A member of the SMWF Group
THE WORLD S MOST DESIRABLE KITCHENS
smallbone.co.uk
+44 (0) 2080 882813
BAIA
www.armaniroca.com
Made in England Since 1860
The Beardmore Collection beardmore.co.uk
Est. 1860
CONTENTS JUNE 2019
33
BOOKS
Reading on art, architecture and design
53
SERIOUS PURSUITS
Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities
56
FUCHSIA CLASSICS
From raspberry toile to blushing linen, these fabrics will put you in the pink, says Max Egger
69 COVER Regent’s treat – two post-Georgian hall chairs make a fetching silhouette in the garden hall of Drue Heinz’s ‘miniature stately home’ in the West End. To succumb to her ruling passions, proceed to page 148. Photograph: Simon Upton
ART AND ANTIQUES GUIDE
Settle back as we lionise Leonardo’s drawing skills, see Nelson get his just desserts (sic!), thumb a lift to Sussex with Ivon Hitchens, and much, much more. We also tick off all the fairs worldwide and point you to art in odd spots
140
14
ANTENNAE
18
LIGHTS BRIGADE
Whether wicker, fluted bronze or bamboo, Miranda Sinclair’s fittings carry quite a charge
27
BELLA’S EPOQUE
Designed (with Retrouvius) like a Roman villa with a sky-lit atrium, Bella Freud’s cool retro newbuild feels like the ideal after-party venue. Sophie Barling kicks off her heels
178
WRAP STAR
Architect Kengo Kuma has enclosed the late artist Masanari Murai’s cluttered studio in glass and steel. Thus, says Augusta Pownall, the Tokyo museum mediates a meeting of masters
186
BOHEMIAN BARBECUE
Princesses and party-loving literati have long made a beeline for Abdou’s seafood joint south of Tangier. Marie-France Boyer winkles out more in his makeshift beachside shanty
194
WUNDER KIN
Suppliers in this issue
Whether it’s a cunning cat cubbyhole or selfmade floor tiles, one family in Berlin have a Zen-like approach to art and daily life. They put the ‘om’ into domesticity, says Kirsty Bell
220
204
144
What’s new in style, decoration and design, chosen by Nathalie Wilson
NETWORK
Merchandise and events worldwide
168
ADDRESS BOOK
INSPIRATION
How to recreate some of the design effects in this issue, by Grace McCloud
224
EXHIBITION DIARY
Hodgkin’s harvest, Krasner the changeling, wholly Gnoli, plus Charlotte Edwards’s listings
THE LADY IS A TROMPE
When 16th-century wedding guests entered this Brescian palazzo, they came face to face with six freshly painted beauties... Aliette Boshier probes the fresco’s symbols for clues
210
FLAT DU JOUR
Joanna van der Lande uses all her senses to test the provenance of one fair’s antiquities
Two artists turned a tiny Paris bistro with a glass front into a family home/studio, bagging the bar, banquettes and marble-topped tables. Valérie Lapierre honours her booking
SUBSCRIPTIONS AND BACK ISSUES Receive 12
INTERIORS
FROM THE ARCHIVE
issues delivered direct to your home address. Call 01858 438815 or fax 01858 461739. Alternatively, you can visit us at www.worldofinteriors.co.uk
148
160
ANTENNAE ROUNDUP
Our selection of the best bowls
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 39 no 6, total 441
248
JOURNAL OF AN ANTIQUES VETTER
A MEWS ZHOOSH
Trompe-l’oeil master Renzo Mongiardino built on John Fowler’s décor in philanthropist Drue Heinz’s grand London home. Andrew Barrow has a last, lingering look at this glorious interior
THE DIRECTOR’S HUT
Facing Dungeness’s nuclear plant, Derek Jarman once planted and painted at his lonely cabin. John Vere Brown and James Graham went fission. First published: November 1989
smeg.com
Refrigerator FAB50
Vogue House Hanover Square L ondon W1s 1Ju Tel 020 7499 9 08 0
EDITOR Rupert Thomas CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jessica Hayns ART DIRECTOR Mark Lazenby DEPUTY EDITOR Nathalie Wilson ASSOCIATE EDITOR, PARIS Marie-France Boyer FINE ARTS & FEATURES EDITOR Charlotte Edwards SENIOR EDITORIAL STYLIST Miranda Sinclair EDITORIAL STYLIST Max Egger EDITORIAL MANAGER/ INSPIRATION EDITOR Grace McCloud CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Damian Thompson ART EDITORS Simon Witham Liam Stevens EDITOR’S PA Magdalene Barclay NEW YORK EDITOR Carol Prisant EDITOR-AT-LARGE Min Hogg $
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION MANAGER ACTING PRODUCTION CONTROLLER ACTING PRODUCTION CO-ORDINATOR COMMERCIAL, PAPER & DISPLAY PRODUCTION CONTROLLER
Sarah Jenson Xenia Dilnot Skye Meelboom Milly Aylott Harvey Martin MacMillan $
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Richard Kingerlee NEWSTRADE MARKETING MANAGER Olivia Streatfield SUBSCRIPTION Patrick Foilleret (Director) Anthea Denning (Creative Design Manager) Lucy Rogers-Coltman, Brittany Mills (Direct Marketing Managers) Alan Paterson (Database Insight and Marketing Manager) Claudia Long (Assistant Promotions and Marketing Manager) US SUBSCRIPTION SALES The World of Interiors, Freepost PO Box 37861, Boone, Iowa 50037-2861 (Tel: 888-737-9456. E-mail: theworldofinteriors@subscription.co.uk)
savoirbeds.com
London
New York
Paris
Shanghai
Hong Kong
THE WORLD OF INTERIORS (ISSN 0264-083X) is published monthly by The Condé Nast Publications Ltd, Vogue House, 1 Hanover Square, London W1S 1JU. Telephone 020 7499 9080. Fax 020 7493 4013. ©2008. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. Printed in the UK by Walstead Roche. Colour origination by williamslea. Dis tri buted by Frontline, Midgate House, Peterborough, Cambs PE1 1TN, United Kingdom (tel: 01733 555 161). ‘The World of Interiors’ is a registered trade mark belonging to The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. Subscription rates (per year, inc postage): UK £59.88. USA (air-assisted periodicals postage) $99; USPS Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica, NY 11431. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named Worldnet Shipping Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Europe (airmail) EU 99 euros, outside EU £80. Rest of World (airmail) £99. Subscription enquiries, change of address and orders payable to: The World of Interiors, Subscription Department, Tower House, Lathkill St, Market Harborough, Leics LE16 9EF (01858 438815). Orders on www.subscription.co.uk/woi. Subscriptions enquiries on theworldofinteriors@subscription.co.uk. Subscriptions hotline: 0844 848 5202, open Mon-Fri 8am-9.30pm, Sat 8am-4pm. Manage your subscription online 24 hours a day by logging on to www.subscription.co.uk/help/condenast. The paper used for this publication is based on renewable wood fibre. The wood these fibres are derived from is sourced from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources. The producing mills are EMAS registered and operate according to highest environmental and health and safety standards. This magazine is fully recyclable – please log on to www.recyclenow.com for your local recycling options for paper and board.
YOUR LIFE. YOUR RULES.
YOUR SHOWER. YOUR TURN. GROHE SMARTCONTROL
Turn up your shower experience with three showers in one. grohe.co.uk
SHOWER PLEASURE TO THE POWER OF THREE START / STOP & VOLUME The Innovative GROHE SmartControl technology lets you choose your preferred spray pattern – or a combination of spray functions – as well as adjust the water flow to just the right amount. Nothing could be simpler.
1. FLEXIBLE
2. POWERFUL
3. RELAXING
Simply turn up the water flow to get just the right amount. From a delicate spray to a refreshing shower – for seamless flexibility.
Put power at your fingertips. Start with a vigorous spray to rinse away shampoo. Increase the volume for a concentrated jet spray to massage away the stress of the day.
All the control you need for ultimate relaxation – choose a soft and refreshing rain shower or turn the volume all the way up for a summer downpour.
UP TO
0 5 £ ACK* B H S A C
*For a limited time only please visit grohe.co.uk for more information.
Vogue House Hanover Square L ondon W1s 1Ju Tel 020 7499 9 08 0
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Emma Redmayne PA TO PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Freya Hill ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Sophie Catto Emma Hiley (acting) ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS (EUROPE) Alexandra Bernard (Tel: +33 5 5652 5761. Fax: +33 5 5652 5770. E-mail: abernard@condenast-europe.com) Christopher Daunt (Tel: +44 20 7152 3755. E-mail: christopher.daunt@condenast.co.uk) ADVERTISING MANAGERS Georgina Penney, Marina Connolly ACCOUNT DIRECTORS Lorna Clansey-Gramer, Nichole Mika SENIOR DIGITAL ACCOUNT MANAGER India Barclay SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER Olivia McHugh ACCOUNT MANAGER Olivia Capaldi and Pandora Lewis SOCIAL MEDIA/NETWORK EDITOR Sophia Salaman SPECIAL PROJECTS Melinda Chandler (Head of Special Projects) Amelia Morley (Special Projects Manager) Joan Hecktermann (Art Director) Richard Sanapo (Art Editor) Rebecca Gordon-Watkins (Art Editor) Arta Ghanbari (Special Projects Editor) Phoebe Wood (Promotions and Project Manager) Freya Hill (Event Co-ordinator) CLASSIFIED Shelagh Crofts (Director) Lucy Hrynkiewicz-Sudnik (Senior Advertisement Manager) Laura Bailey (Senior Sales Executive) MEDIA RESEARCH Heather Batten (Senior Research Manager) Lauren Hays-Wheeler (Research Executive) US ADVERTISING Nichole Mika (Tel: 011 4420 7152 3838. E-mail: nichole.mika@condenast.co.uk) REGIONAL OFFICE Karen Allgood (Regional Sales Director) Heather Mitchell (Account Director) ITALIAN OFFICE Cesare Fiorucci Carlo Fiorucci (Tel: +39 0362 232210. Fax: +39 0362 326934. E-mail: info@fiorucci-international.com) $
CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER Simon Gresham Jones DIGITAL COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR Malcolm Attwells OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Helen Placito $
EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION & RIGHTS Harriet Wilson (Director) EDITORIAL BUSINESS MANAGER Jessica McGowan $
Sabine Vandenbroucke Daisy Tam Hazel McIntyre Emily Hallie
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER HEAD OF FINANCE HR DIRECTOR COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR $
MANAGING DIRECTOR Albert Read CHAIRMAN Nicholas Coleridge
Directors: Nicholas Coleridge, Shelagh Crofts, Edward Enninful, Simon Gresham Jones, Dylan Jones, Albert Read, Sabine Vandenbroucke
6 , RU E D E L’O D EO N 75 0 0 6 PA R I S T.+3 3 1 5 5 4 2 92 1 0 S ER I ER A R E @ S ER I ER A R E .CO M W W W. S E R I E R A R E .CO M
CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE CONDÉ NAST INTERNATIONAL Jonathan Newhouse THE WORLD OF INTERIORS is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (which regulates the UK’s magazine and newspaper industry). We abide by the Editors’ Code of Practice [www.ipso.co.uk/editors-code-of-practice] and are committed to upholding the highest standards of journalism. If you think that we have not met those standards and want to make a complaint please see our Editorial Complaints Policy on the Contact Us page of our website, or contact us at complaints@condenast.co.uk, or by post to Complaints, Editorial Business Department, Condé Nast Publications Ltd, Vogue House, Hanover Square, London W1S 1JU. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or if you would like more information about IPSO or the Editors’ Code, ring IPSO on 0300 123 2220, or visit www.ipso.co.uk
THE HEVENINGHAM COLLECTION
www.heveningham.co.uk sales@heveningham.co.uk +44 (0) 1424 838483
antennae
What’s in the air this month, edited by Nathalie Wilson
1 Astier de Villatte’s latest offering will bring a twinkle to both your eye and your interior. The opaline-and-clear-glass ‘Pavilion’ chandelier (£2,575 approx), available in turquoise or amber colours, is handmade in the firm’s Paris atelier to Merrie Shinder’s design. Ring 00 33 1 42 60 74 13, or visit astierdevillatte.com.
2 Interior designer and architectural historian Edward Bulmer is confident that his natural paint is the safest, healthiest and most beautiful available. Testament to the last-mentioned quality are his 20 brand-new colours, which brings the total to 90 overall. Prices start at £49.50 for 2.5 litres. Ring 01544 388535, or visit edwardbulmerpaint.co.uk.
1
3 There’s more to Roger Oates’s ‘Borders’ collection than its name suggests. Thought has been given to how the edges work as a stripe when the wool runners are stitched together to make wall-to-wall carpeting or wider rugs. It also includes co-ordinating plains that can be used on landings and hallways to complement the stair runners. Shown: ‘Hanbury’ (left) and ‘Pelham’, from £129 per m. Ring 020 7351 2288, or visit rogeroates.com.
2
4 A cabinetmaker first and foremost, the late Frits Henningsen drew on past styles and reinterpreted them for the present. His 1936 ‘Coupé’ sofa, recently reissued by Carl Hansen (£6,328), is reminiscent of the draught-reducing winged armchairs popular in the 18th century. Ring 020 7730 8454, or visit carlhansen.com.
3
4
nobody, but Nemo is certainly a somebody in the lighting world. Its latest reissues of works by great masters include Le Corbusier’s 1925 ‘La Roche’ wall light (£335 approx), which was conceived for the villa of the same name. The fitting is led and dimmable. Ring 00 39 0362 166 0500, or visit nemolighting.com.
6 These are no off-the-rack plate racks. Put together in Cosmo Fry’s Bath workshops from plywood, iroko and ash components, each model evokes a different design 5
PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON WITHAM (2, 2 OVERLEAF)
5 The company name might be Latin for
6
movement, be it ‘Art Nouveau’ (left), ‘Gothic’ (right) or ‘Arts and Crafts’. They are also available in a range of Formica colours. From £595 for a 61cm-long model. Ring 01225 424467, or visit cosmofry.com.
7
7 With its semi-irregular motif of squares and rectangles, Alexander Brenner’s ‘Conte’ oak engineered flooring for Listone Giordano eschews uniform patterns just like, say, the stone flags in the nave of a Norman cathedral. This latest addition to the historic company’s repertoire of unusual designs in wood can be yours for £223 approx per sq m. Ring 00 39 075 988 681, or visit listonegiordano.com.
8 Made in his studio on Alki Beach, Seattle, Aaron Murray’s delightfully characterful stoneware vessels (from £90 each) have a japonaiserie feel and are inspired by the Oaxaca folk tradition for bird pottery. They are sure to fly off the shelves of Rebecca Hossack’s gallery in Charlotte Street (1 May to 1 June). Ring 020 7255 2828, or visit rebeccahossack.com.
8 9
9 Like all its wares, Adelphi Paper Hangings’ new designs are old. Another shared feature is their 19th-century-style means of manufacture – all are printed on manually operated presses. ‘Reveillon Arabesque 810’ (top; $155 per yd), which requires a staggering 24 blocks to print its 14 colours, is based on a 1780s document and was commissioned by the Homewood Museum in Baltimore. Meanwhile, the original of ‘Parson Smith Pillar and Arch’ ($650 per 10m roll) is in the archives of Historic New England, a Boston attraction. Ring 001 518 284 9066, or visit adelplhipaperhangings.com.
10 Anna Standish’s enthusiasm for 1970s American interiors and Davidson’s quality craftmanship mesh in the ‘West Coast’ collection. It consists of three pieces – a tub chair, a coffee table and a ‘Palisades’ cabinet (shown; £17,904) – the last two are made from bird’seye maple wood in a choice of colours. Ring 020 7751 5537, or visit davidsonlondon.com. r 10
15
antennae 1 As you might imagine a real sultan’s garden
1
to be, Sam de Teran’s 22-piece bone-china tableware range of that name for William Edwards Home is replete with grazing gazelles, mischievous monkeys and other exotic flora and fauna. From £8 for a condiment pot. Ring 01782 838000, or visit williamedwardshome.co.uk.
2 Several of Pigott’s Store’s 27 fabrics, including these ones, feature enduringly appealing traditional Mogul patterns. The remainder, by founder Nano Sefton, will undoubtedly stand the test of time too. All are handblock-printed in India on fine cotton; from £42.50 per m. Ring Mews Fabrics and Furnishings on 07920 493082, or visit themewsfurnishings.com.
3 ‘The grandeur of a noble English estate, the adventurous spirit of a safari, or the glamour of Hollywood’. Ralph Lauren Home has covered ’em all. Whither, one wonders, does the brand want to transport us with its blueor green-lacquered ‘One Fifth’ maple pedestal end table (£4,950)? Visit ralphlauren.com.
2
4 French embroidery house Maison Noël’s client list reads like a who’s who of the great and good: French presidents, cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein – even the infant Prince Charles slept in the company’s cradle linen. Pictured: hand-stitched ‘Château’ monograms, from £82 approx for a 10cm letter. Ring 00 33 1 40 70 14 63, or visit noel-paris.com.
3
4
5 Paolo Moschino for Nicholas Haslam’s ‘Elba’ collection is evocative of Edwardian gardens laden with lupins. The seven pieces, including this ‘Rhodes’ chaise (£2,890), are handwoven in Indonesia from weatherproof synthetic rattan and are available in white, brown or a combination of the two. Ring 020 7730 0445, or visit nicholashaslam.com $
16
5
Cala Collection by Doshi Levien H Pavilion by Kettal Studio HEAD OFFICE KETTAL / CONTRACT BARCELONA: Aragรณn 316, 08009 Barcelona, Spain. T. (34) 93 487 90 90 SHOWROOMS KETTAL BARCELONA - LONDON - MARBELLA - MIAMI - NEW YORK - PARIS LONDON: 567 Kings Road SW6 2 EB. T. (44) 20 7371 5170
1 ‘Carabinieri’, by Fornasetti, £861 approx, Harrods. 2 ‘Berber’, £195, Oka. 3 Small mimosa yellow ‘Glossy’, £130, Rosi de Ruig. 4 ‘Coral TL101’, by Jocelyn Burton, £810, Hector Finch. 5 Hand-painted spindle lamp, by Pedro da Costa Felgueiras, £1,480, The New Craftsmen. 6 ‘Gingembre’, £110, Pooky. 7 ‘Mela TL163’, £474, Bella Figura. 8 ‘End of Day Confetti ’, by Bridie Hall, £510, Pentreath & Hall. 9 Royal blue ‘Spring’, £384, Marianna Kennedy. 10 ‘Curvy’, £350, Melodi Horne. Hardwood table with tubular base, £1,50 0, Retrouvius. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
2 1
3
4
6 5
SHORTLIST
L I G H T S B R I G A D E On the lookout for a lamp base that stands up to attention? At ease! Whether you covet a classical column or ‘coral reef’, you’ll find something that passes muster here. Miranda Sinclair marshals the recruits into serried ranks. Photography: Neil Mersh
9
7 8
10
1 ‘Cube’, £570, Julian Chichester. 2 Wiener Werkstätte lamp, by Josef Hoffmann, £4,441 approx, Woka. 3 ‘Rest’, £179, Ferm Living. 4 ‘Pluto’, £606, CTO Lighting. 5 ‘CTL3210’ lantern, by Commune, $2,525, Remains Lighting. 6 ‘Hatton 4’, £585, Original BTC. 7 ‘IC T1’, by Michael Anastassiades for Flos, £327, Aram Store. Library table, £1,500, Retrouvius. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
4 6
1
5 3 2
7
SHORTLIST 1 ‘Turn On’, by Joel Hoff for Hay, £115, Selfridges. 2 ‘Sitar’, £495, Ligne Roset. 3 Rechargeable ‘Bellhop’, by Barber Osgerby for Flos, £174, Aram Store. 4 ‘B-4’, by Greta Grossman for Gubi, £250, The Conran Shop. 5 Small ‘Duo’, by Tom Housden, £199, Hand and Eye Studio. 6 Red ‘Eclisse’, by Vico Magistretti, £148, Artemide. 7 Smoke ‘Take’, by Kartell, £80, Amara. Antique textile table, £480, Elemental. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
2 4
1
7
5
3
6
LUCIEN SOFA design Stefano Gaggero RIVIERA SIDE TABLES DRAGONFLY ARMCHAIRS EATON OTTOMAN MARMADUKE COFFEE TABLE design Roberto Lazzeroni
www.flexform.it
AGENT FOR UK ALBERTO SCHIATTI tel. +39 0362 328162 info@schiatti.it
SHORTLIST 1 Brass ‘BR25-B’ column, £490, Tindle. 2 Marble cone, £4,400, Rose Uniacke. 3 ‘Byron’, £1,260, Jamb. 4 ‘Gold Star Temple Jar’, £150, India Jane. 5 ‘Fantastical ’, £750, Max Rollitt. 6 Fauxtortoiseshell ‘Candlestick’, £380, Penny Morrison. 7 Antique-gilt ‘Floors’, £1,650, Robert Kime. Library table, £1,500, Retrouvius. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
3
2 1
6
4 5
7
SHORTLIST 1 Tall ‘Palm Tree’, £119, Graham and Green. 2 Large khaki ‘Bamboo’, £618, Porta Romana. 3 ‘Edith’, £474 approx, Atelier Vime. 4 ‘Rattan Bottle’, £2,000, Soane Britain. 5 ‘Longton’, £288, Vaughan. 6 Natural ‘Ananas’, £495, House of Hackney. Hardwood table with tubular base, £1,500, Retrouvius. Throughout: plain paper shades – from A Shade Above – painted by stylist. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
6 5 4
2
1
3
rugiano.com
PIERRE sofa Giovanni Fortunato +44 7717425313 - uk@rugiano.it Flagship Store: Via della Moscova, 53 MILANO
antennae roundup On the hunt for a handsome bowl to salivate over? Miranda Sinclair presents some of the dishiest
2
1
3
4
5
6
8 7
1 Stainless-steel Bauhaus bowl, by Marianne Brandt, $120, Neue Galerie Design Shop. 2 ‘A Walk in the Garden’ (from top: ‘043013P’; ‘043085P’), from £95 each, Hermès. 3 ‘Lattuga Grande’, £38 approx, Mario Luca Giusti. 4 Black dhow ‘Lustre’ pasta bowl, by Bethan Gray, £130, 1882. 5 ‘Trattoria’ (from left: orange zest; pool blue; straw; mint), from £18 each, The Conran Shop. 6 ‘Labirinto Scarlatto’, by Richard Ginori, £255, Harrods. 7 Large topaz ‘Girih’, £1,150, Linley. 8 ‘Cielo’, from £252 approx each, Hering Berlin. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
London +44 (0)208 675 4808 www.indian-ocean.co.uk
antennae roundup
1
2
3
5
4
7 6 8
1 ‘Edme’ pasta bowls, £17 each, Wedgwood. 2 Hampstead green ‘Vintage Stripe’ café au lait bowls, $68 for a set of four, Sir/Madam. 3 Mustard stoneware breakfast bowls, by Robyn Cove, £30 each, Tinsmiths. 4 Yellow/white ‘8’, by Aage and Kasper Würtz, £60, Sigmar. 5 ‘Window Still Life’, by Katrin Moye, £375, The Shop Floor Project. 6 From top: French-onion-soup bowl, by John Leach, £21.80; cereal bowl, by John Leach, £16.50; both Muchelney Pottery. 7 Handmade porcelain serving bowls, by Julian Sainsbury, £160 for a set of three, John Julian. 8 Mango-wood ‘Indus IW3254’, from £29.95 each, Nkuku. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
antennae roundup
1
2
3
5
PHOTOGRAPHY: LIAM STEVENS (6)
4
7 6
8
1 ‘Côte d’Azur’, £22 each, Ralph Lauren Home. 2 ‘Baroque Pedestal’, $1,100, Frances Palmer Pottery. 3 Handmade porcelain soup bowl, £90, Summerill & Bishop. 4 Large salad bowl, by Astier de Villatte, £150, Liberty. 5 ‘Dominoté’, by Antoinette Poisson, £60 approx for a set of two, Gien. 6 ‘PCLA-GT-501’, by Claresco, £107, Thomas Goode. 7 ‘Périgord’ dessert bowl, £50 for a set of six, The French House. 8 ‘Imperial Blue CW2418’, $250, Mottahedeh. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
®
A HANDMADE, SACHS GREY CIRQUE7 PATTERN, WITH PIETRA SERENA STONE INLAYS AVAILABLE IN A RANGE OF WOOD AND STONE OR MARBLE COLOUR COMBINATIONS
element7.co.uk
+ 44 (0)20 7736 2366
EXCEPTIONALLY ENGINEERED WORLD-CLASS INTERIOR FLOORS WIDE-PLANK
PARQUET
LEATHER
BESPOKE
Nobbling the nobs, landscape unframed, a tank-sized Frank, sari story, Nicholson’s mail gaze, façades of the soul, Whistler in the wind, graphics in an analogue age
THE COUNTRY HOUSE PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE: GREAT HOUSES OF THE BRIT ISH ISLES (by David Cannadine and Jeremy Musson; Rizzoli, rrp £65)
With its cover picture of Uppark against an azure sky, The Country House could be yet another coffee-table book, but it’s not. It is an incendiary bomb lobbed in the direction of the ‘inherited privilege, abundant leisure and elite culture’ of the classes who owned, and still own, Britain’s country houses, and of the art- and architecturalhistory approach taken by people like James Lees-Milne, who called country houses ‘our most precious secular shrines’. In his introduction, the historian David Cannadine begins with The Treasure Houses of Britain, a sumptuous exhibition in Washington in 1985-86 showing 700 works of art from more than 200 country houses. He dismisses the claim of its curator, Gervase Jackson-Stops, that these houses represent ‘Britain’s greatest single contribution to global culture’ and refutes his plea that ‘owners and their artefacts should be allowed to remain in the mansions their forebears had lovingly tended and embellished across the generations’. The unremitting toil of ordinary people made possible the privileged life enjoyed by the landed elite, says Cannadine, and he rejoices that the National Trust, once in the hands of a patrician oligarchy, has redefined the UK’s national heritage to include industrial archaeology and environmental protection, turning its back, for the most part, on the acquisition of country houses. The blockbuster show prompted the emergence of academic country-house studies, which switched the focus from beauty to an ‘awareness of the complexity and significance of country-house life… from slavery to gender, the local community to the British Empire, horticulture to transport, politics to recreation’.
books
This is a book of two halves. Its ‘Past’ aspect is represented in its 300 pictures – mostly lovely, but some too bright and reminiscent of a guidebook – which complement and illustrate seven essays by (sometime WoI contributor) Jeremy Musson on such topics as ‘Design and Construction’, ‘Magnificence and Power’, and ‘Pleasure and Recreation’. They are a swift canter through the history of the country house. And, speaking of cantering, it is astonishing what short shrift the latter gives to hunting, which was less a pastime than a defining passion for most inhabitants of country houses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The ‘Present’ and ‘Future’ aspects of the book are furnished by eight essays, mostly by heritage professionals, with such subtitles as ‘New Approaches in Irish Country House Studies’. They read like papers given at a heritage conference. There is ‘outreach’, ‘collaborative research ventures’, ‘joint marketing’, ‘an approach to the Secretary of State’ and ‘widest public impact’. Wading through reveals some interesting facts: most visitors prefer the ‘downstairs’ parts of country houses; an exhibition themed on the female experience increased footfall at a group of country houses by 2 per cent; at Highclere Castle – where Downton Abbey was filmed – all 120,000 visitor tickets have been fully booked in advance for the past three years. And even 38 years after it was aired, the 1981 TV series Brideshead Revisited still benefits Castle Howard, where it was filmed. Though the book sneers (or cheers – according to your point of view) at ‘the sentiment, the hyperbole, and the fetishisation… of the “Brideshead syndrome”’, it seems the public are rather partial to a bit of fetishisation $ ELFREDA POWNALL is a freelance writer r
To order The Country House for £55.25 (plus £8 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
Chimneypieces | Lighting | Furniture 020 7730 2122 | jamb.co.uk
books
LANDSCAPE PAINTING NOW: FROM POP ABSTRACTION TO NEW ROMANTICISM (ed. Todd
Bradway; Thames & Hudson, rrp £39.95) For the minimalist sculptor Tony Smith, the end of painting occurred in 1966, with a late-night drive on an unfinished road. With no markers, lights or railings to guide the way, he had something of an epiphany, realising that art was an experience that could not be framed. ‘Most paintings look pretty pictorial after that,’ he said. Smith was not alone in this observation. As artists in the modern era shifted their focus away from the natural world to something the art critic Lawrence Alloway defined as Hi-Way Culture, landscape stopped being sublime and became the grit beneath the wheels. According to Barry Schwabsky, who writes the combative introduction to this beautiful and sprawling anthology, Impressionism was landscape’s last great hurrah. After which it struggled to dominate any of the radical innovations of the avant-garde until it was consumed by the behemoth of abstraction. Granted, argues Schwabsky, there were moments when the idea of landscape came in ‘through the back door’ as critics in the mid-20th century likened the variations in colour by the Abstract Expressionists to sunsets and brooding skies, but ultimately it seemed the modern world was too frenetic, too sophisticated, too switched on for the genre. The 83 contemporary artists covered here prove this wrong. Across six chapters the anthology offers a comprehensive assessment of the multifarious and complex nature of landscape painting today. It starts in Baudrillardian fashion with the concept of illusion. Photo-realist painters Richard Estes and Franz Gertsch offer their clear-eyed deceptions together with the stretched panoramas of Rackstraw Downes. The flow of normal existence has been disrupted here, and the parameters widened. Israel Hershberg’s constructed Italian vistas are like looking at the world through a sandstorm. Meanwhile, Maureen Gallace has pared down the houses on a Connecticut beach to look like a faded Kodachrome. In the 1960s, the traditional landscape painting was seen as a kind of pictorial cliché, and as a result a perfect subject matter for Pop art. Three artists from that time, Alex Katz, David Hockney and Wayne Thiebaud, are featured in the exuberant chapter Post-pop Landscapes, together with younger artists like Jonas Wood, who are revisiting Modernism through old snapshots and the use of bold, saturated colour. Atmosphere, nostalgia and a sense of place dominate the ‘new romantics’. There are no surprises here, just the remote, blurred and hypnotic worlds of Mamma Andersson and Peter Doig. Likewise, in Constructed Realities, the artificial landscapes of Inka Essenhigh and Lisa Yuskavage embody that supernatural aesthetic that operates somewhere between the physical and the otherworldly. Ultimately it is the chapter on Abstracted Topographies where the book really warms to its theme. Here the suggestion is that rather than killing off landscape, abstraction liberated it. Julie Mehretu’s multilayered cartographic imagery introduces a whole new way of looking at the world, while the final chapter, Complicated Vistas, offers a dystopian vision of the future. It is one that is fraught with the overriding concerns about climate change. As this book reveals, the landscape painters of the future will need to negotiate what the poet and art critic Frank O’Hara once called ‘an agreement for cessation of hostilities between oneself and nature’ $ JESSICA LACK is the author of ‘Why Are We “Artists”? 100 World Art Manifestos’ (Penguin)
To order Landscape Painting Now for £33.95 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
A PALETTE OF 180 COLOURS FREE COLOUR CARD | PAINT TO ORDER Nationwide Stockists | paintandpaperlibrary.com +44 (0) 161 230 0882 | info@paintandpaperlibrary.com London Showroom | 3, Elystan St, Chelsea, London SW3 3NT | +44 (0) 20 7823 7755
books
JEAN-MICHEL FRANK (by Laure Verchère; Assouline, rrp $250) The
story of French designer Jean-Michel Frank is equally fascinating, beautiful and tragic, taking in many key characters of the interwar years. His creative output still resonates to this day, and is presented here in a large-format book that is a collectable object in itself. Frank, born in 1895, arrived into the world of interior design in the 1920s, at the height of Art Deco. His family was of German Jewish descent, related to diarist Anne Frank. Both his brothers died in World War I, and his father took his own life not long after. Frank was homosexual, petite, well-dressed and soft-spoken, and liked to party, with a taste for cocaine and opium. He also possessed great social skills, and knew Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Elsa Schiaparelli (Frank would design both her home and showroom), Cecil Beaton and Nelson Rockefeller. Self-taught, he soon became a hugely popular decorator for fashionable Paris, later working in London, the USA and Argentina. International clients included Cole Porter, Nancy Cunard and the Duke of Windsor. In 1930, Frank became artistic director of Chanaux & Co, with workshops in central Paris, making furniture and furnishings using exquisite and unusual materials: straw, gold, silk, marble, terracotta and quartz. Frank’s designs and interiors are full of historical references, not least to the 18th century; they are also heavily Art Deco, but much is pared down and reduced. Thus he aligned himself with the Modernists. When Jean Cocteau visited Frank around 1925, he said of his minimalist home: ‘This fellow is charming. What
a shame he’s been burglarised.’ But there were also tribal African, Japanese, Chinese and Egyptian elements in Frank’s work. Through Chanaux & Co, Frank also pulled in artists such as Christian Bérard, Dalí, Paul Rodocanachi, Alberto Giacometti and Emilio Terry to design for the company. In 1935, Frank opened a showroom at 140 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Later in the 1930s, the designer gained commissions in the United States, including the Fifth Avenue home of Nelson Rockefeller, collaborating with the American architect Wallace Harrison, famous for Rockefeller Center, the UN building and the Met. Saks Fifth Avenue sold Frank designs, and his interiors were featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. With the outbreak of war, the workers at Chanaux & Co were called up for service, and Frank thought it best to escape Paris before the Nazis arrived. Having business links to furniture-maker Comte in Argentina, he ended up in Buenos Aires. But in 1941, he moved to New York, where he too killed himself, jumping off a building on Third Avenue. After the war, Frank was forgotten and most interiors were lost. But, as this huge and attractive tome shows, by the 1970s, people of influence, such as Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, rediscovered him. French galleries and auction houses started to show interest and, over time, a collector’s market for Frank’s work emerged. Some designs have now been reissued by Hermès, the original leather supplier to Chanaux & Co $ MAGNUS ENGLUND is the co-author of ‘Isokon and the Bauhaus in Britain’ (Batsford) r
To order Jean-Michel Frank for the price indicated, ring Assouline on 020 3034 3092, or visit assouline.com
books
THE INDIAN TEXTILE SOURCEBOOK (by Avalon Fotheringham; Thames & Hudson/V&A, rrp £35) The V&A’s uniquely diverse collection – with its origins in the Great Exhib ition of 1851 – lends itself particularly well to a sourcebook. With its dizzying array of blockprinted bedcovers, embroidered silks and mirrorembellished saris, the seemingly endless variety of patterns and techniques to be found within the museum’s South Asian textile collection is simply tantalising. Not many art publications come with instructions, yet this one opens with a thoughtful ‘how to use this book’. Curator and author Avalon Fotheringham might have added ‘wear fine cotton gloves’ to her list of advice, since readers immersed in this sweeping survey would be forgiven for thinking they were riffling through the V&A’s fabric stores for themselves. The extraordinarily tactile photographs are almost better than the real thing: fullpage closeups show every weave, sequin and iridescent beetle wing. We get to see the reverse sides, too. In some cases these are even more beautiful and beguiling than their fronts. The sourcebook is a followup of sorts to The Fabric of India that accompanied the sellout 2015 V&A exhibition. Luckily for us – and testament to the huge success of the show – Thames & Hudson realised that one book wasn’t enough. Although sev eral examples from the catalogue are repeated here, the two publications do look and feel very different. The earlier one told the captivating story of Indian textiles through out history, whereas the aim of this sourcebook is instead to explore the designs for their own sakes and to clarify the complex techniques involved. Thanks to the Victorians’ formalised system of collecting, nearly all the patterns and techniques shown are associated with specific times and places. Together they represent the full and wondrous extent of South Asian regional manufacture. Fother ingham gives a comprehensive and practical overview of these in the accompanying text, and her engaging narrative makes the complex aspects of textile production – which can be dry and difficult – not only clear, but delightfully readable. The textiles are divided into three broad types: floral, figurative and geometric. She further breaks these down into groups of fabrics with similar construction: whether the design is inherent in the structure (woven, knotted or crocheted), applied directly onto the surface (by dyeing, printing or painting), or added at the end of the process (as embroidery or embellishment). Examples are cleverly juxtaposed – 18th and 19thcentury fabrics sitting alongside more recent acquisitions – subtly suggest ing the impact of traditional craftsmanship on contemporary South Asian design. If you missed the exhibition, you have the enviable joy of discovering these breath taking artefacts for the first time. A beautiful and inspiring publication, The Indian Textile Sourcebook celebrates the endless possibilities of pattern and print, and will prove an invaluable resource for creators, collectors and enthusiasts alike $ EMILY HANNAM is assistant curator of Islamic and South Asian Collections, Royal Collection Trust, and author of ‘Eastern Encounters: Four Centuries of Paintings and Manuscripts from the Indian Subcontinent’ (Royal Collection Trust) r
To order The Indian Textile Sourcebook for £29.75 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
K I L M O R Y
C O L L E C T I O N
020 7368 7700
foxlinton.com
books
BEN NICHOLSON: WRITINGS AND IDEAS (ed. Lee Beard; Lund Humph
ries, rrp £35) As the child of two artists – one of them very famous – Ben Nicholson knew the art market was where reputations are made, traded or deconstructed. He consistently protected his pri vate life, refused interviews and destroyed letters and, like his coe val Patrick Heron, he held strong views on how his work should be received. This elegant little book presents extracts filleted from the sources that remained: letters to his wives, Winifred Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, children, dealers, critics, artists and patrons such as Herbert Read, Adrian Stokes and Jim Ede, interleaved with wellchosen illustrations. The byproduct of a forthcoming catalogue raisonné, it can only enhance his reputation. Contents are corralled into (semiinterchangeable) sections and subsections including ‘Becoming an Artist’, ‘Living with Art’, and ‘Influences, Opinions and Inspirations’. Otherwise Nicholson’s direct utterances float free, anchored only by short prefaces, an index and the chronology printed at the back; we may enjoy them at face value or as an exercise in biographical decoding. Nicholson forged coolly intelligent connections with fel low artists and useful critics in London, Paris and beyond. Surfing the seismic shift that was Modernism in Paris in 1922, he was appraising Matisse and Picasso; in 1933 he was back and rec ommending Hepworth to Braque (‘I told him there was a sculptural move ment in England which had sprung from his and Picasso’s work, and which was going to be a very interesting de velopment…’). From the first he ex presses quiet confidence in his own work (‘It has something!’), rising to bragging: ‘I think there is no doubt
now that my show has stolen the Biennale...’ Competitive feelings towards his famous father underlie the advocacy of his dead mother, Mabel Pryde’s, ‘promising painting career’ as the stronger influence. But years later he acknowledges the debt: his stilllife theme didn’t come from Cubism but from his father’s ‘very beautiful striped and spotted jugs and mugs and goblets… Having those things throughout the house was an unforgettable early experience for me.’ That recollection was revisited in what Beard describes as the ‘selfconsciously simple lifestyle that centred on painting’ con jured among Ben’s goblets and jugs and Barbara’s cacti, musical instruments, fishing floats and the textiles that both were design ing. Spending Christmas of 1932 in Paris with Winifred, Ben gloats: ‘My table looks most lovely – a beautiful raw wood cheap table only with slender legs with a dark violin on it leaning against a vast Pic asso black photo… and a milk glass and a sardine tin and some bright pencils and some fishing things brilliant scarlet and white and black striped tips…’ A persistent controversy is solved when he tells Hepworth in 1954, ‘… you/H[enry] M[oore] and discovery of the hole cropped up – I told Paul [Hodin] there was no question that you made the first and showed him which in your book…’ Very occasionally something more venial slips between the highminded descriptions of process or how to frame paintings by Alfred Wallis ‘so that their edge shows’. But the monotony of Ni cholson in his own words and at his own high estimate is both fascinat ing and slightly repellent, to be taken in small doses $ RUTH GUILDING is an author, critic and curator, and has a blog at bibleofbritishtaste.com r
To order Ben Nicholson for £29.75 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
WI RE D -D ES IGN S .COM
books
New Showroom 57 Pimlico Road London SW1W 8NE
THE FACE: OUR HUMAN STORY (by Debra N. Mancoff; Thames &
SCP Collection Piet Hein Eek De La Espada Roll & Hill David Weeks Studio scp.co.uk
Est.1985
Hudson, rrp £16.95) One school of thought suggests that the more abstracted an image of a human face is, the greater the number of people that can identify with it. In a detailed portrait, we tend to focus on the things that differentiate it from our own visage; when, however, these elements are pared back, it becomes universal. This is why the faces of cartoon characters, for example, are reduced to only the most expressive elements, the eyes and the mouth – the very holes in the mask through which we engage with the world. In their abstractions we see ourselves. On the face of it, this is absurd: surely there is more to empathise with in a playful Rembrandt self-portrait than there is in a smiley or an emoji? Well, yes and no. The heterogeneous collection of countenances in this survey, selected from the British Museum’s vast archives, indicate that it is the simplest parts of the face – if you like, the two dots and curved line of popular iconography – that carry the weight of expression. Mancoff’s 363 case studies range in timescale from ancient Ur to a Celia Paul watercolour from 2007, and in scale from a Hilliard miniature to one of the huge, impassive Moai heads of Easter Island. There are statues, portraits, sketches, icons, idols, photos, busts and masks. (At times the rubric is stretched so far it almost snaps, notably in a Natufian calcite carving of an embracing couple that is so abraded by the passage of some 11,000 years that neither of them has faces, or even discernible heads.) It is telling that those portraits aiming for caricature, be they by Gillray, Beardsley or Leonardo, tend to emphasise features such as the nose or the chin, elements of differentiation rather than commonality. Similarly, a woodblock portrait by Utagawa Sadahide of a Dutch merchant and his beloved gives her a great hooked conk and a lazy eye – noticeably unlike the elegant strokes used to depict Japanese maidens in similar prints, although perhaps it is simply a case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. A similarly fascinating collision of traditions can be seen in a Yoruba figurine of Queen Victoria, which renders the jowly imperatrix in the idiom of African carvings, a face at once made strange and instantly familiar. As with many statues, be they placidly smiling pharaohs or impassive Etruscans, her eyes are glazed orbs without pupils. By contrast, in the Meroë Head, a bronze bust of Augustus that unusually retains the white paint highlighting the eyes, the marmoreal stillness of much classical statuary is replaced by something unexpectedly expressive: a doleful, almost reprehending gaze. For it is in the eyes and the mouth, eternally communicative, that the face finds its soul $ STEPHEN PATIENCE is a freelance writer r To order The Face for £13.95 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
books
www.tomfaulkner.co.uk WHISTLER AND NATURE (by Patricia de Montfort and Clare Willsdon;
Paul Holberton, rrp £20) When we think of Whistler, we think of his mother. We cannot help it. The portrait is a stark mono chrome study in profile, a sombre reminder of his protestant lineage. It seems oddly austere coming from the dandy flâneur. While Whistler’s numerous portraits seem resolutely ‘inte rior’ and detached from nature, his landscapes and seascapes declare themselves as mere colour compositions – Nocturne in Black and Gold and so on. This little book, which accompanies a touring exhibition, is a collection of three long beautifully illustrated essays that look beyond his sometimes reductive self presentation to redefine Whistler’s engagement with nature. The first, by Patricia de Montfort, takes us through the art ist’s first 25 years, from his birth in the textile town of Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834, through his boyhood in St Petersburg where his engineer father was building a railway for the Tsar, to improbable stints as a cadet at the West Point military academy and on the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. But it was no life for a free artistic spirit, and soon Whistler made what turned out to be a oneway trip to Europe, first to Paris in 1855 and then to London a few years later. The most ambitious essay is also by De Montfort, assessing ‘Whistler and the Productive Landscape’. In it she argues that in his nocturnes and other landscape paintings he ‘recasts 18th century notions of landscape as a space for economic produc tiveness’. She sees in Whistler the influence of Gainsborough in his shift away from the ‘damned realism’ he had pursued in Paris and London in the 1850s to ‘a more purposeful interven tion in nature’. She also makes a convincing case for Whistler’s training in mapmaking as a source for this multipleviewpoint approach, one that elicits a truth about nature more profound than ‘the mere disgorging of facts’. The final essay by Clare Willsdon explores Whistler’s later years in London and Paris through his studies of parks, gardens and the sea. It provides a vivid counterpoint to the famously bel ligerent man of the city, in the peace of the gardens he and his wife, Beatrix, created in Chelsea and at the Rue du Bac in Paris, filled with the sound of birdsong and the chanting of monks from the neighbouring monastery. Willsdon ends up making a crucial point about Whistler. That despite his bohemian pos turing and reductive titles, he belongs firmly within the Euro pean Symbolist tradition of Vuillard and Klimt, sharing their concern with ‘an inner subjective response to nature’s stimuli’. For Whistler, art was never just for art’s sake $ AILEEN REID is a historian on the Survey of London at the Bartlett, UCL r To order Whistler and Nature for £17 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
luxur y custom hand made rugs
books
MID-CENTURY MODERN GRAPHIC DESIGN (by Theo Inglis; Batsford,
THE INVISIBLE LIGHTSWITCH® www.forbesandlomax.com London | New York
rrp £20) The past 15 years have seen a surfeit of books with MidCentury Modern in the title. All have applied the term – a neologism for what was simply ‘contemporary’ in its day – to architecture and interiors; Theo Inglis’s first book transplants it to graphic design. In retrospectively inventing ‘Mid-century Modern graphic design’, Inglis admits that definition can only be vague: it was ‘fresh and modern’, with ‘a laid-back quality’ and an emphasis on fun. Common motifs include handwriting in place of or alongside typography, ‘organic shapes’, collage and torn paper. Five chapters each show work of a different format (book covers, record sleeves and so on), after a brief essay. Captions mainly comprise biographical details, and are shy of examining particular designs. When Alex Steinweiss used forms similar to those of Miró, was this meaningful appropriation or filching in the service of ‘visual playfulness’? The text is patchily edited, allowing errors such as ‘increasingly more’ to slip through. Important points are occasionally missed: handwriting was not just a means of achieving ‘personal immediacy’; it was a way for the designer to bypass the printer’s limited number of typefaces. The book’s timespan runs from 1939 to the 1970s. This is too broad. In the 1950s, Tom Eckersley’s work impressed with its large areas of solid colour, interplay of basic shapes and simplified figures. Two of his posters for the Post Office Savings Bank seem of comparable quality, until one notices the date: ‘c1969– 79’. By then they would have looked innocent of Postmodernism and the changing language of design. Is the appeal of this work due to mere patina? As Inglis mentions, publisher New Directions recently reprinted its old titles in their Alvin Lustig designs. This proves little in an era senile enough to drool over old Faber covers that were haggardly retrograde the first time around. Flickr and Instagram are praised for facilitating ‘the easy sharing of images’, but such platforms wrench artefacts from their histories, and the catch-all cauldron of vintage chic swallows so much tat alongside seminal work that separating wheat from chaff becomes the more vital. If the work gathered here remains worthy of attention, then a survey must question whether it was ultimately less dogmatic than the Modernism Inglis describes as ‘hyper-rational’. After 256 pages, the relentlessly jolly colour schemes, abstract tendrils and twee illustrations might feel as formulaic as third-generation Swiss graphic design. But that’s the trouble with formalism: it wears many disguises $ CHRISTOPHER WILSON is the author of ‘Richard Hollis Designs for the Whitechapel: Graphic Work for the Whitechapel Art Gallery 1969-73 and 1978-85’ (Hyphen) To order Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design for £17 (plus £4.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
S C A N
MILAN
|
Y O U R
LONDON
|
MOSCOW
www.agresti.com
S A F E
|
SHANGHAI
Parsua, the Galerie Chevalier rug brand, was created to kickstart the revival of the Persian carpet. The objective is to make carpets using ancestral techniques (hand-spun wool and dyeing using only natural pigments, sun and water to obtain a natural patina). The result is carpets of high quality, without ever resorting to the use of chemicals that harm the environment. The Parsua spirit lies where ancient and contemporary meet, mingle and harmonise. Pictured: naturally dyed, hand-knotted ‘Narendji’ carpet in cotton and wool, 3.5 × 2.5m, £10,000. Visit cbparsua.com
T HE WORL D OF INT ERIORS PROMOT ION The woven masterpieces created by Belgian luxury brand Thibault van Renne boast extraordinary design and uncompromising quality, durability and sustainability. Inspired by our human capacity to embrace emotion over logic, its legendary products are created by challenging traditional design methods in favour of innovation and unparalleled artistry. Its eco-friendly approach goes hand in hand with efforts to combat illegal child labour. From top: aqua ‘Abstracts’ in hand-carved wool and silk, 2.5 × 3m, £1,680 per sq m; grey/pink ‘Immersive’ in hand-carved wool and silk, 2.5 × 3m, £2,220 per sq m. The size, shape or colour of rugs can be customised. Visit thibaultvanrenne.com
P OSITIVE SP I N
EMPLOYING THE FINEST WOOL AND SILK YARNS, HAND-KNOTTED BY ARTISANS, THESE RUGS AND THEIR MANUFACTURERS REQUIRE LITTLE BY WAY OF PR – THEY PRACTICALLY SELL THEMSELVES. PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDERS GRAMER
Over a century after its creation, Alexia Leleu is bringing the illustrious Maison Leleu back to life. Art, luxury and craft are the foundations of this historic company, a star of the Art Deco movement. The firm’s exceptional archives of timeless designs allow Alexia to offer new editions of iconic rugs, custom-made though adaptations of the archive drawings. Each one, signed and numbered, is hand-knotted according to ancestral techniques. From top: green ‘Joya’ rug, which is offered as an exclusive limited edition with Galerie Marcilhac, renowned Art Deco specialist, and will be shown for the first time at Masterpiece in the Marcilhac space; grey ‘Inca’ rug, interpreted in new colours by interior designer Steven Payne and Alexia for a private project. Visit maisonleleu.com or galeriemarcilhac.com
T HE WORL D OF INT ERIORS PROMOT ION
Deirdre Dyson has been designing contemporary carpets and rugs for over 20 years and produces a new themed collection annually. From her contemporary gallery space on London’s King’s Road, she offers a complete bespoke design service, for both residential and commercial projects. Deirdre’s award-winning carpets and rugs are either handknotted in Nepal or gun-tufted in Britain; all are made to order from a palette of over 5,000 colours using wool, silk or a combination of both. From the 2019 ‘Plumage’ collection: ‘Harlequin’ (top) and ‘Flight’, both hand-knotted in Tibetan wool and Chinese silk, £1,080 per sq m. Visit deirdredyson.com
L O N D O N
0333 011 3333
1
SERIOUS
pursuits
Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities, chosen by Magdalene Barclay
2
Normally hidden from public view, the communal gardens of London are soon to be revealed. From behind brick walls, cast-iron railings and clipped hedges – and for two days only, 8-9 JUNE – the secret gardens of London’s boroughs will open to one and all as part of LONDON OPEN GARDEN SQUARES WEEKEND. One such space is Collingham Gardens, created in the 1880s by the Victorian landscape architect Harold Peto, with rolling lawns and curving gravel paths. For a more recent addition to the city’s green spaces, visit Oasis Farm, in partnership with the children’s charity Jamie’s Farm, where a strip of wasteland has been transformed into a centre for community activity and biodiversity. New to the event this year are the Islamic gardens at the Aga Khan Centre, where contemporary landscape design demonstrates the diversity of Muslim culture across the globe. Funds raised over the weekend go to the London Parks and Gardens Trust, ensuring that community gardens are preserved and maintained. Details: opensquares.org.
3 1 Collingham Gardens, Open Garden Squares Weekend, 8-9 June. 2 Barbara Hepworth, Foursquare (Four Circles), 1966, Sotheby’s, 11-12 June. 3 Tintagel footbridge, 14 June. 4 Paul Garbutt, London Underground Map, 1966, Bryars & Bryars at London Map Fair, 8-9 June.
4
BRITAIN 16-27 MAY SKETCH, CONDUIT ST, LONDON W1 SKETCH IN BLOOM. Six florists set out to
transform the members’ club into a blooming cornucopia for the annual Mayfair flower show – expect bountiful buds. Details: sketch.london. 17-19 MAY SAATCHI GALLERY, DUKE OF YORK’S HQ, KING’S RD, LONDON SW3 DRAW ART FAIR LONDON. Back to the drawing board: this new fair sees exhibitors
juxtapose drawings against related artworks in other mediums, positing the pencil as the creative starting point. Details: drawartfair.com. 17 MAY-30 JUNE AMP GALLERY, ACRE PARADE, LONDON SE15 TENDER TOUCHES CAFE. Eat up the artworks created by Inês Neto dos Santos, at this new
conceptual café in Peckham. Details: openspacecontemporary.com. 18-19 MAY THE GREAT HALL, KING’S COLLEGE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 LONDON PHOTOGRAPH FAIR. The fair for vintage photography. Look out for Daniella
Dangoor’s exhibition of 36 rare views of Mount Fuji, including a view of the peak seen through a torii gate. Details: photofair.co.uk. 21 MAY CHRISTIE’S, KING ST, LONDON SW1 RESHAPED: CERAMICS THROUGH TIME. The
5
first auction of its kind to bring together ceramic artworks from a broad span of cultures and periods. Details: 020 7839 9060; christies.com.
6
22 MAY YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK, WEST BRETTON, WAKEFIELD, W. YORKS RIBA AND VITRA TALK: FEILDEN FOWLES. Join the architects of the new visitor centre, the Weston, for
a discussion of the building’s construction. Details: architecture.com. 25 MAY BISHOP’S AVE, LONDON SW6 RELAUNCH OF FULHAM PALACE. The newly restored
palace, once home to the Bishops of London, is ready for visitors, with an emphasis on the botanical legacy of Bishop Compton. Details: fulhampalace.org. 4 JUNE MULTIPLE LOCATIONS EXHIBITION ON SCREEN. A film about Vincent van Gogh and the japonisme that fascinated him. Details: exhibitiononscreen.com. 6 JUNE PHILLIPS, BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON W1 FIFTY ARE BETTER THAN ONE. A sale of property from the archives of Edition Schellmann: discover screenprints by Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. Details: 020 7318 4010; phillips.com. 8-9 JUNE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, KENSINGTON GORE, LONDON SW7 LONDON MAP FAIR. Cartographically curious? From Tube maps to Seutter city plans, navi-
gate Europe’s largest fair on this theme. Details: londonmapfairs.com. r
5 André Derain, Quatre Femmes, 1905-1907, Christie’s, 21 May. 6 Vincent van Gogh, Père Tanguy, 1887, Exhibition on Screen, 4 June. 7 Anon, Mount Fuji through a Torii, 1890, The London Photograph Fair, 18-19 May
7
SERIOUS
pursuits
1 Wouter Dam, Yellow Sculpture, 2019, Galerie Vivid New, Design Miami/Basel, 11-16 June. 2 Gerda Wegener, Two Women in a Window, 1920, Swann Auction Galleries, 20 June. 3 Ancient Egyptian ushabti for Neferibresaneith, Egypt, 26th dynasty, Artcurial, 15 May. 4 Lucien Freud, Painter’s Garden, 2003, Christie’s New York, 15 May.
1
2 11 JUNE SUMMERS PLACE AUCTIONS, THE WALLED GARDEN, STANE ST, W SUSSEX CHARLES SARGEANT JAGGER. A rare pair of Portland stone statues of a nubile nymph and squatting satyr go on sale. Details: 01403 331331; summersplaceauctions.com. 11-12 JUNE SOTHEBY’S, NEW BOND ST, LONDON W1 MODERN AND POSTWAR BRITISH ART.
Sculptures by dames Frink and Hepworth. Details: 020 7293 5000; sothebys.com. 14 JUNE TINTAGEL CASTLE, CASTLE RD, CORNWALL TINTAGEL FOOTBRIDGE OPENING. In the Middle Ages, north Cornwall locals would cross the chasm from one cliff to the other via a natural land bridge; the ethereal new footbridge, paved in delabole slate, mimics this with two cantilevers reaching out to meet, and balustrades so fine as to appear almost invisible. Details: english-heritage.org.uk. 21-22 JUNE HOUGHTON HALL AND GARDENS, NORFOLK GARDEN MUSEUM LITERARY FEST-
Hortus conclusus: wander around the five-acre walled garden and listen to speakers such as Roy Strong, who will kick off by remembering Cecil Beaton’s affection for flowers. Details: gardenmuseum.org. 22-23 JUNE WOBURN ABBEY AND GARDENS, WOBURN, BEDS GARDEN SHOW. The tenth edition sees vegetable expert and author Rachel Green turn home-grown produce into delectable dishes before your eyes. Details: woburnabbey.co.uk. IVAL.
3
4
26-27 JUNE THE BRITISH ACADEMY, CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE, LONDON SW1 HAUGHTON INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR. Head to the academy for two days of lectures on the world’s great patrons and collectors. Details: haughton.com. OUTSIDE BRITAIN FRANCE 15 MAY ARTCURIAL, ROND-POINT DES CHAMPS-ELYSEES, PARIS ARCHAEOLOGY AND ORIENTAL ARTS. Ushabtis were placed in Egyptian tombs as servants for the de-
ceased; find them here in wood, ceramic and alabaster. Details: artcurial.com. 19 JUNE CHRISTIE’S, AVE MATIGNON, PARIS ICONS OF GLAMOUR AND STYLE: THE LEON CONSTANTINER COLLECTION. This New York collector’s pieces present a joyful
panoply of the work of the great editorial photographers. Find images by Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Herb Ritts, Frank Horvat and Peter Lindbergh. Details: 00 33 1 40 76 85 85; christies.com. ITALY 7-9 JUNE COMPLESSO DI SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE, VICO SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE, NAPLES EDIT NAPOLI. Three international design studios made their
way to Naples for month-long residencies in anticipation of this new fair, where the spotlight is on artisanal practice. Details: editnapoli.com.
5
SWITZERLAND 11-16 JUNE VOLKSHAUS BASEL, REBGASSE, BASEL PHOTO BASEL.
6
5 Frank Horvat, Givenchy Hat A, Jardin des Modes, 1958, Christie’s Paris, 19 June. 6 Reinaldo Sanguino, untitled sketch, 2019, Design in Residence at Edit Napoli, 7-9 June. 7 Houghton Hall gardens, Garden Museum Literary Festival, 21-22 June
7
The first Swiss fair dedicated to the medium. Details: photo-basel.com. 11-16 JUNE MESSE BASEL, MESSEPLATZ, BASEL DESIGN MIAMI/BASEL. This year new curatorial director Aric Chen sets the theme for the fair’s exhibition platform, Design at Large, as ‘Elements: Earth’. Details: designmiami.com. 13-16 JUNE MESSE BASEL, MESSEPLATZ, BASEL ART BASEL. The work of seminal Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica returns with his 1972 installation Penetr‡vel Filtro. USA 13 AND 15 MAY CHRISTIE’S, ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, NEW YORK, NY 11 MASTERPIECES FROM THE COLLECTION OF SI NEWHOUSE. This formidable collection of the pub-
lishing titan and art aficionado will be sold across two auctions. Highlights include a Giacometti head, a Morandi still life and an oil painting of Lucian Freud’s garden by the man himself. Details: 001 212 636 2000; christies.com. 20 JUNE SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES, EAST 25TH ST, NEW YORK, NY THE PRIDE SALE. Held in the same month as World Pride and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, this landmark sale offers manuscripts by Tennessee Williams and a warm-hued painting by Gerda Wegener. Details: swanngalleries.com ■
1 Duvet covered with fuchsia ‘Avila’, by Baker Lifestyle, £59, GP&J Baker. 2 ‘Essential JM1124’, by Jean Monro, £50, Turnell & Gigon. 3 Duvet covered with hot pink ‘Peonies’, by Michael Szell, £140, Christopher Farr. 4 ‘La Chasse
5551-6’, £58.50, Marvic; trimmed with cotton candy ‘Dulce’ pompom fringe, £52, Samuel & Sons. 5 Berry ‘La Seyne Check’, by Brunschwig & Fils, £63, GP&J Baker. 6 Framboise ‘Toile Fragonard’, by Charles Burger, £139, Turnell & Gigon. 7 Fuchsia ‘Aurelia’, by Raoul Textiles, £255.20, Turnell & Gigon. 8 ‘Kodali Rani’, by Toile Indienne, £85, Bombay Sprout. 9 Dark pink ‘Where’s Cocky’, £56, Charlotte Gaisford. 10 ‘Alys’, £110, Colefax & Fowler. 11 ‘Fern’, by Pigott’s Store, £42.50, The Mews Furnishings. 12 Duvet covered with musk rose ‘Jessamy Paisley’, £65, Ian Sanderson. All prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
1
4
5
6
7
SWATCH
FU CHSI A CL ASSICS There’s surely nothing perkier than pink, a colour with perennial appeal on fabrics – and not just the floral kind either. Take your pick from spotted and striped, twigged and toile, in every shade from the powdery to the most punchy. All have their place in a linen cupboard, reckons Max Egger. Photography: Sean Myers
2
3
11
8
9
10
12
2
1
3
5
4
6 4
8 7
1 Duvet covered with blush ‘Cubic Bumps’, by Kirkby Design, £77.50, Romo. 2 ‘Monochrome LW184123’, £89.99, Lewis & Wood. 3 Grenadine ‘Tribu’, £116, Lelièvre; trimmed with cotton candy ‘Dulce’ pompom fringe, £52, Samuel & Sons. 4 Guava ‘Saqqara’, by Walter G, £184.50, The Fabric Collective. 5 ‘Paloma’, by Shauna Dennison, £109, Lizzo. 6 ‘Perspectives 99150-006’, by Créations Métaphores, £112, Abbott & Boyd. 7 Pomelo ‘Cubis’, £45, Romo. 8 Rose ‘Cezaire’,
by Manuel Canovas, £89, Colefax & Fowler. All prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
SWATCH
1
2
3
4
6
5 7
1 ‘Glasgow Toile’, £108, Timorous Beasties. 2 ‘Contour’, by Matthew Williamson, £62, Osborne & Little. 3 Flamingo/peach ‘Java’, by Harlequin, £93, Style Library. 4 Garnet ‘Florence’, by Weitzner, £395, Altfield. 5 ‘Feu Follet Bourgeon’, by Christian Lacroix Maison, £105, Designers Guild. 6 ‘Tonga Leopard’, by Brunschwig & Fils, £215, GP&J Baker. 7 ‘Great Barrier
Reef’, by Schumacher, £245, Turnell & Gigon. All prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
1
2
3
4
5
6
7 1
1 ‘Oscar 184472’, £207, C&C Milano. 2 Orchid ‘Barnegat’, by Kravet, £49, GP&J Baker. 3 ‘Monaco’, £124, Zimmer & Rohde. 4 Cyclamen ‘Loie’, by Brentano, £102, Altfield. 5 Sunstone ‘Kea’, £128, George Spencer Designs. 6 Dragon fruit double-faced wool, by Pollack, £220, Altfield. 7 ‘Pur Mohair’, by Elitis, £397.60, Abbott & Boyd. Traditional Provençal soaps, £2.50 each, Re. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book
SWATCH
1
2
5
3 4
6
1 Strawberry sorbet ‘Regimen’, £202.50, Dedar. 2 Petra ‘Marmaris Stripe’, £145, Susan Deliss; trimmed with garden rose ‘La Musée’ narrow braid, £103, Samuel & Sons. 3 Raspberry ‘Ripple Stripe’, £150, Soane Britain. 4 ‘Eresma 5495-002’, by Gastón & Daniela, £283, Abbott & Boyd. 5 ‘Andy Stripe’, by Schumacher, £137, Turnell & Gigon. 6 Pink/orange/
oyster, ‘Pavilion Stripe’, £187, Bennison Fabrics. Senegalese recycled-plastic buckets, from £6.75 each, Re. Throughout: linen press, £2,100, Lorfords. Faux-bamboo chairs with rush seats, c1830, £850 for the pair, Robert Kime. ‘Gul’ durrie, £4,200, Guinevere. Down single duvets, £120 each, Zara Home. Background: watermelon ‘Etched Pineapple’ wallpaper, £380 per 10m roll, Soane Britain. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
T H E WO R L D O F I N TE R I OR S P ROM OT IO N
Colour Story VIRTUALLY UNPARALLELED IN ITS COLOUR-MATCHING CAPACITIES, THE URBAN ELECTRIC COMPANY ALLOWS CLIENTS TO CUSTOMISE ITS LIGHTING IN DIVERSE WAYS. BUT WHERE THE ARTISANAL AMERICAN FAMILY FIRM REALLY SHINES IS IN ITS IMPECCABLE CRAFTSMANSHIP AND CHIC DESIGNS. PHOTOGRAPHY: NATO WELTON
Above left: ‘Benson’ in polished nickel with RAL #1027 curry accents. Centre: ‘Rex V2’ table lamp in bronze finish with polished-nickel accents and a custom-painted shade. Top right: ‘Pipe Hang’ in RAL #59/20043 neon yellow powder-coat finish with polished-brass accents
Below: ‘Chelsea’ in Farrow & Ball #93 studio green with heirloom accents and clear glass. Centre: ‘Chisholm Hall’ in RAL #1027 curry powder-coat finish with polished-nickel accents and clear glass. Far right: ‘Yves Hang’ in hewn-brass finish with polished-brass accents and pot white glass
T H E WO R L D O F I N TE R I OR S P ROM OT IO N
Left: ‘Cosy’ lantern shown in polished-nickel finish with RAL #5001 green blue accents and clear glass. Below: ‘Yul’ in white finish with a custom-painted shade
Right: ‘Lou Lou Hang’ in black finish with white accents and Robert Escalera shades. Below: ‘Pharmacy’ wall light in hewn-brass finish with RAL #6028 pine green shade
T H E WO R L D O F I N TE R I OR S P ROM OT IO N
Left: ‘Lou Lou’ wall light in hewn-brass finish with RAL #3005 wine red accents and a custom Tilton Fenwick fabric shade. Below: ‘Hibiscus’ floor lamp in polishedbrass finish with hewn-brass accents and a white paper shade
Right: ‘Chiltern Round’ pendant with custom powder coat matched to Farrow & Ball #280 St Giles blue with hewn-brass accents. Shades in white finish with hewn-brass interior. Below: ‘Audley’ wall light shown in hewn-brass finish with Farrow & Ball #230 calamine accents and matching painted shade
Walls and floors throughout painted in ‘Morning Blue’ from Mylands
When Dave and Jen
Dawson moved to Charleston, South Carolina, in 2002 they became frustrated with the lighting options available during the renovation of their historic home. Soon after, The Urban Electric Company was born. Now, with more than 250 employees on their team, and a client roster that includes the Obamas, Soho House and Annabel’s nightclub, their brand of sophisticated sustainable design with innovative US craftsmanship has sent a surge of voltage through the homeware industry. The potential for customising is crucial. Bench-made and hand-finished by trained artisans, each fixture is available in thousands of paint and powder-coat options and up to 30 metal finishes. From the palest pink of Farrow & Ball’s ‘Calamine’ to the acid-yellow powder coat immortalised in its ‘Cosy’ pendant, all shades are embraced. Throw in different glazing options, patterned shades and diverse flexes, and the sky is the limit. Creative director Michael Amato puts it succinctly: ‘Through colour, our clients become design colleagues’ $ Ring 001 843 723 8140, or visit urbanelectric.com
À
L A
R E C H E R C H E
D E
L ’ Œ U V R E
THE WORLD OF
ART & ANTIQUES
WWW.JAMESGRAHAM-STEWART.COM
INTRODUCTION Even by the all-encompassing standards of The World of Interiors, the contents of this special art and antiques supplement seem particularly varied. Five-hundred-year-old Renaissance drawings keep company with a cardboard tower designed to be built – and destroyed – over just two days this July, while the quiet escapism of life in six acres of remote Sussex woodland is brought together with the blast of a new sound work played on car stereos. And that’s to say nothing of your chance to sample the new night-time vitric virtuosities at Kew Gardens or spend a day engaging with contemporary structures created to mark the 450th anniversary of the death of Bruegel the Elder in his native Belgium – all from the back of a donkey. So contrast is key over the following 63 pages. Accordingly, and just as the not-quite-Minimalist sculptor Gerwald Rockenschaub intends, you’ll find you don’t need an art-history degree to appreciate the visual punch of his disruptive installation, whereas the dessert service made in 1798 to celebrate Nelson’s Nile victory (as well as his 40th birthday) becomes sweeter the more you dig into the millefeuille of its history. Similarly scintillating is the juxtaposition between works on paper by Claude Flight and Leonardo da Vinci. The bold, simplified linocuts of Flight and his pupils sought to encapsulate the rhythm of modern life (sometimes using nothing more specialist than a toothbrush or the spoke of an umbrella to do so) and to make the prints cheap enough for every pocket. On the other hand, the extraordinary and almost dizzyingly intricate drawings of Leonardo most often reveal ideas in progress and offer an intimate view into the master’s mind and process. Hugely valued in their own time, these works could only ever have been destined for the grandest collection – though precisely how they came to the English court and thence Windsor Castle is still a matter of conjecture. Lastly, there are two contrasting takes on life beyond the big city: Ivon Hitchens upped sticks and left London and the Blitz for a wild woodland on which he built his wife and young son a single-storey brick studio – and resisted having electricity there for a full 17 years. Jeff Lowe and his wife’s move from the capital couldn’t be more different and they are now happily ensconced in a unique former water-purification plant with all mod cons and an Art Deco-like elegance that makes the building seem more architecturally suited to downtown LA than to a Kentish market town. So here is difference, diversity, distinction – and even the chance to sing and dance in the Cairngorms. Gillie shoes and rucksacks at the ready… $ RUPERT THOMAS, EDITOR
CONTENTS 83
ART OUTSIDE THE BOX
Summer shows in offbeat or downright unlikely venues. By Charlotte Edwards
92
A DELUGE OF DELIGHTS
From rugged old men to raging storms, Leonardo da Vinci drew them all. James Hall surveys the climatic build-up of the master’s extraordinary career
110
POLITY IN MOTION
Driven by a desire to democratise art, the Grosvenor School printmakers did a nice line in linocuts between the wars. Their work transports Rebecca Swirsky
114
ORGANISED CHAOS
Don’t be deceived by the apparent order in Gerwald Rockenschaub’s latest exhibition – the man is an anarchist punk at heart, says Paul Carey-Kent
118
FUNNEL VISION
Jeff and Monica Lowe have poured their art and souls into the two gigantic concrete cones they now call home. Charlotte Edwards drops in for a visit
124
NAVAL GLAZING
The dessert service William and Emma Hamilton gave Nelson for his 40th birthday shows just how sweet the couple were on him, says Philippa Glanville
128 COVER Fauteuil opportunity: one of a pair of Consulat armchairs with needlework seats and backs, c1800. From James GrahamStewart, 89-91 Scrubs Lane, London NW10 (020 3674 0404; jamesgraham-stewart.com)
STROKE OF GENIUS
Having left wartime London for Sussex, painter Ivon Hitchens found plenty of ups to life in the Downs – freedom to experiment, for one. Simon Hucker explains all
134
ARTS AND ANTIQUE FAIRS
A guide to the best events on the international scene
73
To request a complimentary copy of The Guide featuring news and the latest collections, please scan here with your mobile:
ACCESS THE BIGGEST NAMES IN INTERNATIONAL DESIGN
design centre LONDON
120 SHOWROOMS | OVER 60 0 INTERNATIONAL BR ANDS | ONE ADDRESS
www.dcch.co.uk Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 0XE | +44 (0)20 7225 9166
STEPHEN CAVALLO NEW YORK
B ESPOKE MI R ROR ED I NTER IORS - ARC H ITECTU RAL CAST GL ASS MOU LDI NGS w w w. s t e p h e n c ava l l o. co m
art outside the box Summer shows in the air and off the wall. By Charlotte Edwards 1 Lothar Götz, Crash, 2012, at Kunstverein Hanover. A new outdoor commission is at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, 1 June-31 May 2020. 2 Susie MacMurray, Promenade, 2010, at Kedleston Hall. New work at Tatton Park, 28 June6 Oct. 3 Evan Roth, detail of Red Lines, 2018, online, until 10 Sept. 4 Dale Chihuly, Scarlet and Yellow Icicle Tower, 2013, at Kew, until 27 Oct.
2
1 LONDON & UK UNTIL 10 SEPT ONLINE RED LINES The internet has democratised access to
art. Anyone anywhere can browse the world’s greatest museum collections or download a host of apps offering high-definition closeups and VR tours, while initiatives such as Art UK provide a public platform for works that are hidden from view. But there are creative possibilities, too, such as Evan Roth’s project for Artangel, which explores the physical reality of all these virtual connections. Filmed at the remote sites where internet cables emerge from the sea, Red Lines is a series of mesmerising infrared video landscapes, free to stream and display on your phone or screen at home. Details: redlines.network. UNTIL 27 OCT ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW, LONDON TW9 CHIHULY: REFLECTIONS ON NATURE The Seattle glass artist’s elaborate organic forms have taken
root in Kew’s vistas, galleries and glasshouses. From August, the sculptures will be lit up for night visits. Details: kew.org. 11 & 25 MAY VARIOUS LOCATIONS, FOLKESTONE, KENT FOLKESTONE ARTWORKS
Art festivals often breeze through a town without leaving a trace, but Folkestone’s Triennial, which returns in 2020, has made a permanent contribution to the landscape here: a trail of 74 site-specific works by 46 artists. Take a guided tour on these dates in May, or do it yourself with downloadable maps of four walks. Details: creativefolkestone.org.uk. 30 MAY-2 JUNE GLEN FESHIE, KINGUSSIE, PERTHSHIRE INTO THE MOUNTAIN Nan Shepherd’s book The Living Mountain, an ecstatic paean to the Cairngorms, has inspired this performance piece by Simone Kenyon. Take a walk in small groups to observe and listen to this extraordinary landscape, accompanied by dancers and a choir of locals. Details: intothemountain.co.uk. 1 JUNE-31 MAY 2020 TOWNER ART GALLERY, DEVONSHIRE PARK, COLLEGE RD, EASTBOURNE, E. SUSSEX BREWERS TOWNER COMMISSION Known for kaleidoscopic paintings that zigzag across walls and stairwells, Lothar Götz fills this gallery’s undulating, tantalisingly blank façade with his largest work to date. Details: townereastbourne.org.uk.
3
4
5 Lubaina Himid, Jelly Mould Pavilion, 2017, in Folkestone. Guided tours, 11 & 25 May. 6 Olivier Grossetête, Phare d’Eau, 2011, for ‘Small is Beautiful’ in Martigues. New work in Guildhall Yard, London, 20 & 21 July. 7 David Smith, Gondola II, 1964, at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 22 June-5 Jan 2020 5
22 JUNE VARIOUS LOCATIONS, WALTHAMSTOW, LONDON E17 & KING’S CROSS, LONDON N1 ART NIGHT Twenty-four-hour arty people should make
a beeline for the Victoria line for this annual onenight-only event, co-hosted by Waltham Forest and King’s Cross. Popping up in car parks, markets and churches, commissions include a Barbara Kruger billboard, Joe Namy’s sound work for car stereos, and Shiraz Bayjoo’s project with a local school exploring the Indian Ocean’s colonial past. Details: artnight.london. 22 JUNE-5 JAN 2020 YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK, WEST BRETTON, W. YORKS DAVID SMITH The American
sculptor preferred to contemplate his totemic welded-steel constructions in the great outdoors. So will you, at the outstanding show of the new Yorkshire Sculpture International festival. Details: yorkshire-sculpture.org. r
7
6
83
194
EBURY STREET
BELG R AV I A
LONDON
SW1W 8UP
|
+4 4 (0)203 328 9506
|
WWW.COXLONDON.COM
art outside the box 1 Rehearsals for Simone Kenyon’s Into the Mountain, 2019, in the Cairngorms, 30 May2 June. 2 Shiraz Bayjoo, Missionary 3 & 4, 2018, part of Art Night, London, 22 June. 3 Indre Serpytyte, Territorial Symphonies, 2019, outside the Giardini, 8-10 May. 4 Renata Morales, Invasor, 2019, at Palazzo Ca’ Rezzonico, 6 May-6 July.
2 1 28 JUNE-6 OCT TATTON PARK, KNUTSFORD, CHESHIRE THE GATHERING
Using thousands of repeated elements (20,000 mussel shells, 170,000m of gold thread), Susie MacMurray creates ethereal installations in historic or sacred interiors. Here, she suspends 3,000 individually sewn red-velvet and barbed-wire spheres in the Neoclassical mansion’s rotunda. Details: tattonpark.org.uk.
1
20 & 21 JULY GUILDHALL YARD, GRESHAM ST, LONDON EC2 THE PEOPLE’S TOWER His giant cardboard replicas of famous buildings are so
cleverly conceived that Olivier Grossetête could be forgiven for being, well, big-headed. As part of ‘Fantastic Feats’, an outdoor festival celebrating architectural innovations in the City of London, he invites you to join him in erecting (and then destroying) a 20m tower of 1,500 boxes. Details: cityoflondon.gov.uk. VENICE
3
6 MAY-6 JULY PALAZZO CA’ REZZONICO, DORSODURO PHI PRESENTS: RENATA MORALES & MARINA ABRAMOVIC Do look now: venture
4 5
beyond the Biennale nerve centre in the Giardini and Arsenale for unexpected encounters with art in Venice’s squares, palazzos and churches (who cares if they’re official ‘collateral events’?). Here, Morales’s hybrid ceramic figures are installed among detritus imported from the Guadalajara factory where they were made, while Abramovic’s virtual artwork, a plea for environmental awareness, imprisons her in a glass tank slowly filling with water. Details: phi-centre.com/venice. 7 MAY-29 SEPT CANTON SCUOLA, CAMPO DI GHETTO NUOVO & ATENEO VENETO, CAMPO SAN FANTIN EDMUND DE WAAL: PSALM The ceramicist presents contemplative in-
stallations in a seldom-visited ghetto synagogue and in the 15th-century Ateneo, where he constructs a porcelain-coated pavilion lined with 2,000 books by exiled writers. Details: edmunddewaal.com.
6
7 MAY-30 MAY 2021 PALAZZO GRIMANI, SANTA MARIA FORMOSA DOMUS GRIMANI 1594-2019 Giovanni Grimani, Patriarch of
Aquileia, was a holy man with a weakness for sculpture; after his death, his haul of classical statuary was removed from its purpose-built treasure-chamber, the Tribuna, and given to the Republic. The extraordinary collection has now been restored to its niches here for the first time in over four centuries. Details: polomusealeveneto.beniculturali.it. 8-10 MAY VARIOUS LOCATIONS OUTSIDE GIARDINI INDRE SERPYTYTE: TERRITORIAL SYMPHONIES Seasoned Biennale-goers may spot that the flags in the picture
above belong to countries without Giardini pavilions. This Lithuanian artist takes up their cause by getting a brass band to play their national anthems around the garden boundary. Details: blockuniverse.co.uk. 11 MAY-24 NOV BACINO DI SAN MARCO & WATERWAYS RED REGATTA Melissa McGill’s choreographed performances of 50 vela al terzo sailboats hoisted with handpainted red sails should look spectacular, but they also carry a message about mass tourism and rising sea levels. Details: redregatta.org. r
5 Marble bust of Antinous as Dionysus, at Palazzo Grimani, 7 May-30 May 2021. 6 Melissa McGill, Red Regatta (Coppa del Presidente della Repubblica), 2018, in the Bacino di San Marco and waterways, 11 May-24 Nov. 7 Edmund de Waal, psalm, 2019, view of proposed installation in the Ateneo Veneto, 7 May-29 Sept
7
85
art outside the box 1 Doug Aitken, rendering of New Horizon, 2019, in Massachusetts, 12-28 July. 2 Gijs van Vaerenbergh, Study for a Windmill, 2019, in Dilbeek, Belgium, until 31 Oct. 3 Martin Creed, work from Amigos, 2019, in Santander, until 9 June. 4 Ayesha Singh, Hybrid Drawings, 2018, in Jaipur, until 1 Nov. 5 Ensamble Studio (Antón García-Abril & Débora Mesa), Inverted Portal, 2016, at Tippet Rise Art Center, 5 July-7 Sept.
1
2 AROUND THE WORLD UNTIL 9 JUNE CENTRO BOTIN, MUELLE DE ALBAREDA, JARDINES DE PEREDA, SANTANDER, SPAIN MARTIN CREED: AMIGOS A typically mischievous
and off-the-wall exhibition by the British artist, who has painted every inch of the place – including the lift, lobbies and staff (or their uniforms at any rate) – and commissioned bands of musicians to rove about the galleries. Details: centrobotin.org. UNTIL 31 OCT 23 PLANKENSTRAAT, DILBEEK, BELGIUM BRUEGEL’S EYE: RECONSTRUCTING THE LANDSCAPE To mark the 450th anniversary
of the death of Bruegel the Elder, artists, designers and architects have made 15 interventions in the Pajottenland countryside just outside Brussels, the backdrop to his best-known paintings. The 7km route, which begins and ends at a church and mill that appear in his work, is designed for walking, biking or riding in a horse-drawn cart, with a shorter route designed for pushchairs and, brilliantly, donkeys. Details: dilbeek.be/en/bruegels-eye.
3
UNTIL 1 NOV NAHARGARH FORT AT MADHAVENDRA PALACE, JAIPUR, INDIA
Indian and international contemporary sculptors have stormed this 18th-century hill fort, installing both monumental and intimately scaled pieces in its labyrinthine frescoed rooms and corridors. Snaking through the courtyard, Richard Long’s River of Stones is particularly breathtaking. Details: thesculpturepark.in. THE SCULPTURE PARK
4
UNTIL 20 DEC 66 BARRIO JAUREGUI, HERNANI, BASQUE COUNTRY, SPAIN CHILLIDA LEKU
Architect Luis Laplace and landscape designer Piet Oudolf have overseen renovations at Eduardo Chillida’s 16th-century caserío, or farmhouse, near San Sebastían, now open to the public for the first time. Explore the great Basque sculptor’s muscular works in iron and corten steel in the gallery spaces and surrounding grounds, then drive to nearby Ondarreta beach, where The Comb of the Wind XV (1977), a mighty trio of sculptures embedded in the rocks, has just been granted protected status. Details: museochillidaleku.com.
5
1 JULY-22 SEPT VARIOUS LOCATIONS, ARLES & SOUTH OF FRANCE LES RENCONTRES D’ARLES
This sprawling photo festival started life in July 1970 as a slideshow in a stifling single room in City Hall. Celebrating its 50th edition, it now comprises hundreds of pop-up galleries, satellite shows, workshops and events throughout Arles and other cities in the South. Details: rencontres-arles.com. 5 JULY-7 SEPT SOUTH GROVE CREEK RD, FISHTAIL, MONTANA, USA TIPPET RISE ART CENT-
6
7
86
6 Eduardo Chillida, Stele II, 1954, in Hernani, Spain, until 20 Dec. 7 Charles Lallemand and Ludovico Hart, Christian woman from Zouk Mikael, c186365, part of Les Rencontres d’Arles, 1 July-22 Sept
ER The USA has its fair share of sculpture parks – the celebrated Storm King
Art Center, St Louis’s Laumeier, the prairie-set Nathan Manilow collection – not to mention its famous land-art sites. Tippet Rise, which stages art and concerts on a 12,000-acre working ranch in the shadow of the Beartooth Mountains, is surely one of the most dramatic. You can take a van tour, bike or hike, but be sure to book a slot before you go. Details: tippetrise.org. 12-28 JULY VARIOUS LOCATIONS, MASSACHUSETTS NEW HORIZON In the desert, underwater, up a mountain: the sky’s the limit for Doug Aitken’s mind-expanding installations – or is it? His latest flight of fancy, for Massachusetts conservation group The Trustees, is still under wraps; but if the rendering is anything to go by, you’ll need to look up to catch its surprise appearances at natural, coastal and cultural sites across the state. Details: thetrustees.org $
Art work supplied by Cameron Contemporary Art. Anastasia Reclining by Luke Hannam.
COLLIER WEBB
T H E A R T O F P I C T U R E H A N G I N G S TA R T S W I T H T H E C O L L I E R W E B B P I C T U R E R A I L S YS T E M
www.co llier web b .co m
The Decorative Antiques & Textiles
FAIR
AnTiques AnD 20th cenTury Design for inTerior DecorATion
Three Times A yeAr in BATTerseA PArK, LonDon
AUTUMN 1-6 october 2019 WINTER 21-26 January 2020 SPRING 21-26 April 2020
decorativefair.com +44 (0)20 7616 9327
KESHISHIAN
A rare Oushak carpet, Turkey, late 19th century.
73 PIMLICO ROAD, LONDON SW1W 8NE. TEL.020 7730 8810 NEW YORK TEL. 212 956 1586 info@keshishiancarpets.com www.keshishiancarpets.com
GALERIE MARCILHAC XXth CENTURY DECORATIVE ARTS PA R I S
GALERIE MARCILHAC 8, rue Bonaparte 75006 Paris - info@marcilhacgalerie.com - www.marcilhacgalerie.com
SUMMER 2019 28 JUNE - 5 JULY PREVIEW THURSDAY 27 JUNE SPONSORS
@londonartweek_
WWW.LONDONARTWEEK.CO.UK londonartweek londonartweek
This page, clockwise from top left: the pelt in this c1510 portrait suggests the subject is a mythical ‘wild man’; Leonardo’s finest botanical drawings were made in connection with his Leda compositions; the artist himself dissected a bear’s foot for this study; Horses, St George Fighting the Dragon, and a Lion, c1517-18. Opposite, clockwise from top: this study of drapery is a preparatory drawing for The Virgin A Deluge, c1517-18, were a favourite subject in the artist’s late years and Child with St Anne; The Skull Sectioned
000
A DE LUGE OF DELIGH TS
From cataclysmic storms to ursine anatomies, Leonardo da Vinci turned his hand, chalk and charcoal to all manner of subjects. In fact, the only thing he didn’t ever appear to draw was breath. Working away furiously, the artist sketched an astonishing array of studies – often superimposed one on top of the other or else surging across a single sheet of paper. Now, to mark the quincentenary of his death, 200 such works from the Royal Collection have been gathered for an exhibition showing his sheer brilliance. All hail the visionary and his variants, says James Hall r
A DELUGE OF DELIGHTS
ALL IMAGES: ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/© HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2019
POPULAR INTEREST in Leonardo
is dominated by his paintings, whether it be the media frenzy over the auction price and attribution of Salvator Mundi, or Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s video filmed in the Louvre and framed by the Mona Lisa. It’s the apparent mystery of the paintings that does it, swathed as they are in the artist’s trademark chiaroscuro (literally ‘lightdark’), and sporting expressions and gestures that can be downright weird. Painting was in fact a troublesome sideline for Leonardo (1452-1519), with few completed and two great murals spoiled by technical flaws. The great connoisseur Bernard Berenson considered his paintings overwrought smudges; when the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, he hoped she would vanish forever. He adored the drawings, however, and it is here that we see Leonardo at his fluent, varied and inventive best. Britain is fortunate to have the finest group in the world. Leonardo bequeathed them to his pupil Francesco Melzi, and in 1660 a courtier gave them to Charles II. Some 600 sheets remain in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and 200 have been selected by curator Martin Clayton for a survey to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, following exhibitions of 12 groups of 12 drawings at museums across the country this spring. Arranged chronologically, but with thematic subdivisions, they cover every conceivable state (from thumbnail sketch to presentation drawing), subject and medium. The selection is also topical: there are two drapery studies in red chalk for a Salvator Mundi. When Leonardo was an apprentice in Florence, the role of drawing was being transformed. In the Middle Ages, artists relied heavily on pattern books, handed down from one generation to the next. They memorised a small set of standardised motifs. Leonardo’s Florentine contemporaries, however, increasingly drew from nature and the live model. Recent development of the printed book meant the availability and cost of paper improved. Juxtaposing variants on the
same page and separate pages became more feasible. Where Leonardo’s drawings stand out, apart from their range and beauty, is in the number of variants sprawling across the page, as in the studies in pin-sharp metalpoint for the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, mistress of the ruler of Milan. There are no fewer than 18 attempts to fix the turn of the head and shoulders on a single page, probably studied from a servant woman; he even draws her from the back. In a separate charcoal study for the hands, we see the seismic shift from clasped hands (as in the Mona Lisa) to a more dynamic and open pose, with right hand raised to fiddle with her necklace. Ernst Gombrich coined the term ‘brainstorming’ to describe Leonardo’s other habit of superimposing variants until the first sketch is practically swallowed up by subsequent layers, as in his studies of rearing horses. Gombrich’s phrase was no doubt influenced by the late tempest and deluge drawings, done in smouldering black chalk, a medium that the artist pioneered. But as Leonardo was an accomplished musician, it makes more sense to compare the technique to choral polyphony, where a tenor part would be overlaid with tunes and texts sung at various paces; as the overall sound became more mesmerising, so the words sung by the tenor became harder to understand. My favourite group is the evocative set of chalk studies for a painting of Leda, seduced by Jupiter in the guise of a swan; she bore two eggs from which twin boys hatched. Two tiny thumbnail sketches show Leda half kneeling, and the boys hatching; he then makes five larger detailed studies for Leda’s head and gets carried away designing an elaborate plaited wig from front and back. But Leonardo is finding rather than losing the plot. He is equipping Leda with her own encrusted shell, fashioned from hair $ ‘Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing’ runs at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London SW1 (rct.uk), 24 May-13 Oct, touring to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, in November
Top left: Mortars Firing into a Fortress, c1503-04, is a formal drawing made during Leonardo’s time as military architect and engineer to Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI and marshal of the papal troops. Top right: this drawing of c1480 is so faded as to be almost invisible in natural light. A UV photograph reveals numerous studies for Leonardo’s unfinished painting The Adoration of the Magi
Delaunay : © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais - image Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Verrière : © Cosimo Mirco Magliocca
THE UNIV ERSELLE A R T FA I R
1 3-1 7 S E P T 2019
PRI M E MOVER
At Westland London, a major milestone is being marked by a move across the capital. But the new setting for its superb stock of antiques is just as magnificent as the old
To mark its 50th anniversary
as a leading purveyor of antique fireplaces, garden statuary and decorative-art objects, Westland London is moving east to west – from one extraordinary showroom to another. Since the mid-1970s, connoisseurs have been making the pilgrimage to St Michaels and All Angels church in Shoreditch, its Neo-Gothic vaults and soaring eaves the ideal backdrop for the company’s extensive stock dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Now the business is relocating to a Regency coach house and sometime piano warehouse in Willesden Green, an even larger space whose magnificent restored interior will be open to the public in mid-October. Making the journey, too, is its team of 12, including six restorers who are skilled in the use of antique tools and time-honoured techniques. Their meticulous work on objects ensures they are preserved for centuries to come.
Significantly, many of the firm’s antiques have a scale and majesty that require a grand setting. Among its stock of chimney pieces (some 750 specimens), you’ll find everything from a rare Renaissance Venetian example in carved marble to a sinuous Art Nouveau mantel in carved walnut. From the rafters will hang glittering chandeliers, Regency to Rococo; cartouche mahogany mirrors and silvered Baroque pier glasses will grace the walls; and standing sentinel you’ll find scagliola urns, pineapple finials and a castiron fountain. The company’s repertoire, which has gradually broadened over the years, speaks to a public reacting against today’s throw-away culture. ‘We as a people are what we discard and what we cherish,’ says director Maggie Westland. ‘In an age of fast-moving brands, antiques are a testament to the value and continuity of our heritage’. The contents of this magnificent new landmark provide tangible proof $ Ring 020 7739 8094, or visit westlandlondon.com
T HE WORL D OF INT ERIORS î ‹ PROMOT ION
Opposite: a glimpse of the enchanting garden, where architectural antiques emerge from abundant greenery. This page, clockwise from top left: in the Italian Gallery, a fine Medusa chimney piece is flanked by 18th-century putti and goats. These glimpses of grandeur are illuminated by a fine 17th-century Venetian lantern; above an 18th-century stone chimney piece hangs a verdure tapestry in an opulent Rococo room adorned with marble columns and terracotta busts; within one of the panelled galleries stands an imposing Victorian fireplace and overmantel mirror of grand proportions; a fine 18th-century mirror hangs above an English chimney piece of the same period. Beautifully carved marble fragments scattered on the floor contribute to the air of Neoclassical elegance
T H E WO R L D OF I N TE R I OR S P ROM OT IO N
SPECIAL EYES Whether expert in 18th-century chinoiserie or French Art Deco, these antique dealers all have a talent for spotting rare and beautiful objects
Fiona McDonald Fiona McDonald has been sourcing antiques for over 20 years. Her showroom in central London has an established reputation for elegant and distinctive mid-20th-century design. More recently, Fiona has been expanding her custom-made range, Fiona McDonald Makes. Inspired by Italian design and working with a team of skilled craftsmen, Fiona has developed a British-made range of furniture and seating, together with a selection of Italian-made mirrors and lighting. ‘We’re always happy to customise existing designs to suit individual needs, or work with clients who require completely bespoke models.’ Ring 020 7731 3234, or visit fionamcdonald.com The ‘Claude’ chest of drawers, as pictured here, is shown in American black walnut with antique brass handles and feet
Adam Calvert Bentley Having worked for a top London conservation firm, in 2016 Adam decided to break away and form his own antique business with the experienced Lucinda Chetwode. Last year he opened a showroom in Battersea specialising in unusual and decorative pieces from the 17th to the 20th centuries. With the duo’s brilliant ability to spot quality, the venture has proved hugely successful, though, only open by appointment, it is still mainly a jealously guarded secret source among those in the trade. The Decorative Antiques Fair in Battersea has raised their profile, and Adam’s flair for combining unusual items, backed by strong knowledge, has proved immensely popular. Only 31, Adam has forged a reputation on social media. Follow Adam on Instagram @adamcbentley Surrounded by watercolours of birds, a Dresden lacquer cabinet (c1730) attributed to Martin Schnell frames an 18th-century Delft group
THE ART & ANTIQUES FAIR O LY M P I A
l o n d o n
19-28 JUNE 2019 Discover 160 leading British and international galleries and dealers offering an inspirational choice from furniture, art, sculpture and objects to jewellery, textiles, glass and ceramics.
Plan your visit & book tickets
olympia-art-antiques.com Preview Day: 19 June 2019, 11am – 9pm Follow
Every piece for sale is vetted by a committee of experts to ensure quality and authenticity enabling you to buy with confidence.
T H E WO R L D O F I N TE R I OR S P ROM OT IO N
Dorian Caffot de Fawes Dorian is a London-based antique dealer who focuses on the 20th century, typically from 1920 to 1970, though he does incorporate pieces from earlier periods into the mix. Embarking on twicemonthly buying trips to France, Spain, Italy and Sweden, he curates his stock – mostly lighting, furniture and decorative arts – rigorously. Of French origin, Dorian worked at Sotheby’s furniture department in London and at a renowned Chelsea dealer’s before setting up his own business in 2014. Moving from strength to strength, he now has two shops in Fulham on the Lillie Road, and exhibits three times a year at the Decorative Antiques Fair in Battersea Park. Recently he launched his first modern lamp, ‘Ysolde’, made of polished plaster and hand-cast in London. He is also at work on several interiors projects at the moment, at clients’ homes. The purchase of objects has led to wider commissions. Ring 020 7386 9386, or visit dorian-antiques.com A 1961 drawing by Geneviève Couteau overlooks a brassmounted Louis XVI-style bureau plat and a 1940s curule stool
Noble and Thane Based in the vibrant antiques hub of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, Noble and Thane deals in furniture and decorative objects aimed at the interiors market. The firm is run by Jonny Williamson, who has almost 15 years’ experience in the industry. This year has seen the launch of its first bespoke piece of furniture in the form of the ‘Admiral’, an elegant and versatile sofa based on an Edwardian wingback design. The ‘Admiral’ is handmade entirely in Britain using traditional methods and materials; these are sympathetically balanced with modern techniques and equipment, getting the best of both worlds. Features such as handcrafted frames with mortise-and-tenon joints ensure a strong and rigid structure designed to last a lifetime. Ring 0845 496 1815, or visit nobleandthane.com The ‘Admiral’ sofa is pictured with optional bolster cushions and brass castors
Goldsmiths’ Fair 2019 24 September / 6 October
Crumbling Bowl: Ane Christensen Photography: David Goymer
goldsmithsfair.co.uk #goldsmithsfair
T H E WO R L D OF I N TE R I OR S P ROM OT IO N
Twig Antiques and Interiors Su Daybell, the owner of Twig, opened some ten years ago selling plants, flowers and her own paintings. Indeed, though her business has evolved, these lyrical abstract works still hang in her three-floor showroom in Tetbury, in the Cotswolds (she paints as Su Trembath). Now Su concentrates on dealing antiques for both home and garden. Her fine-art background gives her an eye for colour, format and proportion that makes her chosen profession seem like second nature. With a bold and beautiful style, leavened by a sense of balance and form, she creates magical spaces that you want to spend a lot of time in. Being an artist is the ingredient that sets her thinking and her creations apart from others. The results are unusual and inspirational. She is happiest working with private clients, offering ideas they had not even imagined possible. Twig, 46 Long St, Tetbury, Glos GL8 8AQ (01666 502080; twigantiquesandinteriors.com) A pair of 19th-century classical plaster figures stand on a rare 18th-century silver-gilt Venetian console with faux-marble top
VST Gallery An archaeologist by training, Veta Stefanidou Tsoukala has channelled her knowledge of ancient Greek civilisation – and the clarity of its aesthetic – into modern architecture and interior design. Along with her husband, they have created many homes in Athens, London, Paris, Gstaad, Monaco and New York. Alongside her daughter Laura Tsoukala, she has founded an eclectic gallery in Athens – a platform to pass on their passion for the links between past heritage and current practice. Now a fixture at the PAD design fairs, they represent various artists – be it in furniture, ceramics or fine art – from Vladimir Kagan, Wendell Castle and Alexander Loge to Greek practitioners such as Marina Karella and Takis. Ring 00 30 210 614 1407, or visit vstgallery.com A mise en scène at PAD Paris featuring the ceramic Dancers by Roger Capron, and a glass-topped resin table by Kostas Paniaras
Left: Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses (Detail), c. 1890, by Paul CĂŠzanne. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Centre: An Unknown Young Woman (Detail), late 1820s, by John Gibson. Courtesy of Yale Center for British Art. Right: 19th Century Openwork Gold Maskhead and Scroll Cartouche Brooch (Detail), Paris c. 1890, by Wiese.
Napoléon couronné par la Victoire A large Imperial gilt-bronze mounted Sèvres porcelain vase France, circa 1810 Estimate £500,000–700,000*
Treasures AUCTION LONDON 3 JULY
EXHIBITION FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 29 JUNE – 3 JULY 34–35 NEW BOND STREET, LONDON W1A 2AA ENQUIRIES +44 (0)20 7293 5486 HENRY.HOUSE@SOTHEBYS.COM SOTHEBYS.COM/TREASURES #SOTHEBYSDECARTS DOWNLOAD SOTHEBY’S APP FOLLOW US @SOTHEBYS
650 - Une idĂŠe sur le toit
Sculpting light 1935: Jean Perzel creates the first lighted glass slabs. And so the legend began... 3 rue de la CitĂŠ Universitaire, 75014 Paris. Phone: 33 1 45 88 77 24 www.perzel.fr
000
SPOWERS: © THE ESTATE OF ETHEL SPOWERS. ANDREWS: © THE ESTATE OF SYBIL ANDREWS. BOTH PHOTOS: OSBORNE SAMUEL GALLERY, LONDON. POWER: © THE ESTATE OF CYRIL POWER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2019/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. PHOTO: THE WOLFSONIAN-FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY, MIAMI BEACH
Born in Melbourne, Ethel Spowers attended art school in Paris before arriving at the Grosvenor School in 1929 to study printmaking with Claude Flight. In her complex yet uncluttered linocut Wet Afternoon, 1929-30, a child in coat and mittens shelters against her mother as her father opens a taxi door. The slanting rain slices through the curved geometry of the raised umbrellas, which are described in a restrained palette
POLITY IN M OTI O N Adopting the humble linocut as their medium of choice, Claude Flight and his acolytes caught interwar Britain at a time of flux, when mass leisure, public transport and personal freedoms were on the rise. With their ‘art for all’ ethos, these Grosvenor School printmakers had a style for the era too, one rich in jazzy colours and rhythmic geometries. As a long-awaited exhibition of their work goes on display, Rebecca Swirsky introduces the movers and shakers
Top: Sybil Andrews’s Concert Hall, 1929, impeccably balances the linocutting principles of design, rhythm and unity. The spectators’ pared-down forms convey collective focus while, above them, two dress circles curve gracefully, suggesting a swelling orchestral sound. Above: in Cyril Power’s hallucinatory Study II for Whence and Whither, c1932, commuters descend the escalators, shoulders hunched, as though riding into purgatory
From top: Power’s The Sunshine Roof, c1934, was inspired by a Green Line bus journey from London to Hereford; Swiss printmaker Lill Tschudi later studied with Lhote, Severini and Léger. Figures in motion, as in Gymnastic Exercises, 1931, were a favourite subject of hers; In Flight, 1933, by Sheffield artist Leonard Beaumont. He would go on to create the early brand identity for Sainsbury’s supermarket
CLAUDE Flight, owner of a Neolithic cave on the Seine (perfect for summer teaching retreats), was previously a librarian, farmer and beekeeper, with Rudyard Kipling as his neighbour. Teaching linocutting at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico from 1926, Flight proved the power of pedagogy, leading a bright, yet brief, interwar movement. An egalitarian artist inspired by the prewar Futurists, Vorticists and Cubists, he envisaged the linocut, with its humble origins, as an art form for smaller homes and modest budgets. Given it had hitherto been viewed as a childish pursuit, his success was astonishing. But a teacher is only as good as his pupils. The Grosvenor School, founded by the Scottish engraver Iain Macnab, was attractive to overseas students, especially those with short visas, as it had neither entrance exam nor fixed term time. That explains why three of Flight’s nine most committed followers – Dorrit Black, Eveline Syme and Ethel Spowers – were Australian, while Lill Tschudi was Swiss. Employing rhythmic geometry and curvilinear dynamism, Flight’s students explored the velocity and disorientations of modern life. Key subjects included the emerging freedoms of everyday people, the expanding options of public transport and the snappy syncopations of a new music: jazz. Flight’s infectious zeal also converted two members of staff: lecturer Cyril Power and school secretary Sybil Andrews. Under the nom de plume Andrew-Power, the pair produced elegant avant-garde designs, promoting sport and leisure locations reachable on the London transport network. The Grosvenor School’s fascination with the machine age was tempered with a hand-spun method of print production. Flight employed the pressure of a hand or toothbrush, rather than industrial pressing – he even gouged umbrella spokes into the linoleum – while Black used a soup spoon. Having mastered the basic principles, Flight’s students developed their own styles. In Black’s Music (1927-28), four umber-hued figures gyrate to a pianist against a pulsing background of blue, green and red blocks. Tschudi’s Jeu de Boules (1934) presents a more tranquil atmosphere. Described in muted greens and browns, a throng of men play the game. Using lines and stripes, Tschudi’s grainy texture and curving perspective are key. Contrastingly, Football (1937), a print by Sybil Andrews, has an angular force. Surrounded by negative space, two men press close. Arms raised, they edge towards graphic abstraction, their forms blockishly rendered in black, red, umber and blue. All three works testify to a form with a noble vision: transforming the quotidian into art. Flight worked tirelessly to organise exhibitions until 1939, when interest waned. His utopian vision of art failed. At roughly three guineas apiece, linocuts were neither cheap enough for their intended mass market, nor priced high enough to recompense the artists for their labours. Since the 1970s, the value of Grosvenor School linocuts has spiralled stratospherically. Despite this thriving market, and perhaps due to their populist imagery, these works have been somewhat separated from the British avantgarde. This summer, Dulwich Picture Gallery will stage the first major exhibition since the inaugural presentation of British linocuts at the Redfern Gallery in 1929. A collection of 120 prints, drawing and posters, as well as proofs and sketches, will explore commuter experiences of public transport, spectatorship at sporting events and scenes of working life and play. Such a substantial show is indeed timely for a movement that captured the experience of time itself, depicting an accelerated sensibility with a sophistication that remains fresh today $ ‘Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking’ runs at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Rd, London SE21, 19 June-8 Sept. For opening times, ring 020 8693 5254, or visit dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk
POWER: © THE ESTATE OF CYRIL POWER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, 2019/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES. PHOTO: OSBORNE SAMUEL GALLERY, LONDON. TSCHUDI: © THE ESTATE OF LILL TSCHUDI. PHOTO: BONHAMS, LONDON. BEAUMONT: © THE ESTATE OF LEONARD BEAUMONT. PHOTO: MUSEUMS SHEFFIELD
POLITY IN MOTION
Echoing but subtly disrupting the geometric pattern of the floor, 55 black Plexiglas tiles have been screwed into the walls of the 18th-century Mayfair town house occupied by Thaddaeus Ropac’s London gallery, in Gerwald Rockenschaub’s new untitled work
O R G A N I S E D C H A O S Austrian artist Gerwald Rockenschaub delights in disruptive influences. A former punk rocker and current techno DJ/ composer, he takes geometric patterns then throws unruly elements into the mix, from spatial irregularities to unexpected colours. As a new exhibition brings his particular brand of anarchy to the UK, Paul Carey-Kent makes sense of it all
VAUGHAN vaughandesigns.com
Lockton Table Lamp
ALL WORKS: © GERWALD ROCKENSCHAUB. IMAGES COURTESY GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC, LONDON, PARIS, SALZBURG. PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN WESTOBY. SWING: COURTESY KUNSTHALLE BERN & GALERIE THADDAEUS ROPAC. PHOTOGRAPHY: DOMINIQUE ULDRY
O R G A N I S E D C H AO S
GERWALD Rockenschaub came to attention in the early 1980s as one
of the so-called ‘Neo-Geo’ artists – Jeff Koons was another – who counterpointed Minimalist aesthetics with the consumer-oriented concerns of Pop. When you walk into the four spaces occupied by the Berlin-based Austrian’s exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac’s elegant London gallery, it’s easy to be reminded of Donald Judd. Rockenschaub’s works may use funkier colours than Judd would have allowed himself, but they are crisply delineated, manufactured to an industrial finish, and combine the languages of design, furniture and architecture with those of painting and sculpture in a vibrant hum of geometry. Look further, however, and it becomes evident that, as the show’s title, Romantic/Eclectic, suggests, this isn’t classic Minimalism. That won’t surprise those who have seen Rockenschaub’s previous installations. In 2011, for example, Multidial covered the walls of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg with a vast array of computer-designed pictographic forms that built up a dazzling complexity of rhythm over such a span. For Embrace Romance Remodelled (2012), ten MDF boards in different colours were spread around the Salzburg Halle in two horizontal rows but at unpredictable intervals. The structure was casual, the white cube space romanticised by the rainbow of hues and the departure from rational strictness. Evidently Rockenschaub goes his own way, consistent with someone who studied history, philosophy and psychology at university before attending art school – finishing neither. In London a sculptural arrangement of three large cubes outlined in aluminium also promises regularity, but one of the constituent rods in each is illogically extended; and while two are black and white, the third dives into green and a far-from-primary purple/ pink. A set of untitled reliefs in acrylic glass also defies any system. One of these combines red and pink in a way that teeters on the ill-advised, and its six horizontal lines prove to be of marginally different thicknesses, with slightly irregular spacing. That said, they may remind you of staves on a music score. Fifty-five smaller, 12 × 12cm black squares are fixed to the lobby walls by means of a visible screw through each centre. These relate directly to the chequered floor, picking up its black tiles at a 16th of their area – as if we are seeing a distanced derivative of the floor, made chaotic and transposed to the wall. Scan them, and you may see a sequence of notes ready for that stave. Those musical hints are germane; Rockenschaub co-founded the punk band Molto Brutto (‘Very Ugly’) in 1980, and now has a parallel life as a sought-after composer and DJ. Moreover, in the best punk style, he wants all his activities to have an immediate impact, requiring no inside knowledge. Just as sex does, perhaps; he’s said he wants his techno to be ‘sex for the ears’ and the art ‘Augensex’ – sex for the eyes. Rockenschaub, then, uses the radical reduction and concentration of Minimalism, but pushes them to the limits of technological feasibility and injects complicating factors: subtle irregularities; an emphasis on the total spatial intervention; the effect of the viewers’ positioning; and influences from popular culture, pictograms and music. He says that he thinks ‘very musically, so that choreography, dramaturgy and rhythm always play a crucial role in developing an exhibition concept’. It sounds wrong, but the trick may almost be to listen to how Rockenschaub’s work plays its spaces $ ‘Romantic/Eclectic (Remodelled Carousel Edit)’ runs at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, 37 Dover St, London W1 (020 3813 8400; ropac.net), until 16 May
From top: Rockenschaub’s 2008 installation Swing responded to Kunsthalle Bern’s historic interior; the black squares in Ely House’s hallway might be read as a kind of musical notation; the lacquered-aluminium cubes subvert the language of Minimalism
The Lime Works retains the structure of the 1937 water treatment plant – a central tower flanked by two filter cones. Jeff’s studio, right, was converted from a workshop. The palms recall the couple’s home in Portugal – Jeff was keen to plant a tropical rather than English-style garden
FUNNEL VISION It takes a sculptor of single-minded purpose to look at two huge concrete cones and see a home. Excited by the potential of this former water-purification plant in Kent, Jeff Lowe and his wife, Monica, set about distilling it into a live/work space awash with art and antiques. And to think not so long ago it was brimful of solidified lime. Charlotte Edwards soaks up the atmosphere. Photography: Fritz von der Schulenburg
This page, clockwise from top left: a ladder-like stainlesssteel work from Jeff’s ‘Jacob’ series occupies the courtyard at the rear; concrete steps lead up into one of the cones, which is now a pod-like gallery for a collection of African sculpture; old fairground columns frame the entrance to the kitchen. Pictures by Geoff Rigden, John Hoyland and Basil Beattie hang above the sideboard; two articulated Gilbert & Sullivan opera puppets survey the kitchen; a Senufo bird sculpture greets visitors in the hall. Opposite: the dizzying view of the dining room’s encaustic-tile floor from the uppermost storey. At the base of the tower, a pair of salvaged doors leads to a smaller breakfast room
THERE MUST be something in the water in Faversham.
They’ve been making beer from it in this creekside Kentish town since Medieval times, drawing on wells in the naturally chalkfiltered aquifers. Shepherd Neame, which claims to be Britain’s oldest brewer, produces over 60 million pints here every year, using local hops and water from an artesian well deep below the brewery. The purification plant on the outskirts of town, on the other hand, was less of a success story. Built in 1937 as the last word in water treatment, consisting of two giant filter cones either side of a tower, it’s thought to be the only above-ground construction of its kind in the world. But the Lime Works was beset by technical problems, and considered an eyesore by locals; by the early 1950s, it had been abandoned. Over time, it became a sinister sort of landmark, like a crash-landed alien craft: a grey concrete hulk flanked by rusty funnels, just visible from the motorway in winter. Sculptor Jeff Lowe would glimpse the building as he drove from London to teach in Canterbury, and was always intrigued by the place. Years later, he and his wife, Monica, befriended its owners, a Faversham antique dealer and his partner, who had spent the best part of a decade converting the derelict plant before they ran out of money. It was a monumental task. The two cones were full of solidified lime, while the central tower and a neighbouring workshop were entirely taken up with pipework and machinery, all of which had to be removed. Windows were cut out, the cones glassed in, and staircases and floors installed, involving 500 tons of concrete. Photographs of the property when it was put up for sale showed pristine empty spaces and a bright-white rendered exterior with curved roof terraces that recalled Miami Beach hotels or an Art Deco ocean liner. In reality, Jeff explains, it was ‘nowhere near finished. We were invited for a sort of barbecue. There wasn’t really a kitchen, it was very makeshift, almost like camping out; it was summer, but it was colder inside than out, and all the guests were shivering. Most of them wouldn’t even go and look around because there were no barriers, you could fall 30 or 40 feet from the top level. I asked Monica, could you live in a house like this? And she said straight away: no.’ At that point, the Lowes were dividing their time between two live/work spaces – converted from an alley of warehouses in southeast London (WoI Sept 2014) and on the site of a ruined estate in Portugal – and a weekend home in Faversham, in part
of an old school. Although he’d been based in London since his late teens, when collector Alistair McAlpine (WoI Feb 2014) helped fund and build his first studio, Jeff found himself increasingly drawn to the countryside, especially after lengthy planning disputes during the five-year build in Brockley. ‘I wanted my own space that couldn’t be affected by other people, and I needed much more peace, so I could think.’ The asking price for the Lime Works kept dropping, and in autumn 2016 the couple came back for another look. ‘My inclination at that time was more towards getting a big barn and a farmhouse and land,’ Jeff admits. ‘This building felt a bit too urban, a bit too much like London. And I wasn’t very well around that time; I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on a project. But Monica really wanted this place. She thought it was the right sort of house for a sculptor.’ There’s certainly a sculptural quality to the play of volumes and voids, light and colour in the interior. One huge cone cleaves the sitting room; the other, which slices into a gallery crowded with plinths, has itself been hollowed out to create a staircase studded with concrete pedestals for African figures and reliefs. Apart from the vertiginous central tower, which is criss-crossed by the original industrial staircase and punctuated by vast windows, balconies and doorways at different levels, the Lime Works has few large, high-ceilinged rooms; in fact, as Jeff puts it, many of them are ‘not really rooms at all, but spaces you walk through’. The house is a striking setting for his work, which is also installed in the open air and in purpose-built pavilions in the surrounding ten acres; but it has also directly influenced it. Since moving here, Jeff says, he is more preoccupied than ever with the relationship between exterior and interior, making multilayered, strongly architectural sculptures with apertures that can be looked through. After poring over countless colour charts for the house, selecting its deep blues, reds and greens, he found himself deliberately challenging his works on paper by choosing a palette that ‘I wouldn’t normally get along with… I think the building made me look at it that way.’ And thanks to the numerous round rooms, he has even embraced the curve. ‘I hated curves, prior to this,’ he says. ‘In architecture, in sculpture. With my other buildings, if anyone ever asked me if I wanted an archway somewhere, I’d say, oh no! It’s got to be 90 degrees!’ Jeff does not consider himself a minimalist, as a builder or as an artist: ‘I try to think about how much I can put in; more rather than less.’ From the outside, the Lime Works retains its sleekly Modernist appearance, but indoors, the Lowes’ fondness for antique furniture, vintage textiles and architectural salvage – wooden panelling, carved columns, a huge stone fireplace from English Heritage – has created an almost Medieval, baronial feel. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in a castle, and it is quite fortress-like,’ Jeff says with a smile. ‘When I was young, I used to have a recurring dream of a confusing property with lots of staircases and ways to get to the different levels. I remember feeling really excited about it. And I’m pretty sure this is the building I dreamed about’ $ ‘Overlap: Jeff Lowe & Eugenie Vronskaya’ runs at Linden Hall Studio, 32 St George’s Rd, Deal, Kent CT14 6BA (01304 360114; lindenhallstudio. co.uk), 7 May-15 June. For more information about Jeff Lowe, contact Pangolin London (pangolinlondon.com)
Top: a Rietveld chair offers a resting place between floors linked by steep staircases. Dogon and Congolese masks flank a work by Eileen Cooper. Opposite: Monica adapted one of Jeff’s woodblock prints to make the bedspread in this guest-room. The drawing in the hallway is by Matisse
A c1802 plaster bust of Nelson after Anne Seymour Damer surveys the Birthday Service. Probably by Coalport, the china remained in the family until it was sold at auction in 2005
n ava l gla zi ng When Nelson turned 40, William and Emma Hamilton had a sweet surprise in store for him at a lavish ball they held in his honour – a porcelain dessert service hand-painted with nautical scenes and emblems. Indulgent it may have been, but the pair could be forgiven for getting carried aweigh after his exploits at sea. The birthday boy’s gift has now surfaced at this month’s Masterpiece. Philippa Glanville dishes the details
are Nelson’s anchors; in short we are be-Nelsoned all over.’ Emma Hamilton wrote this excited note to the hero of the Battle of the Nile as he sailed towards Naples for his 40th birthday, a few weeks after his defeat of the French fleet. She and her husband, Sir William, the British envoy to Naples, were planning a huge public celebration for 29 September 1798. But it wasn’t just in their dress that the Hamiltons pushed the boat out. A romantic and fragile souvenir of this historic moment, the Birthday Service they commissioned – or, rather, the 27 surviving pieces – is one of the treasures on sale at the Masterpiece fair this year. Although a naval theme will unite all Wick Antiques’s offerings, this unique set, preserved within Nelson’s family until 2005, is the centrepiece. Decorated for a private dessert hosted by Sir William before the dinner and ball, this standard service, unmarked but probably Coalport china, was personalised in every detail, right down to the border of patriotic oak leaves (although these were rather poorly rendered by the artists at the Neapolitan royal porcelain factory, who had never seen an English oak). The central motif – Nelson’s fouled anchor between two palm branches – was embellished with views of the Bay of Aboukir, scene of the spectacular victory against the French, and vignettes of his fleet in action. Comprising a footed bowl, a sauce tureen, oval and shell-shaped dishes and an array of octagonal and circular plates, the 27 pieces are typical of those making up a summer dessert service, although a few items have been lost along the way, notably the ice-cream pails. The table would have been laid to achieve symmetry and to please the eye, ‘with all sorts of Fruits, Creams and Ices in the best Italian Maner’, as the confectioner Domenico Negri advertised on his trade card in the 1780s. Though rapidly assembled, the lavish party and ball struck Nelson as in ‘such a style of elegance as I never saw or shall again’. The Hamiltons’ residence, the Palazzo Sessa, was emblazoned with patriotic and emblematic motifs devised for the occasion. Flanked by triumphal columns topped by globes and wrapped with mottoes, the British lion stabbed with his trident the French dragon, while crocodiles and palm trees evoked Egypt. The extravaganza cost Sir William over £1,000, four times what the Goldsmiths’ Company had laid out for William Pitt’s celebratory dinner for 50 in the 1780s. That had involved similar theatrical
effects, with a swivelling crystal star surmounting arches bearing Pitt’s arms and those of the kingdom and the company. But Nelson had no title in 1798; his bare initials – HN – had to suffice. One intriguing question is how Sir William could so quickly secure a service of English-made porcelain while a naval campaign raged in the Mediterranean. For more than half a century, porcelain had been deployed to cement European diplomatic relationships. Ferdinand IV, the King of Naples, had sent George III a service from his recently established royal manufactory in 1787, some of which is still at Windsor, and Catherine the Great was famous for her commissions from factories across Europe, such as the famous Frog Service supplied by Wedgwood 25 years before. Agents in Naples held stocks of fashionable English ware and imported items for the king’s palaces; but another possibility is that Sir William, as an experienced diplomat, had had the foresight to take with him a stock of unpainted services, carefully shipped in straw in barrels, which he could then have personalised to welcome dignitaries and promote British manufacturing. Only five months later, the victory evening seemed hollow. Having lingered in Naples with Lady Hamilton, Nelson had to evacuate the city’s king and his court to Sicily when a Frenchbacked revolutionary government was installed. Presumably his birthday gift and memento of the Naples celebration travelled in his baggage on board with him, to be laid out in his cabin for dessert with his fellow naval officers. Two years on, the picture had changed again. More success in the Baltic won Nelson a viscountcy in May 1801 and a triumphant reception in the City of London. He was awarded a silver service by Lloyd’s in 1800, while in 1802 at least two more tea and porcelain sets came to him, presented by ‘the Ladies of the City’ and listed at his house in Merton after he died in 1805. Apparently decorated at Baxter’s, the London china-painting workshop, these gifts were adorned with Nelson’s new heraldic devices and decorations, the stern of HMS San Josef and the naval crown with the Ottoman chelengk, and again bordered with patriotic oak leaves. So it’s no surprise to find that the Naples Birthday Service, no longer appropriate to his elevated status, was handed down to his sister, Catherine Matcham $ Masterpiece London runs at South Grounds, The Royal Hospital Chelsea, London SW3, 27 June-3 July. For more information, visit masterpiecefair. com. Wick Antiques. Ring 01590 677558, or visit wickantiques.co.uk
PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON HERON AT 3MEN2 (SERVICE); CHRIS CHALLIS (PENDANT). COURTESY WICK ANTIQUES
‘My dress from head to foot is alla Nelson… Even my shawl is in blue with gold anchors all over. My earrings
Opposite, top left: a border of oak leaves is interspersed with vignettes of the British fleet in action in the Bay of Aboukir, which were based on sketches made by an officer. Top right: the renowned cameo-maker William Tassie produced this gold and enamel pendant in 1805 to commemorate Nelson’s life. This page: a fouled anchor topped by a naval crown forms the central motif on the service
The lean-to at the back of Hitchens’s Hampstead studio was a precursor to the informal spaces he would set up at Greenleaves – where the props used for his last painting would tumble into the background of the next. In Garden Conservatory (1935), he leaves plenty of unpainted canvas showing, which serves to highlight the abstract quality of the work while giving it a real sense of light and air
STROKE OF GENIUS Leaving the London art scene for the Sussex woods was a smart move by Ivon Hitchens, for it made his world bigger rather than smaller. There, the artist was able to fine-tune his forte: loosely painted panoramas that brilliantly fuse the figurative and abstract – and are akin to musical compositions on canvas. Ahead of two exhibitions, Simon Hucker sings their praises
PREVIOUS PAGES: PRIVATE COLLECTION. THIS PAGE: BLUE SHADOWS: PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY, CHICHESTER (KEARLEY BEQUEST, THROUGH THE ART FUND, 1989). OPPOSITE: BLUE DOOR, GREENLEAVES: PRIVATE COLLECTION. ALL WORKS: © THE ESTATE OF IVON HITCHENS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2019. PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY WEST SUSSEX RECORD OFFICE. N34538 & N37767
Top: Hitchens made his home in the Sussex woods – captured here by Petworth-based photographer George Griffin Garland – in 1940. Above: painted that year, Blue Shadows already has all the quintessential elements that were to define the artist’s work for the next four decades, not least the layering of dark and light colours side by side in order to evoke a sense of recession and distance
Top: Blue Door, Greenleaves (c1943) is a painting seemingly about the elision of art and life, as the house appears to break down and merge into the landscape beyond – mirrored by the way hints of realistic detail (the trough, the outline of a plant) give way to broader areas of abstraction. Above: another photograph by George Griffin Garland captures the artist painting at Greenleaves in May 1952
vious summer, along with a brightly painted gypsy caravan for £20 that he intended to use as a holiday home, Hitchens decided the time had come to move out of London permanently. Along with his wife, Mollie, and their newborn son, John, the artist left the city behind for an altogether different way of life. Work began almost immediately on a single-storey brick studio, later expanded to include a house, which was to become Greenleaves (the caravan remained, though, as a spare bedroom). Hitchens’s paintings of domestic life at Greenleaves evoke what art historian Peter Khoroche has described as a ‘paradise regained, where the archetypal family can live in primal innocence and happiness, at one with nature – an image heightened by contrast with the menace of war’. Mollie was an accomplished pianist; there was a gramophone and a radio; and of course friends would come to stay and (on occasion) be persuaded to model; but that was essentially it. While the house and studio became more comfortable over time (though it was 17 years before they had electricity), it never lost that stripped-back feel. Greenleaves was no doubt inspired by Bankshead – Winifred and Ben Nicholson’s own minimal, Modernist retreat in the lee of Hadrian’s Wall, where Hitchens had painted in the mid-1920s. And, like Bankshead, it was intended to function as a laboratory for a modern way both of living and of seeing the world. Hitchens’s work is so beautifully handled (no-one lays paint on canvas quite like he does) and seemingly so ‘natural’ in its construction that one can easily forget how different it was to much of what was being painted in Britain in the years up to and including the war. His paintings have a looseness to them, a genuinely abstract, expressionist quality that is in many ways a decade ahead of its time. The seeds of his highly personal style were sown in the 1930s, in works such as those painted on his honeymoon in Sizewell in the summer of 1935. Here the motif already breaks down, before our eyes, into loose arrays of form and colour, brushwork for brushwork’s sake, with the raw unpainted canvas often allowed to stand as a compositional element in its own right (distinctively adding a sense of airiness while simultaneously asserting the flatness – and abstract nature – of the painted surface around it). However, it was with the move to Sussex that Hitchens fully immersed himself in the rhythms and patterns of the landscape, as the lightness of touch and the pastel colours of his works of the 1930s give way to a richness of colour – purples, deep umbers, inky blue-blacks – and a physicality in the weight and handling of paint that is inspired by the dense, ancient woods around him. In a letter to the collector Howard Bliss, one of his most important early patrons, the artist wrote: ‘It is not the subject that truly interests me, but the many possible ways, and finally, the In his work of the 1960s, such as Sussex River, near Midhurst (1965), Hitchens’s colours became ever brighter and his brushwork even more loose and abstract – possibly influenced by the wider art world, on which he kept half an eye from his woodland retreat
SUSSEX RIVER, NEAR MIDHURST: PALLANT HOUSE GALLERY, CHICHESTER (HUSSEY BEQUEST, CHICHESTER DISTRICT COUNCIL, 1985). IRISES – GREENLEAVES: PRIVATE COLLECTION. BOTH WORKS: © THE ESTATE OF IVON HITCHENS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2019
IN AUGUST 1940, Ivon Hitchens’s Hampstead studio was damaged by bombing. Having bought six acres of woodland deep in the Sussex countryside the pre-
only possible way of expressing it. Setting up my canvas and box in all weathers, I seek first to unravel the essential meaning of my subject, which is synonymous with its structure… Next I must decide how best it can be rendered in paint, not by a literal copying of objects but by combinations and juxtapositions of lines, forms, planes, tones, colours etc, such as will have an aesthetic meaning when put down on canvas. My method usually, is to paint a quick “sketch”, then to work out a careful, well-knit design, then to destroy this and start again, painting freely, regardless of the literal proportions of forms because of the way colour reactions of space and form tend to destroy or cut across the actual edges of forms.’ What is immediately obvious from reading this is how much Hitchens sees his art in terms of abstraction. It is little surprise, then, that he was such an inspiration to a younger generation of British painters, most notably Patrick Heron (WoI Aug 2018), whose own work of the late 1950s and early 1960s is all about the interplay of colour and form and the ‘cutting across’ of edges. And it was Heron who wrote the first monograph on Hitchens in 1955, for the ‘Penguin Modern Painters’ series, a slim but beautiful volume in which he describes his hero’s work in a way that is clearly a statement of the kind of painter he himself wants to be and will become a few years a later, when he makes his definitive turn to abstraction. In Hitchens’s paintings, though, figuration and abstraction are always kept in perfect balance, whereby (in the artist’s own words) ‘surface pattern and spatial recession sing together and each part of the canvas is in relationship to every other part – in which pigment and brushstroke can be appreciated for their own sake, yet mysteriously and simultaneously suggest something seen and felt’. From the late 1930s onwards, he started using wide, narrow canvases, of the type previously used by painters for panoramas or seascapes, as these allowed him to divide his pictures into a series of distinct but interconnected phrases, like a musical score. As he wrote in the 1940s: ‘My pictures are painted to be “listened” to… I seek to recreate the truth of nature by making my own song about it (in paint).’ This elision of the figurative and the abstract, the way he holds these two conflicting ways of seeing in effortless balance, are Ivon Hitchens’s singular – and significant – contribution to 20th-century British art. The narrowing of his world to a few favoured locations, all within easy reach of his main subject, Greenleaves itself, was not an act of insularity or, worse, provincialism, as some critics would seem to have it. In fact it is the opposite: a radical and thoroughly Modernist thing to do. Familiarity with his subject allowed Hitchens to dig below the surface appearance of things, to find the ‘visual music’, as he called it, both beneath and within $ ‘Ivon Hitchens: The Painter in the Woods’ runs at the Garden Museum, 5 Lambeth Palace Rd, London SE1 (020 7401 8865; gardenmuseum.org.uk), 8 May-15 July. ‘Ivon Hitchens: Space through Colour’ runs at Pallant House Gallery, 8-9 North Pallant, Chichester PO19 1TJ (01243 774557; pallant.org.uk), 29 June-13 Oct Irises – Greenleaves (c1952) shows the division of the artist’s world: nature and studio. The building’s windows and doors were painted yellow and blue – a nod perhaps to Van Gogh, who surely would have approved of Hitchens’s palette, not to mention the irises
ARTS AND ANTIQUES
fairs
An international roundup, chosen by Magdalene Barclay
BRITAIN
OUTSIDE BRITAIN
16-19 MAY SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 PHOTO LONDON. Special
AUSTRIA 26-29 SEPTEMBER MARX HALLE, KARL-FARKAS-GASSE, VIENNA VIENNA CON-
presentations of work by Stephen Shore, Roger Fenton and Vivian Maier. Details: 020 7759 1169; photolondon.org.
TEMPORARY. Austria’s international fair. Details: viennacontemporary.at.
18-19 MAY THE GREAT HALL, KING’S COLLEGE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 LONDON
BRAFA. Expect a special exhibition by a guest of honour. Details:
PHOTOGRAPH FAIR. Vintage prints. Details: photofair.co.uk.
DENMARK 30 AUGUST-1 SEPTEMBER KUNSTHAL CHARLOTTENBORG, NYHAVN,
BELGIUM 26 JANUARY-2 FEBRUARY 2020 TOUR ET TAXIS, AVE DU PORT, BRUSSELS
brafa.art.
19-28 JUNE OLYMPIA LONDON, HAMMERSMITH RD, LONDON W14 THE ART AND
COPENHAGEN CHART ART FAIR. The leading art fair for the Nordic region.
ANTIQUES FAIR OLYMPIA. Details: olympia-art-antiques.com.
Details: chartartfair.com.
27 JUNE-3 JULY SOUTH GARDENS, THE ROYAL HOSPITAL CHELSEA, LONDON SW3
FRANCE 25-30 MARCH 2020 PALAIS BRONGNIART, PLACE DE LA BOURSE, PARIS
MASTERPIECE LONDON. Details: masterpiecefair.com.
FAIR. A hundred dealers on song in Berkeley Square. Details: 020 7823
SALON DU DESSIN. More than 1,000 drawings gathered together for your pleasure. Details: salondudessin.com. 17-20 OCTOBER GRAND PALAIS, AVE WINSTON CHURCHILL, PARIS FIAC. The premier art event in the City of Lights. Details: fiac.com. 7-10 NOVEMBER GRAND PALAIS, AVE WINSTON CHURCHILL, PARIS PARIS PHOTO. The world’s largest art fair dedicated to the photo. Details: parisphoto.com.
3511; lapadalondon.com.
GERMANY 15-17 NOVEMBER AREAL BOHLER, HANSAALLEE, DUSSELDORF ART
24-29 SEPTEMBER & 1-6 OCTOBER GOLDSMITHS’ HALL, FOSTER LANE, LONDON EC2
DUSSELDORF. Postwar and contemporary art. Details: art-dus.de.
GOLDSMITHS’ FAIR. Head to the City of London for the finest jewellery,
HONG KONG 4-7 OCTOBER HKCEC, HARBOUR RD, WAN CHAI FINE ART ASIA. This
28 JUNE-5 JULY MULTIPLE LOCATIONS, LONDON LONDON ART WEEK. Talks, events
and exhibitions showcasing pre-contemporary art, from ancient sculpture to Post-Impressionist painting. Details: londonartweek.co.uk. 13-18 SEPTEMBER BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON W1 LAPADA ART AND ANTIQUES
30 SEPTEMBER-6 OCTOBER BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON W1 PAD LONDON. Twentiethcentury design and decorative arts are the heart of this Mayfair affair. Details: pad-fairs.com.
fineart fair enters a new long-term partnership with Masterpiece, launching the Masterpiece Pavilion. Details: fineartasia.com. 19-21 MARCH 2020 HKCEC, HARBOUR RD, WAN CHAI ART BASEL HONG KONG. The east Asian edition of Basel’s star show. Details: artbasel.com. INDIA 30 JANUARY-2 FEBRUARY 2020 INDIA ART FAIR. Discover modern and contemporary art from South Asia. Details: indiaartfair.in.
1-6 OCTOBER BATTERSEA PARK, LONDON SW11 THE DECORATIVE ANTIQUES AND
ITALY 1-3 NOVEMBER OVAL LINGOTTO FIERE, VIA GIACOMO MATTE TRUCCO, TURIN
TEXTILES FAIR. The autumn edition of a fair that caters to interior design – with an array of rugs. Details: 020 7616 9327; decorativefair.com.
LEBANON 18-22 SEPTEMBER BEIRUT NEW WATERFRONT DOWNTOWN, BEIRUT BEIRUT
3-6 OCTOBER SAATCHI GALLERY, DUKE OF YORK’S HQ, KING’S RD, LONDON SW3
ART FAIR. East meets West. Details: beirut-art-fair.com.
gold and silversmithery. Details: goldsmithsfair.co.uk. 26-29 SEPTEMBER SAATCHI GALLERY, DUKE OF YORK’S HQ, KING’S RD, LONDON SW3 START. Get ahead at this emerging event. Details: startartfair.com.
BRITISH ART FAIR. Twentieth- and 21st-century works displayed as curated exhibitions. Details: britishartfair.co.uk. 3-6 OCTOBER REGENT’S PARK, LONDON NW1 FRIEZE LONDON. The ultimate international art event. Details: 020 3372 6111; frieze.com. 3-6 OCTOBER REGENT’S PARK, LONDON NW1 FRIEZE MASTERS. Several thousand years of art history in one place. Details: 020 3372 6111; frieze.com. 3-6 OCTOBER SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 1:54. Contemporary art from Africa and the diaspora. Details: 1-54.com. 31 OCTOBER-9 NOVEMBER MULTIPLE LOCATIONS, LONDON ASIAN ART IN LONDON.
Taking place over ten days, this annual event includes a series of selling exhibitions, auctions, symposia and lectures in celebration of Asian art and culture. Details: 020 7830 9788; asianartinlondon.com.
ARTISSIMA. Italy’s foremost contemporary-art fair. Details: artissima.art.
THE NETHERLANDS 20-22 SEPTEMBER WESTERGASFABRIEK, AMSTERDAM UNSEEN AMSTERDAM. The future of photography. Details: unseenamsterdam.com. 14-22 MARCH 2020 MECC MAASTRICHT, FORUM 100, MAASTRICHT TEFAF MAASTRICHT.
Seven thousand years of art history. Details: tefaf.com. RUSSIA 6-8 SEPTEMBER GOSTINY DVOR, MOSCOW COSMOSCOW. Get to know the contemporary-art scene in Moscow. Details: cosmoscow.com. SOUTH AFRICA 14-16 FEBRUARY 2020 CAPE TOWN INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION CENTRE, CAPE TOWN CAPE TOWN ART FAIR. Contemporary African art in situ. Details: investeccapetownartfair.co.za. SWITZERLAND 13-16 JUNE MESSE BASEL, MESSEPLATZ, BASEL ART BASEL. The art world descends on Basel for its flagship fair. Details: artbasel.com. UAE 18-21 MARCH 2020 MINA A’SALAM, JUMEIRAH BEACH RD, DUBAI ART DUBAI.
22-25 NOVEMBER EDINBURGH CORN EXCHANGE, NEW MARKET RD, EDINBURGH
Engage with artists from all arenas. Details: artdubai.ae.
EDINBURGH ART FAIR. Details: artedinburgh.com.
USA 2-6 NOVEMBER PARK AVENUE ARMORY, PARK AVE, NEW YORK, NY TEFAF NEW
22-26 JANUARY 2020 BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE, UPPER ST, LONDON N1 LONDON ART
YORK. The autumn incarnation of this fine-art fair. Details: tefaf.com.
FAIR. With sections dedicated to contemporary photography and large-
5-8 DECEMBER MIAMI BEACH CONVENTION CENTER, CONVENTION CENTER DRIVE,
scale installations. Details: 020 7288 6736; londonartfair.co.uk.
MIAMI BEACH, FL ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH. Details: artbasel.com.
27 FEBRUARY-1 MARCH 2020 SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 COLLECT.
14-16 FEBRUARY 2020 PARAMOUNT PICTURE STUDIOS, MELROSE AVE, LOS ANGELES,
A change of location this year for this gallery-presented fair dedicated to modern craft and design. Details: craftscouncil.org.uk.
CA FRIEZE LA. Frieze’s second year in the sun. Details: frieze.com.
18-24 MARCH 2020 DUKE OF YORK’S SQUARE, KING’S RD, LONDON SW3 BADA FAIR.
Since 1994 this famed American fair has been shining a spotlight on the best 20th- and 21st-century art. Details: thearmoryshow.com $
Buy from the best accredited dealers. Details: 020 7589 6108; badafair.com.
5-8 MARCH 2020 PIERS 92 & 94, 12TH AVE, NEW YORK, NY THE ARMORY SHOW.
Desvres France, Art Nouveau tiled frieze, c1900, Richard Hoppe at Lapada, 13-18 September
Chimneypieces | Lighting | Furniture 020 7730 2122 | jamb.co.uk
1965 Rolex GMT-Master Pepsi Estimate: £15,000 William George & Co
George IV silver candlesticks Estimate: £350–520 Adam’s
Coffee table, Herman Miller Estimate: £760–1,150 Wright
Marble bust Late 19th/early 20th century Estimate: £11,500–15,500 Christie’s
Sear c 2000 h over hous auction es fr om over the w all orld Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger Estimate: £30,000–50,000 Sotheby’s
Pumpkin, Yayoi Kusama (b.1929) Hammer price: £550 Forum Auctions
Hermès bag Kelly Starting price: £7,500 Stockholms Auktionsverk
ALL AUCTIONS IN ONE PL ACE
May Day V, Andreas Gursky Estimate: £450,000–650,000 Phillips
Mahogany dresser Estimate: £500–660 Uppsala Auktionskammare
Swivel chair by Hans J. Wegner Estimate: £2,460–3,300 Bruun Rasmussen
Style of Serge Mouille, ca. 1950s Estimate: £300–460 Rago Arts
Edwardian Art Noveau frame Estimate: £200–300 Tennants
Emerald cut diamond ring Fixed price: £27,400 Once Upon A Diamond
Without title, Alexander Calder Estimate: £430–600 Artcurial
Edwardian arm chair, ca. 1910 Fixed price: £3,850 Wick Antiques
Find the true value of your treasures - only £13. Visit barnebys.co.uk/valuation
This page: customisation requires tailoring the company’s furniture and lighting, rugs and fabrics to a client’s needs and the proportions of a specific room. Opposite, top left: both mood boards and a palette of materials are developed at the genesis of a project. Top right: subtle colours, the finest materials and skilful use of space are the brand’s benchmarks
T HE WORL D OF INT ERIORS PROMOT ION
A Flair for Elegance Liaigre’s Decoration and Styling Service offers a tailor-made response to clients’ specific needs. Retaining an overall interior-design vision, the company can adapt its high-quality furniture and fabrics to any space, from yacht to flat
Created to complement what Liaigre has traditionally offered vis-à-vis interior architecture, its Decoration and Styling Service can supply personalised design solutions within existing spaces, whether those be houses and apartments or yachts and private planes. This division allows customers to take advantage of Liaigre’s artistic direction without the need to modify interior architecture. The completed project is the result of an ongoing dialogue with the customer – an outcome based on an understanding of his or her individual needs and way of life as well as considering from the outset specific characteristics that differentiate a holiday residence from a home lived in every day. Each project is subject to detailed reports structured according to successive stages. These shape the project in time, provide layouts, perspectives and technical drawings, propose mood boards and draw up a carefully costed budget. The work includes suggestions of materials and colours as well as defining ambiances, the choice of fabrics and accessories, together with expert assistance in choosing works of art. Synonymous with unshowy French taste and style, Liaigre comes from a long line of great 18th-century cabinetmakers and interior designers as well as 1930s Modernists. The Decoration and Styling Service strives to maintain the brand’s high standards, ensuring that each project is signature Liaigre, especially in the implementation of specialised finishes and refined materials (be they wood, stone, marble, lacquer or bronze). The customised service is available at the firm’s showrooms in Bangkok, Singapore, London, New York and Paris $ Liaigre, 52 Conduit St, London W1 (020 7287 6392; liaigre.com)
network Sophia Salaman chooses the best merchandise and events worldwide
Luxury rug firm Thibault van Renne has opened its first British showroom at London’s Design Centre Chelsea Harbour. Established in 2006, it creates modern versions of classic designs. Each rug is of exceptional quality and crafted by a skilled weaver. Thibault van Renne, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3514 8795; thibaultvanrenne.com).
The Melia South Beach hotel is found on a private beach on the west coast of Mallorca. It has 256 rooms and 34 suites, all with seafront views. Each ground-floor suite boasts its own garden with pool access, and bedrooms with a clean, minimal design. Melia South Beach, 1 Avenida Notario Alemany, Calvià Beach Resort, Mallorca (00 34 971 12 39 50; melia.com). This year, Roca is introducing a series of new colours and materials into its bathroom designs. The range of new finishes includes China beige, pearl, onyx and the exclusive Everlux for faucets in titanium black, rose gold or black platinum. Roca London Gallery, Station Court, Townmead Rd, London SW6 (020 7610 9503; roca.com).
Designer Ben Soleimani has launched a lifestyle collection of luxurious pieces for the home. The range consists of rugs, cashmere throws, pillows and other accessories, staying true to Soleimani’s neutral colour palette and refined aesthetic with an emphasis on texture and highquality materials. Ring 001 888 216 4277, or visit bensoleimani.com.
140
Farrow & Ball has added new metallic colours to its wallpaper collection. Featuring 25 options, it comprises famous designs such as ‘Lotus’, ‘Gable’, ‘Enigma’, ‘Tourbillon’ and ‘Bamboo’ in silver, burnt copper and gold. Each is made using traditional printing methods. Farrow & Ball, 21-22 Chepstow Place, London W2 (020 7221 2328; farrow-ball.com). r
network Sophia Salaman chooses the best jewellery worldwide
The camellia was Coco Chanel’s favourite flower, and she regularly wore a white one with a black dress. Taking its inspiration from this classic bloom, Chanel’s ‘1.5’ high-jewellery collection features 50 pieces, 23 of which are transformable and can be worn in a number of different ways. Chanel, 173 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7499 0005; chanel.com).
Chaumet will unveil its rarest pieces, some of which are being displayed for the first time, at an exhibition of historical gems from grand families and royalty. Chaumet in Majesty: Jewels of Sovereigns since 1780 runs at the Grimaldi Forum, 10 Avenue Princesse Grace, 98000 Monaco (00 377 99 99 20 00; grimaldiforum.com, 12 July-28 Aug). This spring, Van Cleef & Arpels presents six new creations in its ‘Frivole’ collection: a ring, two bracelets, a pendant, a necklace and a pair of earrings. Made of yellow gold, the pieces feature delicate flowers with pavé-set diamonds that really catch the light. Van Cleef & Arpels, 9 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7493 0400; vancleefarpels.com).
Founded more than 50 years ago, Moussaieff is synonymous with the finest, rarest jewels. Each piece is handcrafted to resemble a work of art, and the company has a reputation for sourcing the most dazzling stones, including pink and blue diamonds, sapphires and emeralds. Moussaieff, 172 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7290 1536; moussaieff-jewellers.com).
142
William & Son offers a custom-made jewellery service for special pieces and suites of jewellery. Each item is made in the company’s east London workshops, which have been associated with the ancestors of its founder, William Asprey, for more than 150 years. William & Son, 34-36 Bruton St, London W1 (020 7493 8385; williamandson.com) $
10-12 BURLINGTON GARDENS, LONDON W1S 3EY 149 SLOANE STREET & SLOANE TERRACE, LONDON SW1X 9BZ +44 (0) 20 7493 8939
PICKETT.CO.UK
ADDRESS
book Pottery. Ring 001 203 227 7204, or visit francespalmerpottery.com. The French House. Ring 020 7859 4939, or visit thefrenchhouse.net. George Spencer Designs, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7584 3003; georgespencer.com). Gien. Visit gien.com. GP&J Baker, Design
1882. Ring 020 3002 8023, or visit 1882ltd.com. A Shade Above. Ring 01273 881130, or visit ashadeabove.co.uk. Abbott & Boyd. Ring 020 7351 9985, or visit abbottandboyd.co.uk. Altfield, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 5893; altfield.com). Amara. Ring 0800 587 7645, or visit amara.com. Aram Store, 110 Drury Lane, London WC2 (020 7557 7557; aram.co.uk). Artemide, 106 Great Russell St, London WC1 (020 7291 3853; artemide.com). Atelier Vime. Ring 00 33 4 66 72 29 11, or visit ateliervime.com. Bella Figura, Design
Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7376 4564; bella-figura. com). Bennison Fabrics, 16 Holbein Place, London SW1 (020 7730 8076; bennisonfabrics.com). Besselink & Jones, 99 Walton St, London SW3 (020 7584 0343; besselink.com). Bombay Sprout. Ring 07980 655570, or visit bombaysprout.com. C&C Milano, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3583 3303; cec-milano.com). Charlotte Gaisford. Ring 01434 689583, or visit charlottegaisford.co.uk. Christopher Farr, 32-33 Chelsea Wharf, 15 Lots Rd, London SW10 (020 7349 0888; christopherfarr.eu). Colefax & Fowler. Ring 020 8874 6484, or visit colefax.com. The Conran Shop, Michelin House, 81 Fulham Rd, London SW3 (0844 848 4000; conranshop.co.uk). CTO Lighting. Ring 020 7686 8700, or visit ctolighting.co.uk. Dedar. Ring 00 39 031 22 87 511, or visit dedar.com. Designers Guild. Ring 020 7893 7400, or visit designersguild.com. Elemental, 130 Shoreditch High St, London E1 (020 7247 7588; elemental.uk.com). The Fabric Collective, 9 Langton St, London SW10 (020 7384 2975; thefabriccollective.com). Ferm Living. Ring 00 45 70 22 75 23, or visit fermliving.com. Frances Palmer
Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 7760; gpjbaker.com). Graham and Green. Ring 01225 418200, or visit grahamandgreen.co.uk. Guinevere, 574-580 King’s Rd, London SW6 (020 7736 2917; guinevere.co.uk). Hand and Eye Studio. Ring 01252 715646, or visit handandeyestudio.co.uk. Harrods, 87-135 Brompton Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 1234; harrods.com). Hector Finch, 92 Wandsworth Bridge Rd, London SW6 (020 7731 8886; hectorfinch. com). Hering Berlin, 98 Potsdamer Strasse, D-10785 Berlin (00 49 30 81 054 110; heringberlin.com). Hermès, 155 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7499 8856; hermes.com). House of Hackney, 131 Shoreditch High St, London E1 (020 7739 3273; houseofhackney.com). Ian Sanderson. Ring 01635 33188, or visit iansanderson.co.uk. India Jane, 121 King’s Rd, London SW3 (020 7351 9940; indiajane.co.uk). Jamb, 95-97 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 2122; jamb.co.uk). John Julian. Ring 01722 744805, or visit johnjulian.co.uk. Julian Chichester, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7622 2928; julianchichester.com). Lelièvre, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 4798; lelievreparis.com). Lewis & Wood, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7751 4554; lewisandwood.co.uk). Liberty, Regent St, London W1 (020 7734 1234; libertylondon.com). Ligne Roset, 23-25 Mortimer St, London W1 (020 7323 1248; ligne-roset.com). Linley, 60 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 7300; davidlinley.com). Lizzo, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7823 3456; lizzouk.co.uk). Lorfords, 30 Long St, Tetbury, Glos GL8 8AQ (01666 505111; lorfordsantiques. com). Marianna Kennedy, 3 Fournier St, London E1 (020 7375 2757; mariannakennedy.com). Mario Luca Giusti. Ring 00 39 0 55 73 22 641, or visit mariolucagiusti.com. Marvic, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 3119; marvictextiles.co.uk). Max Rollitt, Yavington Barn, Lovington Lane, Avington, Hants SO21 1DA (01962 791124; maxrollitt.com). Melodi Horne. Ring 020 7041 6364, or visit melidihorne.com. The Mews Furnishings. Visit themewsfurnishings. com. Mottahedeh. Ring 001 800 443 8225, or visit mottahedeh.com. Muchelney Pottery, Muchelney, Langport, Somerset TA10 0DW (01458 250324; johnleachpottery.co.uk). Neue Galerie Design Shop, 1048 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 10028 (001 212 994 9496; shop.neuegalerie. org). The New Craftsmen, 34 North Row, London W1 (020 7148 3190; thenewcraftsmen.com). Nkuku, Brockhills Barns, Totnes, Devon TQ9 6JS (0333 240 0155; nkuku.com). Oka. Ring 03330 042042, or visit oka. com. Original BTC, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 2130; originalbtc.com). Osborne & Little. Ring 020 8812 3123, or visit osborneandlittle.com. Penny Morrison, 9 Langton St, London SW10 (020 7384 2975; pennymorrison.com). Pentreath & Hall, 17 Rugby St, London WC1 (020 7430 2526; pentreath-hall.com). Pooky, 25 Chelsea Wharf, 15 Lots Rd, London SW10 (020 7351 3003; pooky.com). Porta Romana, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (01420 23005; portaromana.com). Ralph Lauren Home. Visit ralphlauren.co.uk. Re, Bishops Yard, Main St, Corbridge, Northum NE45 5LA (01434 634567; re-foundobjects.com). Remains Lighting. Ring 020 3056 6547, or visit remains.com. Retrouvius, 1016 Harrow Rd, London NW10 (020 8960 6060; retrouvius.com). Robert Kime, 190-192 Ebury St, London SW1 (020 7831 6066; robertkime.com). Romo, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (01623 756699; romo.com). r
Distressed-brass ‘Jacobean T5-018’ lamp base, £265, Besselink & Jones. Plain lampshade – from A Shade Above – hand-painted by stylist
We’re turning 10, join us to celebrate! REGISTER FOR FREE clerkenwelldesignweek.com #CDW2019 #CDW10
ADDRESS
book
Rose Uniacke, 76-84 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 7050; roseuniacke.com). Rosi de Ruig. Ring 020 8743 9737, or visit rosideruig. co.uk. Samuel & Sons, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 5153; samuelandsons.com). Selfridges, 400 Oxford St, London W1 (0800 123400; selfridges.com). The Shop Floor Project,
The Warehouse, Buxton Place, Ulverston, Cumbria LA12 7EF (01229 584537; theshopfloorproject.com). Sigmar, 263 King’s Rd, London SW3 (020 7751 5801; sigmarlondon.com). Sir/Madam. Ring 001 718 797 8758, or visit shopsirmadam.com. Soane Britain, 50-52 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 6400; soane.com). Style Library. Ring 020 3457 5862, or visit stylelibrary.com. Summerill & Bishop, 100 Portland Rd, London W11 (020 7221 4566; summerillandbishop com). Susan Deliss. Ring 07768 805850, or visit susandeliss.com. Thomas Goode, 19 South Audley St, London W1 (020 7499 2823; thomasgoode.com). Timorous Beasties, 44 Amwell St, London EC1 (020 7833 9867; timorousbeasties.com). Tindle, 162 Wandsworth Bridge Rd, London SW6 (020 7384 1485; tindle-lighting.co.uk). Tinsmiths, 8a High St, Ledbury, Heref HR8 1DS (01531 632083; tinsmiths.co.uk). Turnell & Gigon, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7259 7280; turnellandgigon.com). Vaughan, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7349 4600; vaughandesigns.com). Wedgwood. Ring 01782 282651, or visit wedgwood.co.uk. Woka, 16 Singerstrasse, A-1010 Vienna (00 43 1 513 2912; woka.com). Zara Home, 129 Regent St, London W1 (020 7432 0040; zarahome.com). Zimmer & Rohde, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 7115; zimmer-rohde.com) $ ‘Feu Follet Bourgeon’, by Christian Lacroix Maison, £105 per m, Designers Guild. For set details see page 61
Save the Date Frieze London & Frieze Masters Regent’s Park, London 3–6 October 2019 frieze.com
Global lead partner Deutsche Bank
A M EWS ZH O OSH
When the philanthropist Drue Heinz and her husband, Jack, took over this West End house in the 1950s, they kept much of John Fowler’s interior design. They then expanded their square footage, buying up two adjacent mews properties and hiring Renzo Mongiardino to apply his illusionistic mastery. As the contents of the couple’s ‘miniature stately home’ come to auction, Andrew Barrow recalls a sparky hostess and the glittering parties she threw. Photography: Simon Upton
The previous owner commissioned John Fowler to create this double-height drawing room. He added architectural details from Northumberland House (demolished in 1874) and a giltwood chandelier from Notley Abbey. The Philippe Mercier portrait of children playing on a rocking horse originally hung high above the mantel – the Heinzes bought it with the house
Top: Drue Heinz introduced the magnificent George II giltwood mirror, which came originally from the Leverhulme collection. Above left: in 1986 Renzo Mongiardino created this dining room from a car showroom. Above a floor of waxed terracotta, the walls are lined with 17th-century Italian cut velvet. On the far table sits a pair of early 19th-century Derbyshire blue-john Grecian urns. Above right: Winter, one of four anthropomorphic allegories of the seasons by a German follower of Arcimboldo. Opposite: beyond Fowler’s silk sofas curves an apse where Mrs Heinz displayed her collection of English botanical creamware
In the ballroom created by Renzo Mongiardino in 1986 from the car showroom in the second mews house, he decorated the walls with landscapes inspired by the Villa Falconieri in Rome and inserted a large cupola into the trompe-l’oeil coffered ceiling. Flanking the arched french windows are a pair of blackamoor busts resting on Baroque-style silvered side tables
Top: a Paul César Helleu portrait punctuates aged ‘terracotta’ columns and the faux colonnade beyond. Above left: the garden hall is lined with a Mauny wallpaper, against which sit painted Regency hall chairs. On the French provincial table rest a Landseer caricature, an ormolu inkstand and Chinese porcelain animals. Above right: this drawing room was created as part of John Fowler’s original scheme, and it includes his theatrically draped alcove with George III desk and his signature painted seat furniture. Opposite: the collection of Italian plaster intaglios mounted on coral paper also survives from the Fowler era
WHAT IS it about a mews? Why are these lit-
tle streets so magical? Is it because hundreds of horses once lived here – along with their coaches and coachmen? Has it anything to do with the cobbles and lack of pavements? Or is it just because they’re all that’s left of a much bigger picture, the last remnants of an old urban class system? Whatever the reasons, mews properties are fascinating, a half-hidden blend of wealth and poverty. I once enjoyed a champagne-soaked afternoon with Francis Bacon, but sadly I never got to see his house in Reece Mews, South Kensington, which, like many an artist’s home, was apparently a rich mixture of tidiness and paint-splashed chaos. And what an honour it was to visit Drue Heinz’s home in a not-so-little, uncobbled West End mews. All thanks to writing a novel about my father, The Tap Dancer, which had managed to win the Hawthornden Prize, relaunched by Mrs Heinz a few years earlier. Does it matter that, at the National Portrait Gallery ceremony, I had, according to the jocular John Wells, pocketed the envelope containing
my tax-free prize money with ‘unseemly haste’ and offered next to nothing in the form of a thank-you speech? Anyway, it was later that same evening – 8 June 1993 – that I got my first taste of this semi-secret hideaway. Hitherto, I’d known barely a soul in that area of town, apart from the party-giving oil heiress Olga Deterding. Driven through theatre land that night with Mrs Heinz and Professor John Bayley, who’d given me the prize, and his wife, Iris Murdoch, beside me, I was warmly welcomed into this outwardly inconspicuous house. But I cannot claim to have taken on board all of its fabulous contents, its arched doorways, paved inner courtyard – or indeed its history. I’ve since learned that at least part of the mews was built by William Kent as stables for one of the grand houses nearby. Mrs Heinz’s original house had been bought in 1954 by a certain Joan Dennis, who had got John Fowler to do it up. He incorporated swags and flourishes from the old Northumberland House, which was demolished in 1874, and knocked out bits of the upper floors to create
Top: the red bedroom, with its bold Neo-Gothic wallpaper, was created for Jack Heinz (Drue’s husband) when the two mews houses were joined. A Hockney pen-and-ink portrait of Celia Birtwell hangs above the mantelpiece, which is flanked by window seats almost certainly supplied by Colefax & Fowler for the previous owner. Opposite: a self-portrait of John Craxton overlooks a Chinese games box converted for jewellery in Mrs Heinz’s dressing room
high ceilings and a sense of space for the ground-floor rooms and even excited the envy of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, who would cover it for House & Garden in January 1956. At the end of the 1950s, this reinvented house was acquired by Mr and Mrs Heinz, who kept a lot of the John Fowler décor, furniture and curtains and then dramatically expanded the place by buying the two nextdoor mews houses, one of them a former car showroom, and hiring designer and master of trompe l’oeil Renzo Mongiardino to create a new kitchen, dining room, library, red Neo-Gothic bedroom and the particularly spectacular painted ballroom featured in these pages. Right from the start, the house had become a setting for amazing parties. As early as June 1959 there was a much written-up event here attended by Cecil Beaton, the as-yet-unscandalised John Profumo, Sir Charles Clore, any number of dukes and duchesses and, last but not least, the up-and-coming young photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who along with his future wife, Princess Margaret, would become a regular visitor to this miniature stately home in the heart of London. Anyway, enough name-dropping for the time being; these rooms speak for themselves. What can I say about their owner, Drue Heinz, who continued to live here after her husband’s death in 1987 and only died last year at the grand age of 103? Born in England, famous for her Irish blood and red-headed beauty, she had briefly been an art student in Paris, where she had met Matisse, and then an actress in Hollywood, where she had occupied a rather run-down house with a huge Spanish bath and a balcony on which she loved to lie down and listen to the sounds of the night. Twice married as a young woman and the mother of two daughters, she first met the ‘footloose and fancy-free’ Jack Heinz, grandson of the founder of the baked-bean empire, at a party in New York and married him in August 1953. Drue Heinz was 78 when I first met her. Alert, lively and philanthropic, she knew ‘everybody who was anybody’, forever had plans up her sleeve, didn’t always finish her sentences and never used the honorary DBE
she was given in 1995. Of one legendary mutual friend, she said, ‘She never says anything very interesting,’ but she was often kind to others in a discreet way. Asked why she had given an old friend a parrot, she simply replied: ‘He needed one.’ Within weeks of our first meeting she had even visited my ground-floor bedsitter – would music room be a kinder word? – in Kensington, wearing the same dress she had worn at the Hawthornden event and bringing along her own small bottle of ‘airline brandy’ and a special footstool on which she could stretch out her legs. In the years ahead, I returned often to this magical mews, attended alfresco lunches, dinners and dances and rubbed shoulders with – here we go again – the Stephen Spenders, Maurice Saatchi, Tom Stoppard, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, Auberon Waugh, Rothschilds galore and countless other celebrities. One evening, I was particularly delighted to see Drue Heinz dancing with my hero Barry Humphries – alas, not tap dancing! – and I had several brief encounters with her devoted chauffeur, Shawiz, who drove her often to her other Heinz homes, a house in Berkshire, a place on Lake Como and the famous Hawthornden Castle, perched on a secluded crag south of Edinburgh, where I once found my hostess rummaging through a kitchen cupboard in search of late-night snacks. Her triplex apartment overlooking New York’s East River is another story. One of my last and happiest visits to Drue’s central London home came in March 2014, when I took my son Otto, then aged 13, to a private afternoon tea in the little pink study featured on these pages. Here, Mrs Heinz, now in her effervescent late nineties, explained that the sumptuous offering of cakes, biscuits and even her favourite lemon-curd tarts might look as if they came from a shop but were in fact all homemade! It says much for the warm, welcoming nature of the not-so-miniature paradise encapsulated here that it could dish up such a damned good tea $ The contents of Drue Heinz’s mews house will be auctioned by Christie’s, 8 King St, London SW1, on 4 June. For more information, ring 020 7839 9060, or visit christies.com
Top left: the entrance hall looks out on to an internal courtyard, painted in a very Italian pastel pink. Top right: inserted as part of Mongiardino’s scheme in 1986, the kitchen spans the site of the old car showroom and centres on a reclaimed Georgian leaded fanlight and 19th-century french doors. Opposite: John Fowler decorated the pink entrance hall to the original mews house with an 18th-century white-painted Dutch bench and Colefax flower stands
This page: Jarman himself tar-varnished the clapboard exterior of Prospect Cottage, although the yellow-painted window frames are just as he found them. Opposite: two-eyed against Dungeness’s great skies, the house faces little stone circles and henges created by the artist
THE DIRECTOR’S HUT A stretch of shingle in the shadow of Kent’s Dungeness nuclear plant might strike many as an uninviting plot. Not Derek Jarman, who died 25 years ago. Drawn by the desolate beauty of this cinematic landscape, the film director and painter bought an old clapboard house and then edited out ugly accretions such as florid carpet and wallpaper. Stripped back and sparsely furnished, it became the perfect backdrop to his methodically assembled montages. Text and photography: John Vere Brown and James Graham. First published: November 1989
Top: a copper Arts and Crafts stove heats the sparsely furnished sittting room. Here driftwood has been garlanded with pebbles. Above left: similar stakes reach heavenwards among plants in the shingle. Above right: one of Jarman’s first jobs on moving into Prospect Cottage was to strip away the ‘dainty wallpaper’ hung in the central passage and elsewhere, revealing the tongue and groove beneath
Top: the artist sits on a sofa covered with a purple velvet curtain, rich against the faded yellow of the tongue and groove. Above him hangs Sebastiane, a painting by Robert Medley, who appeared in Jarman’s controversial film of the same name. Above left: one of the many stone circles that crop up here and there. Above right: the flat, open expanse of Dungeness can be glimpsed through the front door
FROM MILES AWAYon the A259, across
Denge Marsh, you can see the Dungeness nuclear power stations as great grey masses brooding over the sea. At the village of Lydd they still seem to be miles away, and as you drive towards them on to the world’s largest shingle peninsula the landscape changes dramatically, becoming a stark windswept expanse of gravel pits dotted with large lakes of fresh water. The sparse vegetation and the gorse bushes mat themselves into the shingle and bring their own particular mixture of birds and plants. A nature reserve lies right next to the nuclear power stations. And at the entrance gates there is a notice telling you that the facilities are open to the public on Wednesday afternoons. After the road has crossed the track of the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Light Railway, the habitations begin again, and we are at once in a world of fishermen and shanty dwellers. The shingle line on the left, which hides the sea from the road, is punctuated by small fishing boats, huts and winches. On the right side, against a backdrop of the nuclear power stations, are the small wooden cottages built by fishermen about 100 years ago. Some are still lived in by their descendants. These cottages are mixed up with a series of railway-carriage dwellings that were placed here before the war as holiday homes. A few of these coaches are left but most have been submerged under additions, so you are not at first aware of them; everything is very much home-made. There is a riot of building materials: wood, metal, concrete and asbestos, all of which have been used in profusion – an archetypal example of ad-hocery. Many of the houses have a rich history. The imposingly named East India House, which is actually little more than a shack, was the building from which semaphore signals were sent to the company’s ships, and has a tower on it for this precise purpose. The house next to it, the only one made of brick, was built by a gentleman who paid the local boys to hump the bricks here over the shingle; god knows how little he paid for how many bricks, because 80 years ago there were no roads here
at all, just the houses and the shingle. There used to be a railway that went to the lighthouse, but that closed before the war. The roads were only built during the war, when this became a sensitive military area and was heavily mined. Dungeness is now a conservation area and a mild row has broken out between the inhabitants and the local Shepway Borough Council, who have allowed British Telecom to replace one of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s red telephone kiosks with one of the nondescript substitutes. The council is anxious that Dungeness should not become suburbanised and has issued a circular forbidding fences, building in unsympathetic materials, altering the size of a house substantially, or building any construction more than one storey high. The notice seems to miss the point as there is no group of houses in the Southeast that has grown in such an unplanned manner; with railway carriages, block-houses, old army buildings and the remains of the Pluto Pipeline from the war, it is a shanty town of do-it-yourself. It is not good manners that have made Dungeness the delightful haphazard place that it is. The houses are set back about 20m from the road; there are neither fences nor gates, and the land in front is patchy soft shingle lightly covered with grass. A short way along the road is Prospect Cottage, with its black tarred clapboarding and yellow-painted window frames. It is the cottage that film director Derek Jarman bought and came to live in about three years ago, and with which he has fallen totally in love. The front garden has small henges and stones circles made from pebbles and driftwood, and the back garden looks like the purlieus of a Tibetan temple: stakes of driftwood stick up into the air like prayer flags, surmounted by shells, pebbles and bleached bones, while below them the plants are growing strongly out of the shingly ground. They are only able to thrive because many loads of soil and manure lie buried below the shingle. The cottage consists of four main rooms, with a central passage running from the front door to the narrow kitchen that lies
Opposite: two 19th-century arrangements of beadwork flank an early self-portrait – a face among flowers. Votive figures and flotsam from the beach are carefully arranged on the table. This page, top: another driftwood stake garlanded with pebbles is propped behind a safari chair. Above left: one of Jarman’s objet-trouvÊ paintings. Above right: a religious print, flint and an old dagger make for a precise grouping
along the back. The internal walls are made from tongue and groove, and all the floors are bare boards. The house is underfur nished with a few good or interestingly functional pieces, but it is full of objets trouvés: stones, bits of iron, battered and rusted tin cans, driftwood and all manner of other flotsam and jetsam that get washed up on the beach. These are carefully and methodi cally laid out in the back workroom together with discarded ac tion men, votive figures, crucifixes, old shoes – in fact anything that Jarman sees as grist to a new painting; and one senses that, as with all serious artists where there is true sympathy between them, their subject and their materials, these objects have been invest ed with an animism that makes it by no means a haphazard or unthinking collection. Jarman’s own paintings hang in all of the rooms, together with work by friends and other artists. A large painting by Robert Medley that hangs over the sofa in the sitting room is entitled Sebastiane, and is autobiographical in the sense that Robert was in the film of that name that Derek made in 1974. ‘Apart from the gales and the constant winds, the climatic compensations are two weeks less frost than anywhere else, the least rainfall and the highest amount of sunshine,’ claims Derek. ‘When I got here the house had been done up. Fitted carpets with dainty wallpaper on chipboard. The first thing that I did was to strip it all back to the original tongue and grooving. One or two of the wooden walls had been painted but some still had the ori ginal varnish – the dark rooms have their own charm. It was all stop and go, and after a while I gave up. I am one of those people who never finish a job; I will paint a room but there will always be a corner left out where the original colour still shows. I bought the cottage from the widow of the local publican. The pub is a wartime barracks that had been painted gooseturd green. I built the outside west wall myself, and tarvarnished the whole of the outside. All these houses were originally tarvarnished. I have tried to keep the cottage just as it was – the name Prospect and the yellow window frames included.’
Derek Jarman describes his new book – which has yet to be given a title – as a day book, ‘an autobiographical gardening book for this area. I have always wanted a garden and here at last was a place to make one, especially as all the neighbours said that noth ing would grow,’ he says. ‘Although in the old days there were vegetable patches down here, it was before there were roads and the earth had to be brought here on the railway that went up to the lighthouse. So I quickly realised that if I buried earth under the shingle I would be able to grow things, and I could have a combi nation of an English gnome garden and a Japanese garden. I can’t grow thyme and there’s a slight problem with sage, but the rose mary is now in its second year and the lavender and cotton laven der seem to be perfectly all right. ‘The irises are wonderful but do tend to get battered by the east winds,’ he continues. ‘There are wild roses that grow at the back and I have planted some of the tougher old roses – ‘Blanc Double de Courbet’, ‘Canary Bird’ and ‘Nevada’. It will be interesting to see at the end of the summer which will be the doers. Nasturtiums run away with themselves and the borage will go wild all over the place. I like the indigenous plants – sea kale, elder, sea pea, sea campion, the horned yellow poppy, the teasels and the lovage. I suspect that none will make very massive plants, but it will be in teresting to see what happens after another few years. ‘I am not worried about the nuclear power stations. I should not have come here if I was. On the other hand of course I am wor ried about nuclear power stations. This one is here and I live next door to it and can see it, while most people here live next door to it and can’t see it. I always feel like this house is like the house in The Wizard of Oz: it is liable to blow away at any moment and land by the Emerald City; which is, of course, the power station’ $ A retrospective of Derek Jarman’s work, ‘Protest!’, will open at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8 (00 353 1 612 9900; imma.ie), on 15 Nov. ‘Derek Jarman’s Garden’ is published by Thames & Hudson, rrp £16.95
Opposite: the landscape is dotted with small wooden fishermen’s cottages. This page: the original varnish has survived on one or two of the house’s original walls
B E L L A‘S EPOQUE It’s fair to say that designer Bella Freud feels most at home in the 1970s – quite literally, judging by the dwelling she has fashioned out of a ramshackle garden plot in west London. With its shimmering wallpaper, ‘weird-coloured carpets’ and leopard-print lampshades, the place has a louche glamour evoking the decade when she was a carefree young thing. Sophie Barling gets down with it. Photography: Simon Upton
Left: a Sparrmannia africana stands sentry by the door in the entrance hall. On the other side is a lampshade covered in leopard-print fabric from one of Bella’s collections. Top: a photograph taken at Big Sur by Hunter S. Thompson hangs against metallic wallpaper from the 1940s that Maria Speake of Retrouvius bought in ‘one big bolt that had never been used’
Left: Bella’s ‘1970’ intarsia design covers a cushion on a sofa in the TV room. The lack of direct sunlight here makes it an ideal gallery for a group of etchings by her late father (above). The glazing dividing the main space from this and other rooms was salvaged from Battersea Power Station. Top: the large ottoman used to be in her shop in Marylebone
This page, clockwise from top left: to the right of the door hangs a ‘very precious’ painting of Katy McEwen – a friend of Bella’s who died in her twenties – by Lucian Freud; a box of his brushes makes for an informal installation on the floor; a photo of the artist as a young man is propped against the glazing in the kitchen. One of his trolleys, bearing used paint tubes, can be seen beyond; a print of Francis Bacon’s Lying Figure adds another shade of green to the living area. Opposite: the Viennese parquet was salvaged by Retrouvius, as was the fabric covering the wall
Top: hanging above Bella’s bed is a sketch of her and Leigh Bowery by her father. Above: Maria Speake adapted consoles and mirrors from Gallery 25 in Pimlico Road to take undermounted sinks and make cabinets. Right: an opening in the bedroom frames a view of the dressing-room wall, where a photo of the fashion designer by Alastair Thain, left, hangs
IN BELLA FREUD’S
west London kitchen a framed photograph shows her father, Lucian, performing a headstand on his studio bed, while a 20-something Bella looks on amused. The painter’s feet, shod in heavy boots, are crossed at the ankles, and he looks impossibly comfortable. ‘He was really good at standing on his head,’ his daughter comments, adding: ‘I used to be really good. I remember my favourite thing when I was about eight was standing on my head and drinking vinegar.’ Surely not at the same time? ‘I suppose I felt really happy when I drank vinegar, and then I’d stand on my head as a kind of celebration.’ This is the kind of spirited individualism recognisable from Hideous Kinky, her sister Esther’s novel based on their childhood years in Morocco in the late 1960s. And this house, as any real home should be, is a reflection of the owner herself: glamorous and cool, with a beguiling streak of that topsy-turvy eccentricity. The fashion designer’s border terrier, Joey, lies curled up on a sofa next to a red cushion emblazoned with ‘1970’, one of her knitted slogan-stamped designs more familiar in sweater form on the likes of Kate Moss and Alexa Chung. It signposts the genius loci here – this is where you’d want to come and rest your sequinned, discoweary limbs after a night at Studio 54. There are leopard-print lampshades made from fabric used in one of Freud’s collections; corduroy, a signature material for her tailored suits, is here used for curtains in her son Jimmy’s bedroom. As she says: ‘It’s nice using stuff from my work.’ Beyond that, Freud’s influences and idols from the era are much in evidence in photographs, newspaper cuttings, books, from Patti Smith to Anita Pallenberg, Allen Ginsberg to Joan Didion. She decided to paint the downstairs loo black after being given a book about Serge Gainsbourg’s apartment on Rue de Verneuil, whose walls the singer lined in black felt. Channelling the decade of punk rock it may be, but Freud’s home is an entirely new creation. It occupies what would have been the back garden of the terrace house she lived in while married to the writer James Fox (WoI Feb 2015). For that project, she and Fox enlisted Maria Speake, of design and salvage company Retrouvius. The two women subsequently worked together on the fitting-out of Freud’s shop on London’s Chiltern Street, as well as the decoration of a show apartment in the BBC’s former White City headquarters. Naturally, Speake was called in to mastermind this more personal venture, which first entailed demolishing the assemblage of sheds and asbestos-topped structures that had mushroomed on the site over time. The new building now reads as an extension, connecting back to the street and to the flat upstairs (where Fox still lives) via an industrial-sized entranceway – the place was at one time, according to Freud, either a chocolate factory or, ‘less tastily’, an abattoir. Aside from Jimmy’s bedroom, which occupies its own eyrie up a flight of stairs, Freud’s new space is on one level. By the time they got to this project, Freud and Speake had developed a shorthand with each other. ‘It’s interesting how you communicate with someone about the mood you might be trying to convey,’ Speake says. ‘And obviously Bella’s so good on her paintings. So it would be: “Hockney, 1970s, not quite swimming pool…” – and you would suddenly understand a whole colour palette, atmosphere.’ ‘Maria is just a total genius,’ Freud says in return. ‘I’m learning so much from her… and she trusts in some of my slightly random things, like weird-coloured carpets; she’s getting the hang of my idiosyncrasies.’ The carpeting
is certainly bold: in the TV room, an orange/red that Freud used in her first collection and was inspired, she says, by the dyed Casentino cloth once worn by Tuscan carters; in the main room, a green that she had already used in her Marylebone shop. A Bigger Splash the palette may not be, but there is in fact an expansive pool here – not of chlorinated water, but of light, cut out of the ceiling in the main living area. The other rooms are arranged round this central space, giving it the feel of a Moroccan courtyard or, as Speake sees it, a Roman atrium with its impluvium open to the sky. The surrounding rooms then borrow that light via four sets of internal glazing – steel-framed windows salvaged from Battersea Power Station that, for Speake, ‘completely make the place’. ‘I think what I love about it most, which was also the thing we were a bit concerned about initially, is that, apart from Jimmy’s upstairs bedroom, it is entirely top-lit. Which makes for a completely different, calm quality of light.’ There’s nowhere calmer than Freud’s bedroom. Its golden palette has a lot to do with that, and started with the carpet, a ‘weird marigold’ colour she saw in a 1960s palatial suite in Vietnam several years ago. She has designated the dressing room as the place for more private pictures. One of two on the wall so far is a photograph of her in the 1980s by Alastair Thain. ‘I thought I should have a photo of myself naked, so that when I’m old I can look back and think, Oh my god, you were fine! Because I was always so selfcritical.’ The other is a sketch for ‘the last picture I sat for for my father; that was the beginning of it, then he started again with a much bigger canvas.’ There’s another sketch by him above the bed, which she found in his studio after his death. ‘It’s me but behind me you can see Leigh Bowery, then me again. I love it; it feels very affectionate. I remember that period because it was a daytime sitting – it was a different atmosphere, sitting for him in the day. It was harder to stay awake in the afternoon. I remember once we both fell asleep, he on one thing, me on another – it was so nice.’ Her father is a strong presence here, not only in photographs, sketches and etchings. One of his paint trolleys is parked against a wall of the main space, and with its mountain of dead paint tubes covered with clingfilm, resembles an artwork in itself. There’s a more vital link in the leafy Sparrmannia africana plants that greet you in the entrance, one a cutting from those Freud kept in his studios and which feature in several of his paintings. A print of Francis Bacon’s Study for Head of Lucian Freud hangs in the main room, its fleshy tones picked up by the calamine pink of the kitchen wall beyond. ‘I like having these fake things with real things,’ Freud says. ‘I don’t really care.’ The same goes for photographs in the kitchen: ‘That’s a photo [of Freud and Bacon] by Harry Diamond, but I just bought it off the National Portrait Gallery website, dirt cheap.’ They overlook an Ikea table she’s had for 20 years that ‘seems to work everywhere’. The overall effect is both unpretentious and unafraid. Freud likes what she likes, even to the point of leaving the cellophane on some of her bought lampshades (‘I got rather attached to the way the light caught on it’). There’s a strong sense that, with Speake’s support, this new home represents a process of creative empowerment for Freud, at least where interiors are concerned. ‘When we were living upstairs it took me five years to order curtains,’ she says. ‘Now I’m much more decisive.’ Perhaps a celebratory headstand is in order $ Retrouvius design studio. Ring 020 8960 8676, or visit retrouvius.com
Opposite: according to Maria Speake, Bella’s inspiration for the loo was ‘something that feels like it might always have been there, in the way that an old loo in a country house does, and that great-aunt so-and-so has added to later with her pink basin’. The idea for the black walls came from a book about Serge Gainsbourg’s Paris flat
WR AP STAR Tasked with designing a museum in Tokyo dedicated to an unsung Japanese artist, the acclaimed architect Kengo Kuma hit upon the neatest of solutions: build it around the painter’s intact studio in his traditional timber house. The result is a lyrically beautiful mash-up of old and modern – and shows a creative who’s clearly comfortable thinking outside the box, writes Augusta Pownall. Photography: Sean Myers
The Masanari Murai museum in Setagaya, a low-key suburb of Tokyo, is clad with wooden boards rescued from the house the artist lived in from 1938 until he died in 1999. His Toyota Crown can just be seen in a shallow pool of water
The downstairs gallery is an L-shape, with a wide open space behind the glass faรงade occupied by a George Nakashima rectangular table, which is surrounded by Isamu Kenmochi coloured stools. The floor is polished concrete
A SMALL museum on a quiet, residential street in
the western Tokyo suburbs tells the story of two men who never met. Kengo Kuma is its architect and among the most famous working in Japan, and with the stadium for the 2020 Olympics currently under construction in Tokyo, his star is only set to rise. Masanari Murai, the artist whose life and work this building commemorates, is another story. A respected pioneer of abstract art in Japan, he was a prolific painter, exhibitor and teacher in his lifetime. However, his 1951 oil Mother and Child B only raised a modest £10,000 under the hammer at Christie’s recently, a figure that reflects the fact that he is now relatively unknown. Murai’s life was divided into three phases. After showing early promise, he was shunned during the Pacific War; a long period of painting and teaching then followed, in the house that forms the kernel of the museum. He was born in 1905 in Ogaki City, a nondescript place in central Japan, and grew up by the sea in Shingu, south of Nara. By the age of 15 he had moved to Tokyo to study landscape painting in the Western style. After 250 years of isolation ended in 1868, European painters’ mastery of perspective and illusion was studied with an almost scientific approach in Japanese art schools. The prestigious Bunka Gakuin, from which Murai graduated in 1928, was no exception. A week later he was on a steamer heading for Paris. The budding landscape painter stayed for four years, intending to continue his training, but soon found sexier ways with paint. The French capital in the
1920s was a mecca for artists from all over the world, a cultural melting-pot heaving with ideas and egos, so it’s easy to see why an ambitious young painter would be drawn there. In Paris he was exposed to abstract art for the first time and began experimenting with bold swaths of colour and simplified shapes, in the manner of Jean Arp. He even started signing his work Maçanari, a pretentious flourish forgivable only because he was impressionable. Back in Tokyo, he threw himself into the burgeoning art scene, setting up the Jiyu Bijutsu Kyokai (Association of Free Artists) and mounting exhibitions with like-minded painters. But war was coming. The new style of painting was a response to the world of machines and modernity, a way of shaking off the shackles of the past; but it didn’t sit well with a nation now at loggerheads with the West. Murai’s aesthetic was sidelined and he was often physically intimidated by suspicious military authorities. Eventually only those willing to produce propaganda for the government enjoyed access to canvas and paint, and Murai was defiantly not. By the end of the war, the country lay in ruins and Murai was a middle-aged man. Young ingénus were forming avant-garde performance-art groups, abandoning the paintbrush to jump into pools of clay. Perhaps the most famous of these would go on to marry a Beatle. In 1938, Murai had moved into a traditional timber house in Setagaya, a few train stops from Tokyo proper, where he would live, work and teach until his death in 1999.
Opposite, top: the stairs outside lead up to a balcony that is part of the apartment occupied by Murai’s widow, Itsuko. Bottom: the display cabinet contains a number of the artist’s simple clay figures of women, square ceramic bowls and woodblocks. This page: two abstracted human forms are propped beside the door into the original studio, which forms the heart of the museum
Only Murai’s studio remains of the old house; and it’s exactly as he left it, a cluttered cavern of curious collections wrapped in Kuma’s glass-and-concrete enclosure. The two spaces couldn’t be more different. In the studio there are a jumble of canvases stacked against the walls, tubes of paint, a tiny TV, rolls of paper, but also combs, crates, posters, a wooden duck, a set of stairs with cats carved on the steps, a drawer unit full of beautiful ceramics. The ceiling beams are dark and low, with a flash of red paint between each. How on earth did Murai create those bright, graphic canvases in this dimly lit space? He clearly had an eye for stuff and – I would bet – a brilliant sense of humour. When I visited, I longed to rummage and turn things over, but the space felt intensely personal and his widow, Itsuko, hovered outside. It was she who commissioned the museum, after reading Kuma’s thoughts on architecture in one of his books. It opened in 2005, on what would have been the artist’s 100th birthday. Kuma chose not to demolish the studio, but instead to surround it. This has the effect of suspending the studio in time, making it an installation, a work of art and an object like the many it contains. The corridor between the two parts becomes a double-height gallery space with white walls on which paintings are displayed to dazzling effect. A neat staircase leads to a mezzanine, where more work is on show. Here, a closed door conceals a small apartment in which Itsuko lives. Unlike the studio at its heart, the gallery space doesn’t feel remotely private, with
windows opening on to the driveway, soaring ceilings and a George Nakashima table at the front with magazines littering its surface. The glass façade is vertically clad with thin wooden boards rescued from the old house. In a move that suggests Kuma’s sense of humour matches that of the artist, he placed Murai’s beloved Toyota Crown in a shallow pool of water in front of the house. When he took on the commission, Kuma had designed just one museum, a repository for the ukiyo-e artist Hiroshige Ando’s woodblock prints, built from the ground up with the most perfect lines of cedar louvres. Whether in homage to Murai’s Modernism, or because of budget constraints, this museum is restrained. Late in life Murai stuffed his home with this and that, and built endless ad-hoc additions to the warren of rooms. Kuma saw that, as it was, the house was an impossible set-up for a museum, even a small one. Unlike bigger establishments, this Modernist masterpiece is open only on a Sunday for six months of the year, and the website asks prospective visitors to send a stamped-addressed envelope or phone in Japanese at least a week ahead. Murai’s fame doesn’t look set to grow any time soon, but perhaps one legacy of the Olympics will be that more people visit the museum to see Kuma’s work and find themselves bowled over by the artist’s monumental oils in the process $ Masanari Murai Memorial Museum of Art, 1-6-12 Nakamachi, Setagaya City, Tokyo. For opening times, ring 00 81 3 37 04 95 88, or visit muraimasanari.com
Opposite, top: wooden ducks and cats sit on drawers containing tubes of paint and bric-abrac. Bottom: Murai appears in a photo next to his work Face. This page: Kengo Kuma left the studio exactly as it was when the artist died
The entrance to Chez Abdou looks like goalposts, though it’s actually a fishing net, a pair of anchors and lifebelts lashed to rope-covered poles. The internal fence and portico are punctuated by Neoclassical urns
BOHEMIAN BARBECUE During Tangier’s golden age in the 1960s and 70s, louche literary types and raffish expats would regularly make the pilgrimage south to Chez Abdou, a ramshackle fish restaurant on the coast, where the Atlantic’s thunderous surf still drowns out the grills’ sizzle. Now white-bearded, its eponymous proprietor draws a slightly different crowd but, as Marie-France Boyer reports, for the same time-honoured reasons: delicious seafood in a charmingly makeshift setting. Photography: Roland Beaufre
This page, clockwise from top: the departing customer is ushered towards the sea by aloes and creeping Hottentot figs as well as a metal fish hanging from the entrance; mimosas shelter a pathway leading to a salon used for receptions; the former entrance to the first restaurant (now abandoned), complete with chequerboard terrace, balustrade and purple portico; a painted mussel, a scallop and a starfish are surrounded by stencilled plaster decorating a wall. Opposite: an octagonal table and bright plastic chairs sit beneath one of three fig trees brought from Tangier by Abdou’s father-in-law in 1960
Beneath a long tent sheltered by a dune, sparkly lace curtains, satiny chairs and fringed tablecloths offer a cosy atmosphere accompanied by the thunderous crash of waves. Ball lamps in painted amphorae lend their own air of strangeness
IN 1960
Abdou began selling grilled sardines on the roadside between the beach and forest some 20km from Tangier. Today, his fish restaurant, Chez Abdou, is a landmark in its own right, albeit one under growing threat from both north and south by the development eating away at the rugged coast. Abdou has never forgotten the day when, as a boy, he came with the scouts on a picnic to the Forêt Diplomatique, one of North Africa’s great forests. Swept by spray from the Atlantic, its stone pines, eucalyptus, cedars and holm oaks protected a dense undergrowth where wild animals roamed free. In those days, this was an untouched paradise, occupied only by a handful of shepherds and fishermen. Most people were fearful to venture in. It was still the golden age of Tangier, which had not long emerged from the joint administration of various countries and which retained a cosmopolitan buzz that drew literary types and a raffish crowd, some of whom cling on there half a century later. At the age of 18, Abdou began work transporting fish and continued, save for a brief spell as a trapeze artist in the Amar Circus (fittingly his restaurant does have the slight air of a nomads’ encampment). He started out by selling sardines and grilling them on a small barbecue, which in time was joined by a second and then a third. Then he bought a parasol, a table and two chairs. Hunters, hikers and bohemians brave enough to venture that far – including Princess Lalla Fatima Zohra, Hassan II’s sister and the wife of Morocco’s ambassador in London – were thrilled to find him. Thus Abdou’s gradually became the fish restaurant to visit when in Morocco. These days customers rave about his grilled sea bass, squid, swordfish, sole, sea bream and shrimps (all accompanied by generous plates of salad) on social media, even if they’re sometimes slightly disconcerted by the décor, describing it as ‘unconventional’, ‘eccentric’, ‘very weird’ and ‘totally kitsch’. All agree, however, on one thing: the location, like the fare, is heavenly. To reach this wholly unexpected enclave, which has somehow survived the passage of time, you leave the main Tangier/Larache road and cross the now ragged forest from east to west, making your way along an interminable blue-and-white fence that surrounds aloes, mimosas and dense bushes. And then, suddenly, the immense sea appears before you. A surreal gateway knocked together from flotsam and jetsam leads to the beach, which is completely deserted nine months of the year. There, sheltering behind a dune, you will find a labyrinth of small nooks, each one a little island with its own table and chairs, half indoors, half out, under tented canopies lined with satin, or
in huts or shacks made from trellis, plastic or painted wood. Each little corner has its own ambience, whether in full view or hidden, in the shade or the sun, sheltered by the forest or under the three celebrated fig trees (‘brought by my wife’s father in 1960’), or right by the muffled roar of the sea. There are certain regulars who have had ‘their own space’ for more than 30 years. David Herbert, Claudio Bravo, Anna McKew, Patrick de Laurière, Tessa Traeger, the Italian ambassador – le tout Tangier have frequented Chez Abdou. At this ramshackle spot, Barbara Hutton once hosted a candlelit party for 200 people. ‘They had time to enjoy life,’ says the patron. ‘Sometimes the king himself would take a stroll here, and Lalla Fatima Zohra used to come often and chat with me.’ These days there are still very many customers, though they tend to be less recognisable and more home-grown. It is not uncommon to see a young woman and her female friends scoping it out as a wedding venue, or entire families arriving at six or seven for Sunday paella. During Ramadan, Abdou puts out dates and harira, Morocco’s traditional soup, for the most destitute. Now officially ‘elderly’, he is still a fine figure of a man with natural authority. He has a strong presence and, when invited to have his photograph taken, scurries off to fetch his spotless chef’s whites, then prepares a large sophisticated still life of fish and seafood, striking a regal pose. He rises early. ‘After my prayers I go to the market in Larache every day,’ he explains. ‘For the fish, I have to go myself. And every Monday I go to La Casa Barata.’ He finds almost everything he needs for his inspired ‘installation’ at this huge, chaotic flea market. He is always making changes. He likes everything around him to be clean and pristine. At weekends, he tidies up what the picnickers have left behind on the beach. But what gives this delightful place so much spark is the freshness of the paint. The proprietor has decorated everything blue (‘to go with the sea’) and white (‘to go with the forest’). And we mean everything: flowerpots, fences, walls, even the tree trunks and branches. And in the afternoon when the customers have eaten their fill and sloped off, several carefree boys water the plants and endlessly touch up the paintwork: you can see them lying on the ground, slipping between shadow and light, like the many cats and dogs, brush in hand, after they’ve given some grain to the hens and peacocks – which act as guards at night. A few years ago it was pretty much all violet and bright green highlighted with matt gold. Then the settlement was dotted with a great number of baroque plaster statues and a plethora of fake flowers. Multicoloured plastic, which offers protection from the rain, is still evident in the hangings, netting, canopies and knotted, puffed or draped curtains. Today Abdou, who has green fingers, allows plants to play a more important role: succulents, geraniums, banana trees, the Monstera deliciosa (or Swiss cheese plant) so dear to Matisse, elephant ears, cacti and palm trees are interspersed with whale vertebrae or other treasures left by the tide. ‘I really care about my plants. They cost me a fortune. It’s a choice. I have four generators and four wells and I fill a water tank every other day,’ explains Abdou, who nevertheless seems to live on love and fresh water and will never countenance the swimming pool that some misguided folk dare ask him for. That’s not his way. ‘I like the sound of the sea, and the rain: it’s the good Lord’s music. Sometimes I sleep in a caravan nearby, just to hear it. I like it here. I work with my family and I have everything I ever wanted. What would I do with more money?’ $ Chez Abdou, For•t Diplomatique Ð km 17, Route de Larache-Rabat, Tangier
Opposite: romantics bring their drinks out here under a lonely straw umbrella to watch the sun go down. This page, clockwise from top: the entrance to the bathroom area is flanked by a water butt and a table for tips. A pleated cotton skirt tops walls with a mauve stencil on a white ground; the ‘royal’ pathway leading to the old entrance; a Moorish copper chandelier adds an exotic touch to the Matisse-like multicoloured furniture covered in plasticised rain-proof materials; for this portrait, Abdou donned his spotless chef’s whites and created a painterly pescatorial tableau
Above: wooden dividing walls in the apartment are painted the palest of greys, colour-matched to a piece of newsprint. A harp, belonging to Christine Roland and Jason Dodge’s eldest daughter, sits before a Pennsylvania Dutch chair. Opposite: Jason built the low seating in the openplan kitchen/living room, while Christine upholstered it. She also made the porcelain lozenges hanging among the leaves of the vigorous vine
W U N DER K I N Even when heavily pregnant, ceramicist Christine Roland was busy making bathroom tiles (700 of them!) for her soulful Berlin flat. But then there’s little she and her husband, artist Jason Dodge, won’t turn their hands to. From the seating to the coffee service to a stoneware sink, they’ve crafted almost the entire contents – and all so their family can live by a set of ideals. Kirsty Bell admires the couple’s cradle of creativity. Photography: Tim Walker
Top: the mobile in the hall was a wedding present from Scottish artist Martin Boyce. A discreet opening in the wall leads to the cat’s built-in litter-tray. Above: all the cupboards are home-made, while the chairs are by George Nakashima, whose studio is close to where Jason grew up in Pennsylvania
Above: Christine’s handmade tableware, candle-holders and vessels gather on the kitchen table. The sink is a shower tray from a hardware store, the succulents and cacti came courtesy of florist Mary Lennox, and the brushes in the corner were all produced by Berlin’s Workshop for the Blind
Top: in the library a lithograph by Swedish Post-Impressionist Nils Dardel hangs below a drawing by Thea Djordjadze, a Georgian artist who is based in Berlin. Above: shelves in a corridor are filled with books from Jason’s poetry press, Fivehundred Places, alongside exhibition catalogues
Above: in Jason’s studio, a silver curtain conceals deep shelves holding an impressive array of power tools. This space is used more for assembling materials, organising and looking at things rather than for actually finalising artworks, which are generally realised in situ at his exhibitions
This page, clockwise from top left: a 1969 work from The Book of 100 Questions by James Lee Byars hangs on the bathroom wall; a basin has been positioned with smaller family members in mind; the door leads to a laundry room; the glazed stoneware sink was hand-carved by Christine
Strips of dark wood outline the contours of the room. The triangular stoneware tiles on the floor are another example of Christine’s craftsmanship – she handmade 700 of them in all. The black ceramic hanging planters and the pale fluted porcelain sponge- and soap-dishes are also by her
WHEN CHRISTINE Roland comes
to the door of the Berlin apartment she shares with her artist husband, Jason Dodge, their three young children, elderly dog and an even older cat, she is holding a small metal contraption. Turning the handle of this hand-held mill, not without some force, she is grinding coffee beans. This is the first clue to a finely tuned approach to living that permeates her home and extends to crockery, furnishings, flooring and even the walls, all of which were made by either Christine or Jason themselves. As you enter this airy interior, the grime of Berlin is forgotten, as are the usual 21stcentury distractions. ‘It is not about art and life,’ says Jason, who is originally from eastern Pennsylvania. ‘It is art and life.’ With its well-used kitchen, abundant plants and ample evidence of active children, the apartment has the atmosphere of the famous home of turn-of-the-century Swedish artists Carl and Karin Larsson. Like them, the Dodge/Roland family’s life is shaped by creative enterprise. Christine, who is Danish, studied design and fine tailoring, but she switched allegiances some years ago and now works with ceramics. ‘Any idea I have I can translate into clay,’ she says, and indeed the apartment is full of unique plates and goblets, candle-holders and plant pots, even light fixtures and door knobs she has made by hand. ‘You can roll it out and make a fold and it just stays there. With fabric you need a thousand stitches for that.’ Her delicately fluted bowls in fine white porcelain do have something textile-like about them, as if made from stiff crimped taffeta, though her dark, gritty stoneware plates are more like cast iron. Both bear the marks of the maker’s hand, as do the glossy coffee cups and rough-hewn pots and bowls that Christine laboriously carves out of solid blocks of clay. Each one of the 700 black triangular tiles that cover the bathroom floor was individually cut, rolled and hammered flat. ‘I hadn’t made tiles before and I got in way over my head, hammering this clay, eight months pregnant, in a giant white coat like a butcher,’ she recalls,
her conversation punctuated with peals of laughter. ‘But things made by hand are so much more beautiful and alive.’ The couple were originally looking to build their own house, but when they came across this unrenovated shell on the second floor of a former Jewish orphanage and school in the east of the city it was too good an opportunity to miss. Built in 1907 and surrounded by a tree-filled garden, the block differs greatly from Berlin’s typical late 19th-century Altbau apartments, with their high ceilings, ornamental plasterwork and bourgeois enfilades. Here, the rooms meander through a generous open plan; only the bathrooms and the master bedroom are closed off with doors. Tangles of Spanish moss hang in the coat-lined hallway, beyond which, on the left, two children’s rooms face one another, each furnished with a low, painted wooden bed, and a wall of cupboards and shelves full of toys and picture books. Further along again, a spacious kitchen/living room is lined on one side by low, bright casement windows and at the far end by a row of kitchen cabinets made by Jason, their white-painted doors usually variously ajar. Electrical appliances are few and far between here: water is boiled in a kettle on the gas stove, and espresso made with a large mechanical press. ‘We tend to avoid the convenient,’ admits Jason – although a robot vacuum cleaner does lurk on the floor beside the oven. For a family with two working parents, three children and two pets, this was an understandable concession. Jason’s studio – or ‘transit centre’, as he describes it – is tucked away beyond the kitchen. Although his conceptual sculptures, which generally utilise found materials, are assembled in situ in his exhibitions, this space still functions as a fully operational workshop, with several impressive German power tools stored in the deep cupboards he made. It was here that much of the apartment took shape, a process Jason sees as decidedly separate from his artwork proper. He constructed all the walls (bar two existing load-bearing ones) from huge sheets of blockboard – a phenomenal task for a lone carpenter. ‘I wanted every wall to also function as a cupboard,’ he says when I ask why. His inspiration was a Félix Vallotton painting of a woman searching through a linen press. Jason’s furniture pieces, which can be found in every room, are all one-offs. The low-slung easy chair in the living room, for instance, was built of Thermo ash and custom-designed so that it would be comfortable for each family member, regardless of size, from three-year-old son to the man himself. Typically for him, this was made without any preliminary plans. ‘I don’t think in drawings, I think in things, in forms and bodies,’ the artist says. All this hands-on production and improvisation make for an uplifting atmosphere. When I ask the couple if they see their home as a collaboration, Jason laughs: ‘There isn’t really a line.’ Christine elaborates: ‘I am a designer: I can imagine how a cupboard should feel and what kind of things should fit in it. But Jason is a sculptor; he has an incredible sense of space.’ While the apartment might be seen as a Gesamtkunstwerk, perhaps it is the family itself that is the real collaboration here, and the apartment simply its container. ‘In making this house and our work, we are trying to live in an idealistic way,’ says Christine. Home and work life are porous, and it’s the seemingly inconsequential things – fresh air through an open window, leaves unfurling on plants, hand-ground coffee served in a handmade cup – that the occupants appear to value most. The attachment is not to the thing per se, but to experience. ‘If this table were gone tomorrow, I wouldn’t care,’ says Jason. ‘The motivation, and the attachment, is to each other’ $ Christine Roland’s work will be exhibited at the Tanya Leighton and Jochum Rodgers galleries in Berlin and at Roksanda Ilincic, 9 Mount St, London W1, throughout May. Visit cancatstalktodogsintheirownway.net. For information about Jason Dodge, visit franconoero.com or caseykaplangallery.com
Opposite: a pad hung on the wall by ribbons forms a headboard in the main bedroom. A cricket cage sits on the windowsill above it. The owners collaborated on the design of the angled copper lamp and the bedside table. Above: most of the apartment’s internal walls incorporate storage
It is thought that the women of the Sala delle Dame – seen here on the west and north walls – were members of the Martinengo and Gonzaga families, though no firm evidence actually exists to support the theory
THE LADY IS A TROMPE As if his wedding itself wasn’t lavish enough, one Renaissance count had a surprise up his mutton sleeve back at the marital palazzo – a splendid trompe-l’oeil loggia featuring portraits of enigmatic noblewomen. Five centuries on, the Sala delle Dame in Lombardy is still teasing the world with unanswered questions. Could one of the women be the bride herself? Aliette Boshier puts it in perspective. Photography: Ricardo Labougle
This page, clockwise from top left: the gentle tilt of this lady’s head echoes Moretto da Brescia’s portrait of the poet Tullia d’Aragona as Salome; a common feature of 16th-century Venetian painting, lapdogs symbolised fidelity; the women’s clothes are typical of those worn by the ruling class in the Duchy of Milan under Habsburg Spain; citrus fruits have long carried connotations of love and fertility. Opposite: the flooring is of a type called terrazzo alla veneziana, which is characterised by mosaic-like patterns and a highly smooth finish
IN FEBRUARY 1543, a wedding of spe-
cial magnificence was celebrated in the northern Italian city of Brescia. With the ceremonies complete, the nuptial procession set off through quiet winter streets that now stirred to the peal of trumpet and artillery. At open windows hung with Oriental rugs young women craned to catch a glimpse of the groom and his golden-haired new bride. Turning at last into Via Dante, the fanfare swelled for the final time as it came to a halt on the steps of the marital home. The celebrations that followed were every bit as lavish as one might expect from the alliance of two powerful military families in a frontier territory of the Venetian Republic. Recently returned from exile, Count Girolamo Martinengo di Padernello had worked tirelessly to ready the family seat for the occasion of his marriage to Eleonora Gonzaga di Sabbioneta. The residence, which was one of the grandest in all of Brescia, had been in a frequent state of improvement since its initial construction in the 14th century, so much so that it was playfully nicknamed the Palazzo della Fabbrica. Present at the festivities was Girolamo Contarini, the Venetian capitano, who wrote to his father-in-law in enthusiastic tones of the various triomphi laid on for the event. In his letter, he describes an external pavilion with seating for 120 people. Here they dined by candlelight on all manner of dainty fare, from peacock and quail to partridge and sweetmeats, as the sounds of madrigals floated above the laughter. Later, guests wandered from room to room admiring the domestic configurations. It was on the piano nobile, in the centre of a suite of three interconnected bed chambers overlooking the garden, that they came face to face with six beautiful Brescian ladies newly painted on its walls. The Sala delle Dame (c1539-43) is unparalleled as an exemplar of Renaissance interior decoration. While Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi in the nearby city of Mantua may share its themes of marriage and family, nowhere else do we find such an intimate expression of uniquely female group portraiture. Widely attributed to Alessandro Bonvicino, who was known as Moretto da Brescia, with the assumed assistance of his pupil Giovanni Battista Moroni, the painting covers this diminutive room in its entirety. It was originally executed across three walls, in oil for the figures and tempera for the landscape, and it was several years before a further two women were added either side of the south-facing window by an unknown hand, bringing the total number to eight. Against a backdrop of dramatic mountain peaks and cultivated fields, country villas give way to tree-lined avenues where couples stroll in the soft light of dusk. The effect is one of gentle reverie, which is further heightened by the calm, inscrutable countenances of these noblewomen. While some avert their eyes in modesty, their hands caressing tiny lapdogs, others gaze dreamily towards the centre of the room. Moretto’s subjects, painted in three-quarter length like his other female sitters, are sumptuously dressed in the Milanese/ Spanish style, with high necklines, beribboned hair and velvet sleeves that are slashed to reveal delicate puffs of silk beneath. Their social status is further denoted by the presence of rich accessories in the form of plumed fans, gold jewellery and leather gloves. Within the courtly tradition of donne illustri, these highly individualised portraits are nevertheless united by similarities of dress and demeanour that
accentuate their status as archetypes of female beauty. Inherent in their portrayal is the common tension between seeing and being seen, reinforced by the hypothesis (though not officially documented) that the women were members of the Martinengo and Gonzaga families, and therefore possibly familiar to their original audience. Given the tastes of the time, it is not surprising to find a rich visual language at play on the sala’s walls, from the little dogs as symbols of marital fidelity to the red carnation (indicating love) in the hand of the blonde lady on the east wall. This figure, who is sometimes associated with the bride herself, is accompanied by a pet zibellino, or sable, which, like the bunches of citrus fruits that can be seen hanging from the ceiling, holds connotations of fertility. Sadly, even a marriage begun under such auspices was not enough to protect the fair Eleonora, who died in childbirth only two years after she and Girolamo were wed. Moretto utilises the architectural dimensions of the room to place the viewer at the centre of a fictive loggia. A structural boundary is formed by a painted balustrade interspersed with ornate pergolas that frame the landscape beyond. A richly decorated groin-vault ceiling completes the illusion of a semienclosed space, fringed with garlands, grotesques and the Martinengo coat of arms. A popular device in northern Italian Renaissance painting, Mamluk carpets offer a further indication of wealth and social status, objects that would have been as precious to the household as the women perched atop them. Recalling the scene of the Martinengo wedding procession, Venetian artists such as Carpaccio lent a note of realism to their paintings through the portrayal of small Anatolian prayer rugs, which bedecked the bridges and balconies of the city on feast days. Meanwhile, the presence of elaborate Islamic floor coverings in frescoed interiors such as Benvenuto Tisi’s trompel’oeil ceiling (1503-6) for the Sala del Tesoro in Ferrara point to the prestige of the patron. Viewed in the round, the sala becomes a sort of hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden, in which these elegant figures occupy a liminal space between the viewer and the wider world depicted behind them. A century earlier in On the Art of Building, Leon Battista Alberti had written that he would have young women ‘allocated comfortable apartments, to relieve their delicate minds from the tedium of confinement’. Moretto’s dame direct their gaze inwards towards the setting of their daily life. Yet in this quiet realm of women, their presence transcends the merely ornamental to embody a language of shared experience only they can understand. Indeed, they have endured much in their time, from a substantial remodelling of the building in the 18th century to devasting damage during the aerial bombardments of World War II, which necessitated a complete restoration of the sala that is still visible in the uneven surface of its walls. Today, however, peace reigns within, though it’s occasionally broken by the chatter of a local social group, the Circolo al Teatro, which gathers to play bridge in the suite of rooms. The merry wedding guests may have long departed, but these graceful companions still dream on in the passing light of day $ With thanks to the Circolo al Teatro. The Palazzo Salvadego (previously Martinengo) is a private residence. The Sala delle Dame is not open to members of the public except on rare occasions
Clockwise from top left: this enigmatic figure wears delicately pinned braids embellished with pearls – a style popular with Venetian noblewomen. For the poet Agnolo Firenzuola hair was the defining feature of feminine charm; exotic fans were a marker of wealth in Renaissance Europe; in March 1945, a bomb landed in the palazzo’s garden, causing considerable damage to the sala – particularly this lady – and resulting in the need for heavy restoration; the Mamluk carpets were possibly based on real examples belonging to the Martinengo family
FLAT DU JOUR Isabelle Sicart and Nicolas Reese found all the ingredients for a bijou family apartment in a Montmartre restaurant. Salivating at its potential, they put the banquettes and marble-topped tables to good use, adding further flavour to these bistro classics with their own particular specialités in the decorative arts. Valérie Lapierre is happy to report, sans réservation, what a success they’ve made of the former joint. Photography: Roland Beaufre
Opposite: vinyl banquettes and other furniture offer a clue to the apartment’s previous life. The owner made the ‘Slepicka’ cylindrical oak-and-sandstone side table in collaboration with a friend, Emmanuel Levet Stenne. Top: Isabelle Sicart stands in the entrance to the charming former restaurant. Opalescent window film and a densely planted trough lend the family some privacy from passers-by
Top left: the bar conceals a minuscule kitchen, which has cupboards made by a friend of the owners. A poster by Nathaniel Russell covers an unused door leading to the building’s communal hall. Top right: a glass slab set into the floor provides a bird’s-eye view of Isabelle’s basement studio, which is dominated by her kiln (above). Opposite: some of the pieces she has fired line shelves here
Vintage Scandinavian shelves cover one wall of the living room, occupying what was the restaurant’s dining area. An embroidered cushion by Lindell & Co sits on a Le Corbusier sofa in the window. Above them, on the side of the cupboard, hang a 19th-century plaque, top, and one of Nicolas Reese’s reverse-painted glass mirrors
FOR THE PASTten years
or so, ceramic designer Isabelle Sicart, her partner, the artist and decorator Nicolas Reese, and their two teenage children have poured a lot into the 65sq m former restaurant in Montmartre that they call home, managing to cram in not only a dining room/ kitchen, a living room and three bedrooms, but also a small basement studio for Isabelle. ‘Just knock on the windows,’ she tells us before our visit, a surprising instruction from someone living a stone’s throw from the tourist-magnet café made famous worldwide by the film Amélie, and just a few minutes from Pigalle – where Paris comes to party at night. Yet, just a few metres from the hubbub, the cobbled street in which Isabelle lives is amazingly peaceful, and her ground-floor apartment, located on a corner, really does have a glass shopfront. ‘In the 1980s it was a famous night-time restaurant on the gay scene,’ she tells us. ‘We lived upstairs and knew the owners, real prima donnas who were determined there shouldn’t be another restaurant after them. They were delighted to see it become a family home and artist’s studio.’ A graduate in decorative arts, Isabelle started out in the design studio of the legendary glassware manufacturer Lalique, where she worked for eight years. Then, after taking a 12-month sabbatical in Australia with Nicolas, she designed ceramic pieces for small producers for five years. Frustrated at not
being involved in the entire manufacturing process, she decided in 2004 to produce unique pieces herself. ‘First of all I exhibited several objects at the Tino Zervudachi gallery,’ she says. ‘Then Carole Decombe, who works in Paris and Los Angeles, became my official gallerist. Rose Uniacke (WoI Nov 2011), in London, also sells some of my lamps. I make them all by hand right here, but I only produce around 20 pieces per year.’ Nicolas is also an artist and designer and with his brother, Sébastien, set up Reese Studio, located just two streets away. The two of them have worked for major interior designers such as Jacques Garcia (WoI Oct 2017), and Joseph Achkar and Michel Charrière (WoI Feb 2019), and are known particularly for their reverse-painted glass mirrors. He and Isabelle wanted ‘to keep something of the spirit of the place’. The glass frontage has been redone as it was before, but in burglar-resistant glass, with an opalescent film that conceals the interior. The main entrance is still on the street. ‘It gives us the feeling of living in a house,’ says Isabelle. The first room you step into – which is flooded with sunshine through the shop window – still has the original restaurant’s décor: two white marble tables in front of green imitation-leather banquettes, a small wooden bar that masks the lower kitchen units, and three leopard-print stools. The setting is so familiar that you feel like sitting down at the
Top: two 1950s wicker armchairs by Raoul Guys surround a low ‘Volta’ table, the fruit of another collaboration between Isabelle Sicart and Emmanuel Levet Stenne. Opposite: mirror covered with lattice teases the eye with the illusion of more space beyond. Artwork by Nathaniel Russell, top, and Isamu Noguchi hangs to the left, above a 1970s candelabra by German manufacturer BMF
bar and ordering a café au lait. Pale walls punctuated with ceramic lamps by Isabelle, and a side table made from oak and enamelled sandstone designed in col laboration with her friend Emmanuel Levet Stenne bring an elegant touch to what is now the family’s dining room. ‘It’s sometimes a laugh having meals in front of people in the street who can’t see you,’ she says. In the middle of the room, the couple have installed a transparent slab in the floor with a view down into the basement studio, just beneath our feet. While it serves a functional purpose – increas ing light in the cellar – it’s also fun, making you feel as though you’re levitating. A different, more intimate, ambience reigns in the next room, redesigned as a living room, which has been painted green and is given warmth by a Moroccan rug. Scandinavian wooden bookshelves from the 1950s and 1960s are filled with tomes you can read while sitting comfortably in the vintage wicker armchairs or on a small Le Corbusier sofa. On the left, a door opens into the parents’ bedroom, which isn’t much bigger than the bed it holds – ‘a boat cabin’, Isabelle says. On the right, another door leads into the former kitchen over the courtyard, which has been partitioned to create the children’s bedrooms. ‘It’s so small we haven’t really made any decorative choices,’ she says. ‘We just bought one or two nice things, such as the sofa, and we recycled some of Nicolas’s mirrors and my ceramic rejects,
which I keep, not for decoration, but to live with and think about. I also make our crockery, though that’s not something I sell. We like having handpainted plates and homemade things.’ Isabelle’s ceramics are everywhere in the apart ment: perforated sculptures, figurative vases, lamps with abstract curves – some glazed, others burnished. What they all have in common is their poetry and their sensuality. ‘What interests me is the volume, the proportions, the material.’ It’s in the basement, a space of 12sq m, that these works are born. A steep staircase leads down to the studio, where a large kiln that can fire at up to 1,300°C takes up almost all the space. ‘I work in stoneware, which fires at high temperature and is more solid than earthenware,’ Isabelle explains. She moves about carefully, as the tight space overflows with tools, works in progress, samples and designs pin ned to the wall. ‘I’m a bit wild; it’s because I work alone in a cellar,’ she jokes. ‘More seriously, at a cer tain point you have to isolate yourself so you can concentrate. But I don’t feel alone; I can see the chil dren coming and going with their friends,’ she says, gesturing to the glazed ceiling through which you can glimpse the dining room. ‘And I don’t feel shut in. I can even see a little bit of tree, and the slightest ray of sunshine makes me happy’ $ Isabelle Sicart. Ring 00 33 6 83 53 31 90, or visit isabellesicart.com. Nicolas Reese. Ring 00 33 6 74 41 30 12, or visit reesestudio.com
Top: the couple’s room is barely bigger than ‘a boat cabin’ – Isabelle’s description – with just enough space for their bed and little more. It leads directly off the living room, where a bird painting by Nicolas can be glimpsed on top of the makeshift ‘fireplace’. Opposite: meanwhile, a trio of pieces by Isabelle sits on a windowsill – the spiky, perforated sculpture to the right is called ‘Spina’
inspiration
Some of the design effects in this issue, recreated by Grace McCloud
1 A pair of huge oval mirrors reflect
1 2
the greatness of Renzo Mongiardino’s scheme in Drue Heinz’s beautiful ballroom (page 153). More than a metre in height, Jonathan Sainsbury’s large ‘Irish’ looking-glass (£6,170), which is set with gemstones, would make a grand stand-in. Ring 01258 857573, or visit jonathan-sainsbury.com.
2 The framed plaster intaglios in the Heinz drawing room no doubt appeal to refined readers (page 155). What a relief, then, that we’ve found a (rather more modern) match for them. Costing £80 each, Bridie Hall’s square ‘Intaglio’ découpage trays would look just as elegant holding your trinkets as they would hanging on a wall. Ring Pentreath & Hall on 020 7430 2526, or visit pentreath-hall.com.
3
3 Drama starts at the door to Drue Heinz’s mews house, painted in cobalt-coloured gloss (page 159). If the ultramarine sheen caught your eye, we’ve got the blue for you: Craig & Rose’s ‘Smalt’ gloss costs £15.50 for 750ml. Ring 01383 740011, or visit craigandrose.com.
4
garden hall may not have realised that its birds and blooms have been painstakingly printed by hand (page 154). Made by Mauny and sold through Zuber & Cie, ‘Perdrix et Lys’ comes in four colours and costs £600 per 10m roll. Ring 020 7824 8265, or visit manufacture-mauny.fr.
5 Outsized wooden spoons hang in Masanari Murai’s studio, their carved bowls echoing the organic forms of the paintings (page 185). For a similar set, Kirsten Hecktermann serves up a selection in her online shop. Shown, from top: ‘Boa’ (£18) and ‘Dada J’ (£25). Ring 07887 680672, or visit kirstenhecktermann.com.
6 Bowled over by the striped blanket on the Japanese artist’s studio bench (page 184)? Try Friday Fox’s pure new-wool saddle blankets (£184). Though originally made for horses, they’re a hit in fashion and interior-design circles. Ring 01254 701458, or visit fridayfox.co.uk.
5
220
6
PHOTOGRAPHY: LIAM STEVENS (3, 4, 5, 12, 4 OVERLEAF); SIMON WITHAM (6, 2 OVERLEAF)
4 Those admiring the wallpaper in the Heinz
7 If, like us, you’ve fall en heel over heads for the Astier de Villatte ‘Hercules Foot’ model that ceramic artist Isabelle Sicart has on display above the back of her sofa (page 214), you might fancy following in her steps. It costs £485 from Liberty. Ring 020 7734 1234, or visit libertylondon.com.
7
8
8 The French ceramicist used trellised mirrors to create the illusion of greater space in her bi jou Paris home (page 216). A master of the art is Accents of France, which will conjure some cus tom treillage trickery for you – like this project designed with Miles Redd – from $50,000. Ring 001 323 653 4006, or visit accentsoffrance.com.
9 Fans of the yellow compassrose cushion on Isabelle Sicart’s sofa (page 214) will be glad to know it comes in other colours, too, such as purple. Let us point you in the direction: ‘Estelle’ costs £182 approx from Lindell & Co. Ring 00 33 1 43 57 43 42, or visit lindellandco.com.
9
10
10 It’s hard to find furniture that’s practical and hardwearing as well as cheery, but Isabelle Sicart managed it: spot the brightred sheet metal stool in her studio on page 212. We’d guess it’s one of Tolix’s ‘H’ stools, originally designed for factory workers. Available in eight heights and 53 colours, it costs from £147 ap prox. Ring 00 31 71 562 0409, or visit tolix.nl.
11 Seeking a small sofa that didn’t compro mise on style, Isabelle Sicart chose Le Corbus ier’s neat ‘LC3’ twoseater for her compact Paris quarters (page 214). Reproduced by Cassina and available in different colours, finishes and ma terials, it costs from £4,915. Ring Chaplins on 020 8421 1779, or visit chaplins.co.uk.
11
12 The silk and velvet outfits of the women on the walls of the 16thcentury Sala delle Dame are so exquisitely painted you feel like you could touch them (page 207). Antico Setificio Fiorentino makes that seem possible with its reproduced Renaissance designs. ‘Damasco Uccellini’, for instance, dates from 1450 and costs £242 approx per m. Ring 00 39 055 213 861, or visit anticosetificiofiorentino.com. r 12
inspiration 1 Looking for a stylish new music system? 1
2
3
Take the retro route with a portable turntable, as Bella Freud did (page 172). For the record, Urban Outfitters sells an array of Crosley’s col oured numbers, including this olive ‘Nomad’ vinyl player (£200). Visit urbanoutfitters.com.
2 Keen as mustard on Bella Freud’s yellow fit ted carpet (page 175)? We certainly are, which is why we’ve found out where to get it: prices for ‘Richelieu Velours 4303’ start at £113 per sq m from Belgian company Louis de Poortere. Ring 00 32 56 393 393, or visit louisdepoortere.be.
3 Retrouvius sourced antique brass wall lights by Warren Platner for Bella Freud’s London pad (page 168). While the fittings themselves are no longer in production, other pieces by the Amer ican architect are still manufactured by Knoll, among them this side chair, which is plated in 18ct gold. Prices start at £4,344. Ring 00 39 0371 206 9266, or visit knollint.com.
4
4 Colour abounds in Bella Freud’s London home, where tomatohued leather covering an ottoman stands in contrast to a grassy green carpet (page 172). Seeking a hide with the right red cred, we found Edelman’s offerings to be the best match. Fire ‘Ranger’ (top) and burnt orange ‘Stella’ both cost £205.11 per sq ft. Ring 020 7351 7305, or visit edelmanleather.com.
5 Abdou serves drinks in what appear to be rather smart glasses (page 189), but given the laidback look of his fish restaurant, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were plastic posing as cut crystal. A smart move, we think, especially after finding Mario Luca Giusti’s acrylic designs. These high ‘Dolce Vita’ wine glasses, which come in seven jewel like colours, cost £18 each. Ring Amara on 0800 587 7645, or visit amara.com.
6
Good golly, that brolly on page 192! Life’s a beach if you’ve an umbrella under which to sip a drink like the patrons of Abdou’s seaside café. How fortunate, then, that Vida XL makes a shaggytopped parasol that’s strikingly sim ilar. It’s yours for £227. Visit wayfair.co.uk $ 5
222
6
FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM, TWITTER AND FACEBOOK
JUNE 2019 £4.99
THE WORLD OF INTERIORS MAGAZINE. THE NUMBER ONE TITLE FOR INSPIRING AND UNCOMPROMISING STYLE. THE INTERNATIONAL AUTHORITY ON ORIGINAL DESIGN
#theworldofinteriors
Above: June 1950 from ‘The Twelve Months of the Year’, 1950-51, tempera on board, 26.7 × 22.3cm. Opposite: A Solitary Boot, 1943-44, tempera on board, 17.5 × 22.8cm
224
EXHIBITION
diary
Still lives in season, never mind the Pollocks, puppet mastery, plus Charlotte Edwards’s listings
BOTH WORKS: © THE ESTATE OF ELIOT HODGKIN. LEFT: THE RAMSBURY MANOR FOUNDATION. PHOTOGRAPH BY AJ PHOTOGRAPHY. RIGHT: THE HODGKIN FAMILY COLLECTION
Eliot Hodgkin WADDESDON MANOR Aylesbury, Bucks In June 1950, Eliot Hodgkin made the first of 12 small pictures. Each one offers a formal array of fruit, flowers and vegetables related to the month it was painted, and the series steadily grew in confidence, reaching completion in May 1951. Every item, be it conker, berry, ivy or hyacinth, stands out against the bare back ground, occupying its own space with only a minimum of overlap with its neigh bours. Yet one thing seems to flow into another, owing to the subtle positioning of every part. These works display Hodgkin’s minute attention to detail and his masterly ability to recreate nature’s textures. They catch the veins in a gooseberry and the wilting petals of a poppy. They look modest, but form a tour de force. Shown in a new exhibition at Waddesdon Manor, this set of paintings marks a turning point. From then on, fruit and floral compositions dominated Hodg kin’s output. Admittedly, wild flowers had appeared in abundance in his wartime scenes of bombdamaged ruins, but the design of his pictures became tauter and more focused in the 1950s, like the Dutch and Spanish still lifes he admired. He had begun as a mural painter, following in Rex Whistler’s footsteps, and, like Whistler, was one of the Bright Young Things in the late 1920s and 1930s. But he was also descended from a distinguished Quaker family: his relatives includ ed Roger Fry, the biophysicist and Nobel prizewinner Alan Hodgkin, and the painter Howard Hodgkin. He never had to earn his living, yet a high seriousness was part of his inheritance. He became a connoisseur of old masters, a lifelong Anglican and, as a painter, remained intensely motivated. He painted in oils as well as tempera, preferring the latter, not because it was a medium associated with the Italian Renaissance, but because it best suited his desire for clarity. The show at Waddesdon includes one of his most popular paintings, A Solitary Boot (194344). The boot in question was found by Hodgkin and his wife while crossing a beach at Southwold during the war, unaware that it had been mined as part of the protection of the east coast against enemy invasion. The image Hodgkin paints may carry an oblique reference to the conflict, but it is his ability to depict the numerous grains of sand, and to contrast their grittiness with the battered leather, that makes this picture strangely moving. Many of those who visited him in his later years recall his Chelsea flat as a treasury of marvellous paintings. Clearly his collection, mostly of old masters, nourished his daily life, yet not a single example of his own work was on view. When the Tate acquired one and a curator wrote a lengthy exegesis on it, Hodgkin protested that it was a ‘very ordinary little painting and [did] not call for such solemn treatment’. But his paintings are far from ordinary. They signal a resolute deter mination to uphold continuity. This aligns him with a countermovement in British art of the late 1930s and 1940s, which re tained an interest in the modern, but cold shouldered Modernism. BROUGHT TO LIFE: ELIOT HODGKIN REDISCOVERED runs 23 May20 Oct, WedSun, and MonTues 2728 May and 2627 Aug, 115 $ FRANCES SPALDING has contributed to ‘Frances Hodgkins: European Jour neys’, accompanying a new exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery and published by Auckland University Press/Thames & Hudson
225
Hand-knotted limited-edition r ugs www.aiiostudio.com
BOTTOM: PRIVATE COLLECTION. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRISTOPHER STACH. BOTH WORKS: © THE POLLOCK KRASNER FOUNDATION. COURTESY KASMIN GALLERY, NEW YORK
EXHIBITION
diary
Lee Krasner: Living Colour
BARBICAN ART GALLERY Barbican Centre, Silk St, London EC2
Lee Krasner liked to remind people that she ‘painted before Pollock, during Pollock, after Pollock’. The new retrospective of her work at the Barbican Art Gallery, the first in Europe in 50 years, is mounted in that spirit, wilfully pushing Jackson aside and drawing pieces from her every age. She lived and died within 50 miles of where she was born, in Brooklyn in 1908. Russian and Yiddish were spoken in her parents’ home; prayers punctuated her youth. Yet this belies the distance she travelled in culture and achievement. She would thrive as a modern artist among the bohemian machismo of the Abstract Expressionists, whose attitudes to women one might charitably call ‘old-fashioned’. The Barbican curators want Krasner’s art to stand proud of Pollock, out of his shadow and speaking of her life as she always claimed that it did. After all, she was only married to him for a decade before he died in 1956, and she enjoyed nearly 30 years of productive life afterwards. But isolating Krasner isn’t a simple matter. She was a chameleon: the show begins with moody art-school self-portraits and shifts rapidly through spells of tessellated geometries, Picassoid figures and collages, and biomorphic fields of convulsive swirls. At one point she even produced window displays for a government war agency. (The aim was to advertise courses; finding herself tempted, she took one on explosives.) The exhibition concludes with some late abstractions in kelly green and carmine red and fuchsia pink; pictures that the critic Robert Hughes said ‘rap hotly on the eyeball at 50 paces’.
Krasner was a changeling in life as in art. Born Lena, she later tried on various selves, from Leah to Lenore to LK, only finally settling on the useful androgyny of Lee. Critics have also noticed some intriguing aspects of performance in her life, from the days playing dutiful housewife when the critics came calling on Pollock, to the years spent as his widow. Traits like this, along with her eclectic styles, can make you puzzled as to where the real Krasner lies. Abstract Expressionism was a time of signatures and formulae – Newman’s electric zips, Rothko’s moody oblongs – and yet here is Krasner trying on every costume. But can’t that be the essence of her? During the winter of 1947, when Krasner and Pollock had just moved out to Long Island, she found some old wagon wheels and turned them into sparkling mosaic tables with jewellery, glass and shells; Jackson poured the concrete. Mosaic and collage are the key. Her work isn’t as doubtful or mournful as that by some of the men; and she could likely see through their brooding genius acts. She is more enthused by design and composition. She could be expansive and turbulent – and the best of her works are statements as big in size and majestic ambition as any others in the period – but she never stops wanting to make parts intersect, to make forms click and colours chime. That’s its own kind of authenticity. LEE KRASNER: LIVING COLOUR runs 30 May-1 Sept, Mon-Wed, Sat, Sun 10-6, Thurs, Fri 10-9, bank hols 12-6 $ MORGAN FALCONER teaches at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York
Top: Palingenesis, 1971, oil on canvas, 2.083 × 3.404m. Above: Prophecy, 1956, oil on cotton duck, 147.6 × 86.4cm
227
12 PRINT ISSUES + 12 FREE DIGITAL EDITIONS
No cover lines for subscribers - ALL FOR £36*
FREE INSTANT ACCESS ON ANDROID, iPAD & iPHONE
Call 0844 848 5202 (ref: CWI18223) or register at www.magazineboutique.co.uk/woi/CWI18223 *Offer is limited to new subscribers at UK addresses only. Overseas airmail: Europe £80; USA $99 (periodicals postage); rest of the world £99. For overseas enquiries please e-mail theworldofinteriors@subscription.co.uk or call +44 (0)1858 438815. Offer closes 7 June 2019. For privacy policy and permission details, please visit www.condenast.co.uk/privacy
EXHIBITION
Domenico Gnoli: Two Sets for a Marionette Theatre
GNOLI: COURTESY PATRICK BOURNE & CO. PHOTOGRAPH OF VIRGINIA CAMPBELL: COURTESY HAIDEE BECKER
PATRICK BOURNE & CO St James’s Place, London SW1
In the early 1950s you could hardly move for Hollywood types strolling down the grand slope of the Via Veneto. Thanks to the thick pay packets of the GIs who had stayed on in Rome after it had been liberated from German occupation in 1944, and the injection of billions of dollars in aid under the Marshall Plan, the Italian capital had come to feel like the centre of the cosmopolitan world. The reopening of the vast film studio complex Cinecittà attracted American production companies in search of well-priced resources. Glamorous and creative figures such as Ingrid Bergman, Lady Diana Cooper, Orson Welles and Tennessee Williams followed, flocking to the sun-soaked terraces of the Hotel Excelsior or the Rosati, where the local Frascati, said Williams, washed through them ‘like a new blood’. Nearly all of them, at one time or another, also enjoyed spending evenings at the Palazzo Caetani, a handsome 16th-century palace in which the American writer John Becker and his wife, the Louisiana-born actor-turned-painter Virginia Campbell, had taken an apartment in 1952. Here, beneath painted frescos, the Beckers set up a marionette theatre, hosting soirées for each performance. Becker wrote the scripts – Sir Arthur’s American Beauty Rose and The True Story of Marco Polo, for instance – while Campbell made and directed the fantoccini. Some of the backdrops for their miniature theatre, which they christened the Quattro Staggioni (‘Four Seasons’), were painted by the artist and stage designer Domenico Gnoli (1933-70), then in his twenties. Two of these – of a bullring and a quayside, both reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico’s eerie townscapes – are among a small selection of sets, marionettes and photographs in this exhibition dedicated to the Beckers’ soirées. Over the 14 years the Quattro Staggioni was in operation, the Beckers’ productions often featured their actor and writer friends. Robert Graves, for instance, contributed a tiny mouse that scuttled across the stage on a tightrope and one of his own poems, which he read aloud. Karen Blixen was delighted to see a lilliputian version of herself being whisked across a glacier on a sleigh pulled by butterflies. The director Federico Fellini was so inspired by his visit that he asked Campbell if he could feature the theatre in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita. Campbell declined, but Fellini did use a replica of the Beckers’ apartment as the setting for a party sequence. In a preface to a collection of her father’s marionette plays, Haidee Becker recalled those evenings as being ‘filled with warmth and wonder’ and ‘lit by candle light’. Afterwards, she wrote, her mother would send their guests off into the night with a steaming, spice-infused, brandy-laced coffee and a chanted incantation to bring them good fortune. DOMENICO GNOLI: TWO SETS FOR A MARIONETTE THEATRE runs 13-22 May, Mon-Fri by appointment. Ring 020 3696 5285, or email cb@patrickbourne.com $ LUCY DAVIES writes about art and photography for the ‘Telegraph’ From top: Domenico Gnoli, A Spanish Town, c1957-58, stage set for The Spanish Ballet, mixed media; marionette of the Matador, hand-made by Virginia Campbell for The Spanish Ballet; Campbell photographed with her Quattro Staggioni theatre in the 1950s; Campbell’s bull marionette for The Spanish Ballet
diary
EXHIBITION
diary 1 1 Droog designs – still from A Clockwork Orange, 1970-71, at the Design Museum. 2 Suited and booted – Robert Home, The Duke of Wellington, c1804, at Apsley House. 3 Capital gains – Canaletto, London Seen Through an Arch of Westminster Bridge, 1747, at the Guildhall Art Gallery.
2
LONDON AFRIDI GALLERY ROYAL HOSPITAL RD, SW3 14 May-14
June. Mon-Fri 10-6. Sandy Jones draws on Islamic
tiles, Kuba cloth patterns and Modern British art to design carpets woven with bold stripes, sinuous lines and blocks of colour.
Until 3 Nov. Wed-Sun 11-5. Why eight years in
GUILDHALL ART GALLERY GUILDHALL YARD, EC2 31
India were the making of the young Arthur Wellesley. Don’t miss the splendid silver-gilt Deccan dinner service, a present from fellow officers, on public display for the first time.
May-1 Dec. Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun 12-4. Eighty paint-
BRUNEI GALLERY, SOAS THORNHAUGH ST, WC1 Until
22 June. Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 10.30-5, Thurs 10.30-8. Sir
Isaac Newton’s writings on the Philippines’ capricious tidal currents is the starting point for a survey of contemporary art from those islands, exploring the flow of ideas between Europe and Southeast Asia.
June. Wed-Sat 11-6. Recent poured, stained, col-
laged and lushly coloured paintings by Frank Bowling, on show in advance of the BritishGuyanese artist’s Tate Britain retrospective. MODERN ART VYNER ST, E2 4 May-15 June. WedSat 11-6. Peter Halley and Ugo Rondinone ex-
plore containment, isolation and our interior life in an arresting monochrome installation of bolted doors, geometric prison-cell canvases and a brick wall painted on burlap.
23 June. Tues, Thurs-Sun 10-6, Wed 10-9. The col-
June. Tues-Sat 11-6. Mohamed Melehi, whose
laborative practice of Grace Pailthorpe and Reuben Mednikoff, in Breton’s view ‘the best and most truly surrealist’ British artists. Plus, Jonathan Baldock’s teetering ceramic totems and mask-like tablets.
Casablanca Art School hung their paintings on city walls in the 1960s, presents joyful abstract compositions using a wave motif.
lection fêting the male form, by turns coolly observant, tender and erotic. CONNAUGHT BROWN ALBEMARLE ST, W1
3 May-
15 June. Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-12.30. How Henry Moore carved out his monumental reputation, and how it was viewed by the British sculptors who came after him, from Kenneth Armitage to Bruce McLean and Sarah Lucas. DESIGN MUSEUM KENSINGTON HIGH ST, W8 Until 4 Aug. Mon-Sun 10-6. David Adjaye’s essay on memorial architecture. Until 15 Sept, Stanley Kubrick’s
6
HALES LONDON BETHNAL GREEN RD, E1 10 May-22
THE MOSAIC ROOMS CROMWELL RD, SW5 Until 22
1 June. Mon-Wed 10-6, Thurs, Fri 10-7, Sat 12-6, 27 May 1-5. Highlights of Henry Miller’s art col-
4 Match fit – Aaron Kasmin, Venus Velvet Pencils, 2018, at Sims Reed. 5 Mirror man – Anish Kapoor, installation view, at Pitzhanger. 6 Wiggle room – Mohamed Melehi, Composition, 1970, at the Mosaic Rooms. 7 Tongue and groovy – Jonathan Baldock, Mask XL, 2018, at Camden
ings of London and its architecture spanning four centuries, from grand vistas to back gardens, with works by Canaletto, Spencer Gore, Frank Auerbach and Lisa Milroy.
CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE ARKWRIGHT RD, NW3 Until
CONINGSBY GALLERY TOTTENHAM ST, W1 20 May-
5
GAGOSIAN DAVIES ST, W1 Until 8 June. Tues-Sat 10-6.
APSLEY HOUSE PICCADILLY, HYDE PARK CORNER, W1
embedded with driftwood, barbed wire and other flotsam and jetsam from Dungeness, dating from 1989-90, when he was engaged in making his garden there. See page 160.
EC2 Until 28 June. Mon-Fri 10-5. Cash points: Feliks Topolski’s lively pencil sketches recording frenetic activity at the Bank’s new printing works in Debden, Essex, in 1957.
4
Milanese jewellery entrepreneur Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Rabolini’s world-class collection of 20th-century Italian art on paper. Having tirelessly tested the differences in our perception of a painting and a photograph over his 60-year career, Gerhard Richter merged the two by simply smearing a series of snapshots with paint, which, he says, ‘partly resolved the problem’ and is ‘better than anything I could ever say on the subject’.
AMANDA WILKINSON BREWER ST, W1 Until 22 June. Tues-Sat 11-6. Derek Jarman’s tar paintings
BANK OF ENGLAND MUSEUM BARTHOLOMEW LANE,
3
ESTORICK COLLECTION CANONBURY SQUARE, N1 Until 23 June. Wed-Sat 11-6, Sun 12-5. Gold standard:
THE PHOTOGRAPHERS’ GALLERY RAMILLIES ST, W1
Until 2 June. Mon-Wed, Fri, Sat 10-6, Thurs 10-8, Sun 11-6. A solitary outsider who was abandoned
on a doorstep aged four, Dave Heath has been eclipsed by contemporaries such as Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand; but his melancholy studies in velvety blackand-white, often of isolated figures, are gaining increasing recognition. PITZHANGER GALLERY MATTOCK LANE, W5 Until 18
Aug. Tues-Fri 10-4.30, Sat 10-3, Sun 10-4.30. Anish Kapoor reflects on Soane’s interest in mirrors in the first installation in this space, which adjoins the architect’s restored Ealing residence. SIMS REED GALLERY DUKE ST, ST JAMES’S, W1 30
May-28 June. Mon-Fri 10-6.
Aaron Kasmin strikes back with more meticulous pencil drawings of his vintage matchbook collection.
perfectionism extended to using Nasa lenses in order to film Barry Lyndon by candlelight, making Saul Bass design 300 versions of the poster for The Shining, and having a scout spend a year photographing doorways in London for Eyes Wide Shut. This show delves into his obsessive creative process.
WADDINGTON CUSTOT CORK ST,
17 May-30 June. Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-4. Urban scrawl:
W1
the influence of ancient and modern graffiti on the work of mid-20th-century artists such as Brassaï, Dubuffet, Tàpies and Twombly. 7
230
EXHIBITION
diary
1 OUTSIDE LONDON
WELBECK HARLEY GALLERY Until 16 June. Mon-Sat
BATH HOLBURNE MUSEUM 24 May-15 Sept. Mon-Sat
10-6, Sun 10-4. Jewellery fashioned from lost-
10-5, Sun 11-5. At home with Vuillard, who used
and-found treasures by Romilly Saumarez Smith (WoI Jan 2016). Until 23 June, Sylvie Franquet’s punk-infused textile art.
disorientating pattern to charge his domestic scenes with suppressed emotion. BIRMINGHAM IKON Until 2 June. Tues-Sun 11-5. ‘So many things, good and bad, travel by sea’ is how Hew Locke explains the recurrence of ships and boats in his work interrogating the symbols and language of colonial power.
WOKING THE LIGHTBOX Until 2 June. Tues-Sat 10.30-5,
Sun 11-4. Photographs made by women, from Anna Atkins’s cyanotypes to Sarah Lucas’s self-portraits. Until 23 June, St Ives artists from the Ingram Collection.
BRISTOL ROYAL WEST OF ENGLAND ACADEMY Until 2
YORK YORK ART GALLERY Until 23 June. Mon-Sun
June. Tues-Sat 10-5.30, Sun 11-5. Animals real and imaginary in the art of Gaudier-Brzeska.
10-5. Another Ruskin anniversary show, this
BRUTON HAUSER & WIRTH SOMERSET 25 May-8 Sept.
one reflects on his relationship with Turner’s work, both artists’ observations of natural and weather phenomena – and their mutual struggles with the dark cloud of depression.
Tues-Sun 10-5. Gallerist Manula Wirth selects 70 pieces by radical female artists from the collection of her mother, Ursula Hauser.
BELGIUM BRUSSELS KANAL Until 30 June. Wed, Sun
CARDIFF MARTIN TINNEY GALLERY Until 6 June. Mon-
12-6, Thurs-Sat 12-10. Before this Citroën fac-
Thurs 10-6. Fine watercolour studies of eggs,
tory is converted into a state-of-the-art museum, here’s a last chance to see Pompidou collection works cleverly staged in the bodyrepair workshop and car showroom.
buds and fruit by Sigrid Müller, and Susan Gathercole’s graphic still-life arrangements of cups and jugs on patterned fabric. COMPTON WATTS GALLERY Until 9 June. Tues-Sun 10.30-5. Alexander Creswell’s watercolours of the Holy Land. Until 23 June, satellite of love:
Victorian artists’ fascination with the Moon. COOKHAM STANLEY SPENCER GALLERY Until 3 Nov.
Mon-Sun 10.30-5.30. The annual exhibition here
is usually a one-man affair; but this year, Spencer is set in the context of his contemporaries at the Slade and beyond, considering their shared response in art to the two wars, religion, landscape and the muse. MIDDLESBROUGH MIMA Until 16 June. Tues, Wed, Fri,
Sat 10-4.30, Thurs 10-7, Sun 12-4. Rocks of ages:
how today’s lcd technology depends on ancient minerals, a show of contemporary art and geology on tour from Sheffield. NORWICH SAINSBURY CENTRE Until 30 June. Tues-Fri
10-6, Sat, Sun 10-5. Body of work: Magnum pho-
tographs of the human form from the 1930s to the present. 11 May-31 Aug, three huge faceted stainless-steel beasts by Lynn Chadwick are on the prowl in the gardens. OXFORD BODLEIAN WESTON LIBRARY Until 2 June.
Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun 11-5. A 3,500-year-old bowl
inscribed with the indecipherable Linear A script, Tolkien’s Esperanto notebooks and Matisse’s illustrations for James Joyce’s Ulysses (which he hadn’t read, and so drew scenes from Homer’s Odyssey instead), in a show about translation, the movement of ideas and a universal language. Until 9 Feb 2020, how artists and scientists have sought to convey their ideas in 3D. LERY
Until 6 July. Tues, Thurs-Sat 11-4, Wed 1-6. In-
side information: art reflecting changes in British home life from the 1950s to the 1980s.
2
FRANCE PARIS MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG
Until 30 June. Mon 10.30-10, Tues-Sun 10.30-7. Rare surviv-
ing room schemes, folding screens and other decorative art by the Nabis group. SWITZERLAND RIGGISBERG ABEGG STIFTUNG Until 10 Nov. Mon-Sun 2-5.30. Wool tunics, textile frag-
ments and ornamental appliqués from thirdto ninth-century Egypt: dyed using madder, indigo, insects or sea-snail secretions, and preserved in the heat of the desert.
3
USA BEACON DIA:BEACON Until 9 Sept. Mon, Thurs-
Sun 11-6. Amid the upheavals of 1968, Charlotte Posenenske decided that ‘art can contribute nothing to the solution of pressing social problems’, and became a sociologist instead. This retrospective of her 12-year art career focuses on her playful, modular sculptures that mimic industrial ventilation ducts. NEW YORK THE MET BREUER
Until 2 June. TuesThurs, Sun 10-5.30, Fri, Sat 10-9. Explore the array
of table-top architectural fragments in Siah Armajani’s Dictionary for Building (1974-75); then head down to the East River waterfront to see his ideas scaled up in a public sculpture that riffs on America’s covered bridges.
4
5
NEUE GALERIE Until 24 June. Mon, Thurs-Sun 11-6.
Unflinching, interrogative self-portraits by German and Austrian artists, 1900-45.
5 Hawkish policy – Robert Havell, Jr, copy after Audubon, Iceland or Jer Falcon, 1837, in Salem. 6 Give vent – Charlotte Posenenske, Vierantrohr (Square Tube), Series D, 1967, in Beacon. 7 Nailed it – Meret Oppenheim, Fur Gloves with Wooden Fingers, 1936, in Bruton
SALEM PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM 11 May-1 Dec. Tues-Sun 10-5. All-American art and furniture
from the Carolyn and Peter Lynch collection. WASHINGTON, DC ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY Until 23
June. Mon-Sun 10-5.30.
Jade and kingfisherfeather hairpins, silk robes and scrolls supply a comprehensive picture of the life of Qing empresses in the Forbidden City $
SHEFFIELD GRAVES GAL
1 Ahead in the primaries – Patrick Caulfield, Coloured Still Life, 1967, in Sheffield. 2 Critical eye – Roger Fry, Self-Por trait, 1921, in Cookham. 3 Bit on the side – Edouard Vuillard, The Candlestick, c1900, in Bath. 4 Crimson dyed – sleeveless wool tunic, Egypt, sixth century, in Riggisberg.
6
7
231
CONDENASTJOHANSENS.COM LAS ISLAS, COLOMBIA
THE WORLD OF
CURTAINS & CUSHIONS
Condé Nast International Chairman and Chief Executive: Jonathan Newhouse President: Wolfgang Blau
The Condé Nast International Group of Brands includes: UK Vogue, House & Garden, Brides, Tatler, The World of Interiors, GQ, Vanity Fair, Condé Nast Traveller, Glamour, Condé Nast Johansens, GQ Style, Love, Wired, Condé Nast College of Fashion & Design, Ars Technica France Vogue, Vogue Hommes, AD, Glamour, Vogue Collections, GQ, AD Collector, Vanity Fair Italy Vogue, Glamour, AD, Condé Nast Traveller, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, La Cucina Italiana, Lisa Germany Vogue, GQ, AD, Glamour, GQ Style, Wired Spain Vogue, GQ, Vogue Novias, Vogue Niños, Condé Nast Traveler, Vogue Colecciones, Vogue Belleza, Glamour, AD, Vanity Fair Japan Vogue, GQ, Vogue Girl, Wired, Vogue Wedding
BATHROOMS
TOSCA & WILLOUGHBY ONLY WOODEN LOO SEATS ONLY THE BEST
INTERIORS DIRECTORY
INTERIORS
EDUCATION
Taiwan Vogue, GQ, Interculture Mexico and Latin America Vogue Mexico and Latin America, Glamour Mexico, AD Mexico, GQ Mexico and Latin America India Vogue, GQ, Condé Nast Traveller, AD
Published under Joint Venture: Brazil: Vogue, Casa Vogue, GQ, Glamour Russia: Vogue, GQ, AD, Glamour, GQ Style, Tatler, Glamour Style Book
Published under License or Copyright Cooperation: Australia: Vogue, Vogue Living, GQ Bulgaria: Glamour China: Vogue, AD, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, GQ Style, Condé Nast Center of Fashion & Design, Vogue Me, Vogue Film Czech Republic and Slovakia: Vogue, La Cucina Italiana, Germany: GQ Bar Berlin Hungary: Glamour Iceland: Glamour Korea: Vogue, GQ, Allure, W Middle East: Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller, AD, GQ, Vogue Café Riyadh Poland: Vogue, Glamour Portugal: Vogue, GQ, Vogue Café Porto Romania: Glamour Russia: Vogue Café Moscow, Tatler Club Moscow South Africa: House & Garden, GQ, Glamour, House & Garden Gourmet, GQ Style, Glamour Hair The Netherlands: Vogue, Glamour, Vogue The Book, Vogue Man, Vogue Living Thailand: Vogue, GQ Turkey: Vogue, GQ Ukraine: Vogue, Vogue Café Kiev Condé Nast USA President and Chief Executive Officer: Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr. Artistic Director: Anna Wintour Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Brides, Self, GQ, GQ Style, The New Yorker, Condé Nast Traveler, Allure, AD, Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Wired, W, Golf Digest, Teen Vogue, Ars Technica, Pitchfork, Backchannel, Them
SHUTTERS
Tosca & Willoughby Home Farm Aston Rowant OX49 5ST 01844 353477 sales@looseats.com
www.looseats.com
FLOORING
Specialist in luxurious surfaces for floor and wall as well as architectural elements, De Ferranti has been sourcing rare and unusual products for architects, designers and a range of international private clients for nearly two decades. No matter how large or small, simple or ornate the work, De Ferranti offers unique solutions for residential, commercial and yacht projects.
Tel +44 20 7384 4424 www.deferranti.com
Specialist contemporary stone and marble suppliers with bespoke capabilities
SOFT FURNISHINGS
Since 1996, Limestone Gallery has been working with many of the leading names of British architecture and interior design, specialising in the manufacture and installation of bespoke stonework of all kinds. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7828 6900 www.limestonegallery.com
To advertise here call 020 7499 9080 ext. 3705 247
JOURNAL OF AN ANTIQUES VETTER
THE TESTS OF TIME
As the chair of the Antiquities Vetting Committee at Masterpiece London art fair, I evaluate antiquities, which are artefacts over 1,000 years of age from Europe to Afghanistan, North Africa and Egypt, with a bit of an overlap into early Islamic and Byzantine items. It’s our job to make sure that everything is what it purports to be – so visitors can buy with confidence – and of a sufficient standard to represent the fair, as the name Masterpiece suggests. Confirming provenance is an essential part of the job, but there is a particular sensitivity surrounding the sale of archaeological artefacts from the world’s political hotspots. For many years now, countries with a rich cultural heritage have been requesting the re turn of objects from museums, and complex questions have arisen over who gave whom permission to take what. The claims seldom come with anything concrete to substantiate them, but they can disrupt the trade and create uncertainty. I feel strongly that there is a need to articulate the historical reality of the trade, where pa perwork was seldom retained, while adapting to meet the different standards of collecting in a very changed world. Every Masterpiece London vetting day starts with a reminder of the do’s and don’ts, including the confidentiality rules we ad here to. It’s the only way of keeping things civil if and when things go wrong. No dealer likes to have an exhibit vetted off, so there are strict rules on behaviour. We then run through the list of exhibi tors and start with the stands that are going to be more challenging. We particularly look at the authenticity of objects and whether they have been attributed to the right culture and date. We also look for restoration – not a problem in itself, but too much can make an item more modern than ancient. At one fair we took a close look at a bronze greave (armour to protect the shin) only to find it had been restored to the point of being misleading. In fact, we would have allowed it to stay with less or no restoration.
As well as detecting restorations and forgeries, our committee has to examine every piece under a magnifying glass, with a torch, using specialist equipment to detect surface composition. Tapping or even smelling an object can be equally effective. We debate style and technique, for example, asking ourselves whether the sur face shows signs of modern tooling, whether the nose is original, or whether an object has been correctly attributed to the Middle Kingdom – could it be later or perhaps earlier in date? We had a particular issue with a large Roman bronze foot one year. It had some peculiarities in style and yet the surface was very convincing when observed through the microscope. We couldn’t fault it, and the metallurgical report couldn’t be argued with. Ulti mately, our duty is only to remove objects where the evidence against it is strong. We also have a duty to the exhibitor who has invested in the object, so the bronze foot remained. A large terracotta idol was exhibited on a stand another year. Usually this type of object is heavily restored, so to find an intact example was improbable. We asked the exhibitor if we could wet the surface to see if any restorations became visible in a darker shade of terracotta. The figure was sufficiently dampened to re veal very little restoration – it’s surprising how often this technique works. The idol remained on the stand and dried very quickly. However hard the morning has been we all look forward to a jolly good lunch, where ideas are exchanged and difficulties aired. My job requires me to be a generalist, so it’s a privilege to listen to academics with an indepth understanding of Roman sculpture or the composition of ancient gold. Despite the challenges, a day spent with academics and dealers is an enriching experience where we all learn from each other, and it keeps us going back for more $ Masterpiece London runs at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London SW3, 27 June-3 July. For more information, visit masterpiecefair.com
ILLUSTRATION: BRETT RYDER
WITH SOME 30 YEARS IN THE TRADE, MASTERPIECE LONDON’S EXPERT JOANNA VAN DER LANDE USES HER SENSES OF SIGHT, SMELL AND TOUCH TO CHECK THAT THE ARTEFACTS ON SALE AT THE FAIR – FROM TERRACOTTA IDOLS TO ROMAN BRONZE FEET – ARE THE REAL DEAL
Delicately carved Louis 16th fireplace mantel. Grey Ardennes and white Carrara marble. Ca. 1880. Interior design Natela Mankaeva. Moscow - Russia. Photo : Michael Stepanov.
www.origines.com RICHEBOURG � FRANCE