. Having worked as a paintings specialist at Sotheby’s for many years, I know the scent when it wafts by. I only hope that the museum that does his first retrospective will lift up in its entirety this abode in the hills of Inverness and transport it to their pristine white rooms for art lovers to peruse, for it, too, is a work of art $ JB Blunk died in 2002. His estate is represented by Blum & Poe, the Landing and Kate MacGarry. For more information, email contact@jbblunk.com, or visit jbblunk.com. An exhibition of his ceramics runs at Kate MacGarry, 27 Old Nichol St, London E2 (020 7613 0515; katemacgarry.com), until 20 Oct
Above: expansive views looking east towards Black Mountain. Opposite: influenced by Isamu Noguchi, a mentor, JB left sculptures in progress dotting the path to the front door – among them elegant arches of cypress or black-stained redwood. Each was carved with a chainsaw, his tool of choice
When artist Seán Shanahan and his wife, Dalila, moved into a former silk factory south of Como in Italy they fill rooms with her bright furniture. Their home would reflect a shared love of colour that ‘excites the world’.
Dalila designed the lacquered-steel tables with scratch-proof surfaces in the main living room (which she calls the ‘enchanted wood’). In the corner stands Gerrit Thomas Rietveld’s ‘635’ red-and-blue armchair, an old edition by Cassina. The paintings on the wall are by Ettore Spalletti
CHECKS AND BALANCES struck a deal. Seán would hang his high-key single-hue artworks and paint the walls and floors, while Dalila would As Lee Marshall discovers, the results feel chromatically uncompromising. Photography: Fritz von der Schulenburg
Left: SeĂĄn used resin paint for this dining-room floor. Dalila designed the table, and the ‘Y’ armchairs are by Hans J. Wegner. On the wall are two 17th-century Chinese ceramics. Top: a painting by Carmen Gloria Morales hangs over the late 19th-century living-room fireplace, which is made from local marble. Above: the table on the terrace is another Dalila design, while the benches are English, 20th-century. The iron trellis was original to the house. The sheets can be made to slide along if more shade is required
This page, clockwise from top left: the table in the main dining room is French, made in c1830. On it stands an 18th-century bronze statuette of a hermaphrodite; this lacquered-steel table is a prototype by Dalila; to the rear of the drawing room are two mid-20th-century Italian sofas. Another by Mario Bellini, ‘Le Bambole’, has its back to us; one of Seán’s paintings hangs over an antique Roman figure. Opposite: Seán painted the kitchen wall. A Neapolitan corno (amulet) hangs above. Over each doorway here are 1950s ceramic discs
Above: the geometric wallpaper in this stairway is one of Seán’s designs, hand-printed by Peacock Visual Arts. Mounted to the right are four of his double-sided paintings, which served as ‘kind of prototypes’ for new work in an exhibition at Milan’s San Fedele Museum. Opposite: the bedroom, which receives little natural light, was given vibrant orange walls. It has an original cotto tile floor. The paintings, which date from the 1990s, are both by Seán, while matching Vico Magistretti lamps stand on the bedside tables
‘BEFORE MOVING here,’ says the Dublin-born artist Seán Shanahan, ‘I basically just lived in warehouses.’ The house he shares with his wife, Dalila, is about as far as you can get from the lofts and industrial spaces where he once made his art and, often, his home. ‘I was interested only in the work until recently,’ he explains. ‘I hardly looked at the objects around me.’ Located halfway between Dalila’s former base of Milan and the Lecco branch of Lake Como, the long, three-storey house sprouts like a stray marrow amid the verdant woods and fields of the Montevecchia and Valle del Curone regional park. Seen from the garden, it’s a handsome, imposing, ochre-yellow residence of uncertain age, fronted by a terrace that serves as a climbing frame for a magnificent wisteria with a tree-trunk stem. Yet the house was once part of an industrial complex itself – albeit of the cottage variety. Of 15th-century origin, it was the villa padronale, or boss’s house, of a small silk factory, like many that existed in this Brianza district south of Como. The rural enclave round Montevecchia, a pretty village of red-roofed houses, is one of the few remaining memories of this area’s bucolic past; a district once peppered with the summer retreats of the Milanese aristocracy is today, mostly, one big furniture factory. In the 1970s and 1980s, the complex, still a working setificio, was acquired piecemeal by a philandering Milanese businessman who worked for the fashion brand Hermès. He hoped to tempt his grown-up children here, but they never forgave his betrayal of mamma, so he holed up alone in the house, consoled by various lady friends. When he died in the arms of one (‘La petite mort became la grande mort’ is Dalila’s wry gloss), she opened the safe and fled with a valuable collection of Patek Philippe watches. When Seán and Dalila first saw it in 2012, the house, now divided off from the rest of the former silk factory, had been abandoned for four years. Many of the lonesome Don Giovanni’s belongings were still scattered around – including, in one of the bathrooms, a bottle of cheap aftershave. Seán recognised it immediately: ‘It was called Floïd. My dad used it. It came from Spain but I’d never seen it in Italy.’ Dalila sighs: ‘Can you believe it? We bought the house because of an aftershave.’ Though the building was structurally sound, there was still a lot to be done in a two-year renovation effort that began with the
laying of a new roof. Inside, a few details had survived along with the aftershave – among them an impressive stone fireplace and some decorative floors in marble-composite graniglia tiles, the latter most probably laid in the 1920s. Most of the infissi (doors, windows and shutters) are also originals, which the couple set about restoring. When it came to the long windows that let in so much light, they managed to salvage the antique glass that gives the outside view a certain dreamlike refraction. ‘I like austerity,’ says Seán. ‘And I like the fact that colour confounds austerity.’ That’s a good working description of his art, much of which consists of lively monochrome colours painted on thick wooden panels with unpainted edges. In his recent works, the geometric rigour of the support, and the smoothness with which the paint has been applied, try to form an orderly police cordon around the Beatlemania exuberance of the colour, but only end up getting their helmets knocked off. Until he met and married Dalila, who initially approached him on behalf of a collector, Seán had never thought of putting his own works on the walls of the place where he slept or painting the walls and floors directly. An art historian who has dabbled in antique and art dealing o ver the years ‘in order to pay the bills’, she talked him into doing both. ‘He’s more austere and I’m more restless,’ she says. ‘I’d describe myself as a sort of baroque minimalist.’ One thing they both shared, however, was a strong belief in colour. Seán calls it ‘a way of exciting the world’, while Dalia feels that: ‘Limiting yourself to blacks, greys and whites is an enormous act of presumption – for me, colour is life.’ She doesn’t like giving rooms labels either: ‘I like the freedom of using them anyhow.’ Together, the couple set about applying this chromatic worldview to their new shared house. Downstairs, the living and dining room is an Op Art chequerboard, alternating grey-tinged cadet blue and a 1970s shade of purple, that marches down the floor and up the walls. Here, as elsewhere in the house, Seán used a weatherproof exterior paint. He also hand-painted repeating wallpaper-like motifs in some rooms, never resorting to stencils. Meanwhile, Dalila set about filling Seán’s colour box with furniture – some of it antique, but much more made by local craftsmen to her own plans. ‘I’ve always designed things for my friends,’ she explains. ‘It fills me with joy – it’s like doing a session with the world’s best shrink.’ When I ask her why she decided to throw down the chromatic gauntlet by placing a set of plush Ferrari-red dining chairs and an iron table varnished the same shade on Seán’s lilac and aquamarine checks, she says, simply: ‘Because colour goes with colour.’ There is one monochrome room in this bold Pantone party house. Entered from its vivacious checked neighbour, it’s a dazzling white space illuminated by windows on three sides that give on to the garden. Only a few subtle hues are on view – pastel cushions, a pair of Chinese dragon plates, four pale-green candles in a white Rococo candelabra. But this dehors is a viewing platform on to the vibrant greens of the garden, a ‘ship’s bridge’ Dalila likes to sit in, gazing out past the wisteria, the bamboos and a huge sweet osmanthus tree to Montevecchia’s 17th-century sanctuary dedicated to the Beata Vergine del Carmelo. Seán works downstairs, in a studio space that he describes as ‘pleasingly small’. Though he found it ‘quite sobering’ at first to live with Dalila’s selection of his art in his down time as well as his creative hours, he has since come to terms with it. For the artist, it’s even something of a release to let go of his works. As he says with a smile: ‘As soon as I take them upstairs they become old’ $ To contact Seán Shanahan, visit seanshanahan.it
Opposite: another of Seán’s paintings occupies a guest-room corner. Two lamps by Gae Aulenti stand by the bed, whose cover is by Lisa Corti. The room has one of the few original floors in the house, made from stile Liberty cementine tiles. This page: the metal-and-cloth stool is by Le Corbusier, while the frond-tastic wallpaper was ‘a vintage pick-up in a small local shop’s closing-down sale’
Q U A Y PL AYER Located by the harbour in Barmouth, northwest Wales, the Sailors’ Institute has provided a centre of comfort and community for generations of seafarers and their families. Rescued from ruin, it remains a focus of local life, with salty stories from years of ocean-going history on every wall. Ruth Guilding has a swell time. Photography: Antony Crolla
Left: framing the front door in the institute’s reading room, these glazed bookcases are home to a library of more than 700 ‘improving’ volumes donated by the Talbots and the Listers, two gentry families living in the vicinity. Top: built in 1890 and clad with corrugated iron, the institute is in stark contrast to the older, bigger stone buildings on the waterfront
Above: the tables are laid out with journals such as Navy News and National Geographic. The mismatched furnishings were likely offered as donations. Opposite: a Royal National Lifeboat Institution roll of honour celebrates two vessels that saved 90 lives in 22 years between 1854-1876
Above: a portrait of founder Canon Edward Hughes hangs in pride of place over a collection of nautical curiosities and sailors’ carvings. Right: these highly detailed marine models will probably never be added to as the space inside the institute is so limited they can no longer accept new exhibits
IoneSPOTTED the Barmouth Sailors’ Institute early morning two summers ago. In the dim, aqueous light of a wet Welsh morning, I looked through shining windows into a long rectangular room, neat as a pin, with newspapers folded on a table and a mass of framed portrait photographs jostling edge to edge on pale blue tongue-and-groove walls. When I returned the next year, Janet Griffith was painting the windowsills, getting the first coat on between showers. This year, she had run the Welsh Dragon up the flagstaff in time for our arrival. Janet, who is now the institute’s secretary and an executive-committee member, was frequently at sea, often choosing to sail with her late husband, Dafydd, rather than face long separations of up to six months at a time. ‘I was always hands on,’ she explains. ‘I was painting, caulking the deck and I showed an interest in navigation and was allowed on the bridge.’ Barmouth-born Dafydd was a radar operator and purser, just the sort of seaman for whom the institute – the last of its kind in daily use in Wales – was built. As boys, he and his friends would be sent up on to its roof to clear off the sand that blew there. Afterwards, they were allowed inside. If they were lucky, they were trusted to moor one of the skiffs in the harbour below. (‘You can go for a spin in the punt afterwards. Leave it fast to the ladder when you’ve finished and remember the tide’s on the ebb,’ the older men would say.) After nine years in the RAF, Dafydd joined the Merchant Navy, making long voyages to load the raw material for the production of aluminium in the Caribbean and sailing it on to Canada, Scandinavia and the Norwegian fjords. Sometimes, there were missionaries on outbound voyages all the way down to the British Cameroons (which are now parts of Nigeria and Cameroon). On the return legs, they picked up monkeys and parrots that were destined for zoos. The institute was built in 1890 by a local philanthropist, Canon Edward Hughes. It was his thoughtful gift to locals – referred to as the ‘people of the quay’ – to provide a space for socialising and relaxation. As the railways advanced into far-flung rural areas in the mid-19th century, the local shipping trade had begun to collapse. Seamen who had formerly served on smaller coastal vessels were obliged to take up berths on the deep-sea ships sailing from Glasgow, Hull, Liverpool, London and Cardiff, embarking on round trips that could keep them at sea for up to two years at a time. Left behind and facing the prospect of, at best, sketchy communication, families could chart the journeys of loved ones here in the institute’s copies of Lloyd’s List and Shipping Gazette, or plot their whereabouts on charts dating back to the 1820s entrusted to the rector of Llanaber. There was also a temperance angle to the institute’s popularity. ‘At the time, there was nowhere else to go except the pub,’ says Janet. ‘The families left behind would get together and talk or play draughts in the reading room, and there’s the billiard room at the
back.’ The windows here frame tidal seascapes with small craft bobbing up and down. There are hourly reminders of the railway that runs directly behind the building, shaking all the pictures on their nails (‘That’s why they’re all a bit wonky’). By the final decades of the 20th century, the institute was in poor shape, sand and water seeping in through roof and walls. A feasibility study recommended knocking it down, but there was no money to rebuild it. A charitable grant of £1,000 was obtained by the Venerable Wallis Thomas, who was accustomed to waiting here for his bus back to the market town of Dolgellau. By 2005, grant funding had made the building fully ship-shape and weather-tight. Janet had also completed an 86-page application for museum accreditation. Now, the institute is a registered charity, run for the benefit of all its members by a committee of ten who make sure Barmouth’s maritime heritage stays alive. The public is welcome to come in and out, paying nothing for the privilege; there are no museum-style intrusions or explanatory captions. All the pertinent information has been summed up by Janet on the single notice fastened just inside the door with drawing pins. ‘We were told we don’t have enough interpretation, but we don’t know who half the people in these photographs are!’ she says. ‘And we don’t have a brown tourist sign. But there are good reasons to keep this small and let people just come along and find us.’ Meanwhile, in the billiard room, the Gospel Compass (‘For Sailors of All Nations’) declares ‘God Is Love.’ Next to it is a roll of honour: ‘For God, King and Country’; on the wall opposite hang photographs of the First Barmouth Group boy scouts and the sea-scout troop from the 1950s and 60s, the broad grins of J. Rees and R. Evans beaming out. Modern notices are more admonitory: No Spitting, No Offensive Language, Closed Sunday, No Mobile Phones. In the old days, competitions were played out here against members of the fire brigade, the railway and the post office, the air was clouded with tobacco and the language spoken was Welsh. Robert Wyn Jones remembers the beautiful litany of members’ names: his grandfather, also Robert, and his brother Jack Jones, both sailing-ship seamen. There was also Bob Minafon and Ifws Jones of the White Star Line, John Jones Bronagraig, ‘Vi’ Morris, Will Barnett and harbourmaster John Ellis Morris. Non-sea-goers Walter Roberts (Compton) and Ellis Tank played chess or draughts at the far end of the room. The snooker competitions continue, newspapers are still read here and the Christmas goose tournament goes on, now played for the prize of a meat voucher from a local butcher. Barmouth has become fonder of its institute, says Janet, but money for its upkeep remains an ever-pressing need. For an annual membership fee of just £5, you too could help to ensure its survival $ Barmouth Sailors’ Institute, The Quay, Gwynedd LL42 1ET (barsailinst.org.uk), is open each day, 9-6
Above: despite the institute’s successful overhaul, vigilance is still required to keep things ship-shape. In the billiard room, scatterings of sand stirred by the wind fall from the skylight to land on the recently laid green baize. On the walls are lists of members’ handicaps, marine paintings and pious mottoes
Above: in the name of temperance, the billiard and reading rooms were originally intended to offer local families an alternative to the pub. Left: secretary Janet Griffith prepares to lower the Welsh flag from the flagstaff. Her links to the building date back to 1997, when it had fallen into disrepair
In this passageway, two oeils-de-boeuf, each paired with a stone console, frame the loo door, which has a semicircular
fanlight. The silver candlestick and champagne bucket both date from the 18th century, as do the lanterns
ROOMS TO REFLECT
Nicole Altero’s Rive Gauche home echoes a lifetime spent in the antiques trade. Her love of glass developed early on and has endured – witness the glazed double doors and Baroque apertures in the central corridor or the reverse Chinese mirror paintings in her bedroom. The material subtly alters the apparent parameters of the apartment too, with windows repeated in nearby surfaces, implying ongoing depths of space, and fabric-lined fanlights giving the illusion that the interior hallway is sunlit. Marie-France Boyer looks back admiringly. Photography: Roland Beaufre
This page, clockwise from top: a child’s small ivory-inlaid bureau Mazarin is visible to the right in this view of the sitting room. To the left of the Louis XVI fireplace hangs a Martin Dieterle painting; Calais lace, Saxony porcelain and 19th-century German glasses adorn Nicole’s dining table; a 17th-century Italian octagonal table occupies the foreground of this photo; on the wall is a Pierre Alechinksy painting. Opposite: on the wall next to this Chinese lacquered writing desk is a panelled Japanese screen depicting cranes in a garden. Both are 18th-century
This page: a display cabinet from the 18th century stands in the corridor, which has 17th-century-style cabochon flooring.
Opposite: the bathroom houses red-chalk drawings and a silver-framed mirror. Yellow faille silk lines the doors
AFTER SELLING antiques on Quai Voltaire –
a location synonymous with the trade – like her mother and grandmother before her, Nicole Altero now lives in groundfloor premises on Rue du Bac, at the heart of the ‘Carré Rive Gauche’ (an annual event showcasing dealers on the Left Bank between the Seine and Boulevard Saint-Germain) in which she has taken part for over 40 years. The Altero family have been in the trade for generations. After the 1914-18 war, Nicole’s grandfather, a wholesaler, was already selling all kinds of tableware: Limoges porcelain, Gallé vases and crystal in his shop, Le Grand Dépôt. Nicole’s mother, Carmen, a dealer ensconced on Quai Voltaire, where the family established their business in 1935, loved Louis XV and Marie-Antoinette and specialised in glassware. Nicole was born over the shop and naturally began work there at a very young age, becoming experienced both in buying and selling, but soon she also developed a passion for glass. Renowned couturiers were among the regular customers: Dior, Balenciaga Givenchy. Artists and other creative people also dropped in from time to time: ‘Monsieur Nureyev,’ as Nicole says, ‘Monsieur Bergé, Monsieur Louboutin,’ whom she mentions with discretion, ‘were frequent visitors.’ She met everyone who was anyone in Paris. At the end of the 1990s, Nicole, who had succeeded her mother, decided to sell the shop. She had discovered that the cabinetmaker and restorer she had been visiting since she was small was selling his premises on the ground floor of a courtyard just a few hundred yards away. It was a bit of a patchwork architecturally: a succession of two very disparate spaces. The cabinetmaker’s workshop, with a window overlooking the courtyard, very low-ceilinged and including a 1950s stove, was still cluttered with tools and hot-glue sticks. It adjoined a large area, dark but with a higher ceiling – the shed – cluttered from top to bottom with furniture ‘awaiting repair’ on shelves. There was even a change of floor level between the two rooms. Nicole had to completely redesign these two places. The workshop became a sitting room/office/dining room overlooking a garden, which provides a pleasant place to sit outside for lunch or tea. Black and white predominate. She mingles her furniture – often black, like her 18th-century lacquered Chinese writing desk, painted Louis XVI fireplace (decorated with allusions to the hunt), or 17th-century bureau, all highlighted in matt gold – with antique chairs sometimes covered in leopard print, and sofas upholstered in period coarse linen, like the curtains. She has also hung contemporary paintings by Martin Dieterle and Pierre Alechinsky. It is not exactly big. To reach the second part of the apartment, Nicole has created a balustrade that makes a feature of the step between the two floors and transforms the windowless room into the corridor of a Baroque château. This is now the nerve centre of the house. For years, she has owned a large white-and-gold 18th-century display cabinet in which she arranges her collections of glassware,
porcelain and silverware and from which she wishes never to be separated. This occupies almost an entire wall, opposite which she has designed the entire décor from scratch: ‘I’d always loved oeil-de-boeuf windows and it was my opportunity to use them.’ So she installed a couple of them above a pair of stone consoles, which she copied from an antique model. The two round architectural elements immediately appear oversized and from the inside they are intriguing. Because they are duplicated by mirrors, they suggest that there must be other spaces beyond. She has combined them with three glazed double doors for which she has designed fanlights lined with golden yellow faille fabric, which – the lights are always on – give the impression of a sunny spot. However, these three elegant and mysterious doors open only onto three small closets: the kitchen, bathroom and a toilet. Nicole’s bedroom, at the far end of this passageway of illusions, has the appearance of an alcove. To create more space, and so as not obstruct the double doors to the kitchen, she has devised an entrance through tall 18th-century château shutters, which fold back like a concertina. The bed takes up almost two thirds of the area; the left-hand wall is entirely covered with books, the other two with a collection of glass or mirror paintings of Chinese courtesans. Glass is a material to be found in every form in Nicole’s home and as ‘silver goes with it so well’, Nicole has even placed ewers in her kitchen to house her wooden spoons. A very good cook, she has refrained from any decoration in its three square metres and chosen to be as functional as possible. The one extravagance that she has allowed herself is some black granite from Zimbabwe. By way of contrast, she has gone in for a ‘boudoir’ style in the bathroom, where she likes to surround herself with silver objects on the edge of her bathtub. On the walls, sanguine (red-chalk) drawings of Roman ruins match antique drawings with landscapes and portraits of women. During her life she has undertaken quite a number of interiordesign projects from beginning to end, but Nicole – feminine, calm and modest – does not see herself as an ‘interior designer’, although she might perhaps accept the term ‘stage director’ because of the tables that are always set, at any time of the day or night. This was also the case with Madeleine Castaing, on Rue Jacob, a stone’s throw from where Nicole lives. But in Madeleine’s home, one did not dine; one looked. She simply wanted the table decoration to be waiting for her, beribboned with plastic ivy, while Nicole, ‘always ready to welcome guests’, is already thinking about what she might cook for her friends. If it’s chanterelles, she will put out the yellow Creil plates. If it’s a cabbage hotpot, it will be slipware or perhaps rustic greenglazed Puisaye pottery. The Minton china is reserved for strawberry crumble prepared with a few small delicate containers in 18th-century Sèvres porcelain. And then Nicole will add her 18th-century ‘Chardin’ carafe as a simple allusion to the painter. ‘It’s my whole life, I love it!’ $
Opposite: Nicole stands below the Alechinsky painting. This page: her bedspread, a printed copy of a suzani, lies
below an 18thcentury Italian church chandelier, while Chinese reverseglass paintings dot the walls
Above: two catalogues from the early 19th century, typical of those put together each year by manufacturers to show customers the variety of shapes, colours and techniques they could offer. They are open here on braids and borders, of straw combined with horsehair, made on looms and sometimes couched on to fabric. Opposite: the compendiums sit on stalks of barley, which would be cut with a paring knife and the strands sorted by thickness
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GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT In the mid-19th century, the straw hat left the fields to become an object of high fashion. Instrumental to the headgear’s change of status was the Swiss region of Freiamt, whose residents became expert at crafting ornaments from stalks of oat, rye, wheat and barley – motifs that would later be assembled by upmarket milliners in Paris and New York. To those rural artisans who toiled away for a kilo of bread a day, Marie-France Boyer tips her brim. Photography: Bruno Suet
SOME REGIONS have grown rich through coal, others through timber or vineyards, but in the 19th century the village of Wohlen in Switzerland became wealthy through straw. The Strohmuseum, founded in 2013 in the family home of a prosperous manufacturer, tells the story of this remarkable period. Cereal crops have been grown for 4,000 years between Basel and Zurich and on the farms of the Freiamt, part of the canton of Aargau. It is said that from the 16th century onwards, and especially in the 18th century, locals adopted the habit of making small objects from the stalks of rye and wheat left behind after the harvest, like those collected by the three ‘gleaners’ painted by Millet in 1857. From children to old people, everyone knew how to make simple decorations representing a star, a cross or a flower, which they would sell. A few especially gifted creators enriched their families. At the same time, the straw hat had left the fields, where it was a utilitarian object, and begun to make appearances in town – it had become a fashion, with a market. In Italy and Britain they were already making all kinds of straw plaits and sewing them together to make hats, supplying Paris, Vienna and then New York. In the small village of Wohlen, in the Freiamt, the people refused to confine themselves to plaits, producing the most inventive hat trimmings in this remote corner of Europe. Collectors would visit people’s homes in search of decorative straw work, just as they sometimes still do for jumpers in Scotland and Ireland, and shift them on to a network of
distributors, who in turn connected with partners throughout the world. Over time, more than 200 different ornamental models (agréments) were invented using more than 100 specialised implements. Each worker made their own tools. The most famous is still undoubtedly the râteau, or rake, which helped invent the balle d’avoine – an oat hull that looks like a stylised leaf. Children were taught the techniques in school. The designs included the bell, the button, the spring, the ear of wheat, the little shovel, the little broom, the star, the mouse dropping, the little woodlouse or the ‘Villmergen ring’, named after a local village where the inventor became a star. To produce these small, three-dimensional items, the stalk had to be harvested before the grain was ripe, then dried. The leaves were then removed from the stalk, and it was measured before being dampened slightly so it could be split along its length into two, four or even more splints. After that, the broad strips were either smoothed and used flat or spun into threads to make cords. Tools for working the straw developed alongside, such as the rouet, or spinning wheel, or the fourche (fork), although the strands of straw were also simply knitted or crocheted. And thus the famous rosette d’Auberville came into being in 1835, copied endlessly and soon to become the basis for thousands of decorations. The same year, when demand was immense, the people of Wohlen sometimes combined straw with other materials such as silk, hemp, cotton or Manila hemp, and they also achieved unprecedented success with
Opposite: the basic straw agrÊments – crosses, stars, flower heads and fleurs de lys – could, as here, be used in combination or made more complex with the aid of horsehair, cotton or hemp. This page: basic rosette forms, nos 3047 and 3048, are embellished with a horsehair stamen centred on a black pearl. High-class milliners in New York and Paris would be able to group these components on hats according to their own taste and that of their customers
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This page, clockwise from top: one of the thousand-and-one boxes in the Wohlen straw museum, established in 2013 in the Isler family home (Jacob Isler & Co). These hat trimmings were made by assembling ornaments: embroidery, braids, pompoms, chenille and ribbons; different agrĂŠments, in wheat and barley straw, form a two-tone ornamental bow; the upper circle served as a hat band, while the lower one would hang down at the neck
This page, clockwise from top: a fashionable hat of 1850, made using a variety of braids. Jean Paul Gaultier revived this mannered rustic look in his ‘Belles des Champs’ collection in 2006; this detail shows a bee made from thread, flattened straw and beads – the ears of wheat are intended to show scale; reminiscent of the finest voilette, these lacy ribbons feature a simple star agrément threaded on to black and white Siberian horsehair
horsehair. This came from Russia, especially northern Siberia, northern France, Argentina and Hungary, with white horsehair being especially prized. With this material they were able to make light and dainty lace-like veils, macramé, ribbons and bands incorporating straw ornaments. These bands were woven, then sewn together to make hats or bonnets, rendering démodé or even replacing the simple straw plait. A style was born that was to become so sought-after that a kilogram of horsehair grew to have a similar value to silver. The trade began in 1800 and reached its height between 1835 and 1880, when some 5,000 people worked at home earning the price of a kilo of bread per day. Wohlen even came to be talked of as ‘Little Paris’. But from 1890 until 1970 the region was overwhelmed by mechanised manufacture. Peasants became factory fodder. Family-based cottage industries were replaced by clocking-in machines, production rates and teams. Industrialists, at the head of this business, grew rich. Wohlen became a prosperous small town fully aware of New York fashions, so that even marriages came about through the trade across the Atlantic. It was no longer rare to see big houses such as the one in which the museum is now located. For nearly 100 years, to attract customers, major manufacturers such as Isler, Bruggisser and Walser published large, almost cube-shaped canvas-bound books (we would call them catalogues) presenting their collections. It was an enormous challenge; they had to do everything in their power to keep up with the trends and establish themselves as world leaders
in New York at a time when production was carried on in a remote village among fields of grain and cows. Competition was fierce. In New York, the buyers joined together, combined the ornaments chosen from the catalogue, and created voluminous, extravagant and delightful designs on their headgear. Every new season would put the previous one out of fashion. The end of the hat sounded the death knell for straw. Few people still know how to make these ornaments. Ottilia Leemann, who does demonstrations at the Strohmuseum, is a rare enthusiast. However, people in the fashion world are not indifferent to straw. Nathalie Sellier-Dejean sources antique pieces from flea markets or antique dealers and refashions them into sophisticated tiaras or crowns. Even synthetic materials could not really compete with straw because it is light, flexible, naturally shiny and even glitters like gold if perfectly dried. Just after the war, Balenciaga had a cape embroidered with straw. Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier have all shown an interest in it, and the latter, no doubt influenced by Arcimboldo’s Summer painted four centuries earlier, had an extravagant corset of straw made for his ‘Belles des Champs’ ready-to-wear collection in 2006, which required 84 hours’ work. Could natural and recycled materials, in fact, be the future? $ Strohmuseum im Park, 5 Bünzstrasse, 5610 Wohlen AG, Switzerland. For opening times, ring 00 41 56 622 60 26, or visit strohmuseum.ch. Nathalie Sellier-Dejean. Email nathalie.dejean@hotmail.fr
Opposite, left: this rouet, a spinning wheel fitted with studs, was a tool that emerged around 1840. It allowed a cord to be made into a braided ribbon. Right: the balle d’avoine, or oat chaff, was a fundamental design that every Wohlen child, using a six-pronged ‘rake’, would have known how to make. This page: contemporary French designer Nathalie Sellier-Dejean made this tiara from antique straw ornaments and moulded-textile oak leaves
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An early nude by Pauline Caulfield sits on a shelf on the left of her studio, its muted colours in sharp contrast to the large John Hoyland painting directly above and to her own textile designs. One of these, ‘Cascade 1’, is seen here in the process of being screen-printed, while a bespoke piece hangs on a rail
CURTAIN CALL Eclipsed by her famous husband, textile designer Pauline Caulfield contented herself with raising a family – and creating some of Christendom’s jazziest ecclesiastical robes – at home in north London. That was until a whole new audience chanced upon her early work, which she now obligingly reprints as bold, geometric curtains. Finally, says Jessica Lack, this screen-print legend is enjoying the limelight she deserves. Encore! Photography: Antony Crolla
This page, clockwise from top left: ‘Garden’, which Pauline designed for her RCA show in 1968, hangs above her patio; a still life by Patrick Caulfield is seen alongside one of his lesser-known works – a faux-marble kitchen table that he painted; Habitat chairs echo the turquoise in Pauline’s ‘Bunting’ design, seen here with ‘Airmail’; the casserole on the top shelf features in Patrick’s 1980 painting Kitchen/Dining/Living
This page, clockwise from top left: Pauline perches on a sofa she and Patrick bought in 1975; the large canvas on her bedroom wall is by Stephen Bennington, who was a student of Patrick’s at Chelsea, while her ‘Sea’ design is laid over the bed; a chest of drawers under a skylight in the bedroom bears a bust of the couple’s oldest son, Luke, who is also an artist; one of Patrick’s paintings presides over an oven-top ‘tablescape’
‘PATRICK used to say it was the best painting he ever did.’ We are standing in Pauline Caulfield’s galley kitchen in north London, sunlight edging through the metal-framed windows, and looking down at a round MDF table expertly painted to resemble green marble. ‘He always said he should come back and sign it.’ I look under the table and, sure enough, there in white paint is the familiar cursive signature of Britain’s most illuminating and often underrated Modern artist. Pauline laughs. ‘I never thought to check! He must have done that some time after he left in ’85.’ The artist in question is, of course, the late Patrick Caulfield, whom Pauline met at Chelsea School of Art in the mid 1960s and later married and had three children with before their marriage was dissolved. ‘He was one of my tutors – a young one,’ she clarifies. A photograph from the time shows Pauline as a serious young woman, with long dark hair. ‘I think I was rather prim,’ she says. At her first tutorial Caulfield had expressed surprise at the lack of colour in his student’s paintings. ‘Everything had to mean so much. Painting was so important that I felt I couldn’t really make a mark, and so my works got paler and paler.’ She points to a small reclining faceless nude made at the time, so sallow the figure almost merges into the white background. ‘I was utterly inhibited, but then I began printing fabrics and it was such a release, all those bright primary colours. It’s funny, because of course printing is actually very structured and controlled, but for me it was total freedom.’ She went on to study textiles at the Royal College of Art, and her diploma show in 1968 consisted of 11 bold geometric screen prints on large panels. It is these works, which are now reprinted as curtains off-site, that form the basis of her new exhibition at her home in Primrose Hill Studios. ‘It’s been strange returning to these works after so many years,’ she says, ‘but it seems a younger generation really like them.’ The show will also feature five more recent commissions for wall hangings and a video of a sliding panel piece made for a house in north London. Until now, Pauline’s speciality has been designing ecclesiastical robes. ‘Unusual, yes, but I was brought up a Catholic and as a child I really liked the vestments and looked forward to them. I loved the order and the ceremonial aspects of Catholicism.’ She got her first commission to produce chasubles while at the RCA
and has since created vestments, altar frontals and wall hangings. Earlier this year she had a solo show, Fashioning the Sacred, at St Augustine’s in Hammersmith. What did her husband, a wellknown atheist (it simply says ‘DEAD’ on his gravestone), think of her work? ‘He was always incredibly supportive,’ she says. ‘But it took huge courage for me to ever put something up on the walls at home. I had to dare myself’ – not easy with Howard Hodgkin and John Hoyland always dropping in. ‘Yes, partly that. John lived at number 12 – in fact, he suggested we try and live here.’ ‘Here’ is the elegantly appointed Victorian house that the couple moved to in 1975. The building is part of a secluded cloister of artist studio homes built in the 1870s and accessed by a narrow passageway off a street in Primrose Hill. The houses surround a courtyard that contains a wooden plaque commemorating past residents, among them the painters JW Waterhouse and Frederic Villiers, the writers Arthur Rackham and Patrick Leigh Fermor and the actor Martita Hunt (the dusty Miss Havisham, a masterclass in supressed evil, in David Lean’s Great Expectations). Pauline’s home is one of the last still to be owned by a trust, the others having been sold off. They inherited it from the painter Lord Methuen and it still had a potbelly stove when they moved in. Patrick screened off one end of the double-height sitting room for his studio, while the domestic life of the house continued at the other. ‘It wasn’t easy,’ concedes Pauline, ‘but I was very happy revolving around Patrick. I was enormously impressed by everyone.’ Her art took a back seat while she raised their three boys, organised private-view parties that her husband rarely attended (‘too drunk to appear’) and produced ‘deceptively casual dinners’ for their friends. Today she still cooks for her assistants. ‘I get good ingredients – a mound of really good tomatoes from the market, good bread…’ she says. ‘It’s important, and I’m so grateful for the help they give me.’ Making textiles is an all-consuming and messy business, and takes time. My visit coincides with her final preparations for the show and there seem to be people everywhere. Was it difficult to produce work when her children were younger? ‘Yes. The problem with textiles is that you can’t stop halfway through and go and do something else, you have to give everything to it.’ She lays out some of the curtains that she is planning to exhibit and I am thrown by the sheer joyfulness of the designs – all those warm yellows and brassy reds, and undulating lines of sea green buzzing like battery acid in a Bridget Riley painting. There is order here – the kind of military precision associated with concrete abstraction – but it is undercut by the flow of the fabric that refuses to settle, and I can’t help feeling mildly irritated that this talented artist has remained in the shadows for so long. We discuss a forthcoming commission she is undertaking for the artist and serial name-changer Monster Chetwynd (known as Spartacus Chetwynd when nominated for the Turner Prize) and the inspirations behind some of the designs. For the first time her engaging chatter falters. ‘It’s not easy explaining your ideas. Patrick once said he wasn’t conscious of any metaphors, and that was not surprising, as he worked mostly in the dark. I think that’s a good way of putting it’ $ ‘Off the Rail’, an exhibition of textiles by Pauline Caulfield, is at 6 Primrose Hill Studios, Fitzroy Rd, London NW1 (020 7586 4130; paulinecaulfield. com), 19-28 Oct, Sat, Sun 10-6, Mon-Fri by appointment
Top: in the studio ‘Black Stripe’ and ‘Odeon’ curtains hang alongside a Nicholas Monro sculpture. Opposite: the sofa was bought off neighbours in Primrose Hill Studios, while Patrick found the Art Deco relief over the mantelpiece, a relic from a liner, in a second-hand shop in the 1980s
A view of the entrance courtyard, paved in locally sourced TÊtouan stone, and the marabout-inspired porte-cochère original to the house. The benches were inspired by those in Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny
Haven Can’t Wait
When the late Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé decided to leave their estate in Normandy and seek a quiet retreat in Tangier, teams of craftsmen, gardeners and labourers renovating their chosen villa had to complete the work in record time. But the round-the-clock frenzy of repointing, rewiring and repainting did deliver – on time – a peaceful, verdant idyll for their later lives, away from the madding crowd. As contents from Pierre’s many abodes go on sale, their landscape designer and friend Madison Cox lets us in. Photography: Christopher Simon Sykes
TWENTY YEARS
ago, I first visited Villa Mabrouka during a working trip with Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé and their decorator, Jacques Grange. Yves and Pierre had made the radical decision in 1998 to abandon their Proustian retreat, Château Gabriel (WoI Dec 2009), set amid the pastoral, green hills of the Calvados region in Normandy, and establish themselves in Tangier, Morocco. Their world at Château Gabriel, created at a moment in their lives in the early 1980s when the two imagined posh weekends of fancy-dress parties, afternoons spent at polo matches, tea with neighbouring grandees or calèche rides amid the verdant lanes of the Pays d’Auge, had come to an end. A complete break with Normandy was deemed the cure for a certain ennui that had established itself, and the promise of a new house, with equally dramatic ocean views across the Strait of Gibraltar, was deemed the answer. The working brief for Jacques and myself was very concise: transform the slumbering beauty of Villa Mabrouka in record time, ten months exactly, and prepare the home for the following August holidays. One other demand came from Yves himself: he wanted the house to carry the spirit of having been inhabited by
a somewhat impoverished and reclusive elderly Englishwoman who loved bold, overblown chintz and surrounded herself with few possessions, a hodgepodge of bits and pieces collected during a lifetime of inhabiting various exotic corners of the globe. Certainly nothing terribly grand. And then there was my challenge: the garden. As the house was to be used exclusively during the month of August, replicating day for day their Normandy routine, I focused on reorganising the steep slopes and numerous terraces, filling them with a multitude of flowering hollyhocks, roses, morning glories, thunbergias and other species that were to provide as much of a statement as the chintz inside. The swimming pool, rearranged by the previous owner, along with an adjacent fanciful pavilion perched on the precipitous cliff edge – designed by Stuart Church, the legendary American decorator and Tangier resident – were in near-perfect shape, except for the cracked ceiling and sagging pitched roof of the folly, a result of water damage. The time had come to have the building restored, and the team felt the proper thing to do was contact Church to see if he would return and rework his creation. This proved rather difficult, as by then Church had become a
Above: this long corridor was treated as a homage to Princess Mathilde’s Winter Garden in Paris, with painted wood trellis on the walls, potted Kentia palms and a 17th-century Isnik double-handled urn on a white marble octagonal table from India. Opposite: a view across the domed central inner courtyard. Chalk-based whitewash allows the villa’s walls to breathe in this humid climate and adds freshness to the interiors
The creator of the water-lily frescoes in the couple’s Normandy home returned to paint Villa Mabrouka’s dining-room walls after Les Nymphéas by Monet. The shell mirror frame is by French artist Armelle Fabre
devout Sufi and was living on the outskirts of town with no electricity, phone or running water. The only means of communication was to chance upon him during his occasional forays into downtown Tangier, where he had an early morning coffee at his favourite café. Finally found, he came to survey the deterioration and immediately erected scaffolding, then worked for months repointing and painting Pompeii-inspired frescoes bursting with garlands of imaginary flowers and dancing nymphs. On completion, Pierre pestered him endlessly to send his bill; when Church finally delivered it, six months to the day after he had started restoring the pavilion, the amount was $100. Vast teams of workmen laboured night and day: rewiring, replumbing, repointing, repainting and repolishing the villa. Unfortunately, several existing elements had to remain, such as the hideous modern aluminium-frame windows that had been installed to enclose the wraparound covered porch, deemed too complicated to remove within the short time span. Meanwhile, in the garden, outside stone retaining walls were erected, pathways laid out, fountains created, pergola walks mounted, while the mad dash to locate plants was under way.
During the entire process, and once the chintz had been chosen, Yves was to remain passive regarding design details. The original decorative painter who gave Château Gabriel its distinctive Monet-inspired, water-lily frescoes returned from retirement to decorate one of the two salons. Pierre, on the other hand, became alive with the passion he always displayed for the design process and was obsessed with the slightest detail, calling at all hours of the day or night to start off in mid-sentence with ‘Now about the steep walk to the pool, what if…’ or ‘When you are in Tangier next, could you take a photo of the door handles at the El Minzah Hotel?’ The house was completed in the final days of July 1999, just in time for the arrival of Yves and Pierre. On the day they set foot in Tangier, Hassan II, King of Morocco, suddenly passed away and the country went into deep mourning. A new monarch was soon enthroned; with the promise of a fresh chapter in the history of the nation, a new era for Villa Mabrouka had also begun. Much to the consternation of many in the Tangerine expat community, invitations to the couple’s home were few and far between. Yves had some close French friends who would come to stay, but in later years became a near-recluse within the property grounds.
Above: Yves commissioned the large mirror for the main sitting room from his long-time friend and collaborator Claude Lalanne. Andalusian glazed bassins, collected in Tangier, adorn the walls. Opposite: bejmat, or unglazed terracotta tiles, from Fez, were used for the outside terraces and porches. The wall sconces and iron-and-glass door designed by Stuart Church were replicated by Jacques Grange in the 2016 renovation
This page, clockwise from top: a 19th-century turquoise-painted wood-bead chandelier hangs over Yves’s bed; two astrolabes in the distance mark one of the many terraces, a series of themed spaces creating a zigzag walk through the property; the couturier’s bathroom-cum-dressing room offered a cool retreat in summer. The window, which looks out to the Strait of Gibraltar, is also visible in the photograph of the garden
Yves’s bedroom gives on to his bathroom-cumdressing room, where a NapolÊon III gilt-bamboo console table holds a plaster lamp base in the style of Serge Roche. The plaster mirror is by Jacques Grange
Those Tangerines who were able to finagle entry were mystified that the house wasn’t another Schatzkammer, like the couple’s Parisian or Marrakesh residences. The walls had been left blank, void of any paintings or decorative treatment. Instead they appeared rather monastic, covered with a simple whitewash that served to reflect the ever-changing light of the ocean. When Yves passed away, already ten years ago, the house was closed. Pierre never returned, except once when I took it over as the setting for my 55th birthday in 2013. Pierre decamped to a smaller house in the centre of town, Villa Léon l’Africain (WoI Dec 2012), which he in turn completely transformed, and where he lived very contentedly. About two summers ago, following an ill-fated and short-lived stay in Tangier after Pierre had become wheelchair-bound, he decided in late October 2016 to return to Villa Mabrouka for the following August holidays. Once again, the team was assembled and a mad rush began anew to transform the grounds and render them wheelchairfriendly. Ramps were created and many of the original ideas for transforming the house that had been abandoned, such as the removal of the aluminium windows, were realised
in record time, as was the miraculous dismantling and moving from Villa Léon l’Africain of a garden pavilion, painted with trailing ivy intertwined with morning glories by the locally based English artist Lawrence Mynott. While all this was under way at an amazing pace during spring 2017, the Paris and Marrakesh Yves Saint Laurent museums were undergoing the final stages of completion. Pierre had thoroughly envisaged them down to the smallest detail, but had now moved on to other challenges and was much more focused, to the point of total obsession, on the renovation of Villa Mabrouka. Just days before his death in early September last year, unable to travel any longer, he remained preoccupied with receiving daily progress updates. When I told him it was complete and ready, he smiled as if a great weight had been removed, and he passed away a few days later. To the very end, that passion he had never left him $ The sale ‘Pierre Bergé: From One Home to Another’ takes place at Sotheby’s France (in association with Pierre Bergé & Associés), Galerie Charpentier, 76 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris (00 33 1 53 05 53 05; sothebys.com), 29-31 Oct. It will be preceded by an exhibition, 25-29 Oct
Above: the interior of the octagonal iron dining pavilion was painted by the Tangier-based English artist Lawrence Mynott, with a fanciful trellis of twining morning glories, ivies and thunbergias. Opposite: Madison Cox originally designed the pavilion for Pierre Bergé’s house, Villa Léon l’Africain. It is nestled in a thick grove of bamboo, providing protection from the chergui (occasional strong easterly summer winds)
inspiration Some of the design effects in this issue, recreated by Grace McCloud
1 Celebrating the tradition of straw-weaving, Switzerland’s Strohmuseum displays objects of exquisite detail (page 140). Though increasingly rare, some craftsmen are still dedicated to the art – among them, Elaine Lindsay, who makes her corn dollies, crowns and ‘favours’ in Scotland. Shown: Swiss-straw brooch, £24. Ring 01467 681330, or visit somethingcorny.co.uk.
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2 White sheets billow in the breeze on Seán
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and Dalila Shanahan’s sunny terrace in northern Italy (page 119). While we can’t guarantee such a clement climate, we can highly recommend Volga Linen’s ready-made, hem-stitch linen curtains, which will bring a bit of brightness, inside or out, and cost £798 per pair. Ring 01728 635020, or visit volgalinen.co.uk.
3 From Wegner chairs to Meissen chandeliers, a roll-call of desirable designer names can be found in the Shanahans’ rainbow-hued home in Lombardy. The couple are no snobs, however: just take the modest – and minimalist – white ‘Klippan’ sofa in their sitting room (page 121), which costs £185 from Ikea. Ring 020 3645 0000, or visit ikea.com. 4
4 Towelling isn’t just for facecloths, as the owners of the house near Como are clearly aware. It is given elevated status in their bathroom (page 125), forming the seat of an ‘LC9’ stool by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, which is available from Aram at £558. Ring 020 7557 7557, or visit aram.co.uk.
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5 The lush leafy print that graces the walls of the Shanahans’ bathroom (page 125) was a local vintage find, but frond fans need not despair. Strikingly similar, green/oyster ‘Waikiki’ from Bennison Fabrics comes as a linen (shown) and a wallpaper, both at £192 per m. Ring 020 7730 8076, or visit bennisonfabrics.com.
6 Gerrit Rietveld’s ‘Red and Blue’ chair looks right at home in the polychrome playground of the artists’ main sitting room (page 117) – and could do in yours, too, for £2,238. Ring Cassina on 020 7584 0000, or visit cassina.com. 6
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PHOTOGRAPHY: LIAM STEVENS (1, 5, 8, 12, OVERLEAF 1, 6)
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7 Yves Saint Laurent picked a graceful console with gilt faux-bamboo legs for his Moroccan bathroom (page 163). While the couturier’s was 19th-century, Dessin Fournir’s ‘Alcott’ ($7,170) has all the poise if not the same provenance. Ring 020 3410 2000, or visit fromental.co.uk.
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8 The Tangier villa has a corridor lined with wooden latticework that was inspired by a royal winter garden (page 156). Recreate the effect with Jim Thompson for No. 9’s green ‘Trellis Panel’ wallpaper; £370 per 10m roll. Ring Fox Linton on 020 7368 7700, or visit foxlinton.com.
9 A word in your conch-like: peer through Villa Mabrouka’s dining-room door and you’ll spot a particularly elegant light fitting (page 159). We’ve gone fishing for something similar and come up with a real pearl: Paolo Moschino for Nicholas Haslam sells seashells for your own wall. Shown: ‘Circle Shell’, £800. Ring 020 7730 8623, or visit nicholashaslam.com.
10 Bamboo-handled flatware adds an exotic
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twist to the traditional table arrangement at Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent’s villa (page 158). If your mise en place is missing a tropical touch, Juliska’s cutlery should more than cut it. A five-piece setting costs $168 from Bloomingdale’s. Visit bloomingdales.com.
11 What’s blue, white and red all over? Isaac Goodwin’s bedroom, of course, which has a stylish scarletstriped antique quilt central to its scheme (page 107). It puts us in mind of Jessica Ogden’s contemporary versions available at APC; this zigzag ‘M85150’ number costs £344 approx. Visit apc.fr.
12 As if the sofa in the Good-
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wins’ sitting room didn’t look sumptuous enough, an array of vivid cushions plumps it up further (page 102). If you are after a similar stylish and soft touch, Robert Kime’s ‘Circles and Dots’ and ‘Tian’ ikat velvets (both £160 per m) have it covered. Ring 020 7831 6066, or visit robertkime.com. r
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inspiration 1 Nicole Altero backed the glazed doors in the corridor of her Paris apartment with yellow faille (page 132), giving the illusion of a sunlit space beyond. For a similarly cheerful cheat, try one of Colefax & Fowler’s banana-coloured silk taffetas; ‘Lucerne F3931-03’, £55 per m, is our pick of the bunch. Ring 020 8874 6484, or visit colefax.com.
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Partial to an oeil-de-boeuf, the owner of the former cabinetmaker’s workshop on the Left Bank cleverly hung a pair of circular mirrors in her hallway (page 132). We’ve hit bull’s-eye in our search for a match: Cox & Cox’s ‘Round Window’ can be yours for £100. Visit coxandcox.com.
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3 Nicole Altero went for boudoir style in her Paris bathroom (page 137), displaying sundry silver objets round her grand-looking tub – for which Devon & Devon’s ‘Capitol’, £10,320, is a dead ringer. It’s up to you to find the antique treasures. Ring 020 7221 5137, or visit devon-devon.com.
4 Work by Patrick Caulfield jollies up the north London home of his former wife, Pauline (page 148). So let’s all raise a toast to Tate, which can customprint his colourful creations – including Wine Glasses of 1969. From £25. Ring 020 7887 8888, or visit shop.tate.org.uk.
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5 Does twill give you a thrill? We’ve lined up
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some lookalikes for Pauline Caulfield’s denim cushions (page 153), courtesy of the jean genies at Designers Guild. Its ink ‘Brera Lino’ cushion has a denim reverse and costs £60. Ring 020 7351 5775, or visit designersguild.com. 6
6 The late sculptor JB Blunk crafted nearly everything in his Californian home from salvage and natural materials – spoons included (page 111). These mvule-wood coffee scoops from Kirsten Hecktermann (£12 each) are similar in both style and spirit, being hand-carved using offcuts from the furniture industry. Visit kirstenhecktermann.bigcartel.com $
THE INVISIBLE LIGHTSWITCH® www.forbesandlomax.com LONDON I NEW YORK
Maman dearest, Roman à clef, Strawberry Hill forever, plus Charlotte Edwards’s listings
OPPOSITE: © THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON. BEQUEATHED BY CAMPBELL DODGSON, 1949. ABOVE LEFT: © NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND. PURCHASED WITH ASSISTANCE FROM THE ART FUND (SCOTTISH FUND) AND THE NATIONAL HERITAGE MEMORIAL FUND 1990. ABOVE RIGHT: © THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
EXHIBITION
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Maman: Vuillard & Madame Vuillard BARBER INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS University of Birmingham, Edgbaston
‘Ma Maman, c’est ma muse,’ said Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940). Not for him the sylph, the model, the slender midinette posing after shop-floor hours. Doughty Madame Vuillard, watchful, white-haired, round as a spool of cotton, fingers and thumbs pricked with a thousand needles, was his true inspiration. The artist talked of his mother, said his first biographer Jacques Salomon, ‘with tenderness and reverence’. Edouard never married. He lived with Maman, a corset-maker and seamstress, until her death in 1928 at the age of 89. Her son, who had never flown the nest, found himself living alone for the first time at 61. What nests they built together. Madame Vuillard made their rented Paris apartments cosy and congenial: a corner for her sewing studio; a curtained atelier for her son’s painting. Vuillard, who early in his career associated with the Nabis, came to be called an Intimist, reinventing the still, small interiors of Dutch 17th-century painters – Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch – in fin de siècle Paris. ‘I do not do portraits,’ he said. ‘I paint people at home.’ In his own home that meant Maman and occasionally his married sister, Marie Roussel. In this charming small-scale exhibition at the Barber Institute we see Madame Vuillard arranging her hair, drying plates on her apron, finishing lunch over Le Figaro, bending over her girls to check their seams in Two Seamstresses in the Workroom (1893). Against the blowsy wallpapers and tufted rugs, it takes a moment to spot her. In Interior with Pink Wallpaper I (1899) you see everything but Maman: the overpowering paper, the pleated lampshade, the fussy chandelier. Then, almost as an
afterthought, there is the self-effacing mother, in a blue dress, hovering for a moment at the door. About to shut it to spare her son the clatter of pans? (‘I didn’t want to disturb…’) Or just opened? (‘Is there anything I can get you, dear?’) Was Vuillard an overindulged mummy’s boy, spoilt and cosseted, happily tied to her apron strings? Or was he driven, determined, devoted to his art, willing to keep his mother on side if she kept quiet, kept house and kept out of his way? His portraits can be fond or unforgiving. In Madame Vuillard Arranging her Hair (1900) the low viewpoint is that of a boy sitting cross-legged on the carpet. This is among the most intimate of his interiors. Who but her son and two daughters would see this widowed lady in her dressinggown? The jacquard swirls of her peignoir clash with the room’s acanthus rug. ‘He seems to embroider his canvas with glorious, old-fashioned wools,’ wrote the Belgian art critic Emile Verhaeren. In other images, Maman is pushed to the margins, no more than a blob of whitely laundered paint. In Interior with Seated Figure (1893) the mood is gloomier, more claustrophobic. Marie steals a moment away from dustpan and broom to sit in a dark, close room. The mother bustles in the background. Close enough to eavesdrop; back in a jiffy. Even a muse can get on one’s nerves. MAMAN: VUILLARD & MADAME VUILLARD runs 19 Oct-20 Jan, Mon-Fri 10-5, Sat, Sun 11-5, with an accompanying catalogue published by Paul Holberton $ LAURA FREEMAN is a freelance art critic and the author of ‘The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite’ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Opposite: Interior with Pink Wallpaper I, 1899, colour lithograph, 35 × 27cm. This page, top left: Two Seamstresses in the Workroom, 1893, oil on millboard, 13.3 × 19.4cm. Top right: Interior with Seated Figure, 1893, oil on card, 35.5 × 29.1cm
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EXHIBITION
Roman Vishniac Rediscovered
ALL IMAGES: © MARA VISHNIAC KOHN, COURTESY INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY, NEW YORK
THE PHOTOGRAPHERS’ GALLERY Ramillies St, London W1 JEWISH MUSEUM Albert St, London NW1
When cinematographer Janusz Kaminski began his Academy Award-winning work on the film Schindler’s List, in the early 1990s, he had a particular look in mind. His guide, he said, was a recently published book of photos taken inside the Jewish shtetls, or small villages, of eastern Europe in the run-up to World War II. Kaminski liked in particular that the photographer, Roman Vishniac, ‘had nothing – inferior equipment, inferior film stock and only available light – yet he managed to create really beautiful pictures with a timeless quality’. Kaminski wasn’t the only one to have been struck so. For a long time, Vishniac, who died in 1990 at the age of 92, was near-fetishised for these pictures, a unique visual record of a community that was obliterated almost immediately after. The photographs had a plaintive cast that only increased with hindsight, and the savvy Vishniac, it later transpired, had not been above cropping and doctoring his negatives for the greater good: namely, to ensure sympathy for fellow Jews. He was also very careful about which images were released, meaning that only a few hundred – a minuscule proportion of his actual output – were ever published in the press. The true size of his holdings, only revealed in 2007 when they were gifted to the International Center of Photography in New York by Vishniac’s daughter, neared 12,000 prints and colour transparencies, and 12,000 negatives. They showed him to be a far more versatile photographer than thought. His work spanned five decades, for a start, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and, along with a more balanced view of the shtetls, included images of Weimar Berlin, portraits of figures such as Chagall and Einstein, and pioneering – and wildly beautiful – examples of photomicroscopy (where specimens are photographed through a microscope). Together, they make for an extraordinary body of work, which you have two opportunities to see this autumn. The first show, at the Photographers’ Gallery, repositions Vishniac as a leading figure in Modernist photography. At the Jewish Museum, meanwhile, the same curator, Maya Benton, explores his role as messenger for the Jewish plight. It’s no exaggeration to call it a tragedy that Vishniac’s visual agility was not fully realised during his lifetime. His images of Berlin, for instance, range from charming street vignettes to dexterous use of Modernist shadows and geometrics. His pictures of postwar New York, where he and his wife and children landed in 1940, and where he photographed other Jewish émigrés adjusting to their new lives, demonstrate just how subtly he could tell a story when he wasn’t under pressure to tell it in a certain light. That light, of course, was an obligation. And who are we to judge whether he should or shouldn’t have told the story as he felt it needed to be told in the moment? The weight of what was about to happen to those children who stare out of his photographs is crushing, even now. ROMAN VISHNIAC REDISCOVERED runs 26 Oct-24 Feb, Mon-Wed, Fri, Sat 10-6, Thurs 10-8, Sun 11-6 (at the Photographers’ Gallery); Mon-Thurs, Sat, Sun 10-5, Fri 10-2 (Jewish Museum) $ LUCY DAVIES writes on art and photography for the ‘Telegraph’ From top: drawer of eggs at Gut Winkel, a training farm for German Jewish youth hoping to emigrate to Palestine, c1938; boy standing on a mountain of rubble, Berlin, 1947; David Eckstein and classmates in cheder, Brod, Czechoslovakia, c1938; Recalcitrance, Berlin, c1929
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EXHIBITION
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Top, from left: reliquary casket depicting the murder of Thomas Becket, French, c1200-1210; ebonised beechwood chair designed by Richard Bentley and Horace Walpole and made by William Hallet, c1755; hair of Mary Tudor in a gold locket, 1784-85. Bottom: Albrecht Dürer, Stag Beetle, 1505, watercolour and gouache
What derision might The Times’ leader writer of 1842 have mustered for this new exhibition? For the next four months, items of fine and decorative art from Horace Walpole’s collection will return to their original settings in his restored villa in Twickenham. His belongings were dispersed two centuries ago, in a four-week sale, having been inherited by the grandsons of his great-niece, one an epileptic, the other a violent jailbird, both cash-strapped alcoholics. The auctioneer billed the sale ‘the most distinguished gem that has ever adorned the annals of auction’ and most commentators agreed. Not The Times. The newspaper dismissed Strawberry Hill as a ‘dusthole of the debris of semi-barbarism and bad taste’ and Walpole himself as a rich man who had ‘fool[ed] away his time in the collection of gewgaws, gimcracks, trinkets and trumpery trifles’. With hindsight, such bluster is nonsense. Walpole’s championing of an 18thcentury Gothic revival was key. Based on what Sir John Summerson called ‘archaeological enquiry’, his gradual remodelling and extension of Strawberry Hill over three decades, from the late 1740s on, was only partly shaped by romantic sentiment and, in its connoisseurial earnestness, far from dilettantish. Escapism played its part in Walpole’s make-up – ‘there is no wisdom comparable to that of exchanging what is called the realities of life for dreams,’ he wrote in 1766 – but his collection arose from diverse motives, none of them the rich man’s desire to beguile empty hours. For Walpole enthusiasts, the present exhibition will serve as a sequel to the V&A’s
2010 effort. In this case, many items from the aesthete’s collection – among the most important assembled in the 18th century – will return to the interiors for which they were acquired. Visitors will have an unprecedented chance to glimpse Walpole’s ‘little Gothic castle’ more nearly as he himself experienced it and meant it to be seen. ‘Mr Walpole is very ready to oblige any curious Persons with the Sight of his House and Collection,’ read a set of rules published in 1766. Having tracked down some 200 dispersed works, the curators make this possible for the first time in living memory. Here are rare treats. Portraits by Lely, Hogarth and Reynolds; Hans Eworth’s 1559 double portrait of Lady Mary Neville and her son; George Vertue’s 1740s tracings of Holbein drawings in the Royal Collection; Geeraerts’s 1603 portrait of Lord Falkland, which inspired a scene in Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto. An exuberantly spiky chair that was designed by Walpole in 1755 in collaboration with Richard Bentley is the earliest extant example of English Gothic Revival furniture. There are Renaissance enamels, 16th-century majolica, Baroque silver and Sèvres porcelain – as well as the limewood cravat carved by Grinling Gibbons in 1690 that Walpole wore to a party in 1769. Gewgaws and trinkets indeed… LOST TREASURES OF STRAWBERRY HILL: MASTERPIECES
runs 20 Oct-24 Feb, Mon-Fri 12-6, Sat, Sun 11-6, with an accompanying catalogue published by Scala $ MATTHEW DENNISON is a biographer whose 18th-century subjects include Caroline of Ansbach, George II’s wife
FROM HORACE WALPOLE’S COLLECTION
TOP LEFT: © CSG CIC GLASGOW MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES COLLECTION. TOP CENTRE: © VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON. TOP RIGHT: © THE RT HON. EARL OF DERBY. BOTTOM: THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM, LOS ANGELES
Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill STRAWBERRY HILL Waldegrave Rd, Twickenham
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EXHIBITION
diary 1 1 Cast away – Heidi Bucher, Flying Skinroom, 1981, at Parasol Unit. 2 Leading lady – Michael Ward, Shirley MacLaine, 1964, at Lorfords. 3 Love’s labour – Edward Burne-Jones, Laus Veneris, 187378, at Tate Britain. 4 Stripe tease – Ian Davenport, La Mer Study (After Bonnard), 2018, at Waddington.
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LONDON
LORFORDS LANGTON ST, SW10 18 Oct-9 Nov. Mon-
ALAN CRISTEA PALL MALL, SW1 Until 10 Nov. Mon-
Fri 9-5.30. Stars charted: Michael Ward’s can-
Fri 10-5.30, Sat 11-2. From 1970, Anni Albers devoted herself entirely to printmaking, and found, to her irritation, that it gained the recognition her weaving had not (‘when the work is made with threads, it’s considered a craft; when it’s on paper, it’s considered art’). This show, tying in with a Tate retrospective, surveys the full range of her graphic work and its layered or rotating geometric forms. ALMINE RECH GROSVENOR HILL, W1 Until 17 Nov.
Tues-Sat 10-6. Norman Rosenthal revisits his 1981 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting with works made recently by the artists he selected back then, including Auerbach, Baselitz and Maria Lassnig. Plus, a group show of ‘early 21st-century art’ forecasts what characteristics might be seen to define this period. BERNARD JACOBSON DUKE ST, ST JAMES’S, SW1
Until 24 Nov. Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 11-2. Net worth:
continuing the gallery’s year-long celebration of William Tillyer’s 80th birthday, this show revolves around his Golden Striker: a 9m-long work painted on – and from behind – five panels of industrial plastic mesh. BRITISH LIBRARY EUSTON RD, NW1 19 Oct-19 Feb.
Mon, Wed-Fri 9.30-6, Tues 9.30-8, Sat 9.30-5, Sun 11-5. Books of revelation: the compelling his-
tory of Anglo-Saxon England is illuminated by its few surviving manuscripts. DAVID ZWIRNER GRAFTON ST, W1 Until 10 Nov. Tues-
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Sat 10-6. From Palaeolithic hand-prints to the
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RICHARD SALTOUN DOVER ST, W1 Until 10 Nov. TuesFri 10-6, Sat 11-5. Scroll down: 58 moulded-
aluminium volutes by Eliseo Mattiacci, inspired by Rome’s Baroque architecture, are squiggling all over the gallery. TATE BRITAIN MILLBANK, SW1 Until 6 Jan. Mon-Sun 10-6. A serious-minded Turner Prize shortlist
sees artists interrogating human-rights abuses, identity politics, migration and police brutality. 24 Oct-24 Feb, ‘if I could I would work only in public buildings and in choirs and places where they sing,’ wrote Edward Burne-Jones, who was happiest when his work was set into architecture. His brand of lyrical fantasy has a fresh sheen of fashionability these days; but this blockbuster delves deeper, exploring his skills as a draughtsman, his (frankly peculiar) portraits, and Wyndham Lewis’s view of him as a ‘pioneer of surrealism’. Paintings – rainbow stripes of poured colour that pool on the floor at the bottom of each panel – and explosive Splat works on paper.
Until 8 Nov. Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-4. Ian Davenport’s Puddle
WALLACE COLLECTION MANCHESTER SQUARE, W1
Fri 10-6, Sat 12-4. Blessing Ngobeni’s mixedmedia paintings of contorted figures, crushed by exploitation and hardship but equally animated by the energy of urban life.
Until 6 Jan. Mon-Sun 10-5. The illegitimate son of the Fourth Marquess of Hertford, Richard Wallace inherited his father’s glorious collection of 18th-century French paintings, porcelain and furniture. Subsequent acquisitions of his own – including Chinese ceremonial wine cups, a gold trophy head from Asante and an ostrich by Augsburg silversmith Elias Zorer – are on show in his former home to mark his 200th birthday.
JOOST VAN DEN BERGH BURY ST, ST JAMES’S, SW1
WHITE CUBE BERMONDSEY ST, SE1
1-10 Nov. Ring 020 7839 8200 for times. For Asian Art in London, this dealer teams Indian art from the Bactrian to Classical periods with Pakistani artist Noor Ali Chagani’s sculptures made from hundreds of tiny terracotta bricks.
Tues-Sat 10-6, Sun 12-6. Doris Salcedo paves the floor with stone slabs on which the names of victims of Europe’s migrant crisis magically appear and disappear, as though traced in sand or spelled out in droplets of water. Plus, a new sculpture by Anselm Kiefer.
LONG & RYLE JOHN ISLIP ST, SW1
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10-6, Sun 12-5. The late Swiss artist Heidi Bucher’s ‘skinnings’: latex casts of rooms, clothes or bodies, expressive of both containment and escape, which are hung from the ceiling or walls or spread on the floor.
EIGHT HOLLAND STREET HOLLAND ST, W8 Until 4 Nov.
EVERARD READ FULHAM RD, SW6 19 Oct-10 Nov. Mon-
5 Set in stone – Saint Ambrose, Nottingham alabaster, early 15th-century, at Ordovas. 6 Path of glory – Lucien Pissarro, My Studio Garden, 1938, at William Morris Gallery. 7 Column inches – Anne Desmet, Sculpture Garden, 2018, at Long & Ryle
PARASOL UNIT WHARF RD, N1 Until 9 Dec. Tues-Sat
WADDINGTON CUSTOT CORK ST, W1
Howard Hodgkin was his star pupil – Clifford Ellis has been neglected as an artist in his own right. Accompanying a big public show in Bath (see Outside London), this small exhibition fêtes his oils and gouaches of the 1950s and his collaborations with his wife, Rosemary, on poster and book-jacket designs.
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Sat 11-3. Rock of ages: canopic jars, statuary and direct carving in alabaster, prized by artists since ancient times for its light colour, delicate veining and translucency.
present, Kerry James Marshall’s epic new canvases tackle the history of painting. Mon-Sat 10-6, Sun 11-4. An influential teacher –
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did photographs of off-duty showbiz icons. ORDOVAS SAVILE ROW, W1 Until 15 Dec. Tues-Fri 10-6,
Until 11 Nov.
11 Oct-9 Nov. Tues-Fri 10-5.30, Sat 10-2. Architectural frag-
WILLIAM MORRIS GALLERY FOR-
ments are heaped up in Babel- or Escher-like capricci in Anne Desmet RA’s collages and prints.
Sun 10-5. The plots thicken:
EST RD, E17 20 Oct-27 Jan. Wed-
the metaphorical and decorative possibilities of gardens in art and design. 7
EXHIBITION
diary
1 OUTSIDE LONDON
LLANDUDNO MOSTYN Until 4 Nov. Tues-Sun 10.30-4.
BATH GRAY MCA Until 30 Nov. Wed-Sat 10-4. Style
Phyllida Barlow, the Boyle Family, Gavin Turk and some 40 others ask you to look anew at familiar things – a plug socket, a broom, a bench – in a show of works drawn from the David Roberts Art Foundation.
sheets: a gallery dedicated to original fashion illustration opens with work by masters of the genre René Gruau and Antonio Lopez. VICTORIA ART GALLERY Until 25 Nov. Mon-Sun 10.30-
5. More of the art and design of Clifford and Rosemary Ellis (see Eight Holland Street, London), including posters for Shell and BP, Collins’s New Naturalists book covers, and watercolours recording the Bath Blitz. Plus, paintings by Victorian traveller Adela Breton.
MELROSE ABBOTSFORD Until 30 Nov. Mon-Sun 10-5
BRUTON HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET Until 1 Jan.
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE LAING ART GALLERY 27 Oct-3
Tues-Sun 10-5 (until 31 Oct), 10-4 (from 1 Nov).
March. Tues-Sat 10-5, Sun 2-5. Bare essentials:
Cover art: Berlinde de Bruyckere, known for disconcertingly corporeal sculptures, presents new, more abstract work made of layers of decomposing blankets. Plus, having viewed blood samples under a microscope, Gutai artist Takesada Matsutani began to incorporate the blob as a motif in his vinylglue paintings, prints and assemblages.
paintings and photographs of naked sitters, from Nell Gwyn to Naomi Campbell.
BUTE MOUNT STUART Until 18 Nov. Mon-Sun 11.303.30 (until 28 Oct), Mon-Fri 12-2 (from 29 Oct), guided tours on the hour only. Christine Borland’s fragile
(until 31 Oct), 10-4 (1-30 Nov). Turner’s specs,
palette and the sketchbook he filled while staying here in 1831 travel north for an exhibition about his (often frosty) relationship with this house’s proprietor, Walter Scott.
The rite stuff: witches in contemporary art. NORWICH SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS
13 Oct-24 Feb. Tues-Fri 10-6, Sat, Sun 10-5. Sculp-
tor Elisabeth Frink’s close observation of animals – including humans, in all their aggression, vulnerability and spirituality. NOTTINGHAM NEW ART EXCHANGE Until 16 Dec. Mon-
Fri 9-6, Sat 10-5, Sun 10-4. Ekow Eshun curates a
show of photography from 11 African countries, with a special focus on the city.
CAMBRIDGE MUSEUM OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Mon-Sat, bank hols 10-5, Sun 11-4. Degas’s Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (1879) will have you ooh-ing and aah-ing at a lively show of circus art, costumes, posters and photographs.
on show in the cast gallery here, Florian Roithmayr’s new works were inspired by the making and materials of sculpture, borrowing their form from moulds and armatures.
SHEFFIELD WESTON PARK MUSEUM
Until 4 Nov.
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FRANCE PARIS MUSEE MARMOTTAN MONET Until
10 Feb. Tues, Wed, Fri-Sun 10-6, Thurs 10-9. Buried
CHICHESTER PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY
Until 3 Feb. Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 10-5, Thurs 10-8, Sun 11-5. Dyn-
treasure: dazzling Impressionist, Nabis and Fauvist pictures from private collections.
amic paintings, posters and textiles by Berlinborn Karl Hagedorn (1889-1969), influenced by Severini, Picasso and his hero Matisse (he kept until his dying day the butt of a cigarette Matisse had shared with him). Until 10 Feb, the life and art of Julian Trevelyan, a Surrealist and traveller ultimately anchored by his beloved studio on the Thames.
INDIA JAIPUR JAWAHAR KALA KENDRA Until 18 Nov.
ITALY PALERMO MANIFESTA 12 Until 4 Nov. Tues-Sun
Until 3 Nov.
10-8. The nomadic biennial has placed work
Thurs-Sat 10-5. Domestic objects, Soho life and travels abroad figure in the prints of the Great Bardfield-moulded artist Chloe Cheese. GLASGOW A-M-G5 Until 3 Nov. Fri, Sat 12-6. This new gallery shows just one work by a single artist. First up is Merlin James’s painting of the Clyde: the view from his house, made from memory.
by 50 artists in venues including the 1789 botanical garden, a historic citrus grove and an abandoned housing development.
EASTBOURNE EMMA MASON PRINTS
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NEWTOWN ORIEL DAVIES Until 7 Nov. Mon-Sat 10-5.
installations of shattered crockery and handblown glass balls respond to the Neo-Gothic mansion’s past as a wartime naval hospital. Until 3 Nov. Mon-Fri 10-5, Sat 10-1. Due process:
1 Fighting spirit – Elisabeth Frink, Riace Warriors (detail), 1986-89, in Norwich. 2 Chest register – Vanessa Bell, David Garnett, 1915, in Newcastle. 3 Speed the plough – Karl Hagedorn, Australia, undated, in Chichester. 4 Put another shell on the barbie – Bedwyr Williams, The Burn, 2012, in Leicester.
Mon-Sun 9.30-6. The inaugural Indian Ceramics
Triennale is staged in this Charles Correadesigned space. Juree Kim constructs miniature clay buildings then sits them in water until they subside; Asim Paul’s fenced-off stoneware towers comment on partition.
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USA NASHVILLE FRIST ART MUSEUM 12 Oct-6 Jan. Mon-Wed 10-5.30, Thurs, Fri 10-9, Sat 10-5.30, Sun 1-5.30. The art of the Parisian Belle Epoque. NEW YORK GERALD BLAND 232 EAST 59TH ST 23 Oct-30 Nov. Mon-Fri 9-5. Pierre Bergian’s
5 Double vision – Lebohang Kganye, Ka 2-phisi yaka e pinky II, 2013, in Nottingham. 6 Whatever floats your boat – Gustave Caillebotte, The Bank of the River Seine at Petit Gennevilliers, 1890, in Paris. 7 Hair-raiser – EugèneSamuel Grasset, Paul Vever and Henri Vever, ‘Assyrian’ comb, 1900, in Nashville
paintings of ‘half-imagined’ empty rooms, themselves containing views of other rooms or classical ruins.
LEICESTER ATTENBOROUGH ARTS
Until 16 Dec. Tues-Fri 12-6, Sat 10-5, Sun 12-4. No frills?
CENTRE
A century after Adolf Loos wrote his famous essay rejecting ornamentation as a kind of crime, Yinka Shonibare MBE curates an Arts Council touring exhibition unpicking the place of pattern in art, with work by minimalists and embellishers alike.
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Until 12 Nov. Mon-Thurs, Sun 10-5.30, Fri, Sat 10-9. THE MET FIFTH AVENUE
Karen B. Cohen’s collection of Delacroix drawings. Until 6 Jan, encore Delacroix: a sumptuous survey, on tour from the Louvre $ 6 7
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191
JOURNAL OF A HISTORIC-SHOP OWNER
OPEN ALL ERAS
SURROUNDED BY 19TH-CENTURY GRAFFITI AND A GHOST OR TWO, ROGER CURRY IS CUSTODIAN OF AN EMPORIUM FROM ANOTHER TIME. AS IF
What on earth am I thinking? The high street is in turmoil, Brexit is looming, politicians and the public are polarised. And here I am trying to revive my family’s 160-year-old department store in a Grade II-listed half-timbered building that isn’t exactly fit for purpose. My head says leave Ludlow, find a nice log cabin somewhere in Slovakia – where my wife, Monika, is from – and go back to furniture-making. This is no time for sentimental attachment to the past, I tell myself. And yet my heart says stay. I can’t simply turn my back on a century and a half of history. How could I? My forebears have been trading from this site on Broad Street since 1852, when a young William Bodenham set up a draper’s shop. There have been five generations of us to date. Within a few decades of opening, the store employed more than 100 people, from shop assistants to delivery men. Now we are down to ten. So I don’t think it’s immodest to say that Bodenhams is an institution in Ludlow. In fact, we’re so ingrained with town life that in 2005, when the building was 600 years old, the rector of St Laurence’s came along to bless our timbers – and business. Monika and I regard ourselves as custodians, trying to steer Bodenhams through the 21st century as best we can. Which is far from easy in a building that dates back to 1405 and is charmingly wonky. We muddle through, respectfully going about our business – Monika is in charge of expanding online stuff, while I am determined to resurrect our lost furnishings department – and our renovations. Tempting as it might be to rip everything out and start afresh, change has to occur organically. I am always mindful of the regrettable fate of the shop next door, which was stripped to a shell 30 years ago, and in the process lost its soul. That is not going to happen here on my watch. Now and again, little things yield a glimpse of what was. We recently uncovered a bread oven and, while stripping away woodchip, discovered a dozen layers of old wallpaper. For posterity’s sake, we left a small area untouched – to the consternation of one customer. ‘Why didn’t the decorators finish the work properly?’ they asked, bemused. And while renovating the menswear department, we unearthed floorboards with deep grooves where a delivery cart once came back and forth. It’s in such ways that the building speaks to us. The walls of the old servants’ quarters in the attic tell their own story, inscribed as they are with myriad names and dates, along with drawings of Queen Victoria, motley old men and a naked lady. I wonder about the lives of the artists. Inevitably there are unexplained events in a place this old, which can make life here spooky. Sleep is difficult when the town falls silent save for the sound of rattling shop signs and the wind whistling through leaded lights. After a couple of ram-raids, we decided to invest in a highly sophisticated – and sensitive – alarm system. One night a strong wind set it off. That or Matilda, our resident ghost, was up to her old tricks again. There are spectres of a different type all around me. I think about my great-great-grandfather’s time in the 1860s. Was it so very different, I wonder? Some years ago we came across a Bodenhams & Sons brochure from the 19th century, which suggests it was. ‘Shopping by Post’ it was called quaintly. There is no doubt that running a business today is difficult, and maintaining a building of this age – with limited resources – even harder. But it is unique, and I like to think that there is still a place for a shop where people can see, hear, smell and touch $ Bodenhams. Ring 01584 872786, or visit bodenhams.co.uk
ILLUSTRATION: PHILIP BANNISTER
MODERN RETAIL WASN’T CHALLENGING ENOUGH, HE SAYS, TRY TRADING IN A GRADE II-LISTED BUILDING THAT DATES BACK TO THE PLANTAGENETS