The Decoration of the Greenhouse by Fernand Renard I
Bunny inherited a passion for gardening from her maternal grandfather. As her own knowledge of gardening and garden history grew, she came to appreciate the activity as a rich and complex cultural phenomenon, a harmonious convergence of nature, botany, horticulture, art, and material culture that was perfectly consonant with her own interests, tastes, and aspirations as a gardener. It was this vision that inspired her, not only in the layout of the grounds for the family’s new home, a gracious mansion of whitewashed stone at Oak Spring, but also in the building of a formal greenhouse to complement the estate’s vast expanse of flower beds, orchards, lawns, and meadows, in which she could carry out horticultural experiments and cultivate seedlings and plants for her garden. All of Bunny’s gardening projects reflected her refined intuition, but she allowed herself to be influenced by examples from the past, finding ideas that she could apply in a manner that harmonized with her own vision for her garden. Thus, she turned to the French tradition for the design of her formal greenhouse, which was then constructed by the New York architect H. Page Cross (1910–1975). A brief letter from Bunny’s secretary to the architect sent early in 1959 shows how closely she followed the project from beginning to end. After providing Cross with Renard’s address, which he had apparently requested, the letter continues, “Mrs. Mellon also asked me to say…that she is not yet ready to go ahead with the greenhouse. She is sure you understand that she does not want you to go ahead, but she wanted to make certain there would be no misunderstanding as she will want to make some modifications.” 72 The formal greenhouse was no mere conservatory, but a carefully designed and functional building consisting of two long wings, each
wide enough to accommodate two rows of plantings—one bed along the inner stone wall and a bench along the length of the outer glass wall. Bunny then devised a pleasing architectural feature to vary the utilitarian aspect of the building—a quadrangular pavilion intended to serve as a vestibule with a hidden workbench, while also providing access to the two wings, each of which ends with its own small pavilion. The vestibule is a beautiful and unusual space, with diffuse light streaming through the glass doors to the right and left, and evocations of eighteenth-century French Orientalism in its architecture and decor. Perched on the roof of the pavilion is a lead urn in the eighteenthcentury style containing a magnificent floral arrangement beautifully wrought from several kinds of metals. This piece of garden sculpture was conceived by Jean Schlumberger (1907–1987), a French jewelry designer who came to the United States after the Second World War and became one of Tiffany & Co.’s most celebrated collaborators. Bunny admired the sophistication and imagination of the artist’s work, which included a vein of whimsy, particularly in his interpretations of nature. She and “Johnny” became close friends and in 1959–60 she asked him to propose some ideas for the decoration of her greenhouse. In the archives of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation are eight studies by the artist pertaining to this commission.73 Bunny devoted a great deal of thought to the layout, furnishing, and decoration of her pavilion. She had wooden cupboards built into the walls of the room, drawing inspiration from L’Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner), an exhaustive treatise on woodworking that was published in several volumes from 1769 to 1774 by the celebrated Parisian cabinetmaker André Jacob Roubo (1739–1791) under the
Bunny Mellon in her formal greenhouse at Oak Spring, 1962. Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photography, New York.
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