JUNE 2016

REIMAGINING THE RAJ

Jaipur cocktail bar – with a twist
 HORTENSIA COLLECTION • VOIE LACTÉE RING

L’ART DE LA JOAILLERIE DEPUIS 1780

174 New Bond Street • Harrods, The Fine Jewellery Room • Selfridges, The Wonder Room
For all enquiries: 0207 495 6303
 CONTENTS JUNE 2016

52 SPLASH HITS 172 VISIONS OF BYZANTIUM

COVER Jali good show – pierced balustrades
both delight the eye and promote effective air
circulation at Bar Palladio in Jaipur. Want to see
more of the hotspot in Rajasthan? Lattice lead
you to page 216. Photograph: Henry Wilson
Historic patterns made modern? Miranda
Sinclair gives us a toile or two by the beach
65 SERIOUS PURSUITS
Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities
66 SHELF LIFE
Give your cupboard love – this range of
vessels covers soup to nuts, says Max Egger
75 ART AND ANTIQUES GUIDE
Welcome to our biddable supplement, a gallery
of Strand photographs, Chinese sconces – plus
a dark dose of Dubuffet. We also air the artiest
retail and serve up the season’s fairs in full
152 NETWORK
Merchandise and events worldwide
David Winfield’s conservation work at a
13th-century church in Turkey filled a hole in
history – and revealed how Medieval muralists
actually worked. Antony Eastmond reports
178 COMMON THREADS
Specially commissioned ribbons snake through
the Magowans’ west London terrace house –
a homage to former occupants, a family of
Edwardian drapers. Text: Dominic Bradbury
188 MARCHIONESS IN MOURNING
Despite its Burgundy location, the château of
Cormatin was the height of Paris fashion in
the 1620s, says Marie-France Boyer, complete
with a gilded study and a chamber of curiosities
200 THE MAKING OF BACON

156 ADDRESS BOOK

18 ANTENNAE
What’s new in style, decoration and design,
chosen by Nathalie Wilson
27 ANTENNAE ROUNDUP
Our selection of the best door furniture
37 BOOKS
Reading on art, architecture and design
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Suppliers in this issue
234 INSPIRATION
How to recreate some of the design
effects in this issue, by Augusta Pownall
238 EXHIBITION DIARY
Land art ahoy!, flowers of femininity, the nude
seekers, plus Charlotte Edwards’s listings
260 JOURNAL OF AN UNDERWATER
SCULPTOR Jason deCaires Taylor promotes
marine ecology with his statues on the seabed
INTERIORS
162 POMPADOUR’S PROTEGES
There’s nothing fishy about Antoinette Poisson,
name aside. Indeed, two of its founders cover
their Paris flat with the selfsame 18th-century-
style wallpapers they sell. Text: Valérie Lapierre
Before 1933, when he devoted himself fully
to painting, Francis Bacon dabbled in interior
design. Rebecca Daniels links his furniture
to the framing devices of his intense artworks
206 BACK AT THE RANCH
Despite its modern silhouette, basic materials
built this Uruguayan loft house by the coast.
Though close to upmarket resorts, it’s ‘more
pampas than pampering’, says Lee Marshall
216 A FINE BALANCE
A cocktail of Edwardian and Indian flavours
– neon paisleys, tented ceilings and pierced
screens – whet appetites in this Jaipur
bar. Henry Wilson meets its maker/shaker
224 CREAM OF CARAMEL
Lined with fine brown parcel paper, this bijou
London flat, decorated by James McWhirter,
comes ready gift-wrapped. It’s classic Colefax,
says Tim Beddow, adapted for present times
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MONTEREY LOS ANGELES SAN FRANCISCO LONDON MONACO

 antennae
What’s in the air this month, edited by Nathalie Wilson

1 Icelandic-born designer Kjartan

Oskarsson’s 40cm-diameter dimma-
ble LED ‘Halo’ wall lamp is handmade
from white oak and ash. Instead of
flicking a light switch, you activate its
heavenly glow by pulling on a leather
strap and rotating the frame. From
£2,760 approx. Ring 00 354 897 5574,
or visit kjartanoskarsson.com.

1 2 Like many before them, Nadia Noel and

Vanessa di Mino fell in love with Morocco.
So it was that four years ago Chabi Chic came
into being. Their firm’s extensive range includes
the ‘Beldi Fes Uni’ tableware collection (shown)
that, despite traditional appearances, is suitable
2 for modern living, being both microwave- and
dishwasher-safe. From £8.75 approx for a small
plate; available in five colourways. Ring 00 212
6 42 84 17 65, or visit chabi-chic.com.

3 A panoply of sources inspired Chiara Andre-

atti’s ‘Primitive Weave’ collection for carpet
company Cc-tapis: Beni Ourain rugs, African
symbols and Weimar textiles. Mixing things
up a bit didn’t stop there though; each of the
four Himalayan wool rugs (available in two col-
ourways) are constructed using an amalgam of
Tibetan flatweave and hand-knotted pile tech-
niques. Available in standard and bespoke sizes,
they cost £525 approx per sq m. Ring 00 39 028
909 3884, or visit cc-tapis.com.
3 4

4 India Mahdavi’s dream of creating her ‘Bub-

bles’ door furniture didn’t ‘nearly reach the
sky, then… fade and die’, as the old music-hall
song has it. The five-piece collection, which
embodies ‘simplicity and femininity’, became
a very solid brass reality thanks to a collabora-
tion with long-established Belgian manufac-
turer Vervloet. Prices from £60 approx for a
PHOTOGRAPHY: FILIPPO BAMBERGHI (3)

thumb turn; available in 14 finishes. Ring 00 32

2 410 61 50, or visit vervloet.com.

5 You don’t hand-print wallpapers for more

than 200 years without amassing a wealth of
skill – as well as an archive full of documents.
Originally executed in the early 19th century,
Zuber’s five latest reissued scenic designs in-
clude ‘Grande Chasse au Tigre dans l’Inde’
(1815; left and right) and ‘Paysage de Télé-

5
18
 6

maque dans l’Ile de Calypso’ (1818; middle),

and can be yours for £950 per 53 × 390cm drop.
Ring 020 7824 8265, or visit zuber.fr.

6 Wash away your woes with a long, hot bath

and Larusi’s lovely 1 × 1.6m Lithuanian pre-
washed linen-mix towels (left) and 1 × 1.8m
Turkish hammam cotton towels; £36 each. 7

Ring 020 7428 0256, or visit larusi.com.

7 For the benefit of those not in the

know, Picós are the huge sound
systems used at Colombian street
parties and are customised to re-
flect their owners’ identities. Find
one that mirrors your personality
among Plusdesign Gallery’s ‘Picós
Project’ models, five of which are by in-
digenous craftsmen and five by European
designers, including Dirk vander Kooij’s
(top; £6,200 approx a pair) and Nathalie 8
du Pasquier’s (£14,310 approx). Ring 00
39 328 362 9774, or visit plusdesigngallery.it.

8 After many years of photographic shoots,

the Zoffany team found themselves sitting on
a hoard of antique upholstered furniture. This
formed the basis of a new eight-piece ‘Curator’
collection, which includes this petite but deep-
seated 1950s-inspired ‘Oscar’ sofa (from £2,000
without fabric; also available as an armchair).
Ring 01895 221000, or visit zoffany.com.

9 The practice of giving defunct 19th-century

water-heating coppers a second lease of life as
suave garden planters sowed the seed for Archi- 9
tectural Heritage’s repro sheet-brass models,
finished and patinated by hand. From £800,
they are available in various standard shapes
and sizes or to clients’ specifications. Ring 01386
584414, or visit architectural-heritage.co.uk.

10 One big and one enormous name of Swe-

dish home wares have hooked up: glass de-
signer/ceramicist Ingegerd Råman and Ikea.
The resulting tableware collection, both simple
and functional, is part of the new handcrafted
‘Viktigt’ range, along with furniture and light-
ing by the in-house team. Shown: a collection
of glassware (from £5 for a pair of bowls) and a
bamboo stacking chair (£40). Visit ikea.com. r
10

19
 antennae
1

1 Having named their

firm after Louis XV’s
mistress, the trio behind
Antoinette Poisson (see page
162) are clear which era inspires
them. Shown are four of five ‘envel-
oppes à cacheter’ (£7.60 approx
each) and embossed domino-
paper ‘Silhouette’ lights (£175
approx each). They can
feature your own profile
– invisible until lit up.
Ring 00 33 1 77 17 13 11, or
visit antoinettepoisson.com.

2 Michel Pastoureau, author

of The Devil’s Cloth, claims that
2 until two centuries ago stripes
carried negative connotations and
were worn only by those on society’s
3 margins. Surely not Clarence House’s
linen/silk ‘Magritte Stripe HB142’ (£225 per
m), had it been around – the nine colourways
are just too joyful. Ring Turnell & Gigon on 020
7259 7280, or visit turnellandgigongroup.com.

3 Valerie Objects nourishes the design of con-

temporary eating implements via its ‘Cutlery
Project’. Maarten Baas’s four-piece place set-
ting closely resembles his original hand-drawn
sketches, right down to the wobbly serrated
blade. Prices start from £8.75 approx for a knife;
available in three finishes. Ring 00 32 3 458 05
4 82, or visit valerie-objects.com.

4 Take your fair-trade coffee ideals a step fur-

ther: percolate it in Yield Design’s 1.5-litre matt-
ceramic French press with copper pull (£115
approx) produced in collaboration with a long-
established Vietnamese pottery, one which lays
claim to comparable ethical
practices. Ring Old Faithful
Shop on 001 778 327 9376,
or visit oldfaithfulshop.com.

5 Ralph Lauren’s new ‘Elizabeth Street’ col-

lection may ‘celebrate the eclectic sensibility of
New York’s artist lofts’ but this antiqued-white
183cm-diameter dining table (£7,300) would
make a handsome addition to any interior. Ring
5 020 7535 4600, or visit ralphlaurenhome.com $
 I t a l y, P u g l i a .

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design Studio Job
 antennae roundup
Get a grip on your door furniture, with Miranda Sinclair’s handy guide to knobs, knockers and more

2
1 3

6 8

1 ‘Big Door Bouillon-Racine 9.6’, £76 approx, Emery & Cie. 2 ‘Rotary’ handle, by Karin Verzariu, £1,920, Black and Key. 3 ‘Pineapple Greetings’ door-
knocker, £30, Anthropologie. 4 Doorknobs, by Antoni Gaudí, from £54 approx each, BD Barcelona. 5 Bronze ‘Punique’ letterbox, by Daniel Podva,
£300 approx, Série Rare. 6 ‘Trousdale’ doorknocker, by Kravitz Design, £795, Strada London. 7 Doorknobs (from left: ‘Sea Urchin’, £255; ‘Starfish’,
£271), Collier Webb. 8 ‘Modern Rectilinear’ entry set, from $3,084, SA Baxter. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

27
 sea of love

JOSEPHCARINICARPETS.COM
 antennae roundup
1

7
6 8

1 Danish steel-plate mailbox, £434, Manufactum. 2 Black house numbers, by Richard Neutra, $27 each, Design Within Reach. 3 ‘No. 1013’ door-
knob, from £350, The Nanz Company. 4 ‘Solid S1333’ barrel-lever handle on round rose, £142 per pair, Turnstyle Designs. 5 Lever handle, by Adolf
Loos, £369, Izé. 6 Concave door boss with stepped rosette, from $3,550, H. Theophile. 7 Doorknockers (from left: ‘Ruhlman’; ‘Arbus’), by Marie-
Véronique Swannell, £475 each, Haute Déco. 8 ‘Boma L501’ handle, £44, Olivari. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

29
 antennae roundup
1

7 8

1 ‘Louis XVI’ door lever with rose, from £310 approx, Bronzes de France. 2 Louis XVI-style doorknocker, £4,570, PE Guerin. 3 Dark-bronze ‘Carter Suite’
centre doorknob, £1,740, The Beardmore Collection. 4 Brass ‘Tudor Rose’ front-door knob, from £408, Charles Edwards. 5 ‘Rococo Pop’ door lever, by
Enrico Cassina, £424 per pair, Solid Wooden Doors. 6 Brass bell pull, £35, Dickinson’s Period House Shops. 7 Black/gold ‘Frisby’ postbox, £185, Broughtons.
8 Gold-plated ‘237’ double-door surface rim lock, £9,639 approx, Rémy Garnier. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $

30
 Stepevi showcases its latest creation, ‘Crack’, which is inspired by the effect
of use and age on surfaces. Exhibiting masterful creative and technical
skills, ‘Crack Wall’ (left) and ‘Crack Garden’ (right) are two stars of this
new collection, blending soft colour tones and striking complex layers.
They can be customised to any size and delivered within four weeks.
Stepevi, 274 King’s Rd, London SW3 (020 7376 7574; stepevi.com)

A FINE RUG CAN SET THE TONE FOR ANY INTERIOR, SO IT’S AN INVESTMENT WELL WORTH MAKING. THE WORLD
OF INTERIORS SHOWCASES THREE COMPANIES KNOWN FOR UNPARALLELED ARTISTRY AND TECHNICAL ACCOM-
PLISHMENTS. THEIR LATEST DESIGNS ARE A FEAST FOR THE EYES – AND THE FEET. PHOTOGRAPHY: NEIL MERSH
 TH E WO R L D O F IN TE R IO R S 쮿 PRO MOT I O N

GROUND CONTROL
‘Up and Over’ is a hand-knotted Nepalese, one of nine graded designs
from Deirdre Dyson’s 2016 collection, ‘Walking on Art’. All Deirdre Dyson
carpets are handmade to order from the finest, most luxurious materials
and from a palette of over 2,000 colours, using wool and silk combinations.
Deirdre Dyson, 554 King’s Rd, London SW6 (020 7384 4464; deirdredyson.com)
 TH E WO R L D O F IN TE R IO R S 쮿 PRO MOT I O N

La Manufacture Cogolin, renowned for its original geometric patterns

and subtle Mediterranean style, has been the epitome of sophistication in
the craft of fine rugs since the company was founded in 1924. ‘Syracuse’
(pictured) is designed by Laurent Buttazzoni and handwoven on 19th-
century jacquard looms in wool, cotton and jute.
La Manufacture Cogolin, 30 Rue des Saints-pères, 75007 Paris (00 33 1 40 49 04 30;
manufacturecogolin.com)
 Mexicans in Michigan, New York’s track and field, comrades in arts, our fabric in
focus, the Bard’s beds, Saint Peter’s floor tiles, down with Bown, new-school Thai
DIEGO RIVERA AND FRIDA KAHLO IN DETROIT (ed. Mark Rosenthal; Yale,
rrp £30) Twenty-fourteen was not the first time that the near-bank-
rupt city of Detroit has considered selling the collection of its own
institute of art. In 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, the
city’s economy was in dire straits, and the Ford Motor Company’s
workers took to the streets in protest at lay-offs and pay cuts. The
Ford Hunger March was renamed the Ford Massacre after four
demonstrators were shot dead by company security guards and
police, and 20 more were injured.
The Mexican artist couple Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo arrived
in Detroit just six weeks after the protest, in April 1932. Rivera was a
communist, and professed sympathy with the workers, but he was
also a pragmatist, according to Mark Rosenthal in a scholarly new
book. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit is pub-
lished to accompany an exhibition at the Detroit
Institute of Art, where in 1932 Rivera had re-
ceived a generous mural commission, funded
by none other than Henry Ford’s son, Edsel.
Rivera does not come off well in this story. His wife
observed dryly that he ‘never worried about embrac-
ing contradictions’, and despite his radical affilia-
tions he was hugely excited by American industry,
and basked in the attentions of Detroit’s elite. He
later praised in his autobiography the capitalist
Henry Ford as ‘an amiable genius’ and ‘a true poet
and artist, one of the greatest in the world’.
It is Kahlo, 21 years younger than her famous
husband, who is painted in the book as the more au-
thentic, gutsy and tormented of the pair, and the one
who experienced the more significant artistic evolu-
To order Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit for £28.50 (plus £5.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
books
tion in Detroit. She hated the city; she dismissed it as ‘an ancient and
impoverished hamlet’ and found the factories ‘completely lacking
in sensibility and good taste’. At one of Ford’s dinner parties, she
amused herself by asking her famously anti-Semitic host, during a
lull in conversation, if he was Jewish.
In one of several specialist essays, Salomon Grimberg details
Kahlo’s excruciating medical travails, which began in 1925 when
her pelvis was injured in a road accident. She arrived in Detroit two
months pregnant, but aborted her baby in July because of her health
concerns. The following September, her mother died.
All the while, Rivera was immersed in his monumental fresco.
An enormous, multi-panelled work in the museum’s Garden Court,
it depicts in exacting detail the automotive assembly line, operated
by handsome muscular workers. It is flanked by
allegorical figures, including female nudes cra-
dling apples and grain, and – poignantly – a cen-
tral motif of a baby in utero.
Kahlo, meanwhile, was untouched by Rivera’s
optimistic embrace of American values. Her paintings
from this period were, like her subsequent work,
mainly self-portraits: terrible, nightmarish images
of herself on a hospital bed, for instance, or giving
birth to a corpse. One senses in these paintings
an unflinching self-scrutiny, and a boundless con-
fidence. Arriving at Detroit train station, when
asked if she was an artist too, she responded: ‘Yes,
the greatest in the world.’ Having emerged from her
husband’s shadow, it was in Detroit, writes Rosenthal,
that Rivera and Kahlo ‘became equals’ $ JONATHAN
GRIFFIN is an art critic based in Los Angeles r
37
Iroko Wallcoverings
www.blackedition.com
 books

THE HIGH LINE (by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio; Phaidon,
rrp £49.95) After the final section of the High Line was completed in 2014,
members of its design team met to discuss their acclaimed ten-year collabo-
ration that produced a year-round public park from a 2.4km section of ele-
vated freight railway, disused since the early 1980s. That meeting led to
another creative partnership: the co-authoring of this comprehensive book
that focuses on the design, development and building of the project.
Several books have already been published about the High Line, located
on Manhattan’s west side; but this one, a feat in its own right and surely a
labour of love, documents through a series of conversations between the
designers the whole creative process from concept to completion. It also
contains previously unpublished material such as the original design pro-
posal and construction images.
It’s hard to believe the High Line, now a beloved fixture in the streetscape
and a role model for dozens of other projects worldwide, was once a cause
célèbre. Some people called for the demolition of the abandoned strip; they
considered it an eyesore and an impediment to development. Fortunately,
in 1999, a group of urban visionaries called the Friends of the High Line,
inspired in part by the 4.8km Promenade Plantée in Paris (1993), began
advocating for the preservation of the railway and its rehabilitation as a
public amenity. Against many odds, the Friends successfully navigated
legal, political and funding obstacles.
As one of four finalists, the team first visited the dilapidated structure in
2004 before winning the competition. The curiously beautiful decaying rail-
way was overgrown with wild flowers and meadow grasses, amid concrete,
barbed wire, graffiti and garbage left by trespassers. As I discovered when
I visited around that same time, there was something inexplicably special
about walking on this urban relic that courses through and in between build-
ings, and viewing the city from three storeys above the street.
Subsequently, as competition winner, the team was inspired by the native
and wild-seeded vegetation that overtook the railway, making a commit-
ment to keeping the High Line simple, wild, quiet and slow. Based on the
principles of ‘agritecture’, organic and building materials are combined to
accommodate natural zones, including woodlands, grasslands and plant
beds, with programmatic ones such as a sundeck with a water feature, an
amphitheatre and a space for public-art installations. Built in three stages,
upon completion the park runs from the Meatpacking District, uptown
through Chelsea and terminates at the Hudson rail yards – all neighbour-
hoods forever changed by the presence and popularity of the park.
As a New Yorker, I visit often. Though nothing replaces being there, this
book, with its abundance of photos, renderings and plans – its cover mimics
the concrete planks of the walkway – is an enriching accompaniment for an
architect, landscape architect, designer, urban planner, or if you happen to
be one of the millions of people who love the High Line $ LINDA G. MILLER is
an editor at ‘Oculus’, a publication of the American Institute of Architects, New York r

To order The High Line for £44.95 (plus £5.50 UK p&p),

ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747

ARTISTS LIVING WITH ART (by Stacey Goergen and Amanda Benchley;
Abrams, rrp £37.50) It is a truism to suggest that artists begin their
careers in digs with other artists and later gravitate from their garrets
to living with only their art and themselves. However, after much
peering into the lofts and duplexes of some famous artists living
in and around New York, it is clear that lifelong relationships with
artists are often as important as the accumulation of their works.
An opening text by the eminent critic and curator Robert Storr
cites the loneliness of the artist’s lot by referencing how Philip
Guston – himself a painter of irascible, solitary, hard-drinking fig-
ures – had placed an impression of Dürer’s 1514 engraving Melencolia
over his small kitchen table. And yet, throughout this admittedly
insular tour of American artists’ homes and interiors, the overriding
sense is of mutual admiration and kinship.
Perhaps this has to do with the editors’ address books, their choice
of artists from a similar generation, or maybe it was all an exercise
in that other art-world staple – nepotism. Whatever the truth, there
are many crossovers here, with photos by
Cindy Sherman and Chuck Close adorning
each other’s walls and much talk of trading
ideas or bartering works between artists.
My own partisan tendencies came to the
fore when encountering those artists at home,
such as the saccharine ex-pâtissier Will Cot-
ton or the feminist sculptor EV Day; because
these names were not familiar to me, they
seemed less consequential. Certainly Sher-
man, a legendary artist and self-portraitist
whose collection includes the aforemen-
tioned Day, comes across as the most eclec-
tic and supportive in terms of her collections
of ceramics, paintings and sculpture, even
recalling the superb and dense section of the
Venice Biennale she curated in 2013.
To order Artists Living with Art for £33.75 (plus £5.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
books
Storr’s essay puts such casual collecting and domestic decorat-
ing into two neat piles: the magpies, ‘who can’t resist owning things
that catch their eye,’ and the obsessives, who pursue collections of
singular or similar objects, from folk art to cookie jars. Firmly in the
latter category comes Andres Serrano, famous for his blasphemous
Piss Christ photograph (1987), who, far from being a heathen, is a
hoarder of religious artefacts – from Gothic furniture and Mother
and Child icons to a casually placed decapitated wooden head of
St John the Baptist from 17th-century Spain.
John Currin likes to look at nothing so much as himself (or at
least his own paintings) and his wife, Rachel Feinstein, who is also
often muse for Currin’s languid, sexy compositions, which are more
Cranach than contemporary art. Luckily, he still has space to hang a
great carnivalesque painting by Cornelis van Haarlem and a pre-
cious Carracci drawing, which we frustratingly don’t get to see.
It is when the camera lingers too closely on the details that we
don’t get access to the wider context. A great younger talent and
abstract artist, Tauba Auerbach, is not well
represented here, as her flat appears cropped
and hemmed in, only a few glimpses of cheq-
uerboard prints and a Klein bottle (a glass ves-
sel with Möbius-like properties) giving much
sense of where her real artistic interests lie.
Ultimately when not just hung in homage or
in comradeship, as in the triumvirate of great
African-American artists included here –
Mickalene Thomas, Glenn Ligon and Rashid
Johnson – the presence of another artist’s
work can act like a Trojan horse, or as Storr
puts it, ‘like an assertive guest in the house:
one with whom it is impossible to avoid con-
versation, even argument: one who whispers,
mutters… even harangues’ $ OSSIAN WARD
is head of content at the Lisson Gallery r
41
 books
To order Picturing England for £42.75 (plus £5.50 UK
p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
PICTURING ENGLAND: THE PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTIONS OF HISTORIC ENGLAND (by
Mike Evans et al; Historic England, rrp £45) England might have lacked the
foresight of France, whose Commission des Monuments Historiques began
its methodical recording project back in 1851, but in the early years of pho-
tography it made up for it with an army of enthusiasts. Picturesque buildings
made excellent subjects for pioneer photographers in that they stayed still and
enjoyed natural light, and as a result they were snapped from every conceivable
angle. Since then vast numbers of photographs recording aspects of England’s
historic fabric have been taken by passionate amateurs: antiquaries, historians
and eccentrics whose pursuit of obsessions, from corbels to pillboxes, has im-
measurably enriched our knowledge of the past. Many of these private hoards
have since entered Historic England’s collections, where they have joined the
archives of commercial firms, professional photographers and their own offi-
cial records of architectural and archaeological surveys. The 300 or so images
in Picturing England have been selected from a staggering nine million to serve
as a glorious introduction to the highways and byways of the archive.
One of the pleasures of this book is the authors’ insistence on the social
context of architecture; surprisingly often the buildings in these photographs
are incidental to the lives that go on around them. At one level this is expressed
in images that record rural crafts and occupations, such as a blacksmith shoe-
ing a horse in a steamy Norfolk smithy, or in photographs leisured Victorians
took of each other – extravagant chimneys rise behind smartly dressed crick-
eters posing on the lawn, while an ivy-covered doorway perfectly frames a
group in Medieval fancy-dress. But the archive also bristles with glimpses of
social history that extend far beyond rural industry or upper-middle class
amusements. These can be hugely evocative, from a concrete staircase that
curves down to the pithead baths at Betteshanger colliery to washing hanging
out to dry along the gallery of a ramshackle old coaching inn.
What emerges strongly is how buildings are captured as they pass from one
state to another, whether infinitesimally slowly, or with dramatic speed – here,
for example, is a heart-in-mouth image of a trilithon lintel swinging from a
crane during the restoration of Stonehenge in 1920. Or they document the
sudden shock of destruction: a pair of photographs show the west end of
Whitby Abbey, taken shortly before and immediately after the German bom-
bardment of 16 December 1914. The pictures also tell more subtle stories about
changing attitudes to conservation. How much tidying up is too much?
Such is the sprawling vastness of Historic England’s collections that the au-
thors have been able to delve into diverse pockets to track down the same build-
ing or site photographed many years apart. The final chapter brings together
some telling examples, from the curious disappearances and reappearances
of Temple Bar to the tentacular spread of Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach, seen from
the air. And if among the triumphant tales of survival are some poignant stories
of loss, then those buildings are at least preserved in this eccentric and acciden-
tally comprehensive archive $ SUSAN OWENS is an art historian, writer and curator r
 555 King’s Road, London, SW6 2EB
124 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11 4UE
Harrods Brompton Road, London, SW1X 7XL

T +44 (0) 20 7229 5148

www.therugcompany.com

Calypso by Suzanne Sharp

 books
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDENS (by Jackie Bennett; Frances Lincoln, rrp
£25) How fitting it is that the life of our greatest playwright should
be filled with so many gaps and mysteries, so many ‘could haves’
and ‘probablys’. Jackie Bennett takes an interesting angle on the
life by looking at the places – more particularly the gardens – as-
sociated with William Shakespeare and his family, but even she
cannot escape the occasional ‘it seems likely’ or ‘maybe’.
In a handsome book with wonderful photographs by Andrew
Lawson, she tells the stories of five gardens with Shakespeare con-
nections, from his birthplace in Henley Street, Stratford, to the
property, New Place, that Shakespeare bought for himself and his
wife, Anne, in 1597. To anyone with an in-
terest in the man, this – his own home for 19
years, the place where he died – might seem
the most significant of all the Shakespeare
shrines, but its history illustrates the many
ironies associated with our urgent desire to
commemorate and celebrate the past.
The house that Shakespeare actually lived
in at New Place, once reckoned the second
most important house in Stratford, was de-
molished in 1702 and remodelled in 18th-
century style. It was later bought by the Revd
Francis Gastrell, who got tired of complete
strangers banging on his door and asking to
see Shakespeare’s mulberry tree. So in 1758
he cut it down, causing a violent quarrel with
the town corporation. They rather liked the
Shakespeare tourists and the money they
brought into Stratford. Gastrell, unrepent-
ant, then pulled down the house as well, and
the plot remained empty until 1884, when
To order Shakespeare’s Gardens for £23.75 (plus £5.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
44
the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust bought it and laid out a garden
in hey-nonny-no style. After extensive archaeology, a new garden
will be unveiled this July to commemorate the 400 years since the
great man died. The new design incorporates the shape of Shakes-
peare’s original house, outlined on the ground in bronze.
The Birthplace Trust, which bought Henley Street in Stratford
at auction in 1847, went on to acquire all the properties now most
closely associated with Shakespeare, including, of course, Anne
Hathaway’s cottage. The garden here is everyone’s dream of what
a cottage garden should be: roses, sweet peas, cowslips, a strange
lack of mud. Paintings made in the middle of the 19th century
show what allure these places had, in their
original unreconstructed state.
Old paintings, photographs, maps and
artefacts from the various properties fur-
ther enhance the book (though the cap-
tions don’t always tell the reader where they
can be found). Good use is made of the bold
woodcut illustrations in contemporary her-
bals such as John Gerard’s of 1597, and there
are eye-catching spreads of plants popular
in Shakespeare’s time: household herbs,
roses, salads, orchard fruit.
Are the gardens authentic? That is, are
we seeing what Shakespeare saw? Probably
not, says Bennett, but does it really matter?
Shakespeare’s father was fined for having an
unauthorised dung heap in Henley Street,
the famous birthplace. Now we have holly-
hocks. Who’s complaining? $ ANNA PAVORD
is the author of ‘Landskipping: Painters, Plough-
men and Places’ (Bloomsbury) r
 UNIQUE SAFES AND EXCLUSIVE CABINETRY

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LONDON: HARRODS LONDON
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THE HEVENINGHAM books
COLLECTION

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE INTERIORS IN ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS

(by Eva Oledzka; British Library, rrp £25) Struggling to under-
stand how people lived in centuries past, historians have long
drawn from inventories, account books and judicial records to
evoke daily life in Medieval English manors or Italian Renais-
sance cities. Now in a breathtaking book packed with images of
illuminated manuscript pages, Eva Oledzka provides a complete
catalogue of the spaces and objects that shaped the lives of people
of all ranks and conditions. The images she gathers, sorts and
analyses, well-known to experts on European texts, are here re-
freshingly exploited as documents of social and cultural experi-
ence, not just in Britain but all over Europe.
To accomplish her end, Oledzka decodes images that were
ostensibly created to convey religious, moral and historical truths,
compelling them to tell us about the material existence of people
long ago. Accordingly, she scours scenes of the birth of John the
Baptist or the Virgin Mary for details of ceiling construction, wall
panelling, window glazing and floor tiling, and plumbs depic-
tions of the evangelists, saints and scholars in their studies for
the design of lecterns, armchairs, bookshelves and cupboards.
Scenes of feasting that describe the marriage at Cana or a royal
banquet yield data on table construction, servingware and kitch-
ens, while a January snowscape from a calendar designed to guide
devotional exercises contains nestled within it a compact model
of a busy peasant household.
From the 140 images presented here, a vivid account emerges
of a material reality in the 14th to 16th centuries. The vital core
of any interior, the fireplace evolves from the open hearth of
earlier centuries, acquires a chimney and masonry frame, and
is encased and decoratively tiled to form a stove for the front
parlour. Windows, at first mere apertures in a medley of shapes,
acquire sills, mullions, wooden shutters and glass. Staircases
migrate from walls and corners to make a grand statement in the
centre of the great hall. Beds that begin as hard, narrow benches
move to niches in a peasant or artisan home, where all family
members sleep on a single mattress, or to freestanding poster
beds in the chambers of the wealthy, enclosed in opulent cano-
pies and curtains. Tapestries, tableware and musical instruments
come to life on these pages as we see the hangings attached to
hooks, the platters, knives, and salt cellars arrayed on tabletops,
and the instruments plucked and blown in a scholar’s study. We
learn not only how our forebears lived; we also see the furnish-
ings of the 21st century take form and inhabit an environment
not so distant from our own $ MARGARET L. KING is professor
www.heveningham.co.uk emerita of history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY r
email:sales@heveningham.co.uk
To order Medieval and Renaissance Interiors for £22.50 (plus
£5.50 UK p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
Tel: + 44 (0) 1420 521159
 A NEW PALETTE OF 180 COLOURS

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 100% LINEN FA BRIC
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NEW PRINT COLLECTION

JANE BOWN: A LIFETIME OF LOOKING (ed. Luke Dodd; Guardian Faber,

rrp £30) ‘Some people take pictures; I find them,’ said Jane Bown,
rather grandly; but she had much to be grand about. Photographer
for the Observer newspaper for 60 years, working almost exclusively
in black and white, she stayed with its colour supplement for less
than three, contriving a disagreement with its editor to return to
her monochrome world. ‘Colour is too busy; the eye never knows
where to rest,’ she explained. It is tempting to see in this a metaphor
for Bown herself. She avoided producing books or mounting ex-
hibitions; the act of making a good picture was enough. She was
an unobtrusive, watchful figure: ‘Photographers should be nei-
ther seen nor heard,’ she would say, but despite her best efforts,
she became well known for portraits that remain unfashionably
uncomplicated. She had no recognisable ‘style’ and operated en-
tirely without artifice – often without much at all: a favourite back-
drop was the stairwell in the old Observer building. In Fleet Street
tradition, she knew where the snapper stood, obliged to fit her
portraits around the interview. What did this diminutive elderly
lady make of Sinéad O’Connor, PJ Harvey or Spike Lee, and they
of her? What did they talk about? Nothing much. She did not need
a rapport to ignite the spark. When she saw the picture in her
viewfinder, she might mutter, ‘Ah, there you are’, and that was it.
As a woman in a man’s world, her steeliness determined that
she just go out and get it, the ‘jackpot snap’. And there are a few of
those: Lucian Freud at his most vulpine; Samuel Beckett cornered
in an alleyway like a cat. Uncomplicated maybe – but not Bown
herself. Luke Dodd’s beautifully modulated words flesh out this
enigmatic figure to explain why she hid behind the camera. She
certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly, if at all. As Vogue’s picture edi-
tor, I wanted to commission from her portraits of authors on the
way up, newly minted playwrights, all those things, frankly, that
Snowdon would turn down in a heartbeat, but still deserved a
decent shot. In fact, Snowdon engineered it that she and I should
meet at an exhibition (not of Bown’s work, naturally). He was a
great fan. This fool she certainly didn’t suffer gladly. Before she
walked off, I got about 1/60th of a second into my invitation, ad-
mittedly not an enticing one. She was tiny, I noticed. And steely.
It turns out that for Bown photography was an escape from
a sad childhood. She would return to the Observer – she called it
‘home’ – long after she had retired. Because she had done that
twice a week for well over half a century, and perhaps the act of
pressing the shutter had kept the sadness at bay if only for sev-
eral fractions of a second. But what those seconds gave us, from
Bertrand Russell to Björk and everyone in between $ ROBIN MUIR
is the curator of ‘Vogue 100’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London r

+ 4 4 (0)172 8 6 3 5 02 0 To order Jane Bown for £28.50 (plus £5.50 UK p&p),

ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
INFO@VOLGALINEN.CO.UK
W W W.VOLGA L INEN.C O.UK
 books

NEW THAI STYLE (by Michael Freeman and Kim Inglis; Laurence
King, rrp £29.95). This is a pleasant picture book of, mostly, the
interiors of smart Thai hotels and of houses that look like smart
Thai hotels – with one spectacular exception. The intention is
to show what expensive fashionable interior design in the coun-
try now looks like, and Freeman’s sharp and professional pho-
tography does the trick. And what it looks like is a combination
of various artefacts from different Eastern countries assembled
in one room, as Inglis’s breathless text explains.
There is hardly a room here that doesn’t have one substan-
tial piece of Chinese furniture in it, and some in which the effect
is created by carefully placing objects that are Burmese, Laotian,
Moroccan and, in one royal residence, designed by an Italian,
Indian and Korean as well. In fact, even the idea of having large
rocks springing out of the floor within a house could equally
be Sri Lankan – Ulrik Plesner was doing it with Geoffrey Bawa
in the 1960s – or Californian, from John Lautner, and ten years
later it was all over House & Garden. But the unifying features,
much luscious polished teak and rosewood, some gold leaf and
some bright red silk: these are authentic Thai elements that hold
many of the rooms together.
The only thing I am not sure about is the swimming pool
with the crimson tiles, which looks like the scene of a massacre.
That spectacular exception is, however, well worth seeking
out. Baan Suan Sanghob is a house on the outskirts of Bangkok
designed by the architect Prabhakorn Vadanyakul to combine
elements drawn from the unexpected combination of jungle and
aviation metaphors, rather as if a plane had crashed down into
the trees and people were living in some style and comfort there.
The architect and his wife are pilots, and they evidently wanted
to live in perpetual flight, yet nested at the same time up in the
tree-tops. They have achieved this with a home of deep glossy
timber floors and an airy steel frame covered in elements drawn
directly from aircraft: wings and flaps for benches and stair rungs,
stainless-steel cables and powder-coated aluminium pipes. The
house nestles so deeply in the trees that its windows seem to
brush the branches, and a black-leather chaise-longue, a model
aircraft hovering at its feet, sits on a narrow glass floor with foli-
age just the other side of the ceiling-height glass on one side, and
the open well of the staircase just down to the other.
It really is a breathtaking ensemble, and for all the evident
lush comfort of the other interiors here, it is the one that makes
the greatest impression $ TIMOTHY BRITTAIN-CATLIN is an archi-
tect and the author of ‘Bleak Houses: Disappointment and Failure in
Architecture’ (MIT)

To order New Thai Style for £29.95 (plus £5.50 UK

rupertbevan.com p&p), ring the World of Interiors Bookshop on 0871 911 1747
studio@rupertbevan.com
T: 020 7731 1919
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When it comes to toiles, are you out of your depth? Whether you dive in with
Pop-bright neons and azure blues, or prefer your pastoral prints in more clas-
sical hues, these patterned fabrics are your shore path to success. Testing
the waters, Miranda Sinclair presents her top 40. Photography: Neil Mersh

1 ‘Hunt of the Raj 5177-04’, by Rose Cumming for Dessin Fournir, £73, Fromental. 2 ‘Escarpolette
B2544-001’, by Charles Burger, £136.60; 3 ‘Pondicherry Emeraude B2433-1’, by Charles Burger,
£108; both Turnell & Gigon. 4 ‘Chinese Leopard Toile BR-79227-0’, by Brunschwig & Fils, £102,
GP&J Baker. 5 ‘Chinese Toile LW90153’, £84, Lewis & Wood. 6 ‘Chinoise Exotique 16211-004’,
by Scalamandré, £394, Colony. 7 ‘Les Muses et le Lion B1826004’, by Braquenié, £156, Pierre
Frey. 8 ‘Xian SL01-01’, £115, Nicholas Herbert. Sunglasses, from left: oversized round, by Miu Miu,
£205; round ombre-lens, by Marc Jacobs, £119; both Liberty. Tumbler: green ‘Vita’ highball, £140,
William Yeoward. Background: ‘Pool by the Sea’ mural, by Slim Aarons, from £60 per sq m, Surface
View. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
 SWATCH

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1 ‘Le Tapis Vert RBP10032-02’, £80, Borderline Fabrics. 2 ‘Guatan 06545-001-002’, by Etro, £76.80, Pierre Frey. 3 ‘Nanking HB-427-3’,
by Clarence House, £212, Turnell & Gigon. 4 ‘Rome 33039’, £98, Zoffany. 5 ‘Coromandel SCH-175482’, by Schumacher, £258, Turnell
& Gigon; trimmed with ‘Valmont 36026-9000’ bullion fringe, £30, Houlès. 6 Red ‘Temple’, £75, Paolo Moschino for Nicholas Haslam.
7 ‘Pillement L3322002’, by Le Manach, £156, Pierre Frey. 8 ‘Bengale 01468-02’, by Manuel Canovas, £78, Colefax & Fowler. 9 ‘Matin d’Eté
8013132-195’, by Brunschwig & Fils, £98, GP&J Baker. 10 ‘Diana the Huntress LW67111’, £75, Lewis & Wood. 11 ‘Toile des Travaux 97932-
020’, by The Twigs, £195, Simon Playle. Tumbler: ‘Alexis’ highball, £220, William Yeoward. Background: ‘Poolside Chez Holder’ mural, by
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 rugiano.com

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by Michael S. Smith, £189.60, Jamb. 3 ‘Hambledon 07’, by Titley & Marr, £45, Tissus d’Hélène. 4 ‘Cathay 44086-997’, by Travers, £110, Zimmer & Rohde.
5 ‘Diana the Huntress LW67111’, £75, Lewis & Wood. 6 ‘Continenti SCH 175470’, by Schumacher, £351, Turnell & Gigon. Background: ‘Pool by the
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Sunglasses: ‘Ornate’ cat-eye, by Prada, £435, Liberty. Tumbler: rose ‘Vita’ highball, £140, William Yeoward. Background: ‘Poolside Chez Holder’
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1 ‘Shepherds LDF7000-001’, by The Twigs, £145, Simon Playle. 2 ‘Old Macdonald 132-02’, £99, Nicholas Herbert. 3 ‘Coutances Négatif-Satin
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Bennison Fabrics. 6 ‘Les Quatres Vents B7544006’ by Braquenié, £160.80, Pierre Frey. 7 ‘Chinese Toile JP 7183’, by Michael S. Smith, £204,
Jamb. 8 ‘Albertine Toile RBP10000-01’, £78, Borderline Fabrics. Sunglasses: photographer’s own. Background: ‘Poolside Chez Holder’ mural,
by Slim Aarons, from £60 per sq m, Surface View. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
tomfaulkner.co.uk
SWATCH

1 ‘Les Buveurs Fluo B7613001’, by Hervé Matejewski for Braquenié,

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3 ‘Jardin du Luxembourg 04813-04’, by Manuel Canovas, £78, Colefax &
Fowler. Background: ‘Pool by the Sea’ mural, by Slim Aarons, from £60 per
sq m, Surface View. Throughout: ‘Håmö’ sun loungers, £25 each; ‘Håmö’
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are per m; all prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
O C H R E
furniture • lighting • accessories
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 SERIOUS pursuits
Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities,
chosen by Grace McCloud

1 Switch House,
opening 17 June.
2 Shirley Baker,
Manchester,
1964, 1964, The
Photographers’
Gallery at Photo
London, 19-22 May.
3 A selection of insect
jewellery, c1895-
1900, T. Robert at the
Antiques and Fine
Art Fair, 10-12 June
1 2

No visitor to London’s Bankside in recent years can have failed to notice that
something’s been going on, not least since plans were announced in 2009 for
Tate Modern’s vast new complex. But six years of building and one deadline
(the 2012 Olympics) later, the wait is finally over. As of 17 JUNE the gallery’s
new extension will be open to the public. Designed by Herzog & De Meuron,
who converted Gilbert Scott’s original power station in the 1990s, the new ten-
storey brick-clad pyramid (of sorts), called the Switch House, will add 60 per
cent more gallery space. Meanwhile, it’s all change in the existing spaces too,
as the Turbine Hall sees a seven-metre tree by Ai Weiwei take root, and the 3
Boiler House galleries get a total rehang. Expect faces familiar and less
so; works by Matisse, Monet et al will now rub shoulders with new
acquisitions by 250 artists from around the world. Fancy joining
the celebrations? Everything is free, including two weeks of per-
formance art in the underground Tanks, and over the inaugural
weekend, the gallery will be staying open until 10pm every
night. Details: 020 7887 8888; tate.org.uk.
BRITAIN 4
15 MAY PENINSULA GARDEN, GREENWICH PENINSULA, LONDON SE10 URBAN VILLAGE FETE.
Simple twist of fête: no tombolas here – instead expect immersive theatre, art-
ists’ workshops and contemporary galleries. Details: urbanvillagefete.co.uk. 4 Robert
19 MAY SOTHEBY’S, NEW BOND ST, LONDON W1 PHOTOGRAPHS. Darling buds of May: Mapplethorpe,
delicate snaps of orchids and lilies by Robert Mapplethorpe are picks of the Orchid, 1989,
bunch this month. Details: 020 7293 5000; sothebys.com. Sotheby’s, 19 May.
19-22 MAY SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 PHOTO LONDON. This year’s 5 Matthew Smith,
Master of Photography, Don McCullin, is the focus of a special exhibition. Still Life of Fruit and
Catch him in conversation with Tate’s photography curator, Simon Baker, Flowers, 20th-century,
on 19 May. Details: 020 7759 1169; photolondon.org. Chorley’s, 24-25 May.
6 Marcel Duchamp,
23-30 MAY CHARLESTON, FIRLE, LEWES, E. SUSSEX CHARLESTON FESTIVAL. Centenary
Nu sur Nu, 1910-11,
celebrations with Virginia Nicholson, Claire Tomalin and others, plus talks by Artcurial, 6 June.
Ian McEwan and Tim Berners-Lee. Details: 01323 811626; charleston.org.uk. 7 Julio González,
24-25 MAY CHORLEY’S, PRINKNASH ABBEY PARK, GLOS 20TH-CENTURY ART AND MOD- Forme Rigide,
ERN DESIGN. Amazing limited-edition Spider-Man prints by Stan Lee are a 1937, Christie’s
highlight in this Marvel-ous sale. Details: 01452 344499; chorleys.com. Paris, 8-9 June 5
25 MAY CHRISTIE’S, KING ST, LONDON SW1 SHAKESPEARE: THE FOUR FOLIOS. Friends,
Romans and countrymen alike can bid for the Bard’s collected works, includ-
PHOTOGRAPHY: © HAYES DAVIDSON AND HERZOG & DE MEURON (1)

ing an unrecorded first folio. Details: 020 7839 9060; christies.com.

7 JUNE SUMMERS PLACE, THE WALLED GARDEN, STANE ST, BILLINGSHURST, W. SUSSEX
GARDEN AND NATURAL HISTORY SALE. A stuffed moose head, plus other curios
of that elk. Details: 01403 331331; summersplaceauctions.com.
10-12 JUNE HAREWOOD HOUSE, HAREWOOD, LEEDS THE ANTIQUES AND FINE ART FAIR.
Got the antique jewellery bug? Head to Harewood for coruscating critters
being offered by T. Robert. Details: 01797 252030; harewoodfair.com.
OUTSIDE BRITAIN
6 JUNE ARTCURIAL, ROND-POINT DES CHAMPS-ELYSEES, PARIS IMPRESSIONISTE ET MOD-
ERNE. Cube root: Marcel Duchamp’s Nu sur Nu, which was painted just months
before his forays into Cubism, goes on sale to raise funds for Médecin sans
Frontières. Details: 00 33 1 42 99 20 20; artcurial.com.
8-9 JUNE CHRISTIE’S, AVE MATIGNON, PARIS THE ZEINEB AND JEAN-PIERRE MARCIE-
RIVIERE COLLECTION. A painting from Bacon’s seminal ‘Men in Blue’ series is
top of the lots. Details: 00 33 1 40 76 85 85; christies.com $
6 7
 1 2

1 Diagonal-square footed bowl, $375, Frances Palmer. 2 Crystal ‘Trafalgar’, £225, Linley. 3 Bowl, by Carlo Moretti, £70, William &
Son. 4 Gold-painted salad bowl, by Bertozzi, £350, Summerill & Bishop. 5 Dark ceramic bowl, by Laura Carlin, £190, The New Craftsmen.
6 Brass ‘Bash’, by Tom Dixon, £195, Liberty. 7 ‘Sarrià’ basket, by Lluís Clotet, £45, Alessi. 8 Fruit bowl, £750, Asprey. 9 ‘Coral’, £595,
William Yeoward. 10 ‘Cobra’, by Constantin Wortmann, £53, Georg Jensen. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
 SHORTLIST

4
3

10

Shelf life
If the display in your dresser is past its sell-by date, perhaps it’s time for some finer china. This clutch of bowls,
whether brass or bamboo, footed or fluted, will also make whatever you lay in them live longer in the memory. So
if your vessels need refreshing, it dozen get better than Max Egger’s crack selection. Photography: Anders Gramer
 SHORTLIST

2 3
5

1 ‘Tinta’, by Ceramiche Fasano, £12, The Conran Shop.

2 Latte bowl, £3.50, Anthropologie. 3 ‘Utopia Mermaid/Sailor’, £178,
Jonathan Adler. 4 ‘Kastehelmi’, by Oiva Toikka for Iittala, £35,
Skandium. 5 ‘Achatina’, £45, Oka. 6 Woven-bamboo ‘Dax’, £5, Habitat.
7 ‘Cabbage Leaf ’, by Bordallo Pinheiro, £24.95, Liberty.
All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
69
 SHORTLIST

3
2

4
7
8

1 ‘Panera XL’, by Cana de Azucar, £25, Couverture and the Garbstore.

2 Marbled ceramic bowl, £928, Willer. 3 ‘Porto’ mixing bowl,
£30, The White Company. 4 Serving bowl, £65, Another Country.
5 Carrara salad bowl, £97.64, Evitavonni. 6 Medium ‘Agna’, £9.95,
Graham & Green. 7 Thrown and faceted tea bowl, £250, Steve Harrison.
8 Stoneware bowl, by Makoto Kagoshima, £115, Gallery Eclectic.
All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r
SHORTLIST

2
4

1 Nero ‘Catene Gio Ponti Bowl’, by Richard Ginori, £265, Harrods.

2 Ruby ‘Anthemion’ cereal bowl, £115, Wedgwood. 3 ‘Côte d’Azur’, £22, Ralph
Lauren Home. 4 Bowl, by Tyler Harris, $225, BDDW. 5 Hand-painted
porcelain punchbowl, £4,398, De Gournay. 6 ‘Blue Fluted Plain’, by Arnold
Krog for Royal Copenhagen, £65, Skandium. 7 ‘Warp’, by Tom Dixon,
£65, Selfridges. Eggs throughout, from £2.15 for six, Clarence Court. All
prices include VAT. Oak library bookcase, c1937, from £6,000, shot on
location at Lassco Three Pigeons. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $
Travelling Light
New wallpaper by Kit Kemp

Christopher Farr Cloth

www.christopherfarrcloth.com
 THE WORLD OF
ART & ANTIQUES

WWW.ROSEUNIACKE.COM
 INTRODUCTION
The past is always present, and nowhere is its effect more subtly felt than in the visual arts. Alberto Giacometti,
for example, was spurred by the elemental power of ancient Cycladic, Etruscan and Egyptian sculpture;
Avigdor Arikha’s rapidly sketched or painted domestic still lifes sprang from Caravaggio’s gritty naturalism;
and the Chinese artists decorating an extraordinary pair of enamelled sconces in 18th-century Canton drew
on that country’s traditional depictions of courtly life. All, of course, creatively transformed such influences
to make works that are vigorously their own (and in the case of the sconces, unlike anything you’ve prob-
ably seen), yet the inspiration of history resonates. So this 76-page guide to the world of art and antiques,
in which these stories feature, can be said to look both backwards and forwards: to celebrate creativity
while acknowledging the debt to makers who have gone before. Paul Strand’s photographs of his own
garden are similarly multilayered, offering a worm’s-eye view of nature in elegiac images that convey the
never-ending cycle of life, death and rebirth. Also here is a painstaking evocation of the sort of asylum
in which Jean Dubuffet encountered work by the insane, which, in turn, gave rise to Art Brut.
So what lessons are discernible in the work of today’s practitioners? Our roundup of multiples and
limited editions finds contemporary artists from Julian Opie to Maurizio Cattelan fashioning fresh work in
the form of objects as familiar as blankets and bars of soap. And quite how future makers will reinterpret
Ryan Metke’s gold ‘Wasp Nest’ is anyone’s guess. But like much of the material brought together over
the succeeding pages, I’m sure it will stay in the imagination $ RUPERT THOMAS, EDITOR

CONTENTS
85 ANTENNAE ROUNDUP
Choice multiples: Charlotte Edwards picks fine limited
editions and products by artists

106 GREEN ENERGY

Paul Strand’s late, great photographs of flora in his French
garden crackle with electricity. Richard Mabey is buzzing

116 FOREIGN AFFAIR

A pair of Chinese enamelled sconces betray much about East/
West relations in the 18th century, discovers Grace McCloud

126 MIND’S EYE

A vividly imagined replica of a fictional asylum reveals much
about the inner workings of Jean Dubuffet. Text: Marcus Field

132 ART AND ANTIQUE FAIRS

The best events on the international scene, selected by
Henrietta Whitfield

136 DAY OF RECKONING

FRONT COVER: Rock star – this lacquered-
and-gilt bentwood Italian Art Nouveau rocking
chair with caned seat and back, by Societa
Anonima Antonio Volpe, c1915, is available
from Rose Uniacke, 76-84 Pimlico Rd, Lon-
don SW1 (020 7730 7050; roseuniacke.com)
Avigdor Arikha’s paintings – always finished by sunset –
bear testament to a fervent, fiery artist. Text: Charlotte Edwards
148 THE LAST WORD: GIACOMETTI
With the advent of a new exhibition, we learn how Alberto
Giacometti reshaped ancient wonders for the modern world

OPPOSITE 30 JUNE CHRISTIE’S, KING ST, LONDON SW1 DEFINING BRITISH ART Golden-haired actress and habitué of her father David’s
Gargoyle Club, Pauline Tennant is the subject of this luminous Lucian Freud drawing of c1945. It comes to auction for the
first time this month, in a sale of British art that marks Christie’s 250th anniversary. Details: 020 7839 9060; christies.com
 design centre LONDON
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 Olympic Champions
The best in its field, The Olympia Art and Antiques fair returns this month, presenting
winsome treasures not just in gold and silver, but teak and marble too

The Olympia International Art &

Antiques Fair, which takes place every
1
June, is one of the highlights of London’s
cultural calendar. It’s been running for
over 40 years now, and for good reason:
it has a wider choice than any other fair
in London, and the prices are surprisingly
reasonable. Whatever you could possibly want,
you’ll be guaranteed to find.
To coincide with other events, the fair now
2
runs later in June – so be prepared to treat
yourself to some beautiful things. Here’s
a sneak preview of some the fabulous
pieces on offer...
Olympia International Art & Antiques
Fair, Olympia London, Hammersmith Rd,
London W14 (olympia-art-antiques.com),
27 June - 3 July.

1 Omnipod offers a mix of 20th-

century furniture and contemporary
art. Shown here is a solid-teak
3 ‘Costela’ chair with a metal frame,
designed by Martin Eisler and Carlo
4 Hauner in the 1950s. Ring 07767
487800, or visit omnipod.co.uk.

2 J M Baptista is a third-generation family

business, which mainly trades in antique
Portugese silver and jewellery, such as this
Italian yellow-gold/enamel bracelet, which
dates from circa 1970. Ring 00 351 21 385 90 68,
or visit josebaptista.com.
 
3 Looking for antique furniture? Head for
Anthony Fell, a dealer in 18th- and 19th- century
English pieces. Shown: 19th-century parcel-gilt
French-walnut sofa. Ring 01263 712912, or
visit anthonyfell.com.

4 Since 1971, Haynes Fine Art of Broadway

has been dealing in paintings, furniture and
sculpture spanning the 16th century to the
21st. Shown here is the late Frederick Gore’s
(1913-2009) oil on canvas Provençal Flowers
on a Kelim, c1980. Ring 01386 852649, or visit
5 6 haynesfineart.com.
 TH E WO R L D O F IN TER IO RS 쮿 PRO MOT I O N

5 Patrick Sandberg, a dealer in

fine Georgian and Regency fur-
niture, presents this painted, carved
giltwood centre table with a marble 7 8
top, dating to the mid-19th-century.
Ring 020 7229 0373, or visit antique
furniture.net.

6 Lisbon-based Manuel Castilho Antiguidades

specialises in Oriental and non-European art,
such as this 19th-century Indian painted miniature
of Krishna with gopis. Ring 00 351 213 224 292,
or visit manuelcastilho.com.

7 Charles Thomas Fox & George Fox’s novelty

silver mustard pot, 1848, is among the high-
lights at The Old Corkscrew’s stand of silver,
porcelain, glass and copper treasures. Ring 00
27 21 876 3671 or visit theoldcorkscrew.co.za.

8 This vase with a blue/grey satin glaze was

made last year by Ted Secombe, and will go on
display at Signed and Designed, specialists in
antique and contemporary ceramics. Ring 020 9 10
8502 2691, or visit signedanddesigned.com.

9 A small rosewood bracket clock of c1830,

made by Geo. Binns, goes on show at specialist
dealer Howard Walwyn. Ring 020 7938 1100,
or visit walwynantiqueclocks.com.

10 David Roberts presents its 19th-century

Orientalist paintings and prints alongside this
Portrait of Madame de Mont Vert (1797) by
Thomas Phillips. Ring 020 8288 9094, or visit
darnleyfineart.com.

11 Joan Miró’s 1969 etching L’Homme au

Balancier (the balancing man) steals the show
at Gilden’s Arts Gallery. Ring 020 7435 3340,
or visit gildensarts.com.

12 This Rosso-antico head of Silenus, which

was made for a fountain in c1790, is available
from Craig Carrington, a Gloucestershire-
based dealer in Neoclassical works of art. Ring
01453 765 355, or visit craigcarrington.com $ 11 12
 A x e l Ve r v o or dt
e x h ibit i n g a t M a s t e r pie c e a nd Fr ie z e M a s t e r s
w w w. a x e l-v e r v o or dt .c om

Monu ment a l f r a g ment f r om a s t a nd i n g m a le s t at ue ‘L e g a nd Fe e t on B a s e ’

Ma r b l e , R o m a n , 2 n d c e n t u r y A . D ., 72 x 5 4 x 4 2 c m (2 8 ¼ x 21¼ x 17 ” )
P r o v e n a n c e : P r i v a t e c o l l e c t i o n T. S a r m a s , L o n d o n , e a r l y 19 6 0 s -2 0 0 3 ; P r i v a t e c o l l e c t i o n E u r o p e , p r i o r t o 19 6 0
 antennae roundup
From functional to fantastical, these fine artists’ editions, multiples and products inspire Charlotte Edwards

1 2

1 ‘Enough Already’ neon, by Deborah Kass, $18,000, Paul Kasmin Gallery Shop. 2 Soap (from top: ‘Why Me?’, £19 approx for two; ‘Bitten’, £16
approx for two), by Maurizio Cattelan & Pierpaolo Ferrari for Seletti Wears Toiletpaper, Toiletpaper Shop. 3 Gold-plated brass-cast ‘Wasp Nest’,
by Ryan Metke, from $450, Paul Kas min Gallery Shop. 4 Two-piece stoneware ‘T42’, by Mona Hatoum, £4,320, White Cube. 5 Plexiglas/MDF
‘Recessed Discussion Stream’ sculpture, by Liam Gillick, $3,500, The Glass House. 6 ‘Cyan Nude’ bronze, by Jessie Flood-Paddock, £1,500; 7 ‘La
Volta’ bronze, by Rebecca Warren, £6,500; both Counter Editions. 8 ‘Astray’ cast of plastic ashtray, by Becky Beasley, £350, South London Gallery.
All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

85
 LONDON
ART 2016
Courtesy of Richard Green Gallery, London
Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell RSA RSW, Reflection (detail), circa 1915

WEEK
1-8 JULY
Supported by
Preview by
invitation only

www.LondonArtWeek.co.uk
Complimentary catalogue available
Subscribe online

@londonartweek @london_art_week
 antennae roundup
1

6
4

7 8

1 ‘Split-Rocker’ vase, by Jeff Koons, $5,000, Gagosian Gallery. 2 Solar-powered LED lamp, by Olafur Eliasson and Frederick Ottesen, £17 approx,
Little Sun. 3 Cast-acrylic ‘Rising’ sculpture, by Alison Wilding, £3,250, Plinth. 4 Bronze/steel ‘Jules et Jim’ mice, by Claude Lalanne, £14,177 approx
for a pair, Louisa Guinness Gallery. 5 ‘Untitled’ cast of beech-tree root, by Hemali Bhuta, £1,200, Yorkshire Sculpture Park. 6 Kitchenware (from
left: ‘Breakfast’ tray, £16 approx; ‘Apples’ plate, £26 approx), by Maurizio Cattelan & Pierpaolo Ferrari for Seletti Wears Toiletpaper, Galerie
Perrotin. 7 ‘A Very Long Chat’ bookends, by Saint Clair Cemin, $6,500 per pair, Paul Kasmin Gallery Shop. 8 ‘Full Stop’ bean bags, by Fiona
Banner, £6,000 each, Frith Street Gallery. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

87
 antennae roundup
1

8
6
7

1 Ceramic ‘Siatkarka/Volleyball Player’ figure, by Paulina Olowska, £2,049 approx, Parkett. 2 ‘Islands’ tiles, by Eric Great-Rex, £550 each, The
Multiple Store. 3 Lambswool blankets, by Matt Connors (left) and Enrico David (right), £520 each, House of Voltaire. 4 ‘M’ bench, by Sarah
Lucas, £12,000, Sadie Coles HQ. 5 Aluminium ‘Untitled (Side Table 3)’, by Nicolas Deshayes, £1,200, House of Voltaire. 6 Red ‘Figure’ chair, by
Keith Haring, $130, Pop-Shop.com. 7 ‘Sheep’ blanket, by Julian Opie, £450, Plinth. 8 ‘Untitled (Palette Drawing)’, by Richard Jackson, £2,350,
Hauser & Wirth. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $

88
FAIR
Battersea Park, London
THREE TIMES A YEAR

ANTIQUES AND 20TH CENTURY DESIGN

FOR INTERIOR DECORATION

Next Fair: Autumn

27 September - 2 October 2016

decorativefair.com 020 7616 9327

 WWW.LUK EIRWIN.C OM
20 – 22 PIMLICO ROAD LONDON SW1W 8LJ +44 (0)207 730 6070
WWW.ORIGINES.COM
RICHEBOURG - FRANCE
$PRQXPHQWDO/RXLVSHULRGULFKO\FDUYHGOLPHVWRQHÀUHSODFH
with an overmantel piece. Ca. 1690.
Origin : A presbytery in Normandy. Ht : 350 W : 250 cm
 TH E WO R L D O F IN TER IO R S 쮿 PRO MOT I O N

ALFIES ANTIQUE MARKET

Marylebone’s Church Street is rapidly becoming
London’s best one-stop design destination, thanks
in no small part to the world-famous Alfies, which
hosts some of the largest collections of high-calibre
design in Europe. Showcasing more than 75 dealers,
Alfies has become one of the most appealing and
lively places for the trading of antiques, vintage pieces
and collectables. Alfies Antique Market, 13-25 Church St,
London NW8 (020 7723 6066; alfiesantiques.com).

LEFT, FROM TOP: TWO-SEATER BENCH,

BY SIGVARD BERNADOTTE, c1954,
FROM THIRTEEN INTERIORS AT ALFIES;
DECORATIVE ITALIAN PERFUME BOTTLES
IN VENETIAN SOMMERSO GLASS, c1980,
FROM SAMBATARO AT ALFIES

F I O NA McD O NALD
Fiona McDonald has been sourcing antiques for
more than twenty years, and her London showroom
has an established reputation for elegant and
distinctive mid-century design. Inspired by Italian
craftsmanship, Fiona has developed her ‘Makes’
collection, a range comprising Italian-made mirrors
and lighting, and British-made furniture and
seating, all of which is created by small teams of
skilled artisans. Produced with both commercial
and residential projects in mind, the ‘Makes’ collection
offers a bespoke service to suit any scheme, with
flexibility over measurements and finish. Fiona
McDonald, 323 Fulham Palace Rd, London SW6 (020 7731
3234; fionamcdonald.com).

RIGHT, FROM TOP: ‘THE CIRCLE’

MIRROR, BY FIONA McDONALD,
MADE TO ORDER; SCULPTURE,
BY CURTIS JERE, 1960s; PAIR OF
ITALIAN BLACK-WALNUT CHEST
OF DRAWERS, 1960s
 TH E WO R L D O F IN TE R IO R S 쮿 PRO MOT I O N

BE E DH AM ANTIQUES LTD
A family firm founded more than 40 years ago,
Beedham Antiques, which specialises in early
English and European furniture and sculptural
works of art, is now run by second-generation
owner, Paul Beedham. Having evolved the business,
he now deals in high-quality furniture dating
from the 15th to the 17th century, and sources
rare sculptural carvings in stone and timber, such
as the Romanesque capital shown here. Depicting
scenes of daily life throughout the seasons, it is
made of Caen stone and once resided in a cloister.
Paul exhibits in London at both the Bada and
Lapada fairs in spring and autumn, but items may
also be viewed by appointment, either on-site in
Derbyshire, or at clients’ homes. Beedham Antiques.
Ring 07798 936308, or visit beedhamantiques.co.uk.

LEFT AND BELOW LEFT: ANGLO-NORMAN

CAEN-STONE CAPITAL, c1150

B ROW N R IG G
Brownrigg is located in the heart of the historic
Cotswold town of Tetbury in a beautiful Georgian
building that boasts original features and open
fires. Specialising in an eclectic mix of conven-
tional antiques as well as more unusual items, the
firm refreshes its stock online and on Instagram
daily. Brownrigg, 44 Long St, Tetbury, Glos GL8 8AQ
(01666 500887; brownrigg.co.uk).
RIGHT, FROM LEFT: 18TH CENTURY
SWEDISH LONGCASE BLUE CLOCK;
19TH CENTURY DANISH LONGCASE
CLOCK; A MORA CLOCK, ALL WITH
ORIGINAL PAINT
A RTS AN D AN TIQUES 쮿 P RO MOT I O N

PAN GO LI N LO N D O N
Pangolin London is one of the city’s few galleries
solely dedicated to exhibiting sculpture. Rep-
resenting a solid stable of both established and
emerging artists and estates, Pangolin curates a
dynamic exhibition programme that focuses on
both the historic developments of British sculpture
as well as the cutting-edge contemporary.
Pangolin’s affiliation with Europe’s leading
sculpture foundry, Pangolin Editions, enables
the gallery to offer a unique service to collectors
and artists alike, with expertise in all areas of the
making, commissioning and installation of works.
To support sculpture from grass roots, the gallery
also organises a biannual sculpture residency in
collaboration with the PJLF Arts Fund.
Pangolin, which is based in the Kings Place
culture hub in up-and-coming King’s Cross,
exhibits sculpture in the gallery, as well as in the
public spaces of Kings Place and the canal side.
A new exhibition, Sculpture in the Garden, runs 13
May-9 July. Pangolin London, Kings Place, London N1
(020 7520 1480; pangolinlondon.com).

LEFT: LYNN CHADWICK,

SITTING COUPLE ON BENCH,
BRONZE, 1990

ARCHITECTURAL FORUM
Architectural Forum specialises in antique
fireplaces and unique salvage pieces. Based in
Islington, the company offers a spectacular array of
antique and vintage items, ranging from grates and
decorative radiators to period doors, furniture
and chandeliers. The majority of the items are
reclaimed from prominent London properties,
such as this fire-basket and mahogany doorway,
which came from the former home of Sir Joseph
Beecham, eldest son of Thomas, the founder of
the Beecham medical empire. Sir Joseph spent
vast amounts renovating his Hampstead mansion,
and the great and the good of London society,
including Edward VII, were entertained in the
ballroom from which these items were removed.
Architectural Forum, 312 Essex Rd, London N1
(020 7704 0982; thearchitecturalforum.com).

RIGHT: ONE OF A PAIR OF

GRAND ANTIQUE FIRE-BASKETS
FROM THE HOUSE OF SIR JOSEPH
BEECHAM, c1900

FAR RIGHT: ANTIQUE CARVED

MAHOGANY DOORWAY FROM
THE HOUSE OF SIR JOSEPH
BEECHAM, c1900
CRÉATIONS D’ARTISTES
www.glustin.net - Instagram: galerieglustin

GALERIE
GLUSTIN
PA R I S

140 rue des Rosiers - 93400 Saint-Ouen (Paris)

glustin@wanadoo.fr - Virginie + 33 6 08 72 00 34 - Karine + 33 6 03 81 12 26
ARTS A N D AN TIQUES 쮿 P RO MOT I O N

APPLEY HOARE ANTIQUES

Appley Hoare’s obsession with collecting began
while she was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris,
where she would spend hours scouring the flea
markets. So it was almost inevitable that she would
soon start trading; she has now been dealing in
decorative art and antique country furniture –
mainly French, but also Swedish, Italian and Spanish
– for over 20 years. If you’re searching for something
rare and authentic, you have every chance of finding
it at Appley Hoare Antiques. Appley Hoare Antiques, 9
Langton St, London SW10 (07901 675050; appleyhoare.com).

LEFT, FROM TOP: PLASTER BUST OF

CLYTIE, c1810;LARGE FRENCH SCULPTOR’S
STAND DESIGNED FOR MODELLING
TORSOS AND FULL-SIZE STATUES, c1860;

OS S OWS K I
For almost sixty years Ossowski has been dealing
and restoring 18th-century mirrors from its gallery
on London’s Pimlico Road. Created during a period
that saw great technical advances and aesthetic
achievements, pieces from this era are among the
finest ever made. If you are after a beautiful mirror,
Ossowski is the place to look. Ossowski, 83 Pimlico Rd,
London SW1 (020 7730 3256; ossowski.co.uk).

RIGHT: BRITISH LOOKING-GLASS,

MID-18TH-CENTURY
 KESHISHIAN

A rare Heriz carpet of unusual design, Persia, c1890.

73 PIMLICO ROAD, LONDON SW1W 8NE. TEL.020 7730 8810 NEW YORK TEL. 212 956 1586
info@keshishiancarpets.com www.keshishiancarpets.com
ARTS A N D AN TIQUES 쮿 P RO MOT I O N

HERES
Stonecutting no longer holds any secrets for Louis-
Joseph Lamborot. Representing the fourth gener-
ation in a family of stonecutters, he is an absolute
master, having spent the past 30 years restoring
France’s most beautiful monuments. It was on the
work sites of the Louvre, the Pont Neuf and the
Palace of Versailles, among many others, that he
learned the grammar of classical architecture.
Now he heads up Hérès, one of the best stonecut-
ting workshops in France.
Based on a simple sketch, Lamborot draws,
cuts, sculpts and makes possible all kinds of solid-
stone constructions, whether decorative sculptures
or exceptional residences. Devoting himself entirely
to the building of brand-new classical-style projects,
he offers his services to both private clients and
institutions. Hérès. For more information, contact
request@heres.paris, or visit heres.paris.

ABOVE: THE SALON D’HONNEUR

AT CHATEAU LOUIS XIV, LOUVECIENNES,
INSPIRED BY THE CHATEAU
VAUX-LE-VICOMTE, 2011
LEFT: ‘FLORE’, MARBLE STATUE AT
CHATEAU LOUIS XIV, LOUVECIENNES,
INSPIRED BY A RENE FREMIN
SCULPTURE IN THE LOUVRE, 2011
 CHESNEY ’S
Luxury fired by design

L O N D O N | N EW YOR K | S HAN G HAI

Chesney’s has fireplace and stove dealers throughout the uk t chesneys.co.uk

 Below: in The Garden, 1957, house leeks intermingle with
stellaria. Opposite: plants screen path in Driveway,
from the same year, an overlay of contrary geometries

106
 G R E E N E N E R GY
For the last two decades of his life, Paul Strand trained a camera on his garden in Orgeval, a village
outside Paris, capturing nature’s pulsating cycles of life, death and rebirth – and the paradox of pattern
and chaos in the plant kingdom. Assessing this late work in the context of his whole career,
Richard Mabey argues that the American photographer was never going to settle for pastoral tranquillity r

107

IN 1955, aged 65, the American photographer Paul
Strand decamped with his third wife, Hazel, to the village of
Orgeval, some 30km outside Paris. Their house had a large and
overgrown garden, and Hazel, for the first time in her life, dis-
covered the delights of working with plants. Paul worked too,
but with his own instrument of cultivation: the camera. After a
lifetime of groundbreaking photography, which spanned the
globe and most of the 20th century’s artistic frontiers, he would
have been forgiven for retreating into a quiet, pastoral mood,
and making impressionist studies of the herbaceous borders.
Instead, over the next 20 years, he took a collection of startling
vegetal portraits, intimate, unsanitised insights into the chaotic
energy of growth, that were a world away from the superficial
prettiness of conventional garden photographs.
One of his earliest (Driveway, 1957) announces quite unequiv-
ocally what draws him to the plant world. The hard geometry of
the crazy paving is obscured by a riotous cascade of winter twig-
gery, curving and twisting with potential even at this supposedly
Top left: in The Garden, 1967, a grassy glade can be seen through trees. Top right: Fungus, 1967, shows the bracket variety climbing an old willow
GREEN ENERGY
dead season. The path to the garden, the human staging of growth,
is blocked by the living plants. No surprise that Strand follows
this with intense close-ups of the almost geological weathering
of ancient willow bark, of a single buoyant spray of wisteria, of
a cat’s-cradle of dried stalks and leaves whose focus is a snail shell.
Ten of Strand’s Orgeval studies are on display in the V&A’s
current retrospective of his career. Seen in the context of his life-
time’s work, this superficially odd digression in his last decades
becomes part of a coherent vision. Strand was one of the most
innovative and versatile photographers of the 20th century. His
work ranged from abstract still lifes, heavily influenced by Cubism,
to fiercely political Neo-Realism. He was fascinated by pattern
and form, but outraged when order and regimentation subju-
gated the human spirit. What is probably his best-known pic-
ture, Wall Street (1915), brings these two commitments together.
A group of black-clad figures, their faces invisible, are walking
into the sunset dwarfed by the blank corporate architecture of
finance. Through the 1950s and 60s he turned increasingly to r
109
ENQUIRIES
+44 (0)20 7499 7470
masterpiecefair.com
FAIR LOCATION
South Grounds, The Royal Hospital Chelsea
Chelsea Embankment, London SW3 4LW
Top left: Lynn Chadwick, Sitting Couple on Base II, Cast by Fiorini, 1973. Image
courtesy of Osborne Samuel. Top right: Agostino Bonalumi, ‘Rosso’ (detail), 1984.
Image courtesy of Tournabuoni Art. Bottom left: Damask Silk Necklace, 2016, Fancy
Coloured Dimaond, Pink Sapphire, White Agate. Image courtesy of Wallace Chan
International Limited. Bottom Right: Sleigh Chair, Designed by Børge Mogensen for
Tage M Christensen & Co, Denmark, 1950. Image courtesy of Modernity, Stockholm.
® RBC is a registered trademark of Royal Bank of Canada. Used under license.
® Masterpiece is a registered trademark of Masterpiece London. Used under license.

documenting the lives of ordinary workers in the poor regions of
Africa and the Scottish Hebrides. He worked with a meticulous
reverence for the individuality of his subjects, as if he were a studio
portrait photographer working en plein air.
Imagine this sensibility let loose at Orgeval: the search for the
capricious rhythms of nature inside the garden’s formal structure;
the challenge of recognising individuality in the cryptic other-
worldliness of plants. Strand did take one traditional garden por-
trait. A harmonious arrangement of one pale- and one dark-
trunked tree, set off by the diagonal of what looks like a fallen
Robinia sprouting new leaf-shoots along its length, is pointedly
entitled From Hazel’s Window (1972). It’s a touching tribute to his
wife’s vision, and her work in the garden. But it is not the view
from Paul’s ‘window on the world’.
His penetrating gaze is mostly fixed on what is happening just
a few feet in front of his face, on a fallen apple, garlanded by dead
stalks; the lianas of old vines, frosted, arthritic, mutually sup-
portive; a single mulberry leaf caught in a snarl of iris blades.
Top left: a weeping elm – Orme Pleureur, c1970 – with contorted branches. Top right: primula leaves surround double daisies in The Happy Family, 1958
GREEN ENERGY
His pictures seem wired, their moraines of stones, twigs, beads of
moisture, fungi, dead foliage and new buds connected by seem-
ingly illegible tangles of stalks and creepers (ivy is ubiquitous at
Orgeval). Strand understands that pattern in the plant world is
not just a matter of spatial arrangement but of the flow of time
and energy. What may seem dead or arbitrary is just waiting to
be recycled and reborn.
The focus of Crocuses and Primroses (1957) is a crocus flower
that has toppled over. Behind it is a miniature stockade of what
may be the old leaf-blades of maize. They are desiccated and with-
ered, blotched with the grainy figures of invading viruses and
moulds. As Janet Malcolm wrote of Richard Avedon’s unflinch-
ing portrait photographs: ‘Avedon sought out faces on which life
had left its mark.’ Sixteen years on, Strand makes a study of Iris
Facing the Winter. One of the iris leaves has collapsed, another is
split. The remaining four are covered with minute droplets of
moisture, as if they are bleeding sap. There may be more than an
enthralled attention to detail at work here. By this time Paul r
111
GREEN ENERGY
Strand was suffering from bone cancer, and his activities in the
garden were severely restricted. Another portrait from this year
(1973) is openly titled Great Vine, Alive in Death. Against an empty
black background, the ancient vine stems are twisting upwards,
entwined with the sprigs of ivy (again) whose aerial roots are
visibly edging into the void.
There are plainly metaphorical layers in these late portraits.
But I don’t think looking for simplistic echoes of the human con-
dition in plants was ever Strand’s main motivation, more per-
haps a search for the challenges common to all life. He called the
garden his ‘observatory’, and wrote: ‘For the artist, the moment
of seeing can also be a moment of revelation. Such moments are
closely related to those of the scientist when he discovers his
hypotheses concur with the structure and organisations of nature,
either by lucky chance or as a result of patient research.’
The most remarkable of the Orgeval pictures is Orme Pleureur
(weeping elm), c1970. It shows the bole of a tree turning into a
whirlpool of wood, the emerging branches coiled round each
Top left: Paul Strand Photographing the Orgeval Garden, by Martine Franck, 1974. Top right: the ground is wired for new beginnings in Fallen Apple, 1972
112
THIS PAGE, LEFT: VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON © MARTINE FRANCK, MAGNUM PHOTOS. ALL OTHER PICTURES: © APERTURE FOUNDATION, INC. PAUL STRAND ARCHIVE
before dividing into a shower of descending twigs. The title is
ambiguous. It may be a simple horticultural label – there is a vari-
ety of elm whose branches ‘weep’ like those of a willow. Or it
may be metaphorical, a description of a tree ‘distressed’ by such
anatomical contortions. I don’t think it matters. Strand has cho-
sen a camera angle that poses this wonder against the house, which
appears as a bland background wall. The power balance of Wall
Street is turned upside down. The drama of life overwhelms the
human structure. Then in his eighties, and working among an-
other kingdom of fellow organisms, Paul Strand was still cele-
brating survival and grace under fire $
‘Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century’ is at the V&A,
Cromwell Rd, London SW7 (020 7942 2000; vam.ac.uk), until 3 July.
‘Paul Strand: The Garden at Orgeval’, selected and with an essay by Joel
Meyerowitz, is published by the Aperture Foundation (aperture.org/shop/
paul-strand-the-garden-at-orgeval-book). The latest Aperture book
releases and limited-edition prints will also be available at Photo London,
Somerset House, Strand, London WC2 (photolondon.org), 19-22 May
ELISE SOM
116
 Opposite: rambling
flowers, just like
those in hammered
copper that frame
them, creep up
a stylised blue rock
formation in this
central panel. This
page: the birds could
well be qingniao
– the ‘bluebirds of
happiness’ of
Chinese folklore
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS: PJ GATES PHOTOGRAPHY

FOREIGN AFFAIR
Made in c1750, these Cantonese enamelled sconces were created for the king of Portugal – flamboyant symbols of
the court’s love of the Orient. Chinese in style, European in form, and full of references to both Eastern and Western
culture, they tell an enigmatic tale of cross-continental taste and trade in the 18th century. Text: Grace McCloud r
24th–30th June 2016
Albert Memorial West Lawn,
Kensington Gardens, London

Tel: +44 (0)20 7389 6555

www.haughton.com
 FOREIGN AFFAIR

FOR NEARLY 100 years, in Britain at least, we

have been ‘on grid’, so it’s hard to imagine a world that once
all but stopped spinning come sundown: supper by gutter-
ing candlelight; no book at bedtime, save for the rich. It’s a
truism, of course, to say that it hasn’t always been like this,
but one worth remembering when looking at the develop-
ment of artificial lighting over the centuries. In the 1750s, for
example, when this pair of enamelled wall sconces is thought
to have been made, burning candles, preferably beeswax –
far superior to the ‘smoakie light/ That’s fed with stinking
tallow’ (so says Leonatus in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline) – would
have spoken volumes about prosperity and status.
And what of their display? The two seen here, which are
for sale at Ronald Phillips during London’s Masterpiece fair
this month, are thought to have been made in Canton for the
king of Portugal, midway through China’s Qianlong period
(1735-1796). Their wooden backboards, about 40cm high,
are adorned with enamelled copper and repoussé mould-
ings in the shape of leaves and rosy flowers resembling ane-
nomes set with cut-glass jewels. Three-dimensional birds,
with oil-slick feathers and peachy breasts, perch on copper
branches – virtually the only surfaces not enamelled – either
side of the candle-holders (these glass ones are modern re-
placements). Each sconce is fitted with a central oval panel
painted with scenes of courtly Chinese life, and at the very
top, sharp-clawed beasts are crested by fans of decorative
enamel. What these fearsome creatures are meant to be
isn’t clear. They may represent tigers, leopards or Chinese
lion dogs, but Thomas Lange, researcher at Ronald Phillips,
thinks they could be owls – Western symbols of wisdom –
their unwonted ferocity explained by Chinese folklore, which
instead sees them as harbingers of death.
If contemporary standards are anything to go by, the fix-
tures quite likely formed part of a set – possibly of as many as
12, which would have meant as many candles too (if not more;
Lange thinks the originals could very well have been double-
branched). But with very few relevant comparisons (there’s a
similar pair in the Hermitage, though without the moulding,
for example), they exist in their own league. What is certain,
however, is that together, lining the walls of a banqueting hall,
their glossy oranges, teals and indigos reflecting the crepus-
cular glimmer of candlelight, they would have made a grand
impression, particularly given that the majority of sconces in
this period were wooden, a few fitted with costly backplates of
brass or copper for extra lustre. Fit for a king (for who else r

Top: intellectual Right: enamels from

and musical pursuits this period often
comprise the main took inspiration from
theme in this ceramic wares; it’s
central oval panel, likely that the
which depicts a pink enamel flowers
lesson taking place were informed by
in a bucolic garden. famille rose pottery

119
 FOREIGN AFFAIR

could afford such splendour?), these were designed explicitly

as dramatic statements of wealth, rank and taste.
And taste here is key. For at the time these were made, chi-
noiserie was the height of fashion in Europe, and Portugal was
one of the few countries (along with Britain and the Nether-
lands) able to trade in the Chinese city of Canton. In the early
16th century, the Portuguese were the first Western nation
to forge Asian trade routes. Around 200 years later, follow-
ing the establishment of the Dutch VOC and our own East
India Company, all things Chinese were flooding the Euro-
pean market, their gracefulness and stylistic frivolity well-
suited to the Continental courts. Mirrors, blown in England,
were shipped to the East (at vast expense) to be painted, then
back again to be sold. Merchants went positively potty for
blue-and-white porcelain, which in turn inspired the Chi-
nese scenes of tin-glazed delftware. Local artisans, afforded
a monopoly by the Qianlong Emperor’s restriction of for-
eign trade to this southern seaport, began creating objects
specially for export – such as these fixtures – though often
with Christian or heraldic subject matter.
As the market grew, so did the demand for recognisably
European forms, and merchants began supplying craftsmen
with prototypes in silver or wood. This might explain the cur-
iously European flavour of these sconces. For while their
charming central panels are emphatically Chinese, showing
children perching on blue-and-white pots, or taking part
in a lesson beneath the trees – the fixtures themselves are
distinctly Continental in shape, and could well have been
based on a faience template. At this point, the Cantonese were
familiar with enamels on copper, the technique having been
brought to China from Limoges by French Jesuits. Certainly
it’s known that the same artists decorating pottery would
have also been in charge of painting what they called yang ci
– ‘foreign porcelain’. In this case, judging by the crudeness
of some of the work (take the decorative patterning) in com-
parison to the sophistication of the central panels, it’s likely
that more than one hand was at work.
But the most interesting thing about these sconces is that
their history is a puzzle, some pieces of which can be fitted with
context, others merely guessed at. Tantalisingly, on the back
of each one is painted a handful of Chinese characters. Nobody
has yet worked out what they say. Made in China, perhaps? $
Masterpiece is at South Grounds, The Royal Hospital Chelsea, London
SW3 (masterpiecefair.com), 30 June-6 July. Ronald Phillips, 26 Bruton
St, London W1 (020 7493 2341; ronaldphillipsantiques.com)

Top: its cheeks Left: the blue, pink

striped and spotted, and black patterning
its forehead stippled that surrounds
with green, this the central oval is
taloned creature likely to have been
displays the breadth of painted by an artisan
techniques used by trained in decorating
Cantonese craftsmen. famille noire pottery

120
THE ATELIER ON Manhattan’s 95th Street announces itself with little
fanfare, but once behind the plain front door, one is soon basking in reflective
glory. Here at Mirror Fair, founded in 1911, a series of dazzling roomscapes
unfolds: one, all shimmering columns and capitals, is Palladian in style; another
channels the Neo-Baroque of mid-century French designer Serge Roche. The
powder room, meanwhile, conjures up an 18th-century palazzo in Venice.
The third-generation head of the atelier, Stephen Cavallo, knows that the set-
tings are effective at seducing potential clients, be they traditionalists such as the
National Trust, A-list modern architects like Robert AM Stern or big-name inte-
rior designers such as Brian McCarthy. Recently, the luxury-goods department
store Bergdorf Goodman commissioned a mirrored fireplace surround for a dis-
play, while custom cast-glass bolection surrounds by Mirror Fair bring sparkle
to a 57th Street store window. In addition to elaborate large-scale projects, the
three-storey workshop, which houses a team of skilled artisans, also specialises
in mirrored and glass architectural details. A nearby table displays the fruit of
their etching, tinting, engraving and carving labours: bevelled plaques, frosted
panels, crystalline capitals, classical mouldings and silvered panes.
Centuries-old techniques underlie much of what one sees in the atelier, from
mouldings that shimmer like mercury to a mantel faceted to resemble rock crys-
tal. Truly, if the craftsmen behind Versailles’ Galerie des Glaces have a spiritual
descendant, it has to be Mirror Fair $
Mirror Fair, 320 East 95th St, New York, NY 10128 (001 212 288 5050; mirrorfair.com)
 TH E WO R L D O F IN TE R IO R S 쮿 PRO MOT I O N

SILVER LININGS
Once renowned for its bespoke looking-glasses, Mirror Fair, a century-old atelier in Manhattan, now focuses
on architectural mouldings and historic mirror interiors. Its pedigree is crystal-clear, discovers WoI
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 M IND’S EYE
In the 1940s Jean Dubuffet began visiting asylums, encountering the art of the mentally ill – and the effect on his painting was
potent. To complement his show on the artist at Frieze Masters, Helly Nahmad last year commissioned a fictional reconstruc-
tion of just such an institution, richly imagined by a team of collaborators. As the dealer tells Marcus Field, the mise-en-scène
explained so much more about the champion of Art Brut ‘than just having pictures on a wall’. Photography: Antony Crolla
Based on photographs of real 19th-century institutions, this exhibition space
by Robin Brown and Anna Pank evoked the day room of a French insane
asylum circa 1945. Built like a stage set at Scena studio in Croydon, it was
then reconstructed on Helly Nahmad Gallery’s stand at Frieze Masters 2015
in order to give a disquieting back story to the works of artist Jean Dubuffet

127
This page, clockwise from top: the white-framed Asylum, which sat opposite a display of the Dubuffet works on sale, contained mocked-up versions of a day
room, a patient’s bedroom and a doctor’s office; a team of eight craftspeople and calligraphers built up layers of Art Brut-style graffiti across the set; furniture and
props from the 1940s were sourced from French flea markets and auction sites, while the floor was painted to resemble institutional tiles from the period
This page, clockwise from top: while avoiding slavish re-creation, Brown and Pank’s design was thick with details gleaned from real asylums; in the doctor’s office,
some suitcases on the shelves opened, revealing more about the lives of fictional inmates; the staff pictures above the desk were taken from the archive at Ville-
Evrard, near Paris, where several exponents of Art Brut were treated. The cabinet of toothbrushes labelled with patients’ names was based on a photograph

PAINTINGS BY the French artist Jean Dubuffet
will always attract attention wherever they are shown. How could
they not? To begin with there is their huge scale and wild, childlike
expressionism. Added to this is the thrill of their sky-high prices –
last year, Paris Polka of 1961 set a record for the artist, going for $24.8
million at Christie’s in New York – a frisson only exacerbated by
the remarkable story of the man who made them.
But there was more than the usual buzz on the stand of Helly
Nahmad Gallery at Frieze Masters in London last autumn, where
eight canvases by Dubuffet were on display. For this was no ordi-
nary art show. While on one side the paintings hung on pristine
white walls, on the other visitors were invited to enter into an un-
settling fantasy. Here, in the manner of an elaborate stage set, three
rooms seemingly lifted from a fictional 1940s French lunatic asy-
lum – the sort visited by Dubuffet and the inspiration for much of
his work – had been painstakingly constructed, with a large space
to represent a day room, a smaller space showing a patient’s bed-
room, and finally the office of the presiding doctor.
Not only was every piece of furniture and architectural detail
faithful to the period, but – more importantly, and for some crit-
ics most controversially – the day room and bedroom were cov-
ered on every surface, including the ceiling, walls and doors, with
the imagined paintings, drawings and scribblings of the fiction-
al inmates. A soundtrack of distant footsteps, music and voices
gave the disturbing sensation of looking onto a scene from which
these unquiet souls had only recently departed.
This bold theatrical gesture originated in the mind of Helly
Nahmad, a dealer whose family collection is famed for its fabu-
lous holdings of Picasso, Matisse and other modern masters, all
stored in an airport warehouse in Switzerland. According to Robin
Brown, the film-set designer who created the installation – titled
The Asylum – the project began with Nahmad’s desire to provide
a back story for Dubuffet’s art, ‘to explain more about him than
just having the paintings on a wall’.
Brown and Nahmad had already set a precedent for such a
scheme at Frieze Masters in 2014 when they showed The Collector,
a spellbinding presentation of a fictional Paris apartment as it
might have appeared in 1968, complete with furniture, books,
kitchen equipment and an art collection to rival a small museum’s.
The display was the highlight of the fair, and the challenge in 2015
was to make something to match it.
‘Helly decided to show Dubuffet, and when I started research-
ing I found the biggest influence on him was the art of the mentally
ill patients in the asylums he visited in France and Switzerland in
the 1940s,’ says Brown, ‘so this seemed the right period to focus
on.’ The designer began looking at ways to tell this story, and again
teamed up with Anna Pank, a producer of fashion shows and other
events with whom he had collaborated on The Collector, to help
realise his vision.
The idea was to give visitors an impression of the asylums in
which Dubuffet first encountered Art Brut, the term he coined to
categorise the work by psychiatric patients, and which he began to
collect from 1945. This same work also inspired the naive, uninhib-
ited style adopted by Dubuffet in paintings like the eight canvases
displayed on the stand. But as Brown is at pains to point out, his
design for The Asylum began as a heightened fantasy, its form based
on photographs of places visited by Dubuffet but not a slavish re-
creation. The rooms, complete with shutters, doors and mould-
ings, were then constructed by set builders in Croydon. Much
of the furniture and other contents, right down to the vintage
toothbrushes, clothes, suitcases and light fittings, came from the
French auction site Le Bon Coin.
More difficult to create was the art covering every surface. ‘We
looked at the art which we know Dubuffet saw; the important thing
was not to plagiarise it but to work in the same spirit,’ says Pank.
‘Then we began looking for artists who had a particular sensibility
and who might be able to interpret this work.’
Among those engaged were Mike Sharp, an admirer of Dubuffet,
who worked in pen and ink on figurative drawings that were later
transposed to the set. Joella Wheatley, whose work is inspired by
architectural plans, spent days scratching directly into the table
surfaces. The calligrapher Kellie Walsh, who provides period writ-
ing for films, worked in chalk and ink on the fictional French texts
covering the day-room walls. Even the vintage notebooks acquired
surreal scribblings by artist Amy Haigh and Greek painter Ahetas
Jimi. On site in Croydon the scene painter Luca Crestani coordi-
nated a team who added their own rich imaginings to the growing
layers of material. Finally the whole set was dismantled and reas-
sembled at Frieze.
Over the five-day event The Asylum became the talk of the fair,
and three Dubuffet paintings were sold. Brown says that every
visitor he spoke to reacted positively to it. ‘Some people found
it moving and sad; others liked the fact they were learning more
about Dubuffet and his life.’ To the critics who questioned its
propriety, he responds by explaining that when the charity Mind
was consulted it was supportive of the endeavour on the basis that
it raised awareness of mental-health issues.
Whether Dubuffet himself would have approved of the simula-
tion of Art Brut seems more doubtful. What is certain is that The
Asylum will never be seen again. Like The Collector before it, it was
pulled apart and dispersed immediately after the fair. For its crea-
tors there will be another project with Nahmad at Frieze Masters
this year, on a theme yet to be decided. Meanwhile Brown is con-
tent with the dream-like legacy of The Asylum, which ‘now exists
only in people’s heads’ – and the pictures you see here $
To contact Robin Brown or Anna Pank, ring 020 7281 0881, or visit
brownandpank.com. To contact Helly Nahmad London, ring 020 7494
3200, or visit hellynahmad.com
Opposite: details in a patient’s bedroom included vintage notebooks embellished
by Amy Haigh and Ahetas Jimi, plus an accompanying soundtrack of popular
songs from the 1940s. This page: the doom-laden atmosphere, aided by the
Art Brut additions, helped visitors get into the mindset of Dubuffet’s subjects
ARTS AND ANTIQUES fairs
An international round up, chosen by Henrietta Whitfield

BRITAIN
19-22 MAY SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 PHOTO LONDON. The second
instalment of this dynamic photography fair is complemented by specially
commissioned exhibitions and curated tours, giving visitors an opportu-
nity to experience all the show has to offer alongside a world specialist.
Details: 020 7759 1170; photolondon.org.
20-22 MAY OLYMPIA, HAMMERSMITH RD, LONDON W14 ART16. Sophie Hastings,
freelance journalist and GQ’s art editor, curates this year’s talks programme,
‘Let’s Talk About Art’. With such provocative titles as ‘Do Women [Still]
Have to be Naked to get into the Met Museum?’ expect some hot debating.
Details: 020 7886 3112; artfairslondon.com.
24-30 JUNE ALBERT MEMORIAL WEST LAWN, KENSINGTON GARDENS, LONDON W2 ART
ANTIQUES LONDON. This glamorous affair is accompanied by a lecture pro-
gramme that includes the grandly titled ‘Face to Face: Dame Rosalind Savill in
conversation with Richard, 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of
Queensberry’. Details: 020 7389 6556; haughton.com.
27 JUNE-3 JULY OLYMPIA, HAMMERSMITH RD, LONDON W14 OLYMPIA INTERNATIONAL
ART AND ANTIQUES FAIR. The 44th year of this impressive fair sees an exciting
rebrand, proving art and antiques to be desirable across the generations.
Price tags range from £100 to £1 million, and a new showcase welcomes
new and emerging galleries. Details: olympia-art-antiques.com.
30 JUNE-6 JULY SOUTH GROUNDS, ROYAL HOSPITAL CHELSEA, ROYAL HOSPITAL RD, LON-
DON SW3 MASTERPIECE LONDON. The international fair offers museum-quality
works spanning 5,000 years. Details: 020 7499 7470; masterpiecefair.com.
1-8 JULY LONDON LONDON ART WEEK. This celebration of pre-contemporary art
takes place in more than 50 specialist galleries. All are situated in Mayfair and
St James’s, making the expert-led guided tours, in partnership with Art
History UK, uniquely enjoyable experiences of both London and the fine
work it attracts. Details: londonartweek.co.uk.
13-18 SEPTEMBER BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON W1 LAPADA ART AND ANTIQUES
FAIR. Note the earlier dates of this year’s prestigious fair, at which every ex-
hibitor is a Lapada member. Details: 020 7823 3511; lapadalondon.com.
27 SEPTEMBER-2 OCTOBER EVOLUTION, BATTERSEA PARK, LONDON SW8 THE DECORA-
TIVE ANTIQUES AND TEXTILES FAIR. The much adored fair, which takes place three
times a year, continues to delight collectors, decorators and gift-buyers alike
with its unique spirit and sometimes-splendid, sometimes-quirky, always-
surprising exhibits. Details: 020 7616 9327; decorativefair.com.
27 SEPTEMBER-9 OCTOBER GOLDSMITHS’ HALL, FOSTER LANE, LONDON EC2
GOLDSMITHS’ FAIR.Head to the City for the finest of fine-art jewellery.
Details: 020 7606 7010; goldsmithsfair.co.uk.
6-9 OCTOBER SOMERSET HOUSE, STRAND, LONDON WC2 1:54 CONTEMPORARY
AFRICAN ART FAIR. A grand celebration of diversity, this vibrant fair repre-
sents the breadth of African art from all of the continent’s 54 countries in
one place. Details: 020 7373 3308; 1-54.com.
6-9 OCTOBER REGENT’S PARK, LONDON N1 FRIEZE LONDON. A critically acclaimed
programme of talks and projects across the long weekend only strengthens
Frieze London’s ever-increasing international reputation as an unmissable
event in the art calendar. Details: 020 3372 6111; friezelondon.com.
6-9 OCTOBER REGENT’S PARK, LONDON N1 FRIEZE MASTERS. Art from the ancient
era rubs shoulders with old masters and major works of the late 20th cen-
tury alike. Details: 020 3372 6111; friezemasters.com.
5-9 OCTOBER BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON W1, PAD LONDON. Details: 00 33 1 53
30 85 20; pad-fairs.com.
31 OCTOBER-6 NOVEMBER OLYMPIA, HAMMERSMITH RD, LONDON W14 WINTER 0LYMPIA
ART AND ANTIQUES FAIR. Details: 0871 620 7062; olympia-antiques.com.
3-12 NOVEMBER LONDON ASIAN ART IN LONDON. The week-long celebration of
eastern art also presents a symposium titled ‘The Science of Art’, which will
be held on 9 November. Details: 020 7499 2215; asianartinlondon.com. r
J U L I A N C H I C H E S T E R

London
º +44(0) 20 7622 2928
1-3 Queen’s Elm Parade, Chelsea
sales@julianchichester.com

@julianchich

New York
º+1(646) 293 6622
NYDC, 200 Lexington Ave, #604
sales@julianchichesterusa.com

@jchichesterusa

Colourist Regency small wave chest with Tassia table lamp julianchichester.com
 ARTS AND ANTIQUES fairs
15-23 MARCH 2017 DUKE OF YORK SQUARE, LONDON SW3 BADA FAIR. Details:
badafair.com.
OUTSIDE BRITAIN
BELGIUM 21-29 JANUARY 2017 TOUR ET TAXIS, AVE DU PORT, BRUSSELS BRAFA. One
of Europe’s leading art and antiques fairs manages to stay eclectic, present-
ing pieces spanning antiquity to the modern day. Details: brafa.be.
CHINA 23-25 MARCH 2017 CONVENTION AND EXHIBITION CENTRE, EXPO DRIVE, WAN
CHAI, HONG KONG ART BASEL HONG KONG. Details: artbasel.com.
DENMARK 26-28 AUGUST BELLA CENTER, CENTER BOULEVARD, COPENHAGEN ART
COPENHAGEN To celebrate its 20th anniversary, this year the fair presents a
new wing dedicated to showcasing contemporary works from around the
world. Called Code, it aims to foster an open and international dialogue
about art. Details: artcopenhagen.dk.
FRANCE 20-23 OCTOBER GRAND PALAIS, AVE DU GENERAL EISENHOWER, PARIS FIAC.
Make sure to download the Fiac smartphone app to stay up-to-date with
the French art scene during this fair. Details: 00 33 147 56 64 20; fiac.com.
20-23 OCTOBER HOTEL DU DUC, RUE DE LA MICHODIERE, PARIS OUTSIDER ART FAIR.
A fair commited to Art Brut and its focus on impulse and raw creativity. If
you enjoyed our article on the Dubuffet-inspired installation on page 126,
FASANO then this is the fair for you. Details: outsiderartfair.com.
10-13 NOVEMBER GRAND PALAIS, AVE WINSTON CHURCHILL, PARIS PARIS PHOTO.
The fair celebrates its 20th anniversary with a glossy programme of events.
Details: 00 33 1 47 56 64 69; parisphoto.com.
GERMANY 13-18 SEPTEMBER BERLIN BERLIN ART WEEK. Details: 00 49 30 24
749 849; berlinartweek.de.
GREECE 26-29 MAY FALIRON PAVILION, MORAITINI ST, ATHENS ART ATHINA Running
since 1993, this contemporary fair is the largest visual arts event in the
country. Details: art-athina.gr.
ITALY 27-30 JANUARY 2017 EXHIBITION CENTRE, VIA DELLA FIERA, BOLOGNA ARTE
FIERA BOLOGNA. Details: artefiera.it.
NETHERLANDS 10-19 MARCH 2017 MAASTRICHT EXHIBITION AND CONGRESS CENTRE,
FORUM 100, GV MAASTRICHT TEFAF. This unmissable event for serious collec-
tors and museum representatives is famous for its stellar exhibitors and its
exciting air of academia. Details: tefaf.com.
PORTUGAL 26-29 MAY FABRICA NACIONAL DA CORDOARIA, RUA DA JUNQUEIRA, LISBON
IFEMA ARCO LISBOA. Details: ifema.es.
BEAUMONT SPAIN 23-26 FEBRUARY 2017 FERIA DE MADRID, AVE PARTENON, MADRID IFEMA
ARCO MADRID. Details: ifema.es.
SWITZERLAND 13-18 JUNE MARKTHALLE, VIADUKTSTRASSE, BASEL VOLTA. One of
the most important shows of Basel’s art week. Set in the fabulous space of
the city’s Markthalle, its layout is specifically designed to encourage visi-
tors to explore individual artists in depth. Details: voltashow.com.
14-19 JUNE BURGWEG, BASEL LISTE. Since its foundation in 1996, Liste has
been developing its reputation as one of the most important fairs wholly
dedicated to promoting new artists and gallerists. Details: liste.ch.
16-19 JUNE MESSEPLATZ, BASEL ART BASEL. Setting standards since 1970, the
largest event of Basel Art Week is now so popular that it’s given rise to fairs
in Miami and Hong Kong too. Details: artbasel.com.
USA 23-26 JUNE LUMBER LANE RESERVE, BRIDGEHAMPTON, NEW YORK, NY ART
HAMPTONS. Details: arthamptons.com.
22-27 OCTOBER THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY, PARK AVE, NEW YORK, NY TEFAF NEW
YORK. The established Dutch enterprise this year launches two new annual
GALLIARD fairs in New York; this is the first and will focus on artworks dating from
antiquity right up to the 20th century. Details: tefaf.com.
1-4 DECEMBER W. 41ST ST, MIAMI BEACH, FL ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH. The Swiss
original’s Stateside sister. Details: artbasel.com.
4-9 MAY 2017 THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY, PARK AVE, NEW YORK, NY TEFAF NEW
YORK. The second New York instalment of the famous Netherlands fair
places emphasis on modern and contemporary design. Details: tefaf.com.
2-5 MARCH 2017 PIERS 92 AND 94, 12TH AVE, NEW YORK, NY THE ARMORY SHOW.
America’s leading modern and contemporary fair returns to the Big Apple
for its 22nd year. Details: 001 212 645 6440; thearmoryshow.com $
 The finest lighting, hardware & furniture
made at the Collier Webb foundry for over forty years

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136
DAY OF RECKONING
In the Paris apartment he shared with his wife and daugh-
ters, Avigdor Arikha set himself a simple rule: any canvas
begun in the morning had to be finished by nightfall. It’s
perfectly in keeping with the artist’s fevered approach to
work – ‘like a panting animal’, said one observer. Beholding
his intense pictures of everyday objects, Charlotte Edwards
hands down her final judgement. Photography: Eric Morin

Opposite: before his Damascene moment at a Caravaggio exhibition in 1965, Arikha was an abstract painter. Two large canvases dating from his
early career are displayed above and below the staircase leading up to storage on a mezzanine. Top: Arikha worked from this double-height studio
in his Paris apartment, on the top floor of a 1929 block. On the easel is his last painting, a portrait of his pregnant daughter Noga in a Marian-blue robe
Top: in the entrance hall, Arikha’s painting Anne in Summer, Jerusalem, 20 July 1980 hangs above a silverpoint double portrait of his friend
Samuel Beckett. Arikha was a scholar of east Asian art – the Japanese print is attributed to Utamaro. Above left: Tomatoes in a Glass Bowl and
Chopping Board, 1998, oil on canvas. Above right: A Spoon, a 1975 sugar-lift aquatint. Later, in mourning for the death of Samuel Beckett, Arikha
would paint the writer’s christening spoon, which he had presented to the Arikhas’ daughter Alba – named after Beckett’s poem – at her birth
Top: Arikha made many drawings of this view through the double doors of the studio into the library, which is lined with books on art and ancient
civilisations. Above left: Paintbrush and Sketchbooks, a pastel drawing of 1988. Arikha often depicted the tools of his trade – a 1985 pastel, Tubes
of Paint in their Drawer, is in Tate’s collection. He loved all kinds of paper, and soon after his arrival in Paris made a point of befriending printers,
suppliers and purveyors of artists’ materials, such as Sennelier and Maison Gattegno. Above right: The Old Armchair, a sugar-lift aquatint of 1973
140
Opposite: in the oil-on-canvas Morning Toast, 1996, Arikha captured his own intense gaze in reflection just above the oven dials. Bread is a recur-
ring subject of his still lifes. This page: according to Arikha’s wife, Anne, Orange Tie Folded, a watercolour of 1975, recalls the abiding influence of
east Asian art on his work. Arikha was six years old when his father took him to see an exhibition of Chinese painting – ‘he never forgot it’, says Anne
 AVIGDOR ARIKHA painted what he saw and he painted himself in the act of
looking: in raw self-portraits, stripped to the waist, brow furrowed, mouth agape. In Morning
Toast of 1996, his grimacing face is reflected in the polished surface of the cooker. The sky-blue
pot holder and the slice of toast, its crust just a little charred by the grill, hold their own against
the dark void of the open oven, but the artist’s image is a memento mori, a ghost at the feast. It
is a painting about a routine, about beginnings and inescapable endings: the stuff of life.
Arikha’s intimately scaled oils, watercolours, drawings and prints of everyday subjects – a
cheap black umbrella; a half-eaten baguette; two odd rubber gloves; a box of pastels – have a
deceptive power. These are things he has known and loved, used and worn and worn out. They
are matter-of-fact, but they are what matters; encountering his quiet study of a casually folded
tie at the Maastricht art fair feels like a moment of truth. He could get at the essence of a teaspoon
as well as of the people he loved. His silverpoint portraits of Samuel Beckett, a friend for over 30
years and his companion on nocturnal walks around Paris, are little more than a tangle of lines.
He painted furiously, in agitation – ‘like a panting animal’, the art historian Jean Clair has

ALL WORKS © MARLBOROUGH FINE ART. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF AVIGDOR ARIKHA
written – and insisted on finishing whatever he started in the light of a single day. The need to
work as if in one great exhalation was in part born out of his artistic training and influences:
the irreversibility of mark-making in east Asian ink painting, which he much admired; and the
rapid execution of fresco, a technique he had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. But
it was also a result of his experiences of war. Arikha had learned that there was no time like
the present. Born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Romania in 1929, he grew up in
Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), and at the age of 12 was deported to the Transnistria
concentration camps with his family, where his father was murdered in 1942. His response was
to draw the horrors around him, with scavenged materials and remarkable coolness, in sketches
that were eventually shown to Red Cross officials. Their intervention secured him and his sister
passage to a Palestinian kibbutz, and alongside his duties there and on military service Arikha
began to study at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Gravely wounded in
the 1948 Arab-Israeli War – in which he had done lightning-quick sketches, between explo-
sions, of soldiers changing positions in the trenches – he was presumed dead, taken to a morgue
and rescued only when a doctor noticed he was still breathing.
A new life in Paris began in 1949, when he took up a scholarship at art school. His wife, the
American poet Anne Atik, takes up the story: ‘It’s like a fable, or something from the Bible; but
then his entire life was like something from the Bible.’ There simply wasn’t a moment to lose.

Clouds, a comparatively large oil on canvas of 1997, records the sky through the huge arched window in his studio. Arikha later whitewashed these
panes with titanium-oxide pigment to filter UV rays. He imposed the constraint that a work, once begun, must be finished by the light of a single day
 Arriving in the city at seven in the morning, he ran straight to the Louvre, desperate to see the
old masters he knew only from reproductions; it was closed, of course, so he lay down on a
bench at the entrance and went to sleep. When the museum opened, he was frantic, not know-
ing where to look first. ‘It was terrible for him,’ says Anne. ‘After that, he was there every day,
from morning to night.’ Arikha went on to become an eminent art historian, writing, lecturing
overseas, and curating major exhibitions of Poussin and Ingres for the Louvre.
As a young artist, he made large, richly coloured abstract paintings in keeping with the then-
dominant tendencies of Art Informel, although he was a great admirer of Mondrian. His talent as
a draughtsman was known to friends such as Giacometti, who often exhorted him to draw from life
(one time, delighted to pose for him, Giacometti urged Arikha to choose any of his own drawings
in exchange). A 1965 exhibition of Caravaggio, again at the Louvre, was the turning point. ‘Avigdor
saw the dirty feet in the painting of the Raising of Lazarus, and that was it,’ says Anne. ‘He was get-
ting tired of abstract work. He said: “I know all my forms, I can’t continue doing them.” And he
started to go back to nature. He called it “a hunger in the eye”.’ He made Anne sit for him for an
entire day, feverishly producing some 30 drawings in brush and sumi ink. ‘And then he wanted to
tell Giacometti, he wanted to tell him he was right. But Giacometti died not long afterwards.’
For over 40 years, Arikha worked unstintingly in his Paris studio in the seventh-floor apart-
ment he shared with Anne and their two daughters; his many depictions of his family are some-
how both overwhelmingly tender and dispassionate. His first action on waking every morning
was to read a chapter of the Bible in Hebrew (he spoke five languages fluently). ‘If it was a good
chapter, he was happy, we were all happy,’ remembers Anne. ‘But if he had a chapter he couldn’t
stand – and there are many bad people in the Bible – then he was in a bad mood all day long,
and we would all tremble.’ His was an inescapable presence. His daughter Noga remembers
lingering outside the closed studio door under orders to be quiet, the smell of turpentine signal-
ling ‘he’s working’. ‘When the door opened, we would be called in for our judgement.’
Diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in his late seventies, Arikha knew he didn’t have much
longer. ‘Of course he used the time the way he always did,’ says Anne. ‘He was so intense. Someone
once asked him: “What do you do when you’re not intense?” And Avigdor said: “When I’m not
intense, I go crazy!” That’s how he was’ $
‘Arikha, Auerbach, Kitaj’ is on show at Galería Marlborough, 68 Carrer d’Enric Granados, 08008 Barcelona,
until 2 July. For opening times, ring 00 34 934 67 44 54, or visit galeriamarlborough.com. For information about
the artist, contact Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albemarle St, London W1 (020 7629 5161; marlboroughfineart.com)

A small self-portrait rests on the studio mantelpiece. In a 2015 catalogue essay, Jean Clair describes the artist painting with ‘body thrown forward, eyes
bulging from their sockets, mouth half-open’, accompanied by ‘a strange concert of little cries, hisses, puffs, the noise of the forge, the boiler room’
 PARIS / SEPTEMBER 2-6, 2016
PARIS NORD VILLEPINTE

BE
HIGHLY
INSPIRED IN
PARIS

THE LEADING DECORATION SHOW CONNECTING THE INTERIOR DESIGN

& LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY WORLDWIDE.

WWW.MAISON-OBJET.COM

INFO@SAFISALONS.FR
SAFI ORGANISATION, A SUBSIDIARY OF ATELIERS D’ART DE FRANCE AND REED EXPOSITIONS FRANCE / TRADE ONLY / DESIGN © BE-POLES - IMAGE © DR - ZIMINDMITRY
JAMES G RAHAM- S TEWART
89 – 91 SCRUBS LANE · London NW10 6QU · + 44 (0)203 674 04 04

A Roman bronze
and gilt-bronze figure
of a Bacchante, c.1780,
attributed to Luigi
Valadier (1726–1785)
27 inches · 68 cm high overall

www.jamesgraham-stewart.com
G IO VA N NA TICCIATI
STUDIO | STORE
giovannaticciati.com

LIFE IN BRONZE - 2016

Triennial Solo Show

of over 40 new bronzes
@

The Mall, London, SW1

10-22 October 2016

www.hamishmackie.com
laura@hamishmackie.com
hamish@hamishmackie.com
+ 44 (0) 7971 028 098

If you would like more information or to be

added to our mailing list please get in touch
 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: © THE ESTATE OF ALBERTO GIACOMETTI/DACS, LONDON 2016. PHOTOGRAPHY: © THE FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, CAMBRIDGE; © ROBERT AND LISA SAINSBURY COLLECTION, SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS; LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. DONATION: LILLIAN OG PT NIELSENS FOND. © THE ESTATE OF
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI/DACS, LONDON 2016. PHOTOGRAPHY: POUL BUCHARD/BRØNDUM & CO; © HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON/MAGNUM PHOTOS; © SAINSBURY CENTRE FOR VISUAL ARTS. ALL QUOTES TAKEN FROM ‘ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: A LINE THROUGH TIME’ (SCVA EXHIBITION CATALOGUE), PUBLISHED BY BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS
THE LAST WORD GIACOMETTI

JUXTAPOSING ANTIQUITIES WITH THE WORK OF ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, A NEW SHOW AT ANCIENT WONDER
THE SAINSBURY CENTRE REVEALS HOW HIS ADMIRATION OF THE DISTANT PAST LED HIM TO DEVELOP A VERY MODERN WAY OF LOOKING

‘Alberto also introduced me to Egyptian his-

tory, through artworks… I remember well
the effort he made to show me the evolution
of the style and the particularities tied to the
different dynasties. Always he attempted to
go beyond contemplation of the art itself in
order to call forth the history of the country
and the development of an entire civilisa-
tion. Our main focus was on ordinary people.
The scribes and the fishermen among the
reeds, rather than the pharaohs and priests,
were our friends’ $ GIACOMETTI’S NEPHEW
SILVIO BERTHOUD

‘If I didn’t know that your skull had a certain

depth, I couldn’t guess it. Therefore, if I made
a sculpture of you absolutely as I perceive you,
I would make a rather flat, scarcely modulat-
ed, sculpture that would be much closer to
a Cycladic sculpture, which has a stylised
look, than to a sculpture by Rodin or Houdon,
which has a realistic look. I think we have such
a received idea of what a head is in sculpture
that it’s completely divorced from the real ex-
perience of seeing a head’ $ GIACOMETTI IN
INTERVIEW WITH DAVID SYLVESTER, 1964

‘Alberto Giacometti: A Line Through Time’ and

‘Henri Cartier-Bresson: Paris’ are both at the
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of
East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ (01603
593199; scva.ac.uk), until 29 Aug

Top left: Alberto Giacometti, Bust of Isabel Rawsthorne (Tête Egyptienne), 1938-39. Top right: Egyptian sistrum fragment with Hathor heads, c650BC. Above left: Cycladic preg-
nant figure with folded arms, c2700-2400BC Above right: Giacometti, Spoon Woman, 1926-27. Centre: Henri Cartier-Bresson, detail of Alberto Giacometti, Rue d’Alésia, 1961
JAMES G RAHAM- S TEWART
89–91 SCRUBS LANE · London NW10 6QU · + 44 (0)203 674 04 04

One of a pair of George III painted bookcases in the manner of James Wyatt, c.1775
110 x 85 x 18 inches · 279 x 216 x 46 cm

www.jamesgraham-stewart.com
TREASURES

Auction London 6 July 2016

Viewing 2 – 6 July

A pair of Regency gilt-bronze six-light candelabra and

stands, by Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, circa 1802–1806
Estimate £250,000–500,000
Enquiries henry.house@sothebys.com +44 (0)20 7293 5486
34–35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA
sothebys.com/treasures
 From top:
network
Sophia Salaman chooses the best merchandise and events worldwide
‘Blooming Out
Loud’ rug, by $ Canadian designer Zoë Luyendijk has cre-
Zoë Luyendijk ated her first rug range for Front, which is
for Front; ‘Luca’ now available in Europe. Having begun her
chandelier
career as an interior designer, Zoë set up her
from Fiona
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McDonald;
18th-century corporate the beauty of the natural world
faience from into modern rug design, devising some of
Julia Boston; the most complex creations on the market.
Front, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, Lon-
don SW10 (020 7376 3355; frontrugs.com).
$ Waterworks has just launched ‘Isla’. Created
alongside New York jewellery designer and sculp-
tor Jill Platner, the collection is the luxury bath-
room company’s first collaboration with someone
outside the interior-design industry. ‘Isla’, whose
sculptural taps, shower and tub fittings, wall-
mounted accessories and hardware are inspired
by rock, stone and organic other forms, makes
use of state-of-the-art processes, including 3D
scanning, and has been two years in the pipeline.
Waterworks, 579 King’s Rd, London SW6 (020
7384 4000; waterworks.com).
$ British furniture maker George Smith has
‘Isla’ tap by collaborated with the LA-based design studio
Jill Platner from
Commune to put together a collection of ex-
Waterworks;
quisite handmade items. Both companies
table from
Nicolas
are dedicated to using traditional craft tech-
Aubagnac; niques to produce their timeless pieces. The
‘Wing’ sofa in range comprises classic English designs with
green mohair a contemporary twist, including a club chair,
fabric by a side chair, a dining chair, the ‘Wing’ sofa
Commune for (pictured) and the ‘Channelled’ sofa – a rein-
George Smith
terpretation of the classic chesterfield. George
Smith, 587-589 King’s Rd, London SW6 (020
7384 1004; georgesmith.co.uk).
$ Established more than 18 years ago, interior
designer Nicolas Aubagnac has become an estab-
lished name in the world of decorative arts. Each
of its pieces is designed with expert knowledge
and created by the finest French craftsmen. The
company’s bespoke furniture and contemporary
lighting, designed to complement both antiques
and modern art, are made of rare and beautiful
materials, such as solid steel, chiselled bronze,
gold leaf, precious woods, straw marquetry, lac-
quer, leather, parchment and shagreen. Ring 00
33 1 42 46 69 45, or visit nicolas-aubagnac.com.
$ London Art Week, back for the fourth time, this
year takes place from 1 to 8 July. Over these
dates, 50 galleries from across Mayfair and St
James’s, including Sam Fogg, Agnew’s, Richard
Green and Johnny van Haeften, will open their
doors to reveal special exhibitions and new dis-
coveries. New participants include Arcadia Cerri
Fine Art, Bagshawe Fine Art and Charles Ede,
among many others. London Art Week runs 1-8
July (londonartweek.co.uk).
$ Since 1982 Julia Boston has been specialis-
ing in European antiques, decoration, light-
ing and furniture spanning the 17th century
to the early 20th. The aim of the company is
to provide interesting and unusual pieces that
can fit into any interior, whether modern or
traditional. Shown here is a selection of its
18th-century faience. Usually blue and white,
these pieces were typically produced in fac-
tories in Rouen, Delft and Nevers. Julia Boston
Antiques, 588 King’s Rd, London SW6 (020
7610 6783; juliaboston.com).
$ Mallorca’s Iberostar Grand Hotel Portals Nous is
set just outside Puerto Portals, one of the island’s
beautiful marinas. The adults-only hotel was de-
signed by Marcel Wanders, who conceived five
different themes for its exclusive rooms. Suites
include ‘The Heritage’, inspired by art, antiques
and the elegance of bygone eras; ‘The Spa’,
ideal for guests seeking a calmer experience;
and ‘The Stargazer’, the ideal spot for those in
search of a romantic getaway. Iberostar Grand
Hotel Portals Nous, 19 Calle Falconer, Portals
Nous 07181, Calvia, Mallorca (00 34 971 99 80
60; grandhotelportalsnous.com).
$ Fiona McDonald has been sourcing an-
tiques for more than 20 years. Inspired by
Italian design, Fiona also works with a small
team of skilled craftsmen to create Italian-
made mirrors and British-made furniture
and lighting. Beautifully designed, each piece
has been created with homes, office spaces,
restaurants and bars in mind. Her company
also provides a bespoke service, offering cli-
ents custom-made pieces. Fiona McDonald,
323 Fulham Palace Rd, London SW6 (020
7731 3234; fionamcdonald.com). r
 Made in England since 1860

The Beardmore Collection est. 1860

beardmore.co.uk
 From top: ‘Slim
Classique’
network
Sophia Salaman explores the latest developments in the world of luxury
watch in rose
gold from Ralph $ Spring 2016 sees French jewellery house
Lauren; two styles
Chaumet – known for its eminent clientele,
of ‘Amulettes
de Cartier’ in
including Napoleon – adding to its ‘Hortensia’
yellow gold with range with the launch of three new designs: a
diamonds from ring, a bracelet and a pair of earrings. Made in
Cartier; ‘P white gold, the pieces are set with chalcedony,
de Genève’ sapphires and diamonds, and each features
watch from Louis the collection’s beautiful hydrangea design,
Vuitton; ‘East
which is based directly on the flowers, as well
West Mini’ watch
as some historic sketches found in the com-
from Tiffany;
pany’s archive. Chaumet, 174 New Bond St,
London W1 (020 7495 6303; chaumet.com).
$ The designs of Ferdinand Berthoud, the French
company dedicated to the legacy of the 18th-cen-
tury Parisian who invented one of the first marine
clocks, are now on sale at William & Son. The
brand now enters a new creative era, honouring
Berthoud’s remarkable achievements with the
creation of a new tourbillon fusée watch. Featuring
a chain chronometer, which is powered by a hand-
wound movement, the design is unique to the
‘Hortensia Voie company. William & Son, 34-36 Bruton St, London
Lactée’ ring in W1 (020 7493 8385; williamandson.com).
18ct white gold
with diamonds $ For the first time, the Geneva Seal has been
and sapphires awarded to Louis Vuitton for its flying-tour-
from Chaumet; billon watch. This prestigious certification is
‘Ingénieur the ultimate standard of horological excel-
Chronograph lence and craftsmanship, recognising inno-
Edition’ watch from
vative approaches to watchmaking. Featuring
IWC; ‘FB1’ watch
from Ferdinand
only 168 components and an extra-slim skel-
Berthoud at eton structure, Louis Vuitton’s delicate, min-
William & Son imalist new offering has a fully transparent
back, putting all the complex moving parts –
each of which is decorated, according to the
seal’s requirements – on full display. Louis
Vuitton, 17-20 New Bond St, London W1 (020
3214 9200; uk.louisvuitton.com).
$ Each of the colourful pieces in Cartier’s enchant-
ing new ‘Amulette de Cartier’ collection symbol-
ises a lucky charm, the padlock detail represent-
ing a secret wish. Precious materials, including
guilloche gold and snakewood, as well as gem-
stones such as opal, lapis lazuli, malachite, car-
nelian, crysoprase, mother-of-pearl and onyx, bring
sparkling magic to this timeless collection. Cartier,
175-177 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7408
5700; cartier.co.uk).
154
$ Launched last year, Tiffany’s ‘East West’ collec-
tion draws on the company’s heritage in Swiss
watchmaking. New to the range is its ‘Mini’ watch,
which features a sleek 37 × 22mm stainless-steel
case, its rectangular silhouette inspired by the
architecture of New York City. The watch comes
with interchangeable single and double straps,
and is available in three colour combinations: a
white dial with gold numerals and a black strap, a
dark-blue dial with silver numerals, and a signa-
ture Tiffany blue dial with silver numerals and a
grey strap. Tiffany, 25 Old Bond St, London W1
(0800 160 1114; tiffany.co.uk).
$ With their delicate gem settings and so-
phisticated round silhouettes, Ralph Lau-
ren’s ‘Slim Classique’ watches are a reflection
of the company’s celebration of outstand-
ing design. Framed within an 18-carat rose-
gold bezel adorned with sparkling diamonds,
each dial is decorated with exquisite blue or
purple translucent guilloche lacquer, while
the roman numerals and hour and minute
hands are also made of gold. Ralph Lauren,
1 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7535 4600;
ralphlauren.co.uk).
$ IWC has unveiled three special-edition watches
to add to their ‘Ingénieur’ collection, including the
limited-edition ‘Chronograph 74th Members’ Meet-
ing at Goodwood’. A tribute to the Sussex es-
tate’s motor-racing legacy, this particular edition
has been limited to just 74 pieces. Also joining
the range is the ‘Rudolf Caracciola’ and ‘W 125’,
750 of which have been made. All three models
have in common a similar vintage style, com-
memorating the golden age of the sport and its
heroes. IWC, 138 New Bond St, London W1 (020
3618 390; iwc.com).
$ Known as the ‘city of gold’, Vicenza is widely
regarded as the centre of Italy’s jewellery-
making tradition. That’s why Bottega Veneta
picked the city’s small ateliers for its own jew-
ellery production. The brand’s latest col-
lection features pieces made of hand-woven
strands of sterling silver. Simple and elegant,
each is a marvel of meticulous craftsmanship.
Bottega Veneta, 33 Sloane St, London SW1
(020 7838 9394; bottegaveneta.com) $
Matki EauZone Plus Bespoke
Tailor-made to your requirements, beautifully engineered in the UK

F O R A B R O C H U R E A N D N E A R E S T B AT H R O O M S P E C I A L I S T C A L L 01 4 5 4 3 2 8 811 | W W W. M AT K I . C O. U K | M AT K I P L C , B R I S TO L B S 3 7 5 P L
ADDRESS book

1
2

1 ‘Chinese Toile LW90153’, £84, Lewis & Wood. 2 ‘Chinese Leopard Toile
BR-79227-0’, by Brunschwig & Fils, £102, GP&J Baker. Oversized round
sunglasses, by Miu Miu, £205, Liberty. Fabric prices are per m; all prices include VAT

Alessi, 22 Brook St, London W1 (020 7518 9090; alessi.com). Another

Country, 18 Crawford St, London W1 (020 7486 3251; anothercountry.
com). Anthropologie. Ring 00800 0026 8476, or visit anthropologie.com.
Asprey, 167 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7493 6767; asprey.com).
BD Barcelona. Ring 00 34 93 457 00 52, or visit bdbarcelona.com. BDDW,
5 Crosby St, New York, NY 10013 (001 212 625 1230; bddw.com). The
Beardmore Collection, 321 Fulham Rd, London SW10 (020 7351 5444;
beardmore.co.uk). Bennison Fabrics, 16 Holbein Place, London SW3
(020 7730 8076; bennisonfabrics.com). Black and Key, Design Centre
Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 7989; blackandkey.co.uk).
Borderline Fabrics, Studio 013, Worlds End Studios, 132-134 Lots Rd,
London SW10 (020 7349 7196; borderlinefabrics.com). Bronzes
de France, 73 Ave Daumesnil, 75012 Paris (00 33 1 43 41 53 53;
bronzedefrances.com). Broughtons, The Old Cinema, Copston Rd,
Anstey, Leics LE7 7BP (0116 234 1888; broughtons.com). C&C Milano,
Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3583 3303; cec-
milano.com). Charles Edwards, 19a Rumbold Rd, London SW6 (020
7736 7172; charlesedwards.com). Clarence Court. Ring 01579 345718,
or visit clarencecourt.co.uk. Colefax & Fowler, Design Centre Chelsea
Harbour, London SW10 (020 8874 6484; colefax.com). Collier Webb, 68
Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7373 8888; collierwebb.com). Colony,
Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 3232;
colonyfabrics.com). The Conran Shop, Michelin House, 81 Fulham Rd,
London SW3 (0844 848 4000; conranshop.co.uk). Counter Editions,
29 Charlotte Rd, London EC2 (020 7684 8888; countereditions.
com). Couverture and the Garbstore, 188 Kensington Park Rd, Lon-
don W11 (020 7229 2178; couvertureandthegarbstore.com).
De Gournay, 112 Old Church St, London SW3 (020 7352 9988;
degournay.com). Design Within Reach. Ring 001 800 944 2233, or visit
dwr.com. Dickinson’s Period House Shops, 141 Corve St, Ludlow,
Shropshire SY8 2PG (01584 877276; periodhouseshops.com). r

AMELIA TRUSS | HAND WOVEN FLAT WEAVE LINEN
BESPOKE CARPETS & TEXTILES
WWW. VAN DER HUR D. C OM
L O N D O N +44 207. 313. 5400 N Y C +1 212. 213. 6541
ADDRESS book
Emery & Cie. Ring 00 32 2 513 58 92, or visit emeryetcie.com. Evitavonni,
Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (0800 170 7050;
evitavonni.com). Fox Linton, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour,
London SW10 (020 7368 7700; foxlinton.com). Frances Palmer.
Ring 001 203 227 7204, or visit francespalmerpottery.com. Frith
Street Gallery, 17-18 Golden Square, London W1 (020 7729 3653;
frithstreetgallery.com). Fromental, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour,
London SW10 (020 3410 2030; fromental.co.uk). Gagosian Gallery,
976 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10075 (001 212 796 1224; gagosian.
com). Galerie Perrotin, 76 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris (00 33 1
78 94 01 48; store.perrotin.com). Gallery Eclectic, 66 Marylebone
High St, London W1 (eclectic66.co.uk). Georg Jensen, 89 Mount St,
London W1 (020 3824 8430; georgjensen.com). The Glass House, 199
Elm St, New Canaan, CT 06840 (001 203 594 9884; designstore.
theglasshouse.org). GP&J Baker, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour,
London SW10 (020 7351 7760; gpjbaker.com). Graham & Green. Ring
020 8987 3700, or visit grahamandgreen.co.uk. H. Theophile, 36 W.
25th St, New York, NY 10010 (001 212 727 0074; htheophile.com).
Habitat. Ring 0344 499 4686, or visit habitat.co.uk. Harrods, 87-135
Brompton Rd, London SW1 (020 3626 7020; harrods.com). Hauser
& Wirth, 23 Savile Row, London W1 (020 7287 2300; hauserwirth.
com). Haute Déco. Ring 020 7736 7171, or visit hautedeco.com.
Houlès, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352
7450; houles.com). House of Voltaire, 1a Nelson’s Row, London SW4
(020 7622 1294; houseofvoltaire.org). Ikea. Ring 020 3645 0015, or
visit ikea.com. Izé. Ring 020 7384 3302, or visit ize.info. Jamb, 95-97
Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 2122; jamb.co.uk). Jonathan
Adler, 80 Sloane Ave, London SW3 (020 7589 9563; uk.jonathanadler.
com). Lassco Three Pigeons, London Rd, Milton Common, Oxon
OX9 2JN (01844 277188; lassco.co.uk). Lewis & Wood, Design Centre
Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7751 4554; lewisandwood.
co.uk). Liberty, Regent St, London W1 (020 7734 1234; liberty.co.uk).
Linley, 60 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7730 7300; davidlinley.
com). Little Sun. Ring 00 49 30 2000 391 41, or visit littlesun.com.
Louisa Guinness Gallery, 45 Conduit St, London W1 (020 7494 4664;
louisaguinnessgallery.com). Manufactum. Ring 0800 096 0938, or
visit manufactum.co.uk. Marvic Textiles, Design Centre Chelsea
Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 3119; marvictextiles.co.uk). The
Multiple Store. Ring 07760 666518, or visit themultiplestore.org. The
Nanz Company, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020
3300 0099; nanz.com). The New Craftsmen, 34 North Row, London
W1 (020 7148 3190; thenewcraftsmen.com). Nicholas Herbert, 118
Lots Rd, London SW10 (020 7376 5596; nicholasherbert.com). Oka,
155-167 Fulham Rd, London SW3 (0844 815 7380; oka.com). Olivari.
Ring 01277 222615, or visit olivari.co.uk. Osborne & Little, 304 King’s
Rd, London SW3 (020 8812 3123; osborneandlittle.com). Paolo
Moschino for Nicholas Haslam, 10-14 Holbein Place, London SW1 (020
7730 8623; nicholashaslam.com). Parkett. Ring 00 41 44 271 8142, or
visit parkettart.com. Paul Kasmin Gallery Shop, 297 Tenth Ave, New
York, NY 10001 (001 212 563 5608; paulkasmingallery.com). PE
Guerin, 23 Jane St, New York, NY 10014 (001 212 243 5270; peguerin.
com). Pierre Frey, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10
(020 7376 5599; pierrefrey.com). Plinth. Ring 020 3479 5922, or visit
plinth.uk.com. Pop-shop.com. Visit pop-shop.com. Ralph Lauren
Home, 1 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7535 4600; ralphlaurenhome.
com). Rémy Garnier, 30 bis Boulevard de la Bastille, 75012 Paris (00
33 1 43 43 84 85; remygarnier.fr). SA Baxter, Design Centre Chel-
sea Harbour, London SW10 (020 8196 2410; sabaxter.com). r
 ADDRESS book

3
2

1 ‘Coral’, £595, William Yeoward. 2 Fruit bowl, £750, Asprey.

3 ‘Cobra’, by Constantin Wortmann, £53, Georg Jensen. Prices include VAT

Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kingly St, London W1 (020 7493 8611; sadiecoles.
com). Sanderson, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10
(020 7351 4269; sanderson-uk.com). Selfridges, 400 Oxford St, London
W1 (0800 123400; selfridges.com). Série Rare, 6 Rue de l’Odéon,
75006 Paris (00 33 1 55 42 92 10; serierare.com). Simon Playle, 1 The
Engineering Offices, The Gas Works, 2 Michael Rd, London SW6
(020 7371 0131; simonplayle.com). Skandium, 245-249 Brompton Rd,
London SW3 (020 7935 2077; skandium.com). Solid Wooden Doors,
Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7376 7000;
solidwoodendoors.com). South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Rd,
London SE5 (020 7703 6120; southlondongallery.org). Steve Harrison.
Ring 020 8482 4169, or visit steveharrison.co.uk. Strada London. Ring
0808 178 6007, or visit strada.uk.com. Summerill & Bishop, 100 Portland
Rd, London W11 (020 7221 4566; summerillandbishop.com). Surface
View. Ring 0118 922 1327, or visit surfaceview.co.uk. Tissus d’Hélène,
Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7352 9977;
tissusdhelene.co.uk). Toiletpaper Shop. Visit shoptoiletpaper.com.
Turnell & Gigon, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020
7259 7280; turnellandgigon.com). Turnstyle Designs, Design Centre
Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 3489 1040; turnstyledesigns.
com). Wedgwood. Ring 01782 204141, or visit wedgwood.co.uk. The
White Company. Ring 020 3758 9222, or visit thewhitecompany.com.
White Cube, 144-152 Bermondsey St, London SE1 (020 7930 5373;
whitecube.com). Willer, 12 Holland St, London W8 (020 7937 3518;
willer.co.uk). William & Son, 34-36 Bruton St, London W1 (020 7493
8385; williamandson.com). William Yeoward, 270 King’s Rd, London
SW3 (020 7349 7828; williamyeoward.com). Yorkshire Sculpture Park,
West Bretton, Wakefield, S. Yorks WF4 4LG (01924 832631; ysp.
co.uk). Zimmer & Rohde, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, London
SW10 (020 7351 7115; zimmer-rohde.com). Zoffany, Design Centre
Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 (020 7351 4269; zoffany.com) $
www.indian-ocean.co.uk London 0208 675 4808
LONDON’S BEST KEPT SECRET
LIVING . DINING . BEDROOM . LIGHTING . HOME ACCESSORIES

T: 020 3110 0804

4-5 Roslin Road, London, W3 8DH
www.thesofaandchair.co.uk
 A large portrait by Georges Dorignac, found in an
Emmaus charity shop, watches over the living
room, where a Louis XVI velvet sofa contrasts with
the saffron yellow of the walls and a 1950s armchair.
On the table by the window sits a casket covered
with ‘domino papers’ made by Antoinette Poisson

162
POMPADOUR’S
PROTEGES
Antoinette Poisson is not merely the maiden name of Louis XV’s mistress
but a Parisian design firm steeped in the 18th century – in particular the so-
called ‘domino papers’ that predate modern wall coverings. In a flat near Père
Lachaise cemetery owned by two of the co-founders, the motifs cover
bedheads, line cupboards and form lampshades – a tribute in part, says Valérie
Lapierre, to the company’s muse and namesake. Photography: Bruno Suet
 Top: above the living room’s dado, walls are lined with a copy of a domino paper designed by Sevestre Leblond, a renowned Parisian craftsman in
the 18th century. Above left: a marble mantel tops the 19th-century stove. Above right: on the sideboard stands a child’s cardboard miniature theatre
from the early 20th century. Antoinette Poisson’s co-founder Vincent Farelly, a restorer of 3D paper objects, prefers to keep it in its original condition.
Opposite: samples of domino papers, block-printed and hand-painted by the firm, made from rag paper by master craftsman Jacques Bréjoux
165
 ‘WE LOVE hunting down things made of paper,
especially wallpaper. It’s our obsession,’ confide Jean-
Baptiste Martin and Vincent Farelly. Along with Julie
Stordiau, they formed an interior-design business that
prints decorative papers, known by the intriguingly fishy
name Antoinette Poisson. Since 2012, these three thirty-
somethings have been busy bringing decorative ‘dom-
ino papers’ back into fashion. The ancestors of wallpaper,
they were highly popular in 18th-century France. ‘As we
really like that period, and have a peculiar affection for
Madame de Pompadour, that great lover of interior dec-
oration, we had fun with her maiden name, Jeanne-
Antoinette Poisson,’ Vincent explains.
Their fondness for paper dates back to childhood. As
a youngster, Vincent used to make scale models; these
days, he restores three-dimensional works in his favour-
ite medium. Jean-Baptiste, who used to take great delight
in scribbling on the walls of his childhood bedroom, now
makes a living restoring wallpapers. As conservators spe-
cialising in paper, one day you might find them hard at
work on small mock-ups of the stage sets of the Ballets
Russes for the New National Museum of Monaco; on an-
other it might be the first panoramic wallpaper, which is
now kept at the Musée Carnavalet.
The idea of creating their own brand came about when
they were tackling the restoration of a room decorated
with 18th-century domino papers. ‘We were not able to
find material with the same rudimentary quality for print-
ing, so we asked the extraordinary papermaker Jacques
Bréjoux to make us rag papers of the kind used in the
past. We block-printed them, painted them by hand and
stuck them to the wall sheet by sheet. The result was a rev-
elation.’ Ever since, Jean-Baptiste, Vincent and their friend
Julie have been making these sheets measuring 33 × 42cm
exactly the same way they used to be.
First produced in the Middle Ages, with images that
were initially religious then decorative, domino papers
were block-printed, then painted by hand or with a sten-
cil, and bore a cartouche with the name of the town and
the maker, the dominotier. The repeating and geometric
patterns – including lozenges, squares, stars, circles,
checks or stripes – were arranged in strips or clusters,
and as the technique is much the same as for Indian-
printed cottons, designs for textile printing were also
produced, such as fruit, flowers, leaf patterns and chi-
noiserie. For a dark-printed outline on a white back-
ground, up to three colours (including indigo, umber and
ochre) would be applied, then mixed or shaded into one
another depending on the desired colour. The irregu-
larity of the process meant that each domino paper was
unique. They were used to line the insides of furniture:
cabinets, chests, drawers and boxes. Because they were
difficult to align, they were rarely used on walls, except
over small areas, where they were applied one after an-
other, or joined together to make a roll – a fashion initi-
ated by Madame de Pompadour in the 1750s, when she
used them to decorate her dressing room in Versailles.

Top: an ostrich egg balances on scales in the kitchen. Above: in the past, domino papers were used mainly to line the interior of pieces of furniture,
a custom perpetuated by Jean-Baptiste and Vincent – this one is no. 20 in their catalogue. Opposite: a large dresser contains a whole collection
of Creil-Montereau earthenware, put together patiently over a long time. It is all in the same ‘Japon’ design that Claude Monet used daily at
Giverny. This model, very popular in the early 20th century, was copied widely, notably by the potteries of Sarreguemines with their ‘Damas’ design
167
In the spare room, a series of 80 old prints under glass of ancient
Roman monuments occupies the entire wall behind the
Louis XVI bed. A rare folding screen is decorated on the facing
side with Boucher engravings surrounded by a printed-
paper frieze. The lampshade comes from Antoinette Poisson

169
 In the 19th century, mechanisation signalled the begin-
ning of the end for domino papers, which continued to
be used for a while to make bindings for books, but then
disappeared altogether.
Jean-Baptiste and Vincent live in a three-roomed flat
of around 60sq m overlooking a courtyard in an ordi-
nary Haussmann-style building not far from the Père
Lachaise cemetery, a few minutes from their workshop-
cum-showroom. It is a far cry from the sumptuous sur-
roundings occupied by Antoinette Poisson’s namesake.
But the preponderance of paper pays tribute to their
muse, whether in old works of art found in the flea mar-
ket; specialist sales, such as a children’s cardboard thea-
tre from the early 20th century; or their own creations:
lamps, boxes, notebooks and other objects lined with
their designs. Here paper is king, even in the kitchen,
where the fridge is covered with vintage publicity flyers
and where the inside of a large dresser, housing a collec-
tion of Creil-Montereau faience in the ‘Japon’ motif used
by Monet, is lined with domino papers.
The occupants have the air of dreamers. The slightest
thing reminds them of Proust, whose books are to be
found in every room. The roughly painted trompe-l’oeil
décor in the loos recalls Christian Bérard, while the bam-
boo chairs and leopard-skin-pattern rug suggest Mad-
eleine Castaing. In the living room, the wood panelling
and walls are painted saffron yellow, except for two sec-
tions framing the fireplace, hung with their paper. The
pattern is a garland of flowers, based on an 18th-century
original signed ‘A Orléans chez Sevestre Leblond’, of
which they found a rare intact sheet. They have also used
the pattern, copyright free and now in their catalogue, to
cover a copy of Madame de Sévigné’s Selected Letters dis-
played on a plaster console on the wall.
In the master bedroom, the window’s white muslin
curtains and cotton in front of the cupboard create a tex-
tural effect, enhanced by the red cashmere coverings on
the black metal bed. A toreador’s suit and a Louis XV
period costume decorate the walls. In front of the fire-
place, a screen with an 18th-century-style bird design
is one of the duo’s own creations. Meanwhile, the large
screen in the guest-room is vintage, covered with prints
by François Boucher on the front and around 20 domino
papers on the back. On the wall, 80 small clip-frames
depict ancient Roman monuments in paper cut-outs.
And as Jean-Baptiste and Vincent now also produce
dominoes as block-printed fabrics, they have covered the
Louis XVI headboard, cushions and quilt with them.
The colourful designs, handcrafted charm and ir-
regularities of their delightfully fresh papiers dominotés
represent a rare and fragile heritage. The team is bring-
ing new life to these once-popular products – products
that were destined for places where they would not be
flaunted, such as the insides of furniture, or humble set-
tings not deemed worthy of preservation $
Antoinette Poisson, 12 Rue Saint Sabin, 75011 Paris (00 33 1 77
17 13 11; antoinettepoisson.com)

Opposite: with its metal Belle Epoque bed covered with a paisley shawl, and La Prisonnière as nocturnal reading, the main bedroom has a
Proustian air, a sign of the admiration in which the writer is held by the masters of the house. Top: above a 19th-century black-lacquer chair hangs a
bullfighter’s costume that Jean-Baptiste restored – and which he is quick to don whenever there’s a fancy-dress party. On the chest of drawers sit
antique perfume bottles. Above: a lampshade covered with dominoes sits on a bedside table fashioned from three items of vintage luggage
171
This page, clockwise from top: Hagia Sophia, here seen from the southeast, was built in the mid-13th century by Manuel I Megas Komnenos,
the emperor of the city then known as Trebizond; the western porch is one of three preceding each of the entrances; one of the remarkable
features of Hagia Sophia is its array of low-relief carvings. This one is similar to those found on Seljuk mosques. Opposite: the monastic
complex overlooks the Black Sea. It must have been one of the very first landmarks that sailors encountered as they arrived from the west
VISIONS OF BYZANTIUM
Motorbiking across Europe in 1951, David Winfield dreamed of working among the scattered ruins of the Eastern
Roman realm. Six years later, he was back, cleaning the 13th-century murals of Trabzon’s church of Hagia Sophia
in Turkey. Here, alongside the restorer’s own photographs, Antony Eastmond recalls how this eccentric Englishman,
armed with little more than a camera and a straw hat, discovered the hitherto unseen majesty of an empire in exile
This page, clockwise from top: a vibrant vision of the Word of God in the central vault of the narthex. In its middle, the hand of God, sur-
rounded by the symbols of the Evangelists, bursts out in a blast of coloured light; this fine portrait of St Peter in the apse shows that despite
the city’s position far from Constantinople, Trebizond had access to the finest craftsmen; in the north porch, the stories of the Virgin birth
and the Burning Bush are conflated – suggesting a parallel between Mary’s purity and that of God’s message, which left the bush undamaged
This page, clockwise from top: a choir of angels flies around the base of the dome, beneath what was once an image of Christ, since lost.
Just visible is the rickety 14m-high scaffolding that Winfield would have worked upon; when the building was reinstated as a mosque in
the late 19th century the Ottomans carved pits into the walls to help their plaster to stick. When it was removed, these spots of damage were
left behind; dressed like a Byzantine courtier, with pearl cuffs and jewelled hems, an angel on the dome suggests the splendour of heaven
 IN 1951 David Winfield, a young history student at
Merton College, Oxford, set out on a motorbike ride. His aim was
to cross Europe through Tito’s embattled Yugoslavia (it had just
fallen out with Stalin’s USSR) to visit the Orthodox monasteries of
Mount Athos. The route and the final destination established the
pattern of his life: a desire to live and work on the very edges of
Europe, and a lifelong passion for the art of the Byzantine world.
He combined the two by becoming a conservator of Byzantine
wall paintings. His first project, begun in 1957, was to clean the
paintings in the church of Hagia Sophia in Trabzon (the city for-
merly known as Trebizond), a remote, sleepy town on the Black
Sea coast in northeastern Turkey. The paintings he uncovered
and cleaned there were a revelation, showing the world the splen-
dours of a long-forgotten outpost of the
Byzantine world: the Empire of Trebizond.
The restorations at Trabzon took him
five years (after each six-month season he
drove back home in his trusty Land Rover).
The cleaning established Winfield’s reputa-
tion, and he spent the next 15 years working
first in the cave churches of Cappadocia in
central Turkey, and then in the remote Byz-
antine churches in the Troodos mountains
on Cyprus. There he toiled at some of the
island’s most famous sites, all the while ne-
gotiating his way around the conflicts that
erupted in the 1960s. The advice in case of
emergency was to ring the church bell to at-
tract attention from the nearest village. He
returned to Britain to become surveyor of
conservation at the National Trust, but the
spirit of adventure never left him, and when
he retired he moved to the north coast of
the Isle of Mull to become a crofter, where
he died in 2013. Throughout his life Win-
field worked closely with his wife, June, who
played a key role in the restoration work and acted as the main re-
corder of the paintings, making beautiful line drawings of them and
watercolours of the decorative details.
As an Englishman in Trabzon, David stood out. In the words
of Robert Thomson, one of the volunteers who worked with him:
‘He was a well-known figure in Trabzon, notable for his reddish
beard and the smart straw boater and blazer he wore on festive
occasions when we processed to the Italian consulate. Hence a
letter addressed simply to “that bearded Englishman, Trabzon”
reached him promptly.’ The work began to attract tourists: Win-
field guided visitors from one of the first Swan Hellenic cruises
round the city in 1958, including Rose Macaulay, author of The
Towers of Trebizond, a semi-autobiographical novel about love,
faith and camels, which begins with a journey to the city.
In the 1950s, the church of Hagia Sophia – then still in use as a
mosque – stood in tobacco fields to the west of the city. Like its em-
pire it was slightly remote and mysterious. In the 1920s the entre-
preneurial art historian David Talbot Rice had seen hints of the
church’s promise. Looking between the bullet holes, possibly
inflicted by the Russians in 1916 during their brief occupation of
the city, and the places where the Ottoman plaster that covered the
interior had fallen off, he saw shadows of lively figures and bright
colours waiting to be revealed. It took him nearly 30 years to secure
the permissions, and he entrusted the work to David Winfield.
176
The decision proved him right. The church was full of images of
the highest quality: lively compositions full of incidental detail,
painted in vibrant colours. These transformed art historians’ un-
derstanding of how Byzantine art developed in the 13th century.
Talbot Rice’s permit also allowed Winfield to work in two other
churches in the city. However, these were now the city’s most im-
portant mosques, and the resulting local sensitivities meant that
investigations were impossible: 19th-century reports suggest more
paintings and even golden mosaics may still be hidden.
The restoration of Hagia Sophia is important because it filled a
hole in history. In 1204, Constantinople (Istanbul today) was
sieged and conquered by Western knights on the Fourth Crusade.
The city’s inhabitants fled to establish rival strongholds in the shat-
tered ruins of the empire while they plotted
to recapture their capital, but little evidence
survived to show what these outposts had
been like. One branch of the imperial family
escaped to Trabzon to re-establish their ju-
risdiction there, and they survived for more
than 250 years, finally yielding to Mehmet
II the Conquerer in 1461, eight years after
Constantinople itself had fallen. The paint-
ings in Hagia Sophia show that they did not
live in poverty, but recreated the majesty of
the empire in exile. Other discoveries were
even more surprising: the exterior of the
church was full of carvings, some made by
Christian craftsmen from the Caucasus,
others by Muslims from Anatolia. Treb-
izond, with its trade links to the Silk Road,
was always a cosmopolitan city, despite its
isolated location on the coast.
What caught David Winfield’s eye the
most were the details, and he devoted his
career as much to establishing how Medi-
eval artists had worked as to the images
they produced. His archive is filled with photographs, like the
ones you see here, housed at the Courtauld Institute of Art in
London, of the host of angels crowding the dome of the church,
bowing down to praise God. He looked for the initial incisions
the artists had made in the plaster to plan their work, for the lay-
ers of paint they used to build up the figures, for the mistakes
they made and how they corrected them, and for the other changes
they introduced as they developed new, better ideas.
If the cleaning of the paintings was a triumph, so too were David
Winfield’s powers of persuasion, which convinced the city to
open the church as a museum by building another mosque near-
by. The paintings put Trabzon firmly on the tourist map, but the
decision by the Turkish government to reopen the museum as a
mosque once more has hidden much of his work behind a textile
tent erected inside the building to screen the paintings from wor-
shippers. So the church has now entered the latest chapter in its
long history – over the centuries it has been, variously, a mosque,
a ruin, a stable, a military storehouse, a cholera hospital, a mu-
seum, and now a mosque once again. It has proved to be a re-
markably adaptable but resilient building $
‘Byzantium’s Other Empire: Trebizond’ runs at the Koç University,
Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, 181 Istiklal Caddesi, Merkez
Han, 34433 Beyoglu, Istanbul (00 90 212 393 6000; rcac.ku.edu.tr/en)
from 23 June to 14 July
This page, clockwise from top: most of the paintings in the main part of the church have been lost, but a fragment of one can be seen on the
far pier. The columns and their extraordinary capitals probably came from Constantinople; in the apse, the Apostles discuss Christ’s resur-
rection after his appearance to Doubting Thomas; John the Baptist, and Kings David and Solomon, the latter wearing crowns, watch as
Jesus destroys the gates of Hell in the dome’s Anastasis scene. Opposite: Winfield, shot in front of one of the paintings he restored in Cyrpus
178
COMMON
THREADS
While restoring a west London terrace, textile lover
Helen Magowan and her husband, Andrew, found out
that they shared more than just space with some for-
mer residents, a family of turn-of-the-century drapers.
Today, bespoke ribbons connect up the rooms and
pay tribute to that lineage. Dominic Bradbury unravels
the wraparound story. Photography: Rachael A. Smith

Left: originally a draper’s shop, the Magowans’ late Victorian ter-

race retains its Maxwell signage from the 1960s/1970s, when it
was briefly used as a launderette. The sign was hidden behind a
wooden cover, which was removed as part of the restoration
process. Top: in the elegant entrance hall, this distinctive window
screen was created by Helen Magowan out of coffee filter papers
Above: in the open-plan ‘winter room’, the fireplace surround is made of reclaimed snooker-table slate from Retrouvius. Below left:
this cabinet of curiosities was created by architect Patrick Lewis to evoke moments in the life of former resident William Roberts,
a card-maker and the grandfather of the clan. Below right: the kitchen’s Belfast sink and brass taps were sourced online from Ebay
Above: a 1960s-vintage Ladderax from Heal’s keeps the library in order. Farrow & Ball’s ‘Stiffkey Blue’ matches the hue of the build-
ing’s façade. Below: these Plain English kitchen units were adapted to suit the space then custom-painted, with colour consultation by
Anna Glover. The work counters, from Retrouvius, are made of reclaimed chemistry-lab iroko, which recurs throughout the house
182
Left: a new, Patrick Lewis-designed staircase leads up to extra
living space, featuring Danish armchairs from Max. Above: the
dining table and benches are made from yet more iroko – still with
its graffiti intact. Below: Anna Glover and Jennifer Hollidge’s rib-
bons are threaded through the building, adding a sense of fluidity
Above: the master bedroom features bespoke bedside lights by Urban Cottage Industries. Below left: Deepa Panchamia’s silk-and-
linen ribbon snakes up across the double-height space. Below right: Anna Glover’s digitally printed ribbons evoke the lives of the
Roberts patriarch and matriarch. Opposite: Helen Magowan’s hidden ‘sewing box’ studio is fronted with bands of larch and oak
185

BEYOND the midnight blue of their front door, Helen
and Andrew Magowan share their late Victorian terraced house
with a welcome family of ghosts. This highly individual and seduc-
tive home is beautifully tailored to the couple’s needs. Yet it also
celebrates the heritage of the Roberts family, who lived here for 30
years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A clan of printers
turned drapers, the Robertses fascinated the Magowans and their
architect, Patrick Lewis, and their stories are told in a series of tex-
tile ribbons winding through the house from top to bottom. This
adds to the multi-layered character of the building and introduces
a sense of movement and delight.
‘From the second that Patrick told us that this had once been
a draper’s shop, it was almost inevitable that we would do some-
thing with textiles,’ says Helen Magowan, for whom fabrics and
textiles are a passion. ‘When we met Patrick it was clear from the
start that he was interested in some of the same things as us, and
in the heritage of the house. At the same time, he was asking us
questions such as: “What do you do at night when you come home
from work?” or: “What do you do on a Saturday morning?” Every-
thing here is a product of those questions.’
The Magowans had been living in an apartment in Barons
Court but hankered after more privacy and space. Looking for a
house in west London, they found everything was neatly laid out
for family living with four to five bedrooms. It wasn’t a pattern
that appealed, so they began to consider other options that might
give them more flexibility. Eventually, they came across this
Victorian terrace, which had been clumsily split into two apart-
ments, with one arranged over the upper two floors and the other
across the lower two floors and the basement.
‘The house was horrific,’ says Helen. ‘It was owned by some-
one who had been here for years and then tried to sell off the top
two floors as a separate flat. He had fitted it out himself to a very
basic level. The first night in this house was the worst. I thought
I would never be able to sleep again.’
‘It was quite eccentric,’ agrees Andrew Magowan, a lawyer
who works for an online fashion retail company. ‘I went to get
the keys and as I opened the front door I thought, What have we
done? There was dust everywhere and a bunch of little rooms, all
cut off from each other, along with six toilets. What we have now
is the antithesis of that.’
Untroubled by concerns of square meterage or maximising
bedrooms, the Magowans wanted to create a home that suited
them, with connections between the various living spaces. At the
same time, they wanted it to be full of character, interest, warmth
and personality, which began to evolve when they started their
conversations and collaboration with Patrick Lewis.
‘What really drives me is the story behind a space,’ says Lewis.
‘Here, our research connected us to the history of the house and
the family of drapers that used to live here. But it also connected
to Helen and her special interest in textiles and embroidery. So
there was the architectural intent on the one hand and then the
idea of integrating the textiles into the design.’
Lewis’s design for the interiors was largely driven by a series
of models, which show the fluid nature of the living spaces – with
many double-height and open-plan elements – as well as the
flow of ribbons across the four levels of the house (the basement
still awaits conversion). On the upper two storeys, Lewis designed
a double-height master bedroom at the front of the house, with a
‘sewing box’ coated in bands of oak and larch at the rear. This box
contains a dressing room and bathroom on its lower level plus a
modest sewing and art studio for Helen above, linking to the bed-
room below via an internal shuttered window.
The ‘sewing box’ became the crucial generator for three of the
textile ribbons, designed by Deepa Panchamia and Anna Glover,
whose two digitally printed pieces tell the stories of William Thom-
as and Clara, father and mother of the Roberts family, through
images and motifs. These pieces travel through the open space of
the bedroom, with the Glover textiles then directed downwards
via the new and bespoke staircase, complete with a steel handrail
that morphs into a loom-like frame that gently steers the fabrics
towards the floors below.
Here, the ribbons are introduced into the main, open-plan
living area: a welcoming space with reclaimed timber floors, mid-
20th-century furniture and a custom diner-style table that looks
out onto the entrance hallway below. To the rear of the first floor
sits a customised kitchen, with vivid bands of blue and white paint-
work, while a fourth embroidered ribbon – by Jennifer Hollidge
– celebrates Lily, one of the Roberts’s children.
On the ground floor, the treatment of the interiors is very dif-
ferent. Here, Lewis designed a ‘winter room’ and library, painted
in deep blues that echo the building’s shopfront façade. Recycled
snooker-table slate was used to create a fireplace surround, while
Lewis designed a tapestry (made by West Dean Tapestry Studio)
and a cabinet of curiosities devoted to the life of William Thomas’s
father, a card-maker.
In this manner, the house is devoted both to the Roberts fam-
ily and their 21st-century counterparts. For Helen especially,
who worked in the fashion industry before turning her talents to
textile studies and experimentation, the collaboration with a
carefully chosen team of artists, as well as Patrick Lewis, has
proved particularly rewarding.
‘It is a really successful home for both of us,’ says Helen, ‘and
we want to be here for the long term, or at least until we can’t
manage the steps. It’s intellectually engaging if you know that all
these secret stories are there. But you don’t have to know any of
that to still be able to enjoy the space’ $
Patrick Lewis Architects. Ring 020 3095 9707, or visit patricklewisarchitects.com
Opposite: Jennifer Hollidge’s beaded and embroidered ribbon, with symbols inspired by
the life of the Roberts’ daughter Lily, hangs over the stairs. This page: the master bathroom
is squirrelled away under Helen’s studio in the hidden ‘sewing box’ at the top of the house
187
 Looking across a moat towards topiary evergreen trees,
the north wing of Cormatin, which dates from 1620-1625,
features corbelled turrets at the inner corners. The
apartments of the marchioness are ranged along the first floor
 MARCHIONESS
IN MOUR NING
When her husband left on a military campaign in 1627, Claude du Blé, Marquise d’Huxelles,
was left to tackle the decoration of their newly built château in Burgundy. In a suite of gilded,
panelled and painted chambers, she brought to bear all the dazzling sophistication of her Paris
circle. But widowed just two years later, and with much work still in flux, she decided to
abandon Cormatin forever, as Marie-France Boyer reports. Photography: Ivan Terestchenko

189
In rectangular panels in the antechamber, Diana and Minerva,
the goddesses of hunting and war, evoke the rights of the
aristocracy and the duties nobles owe their king. On the lowest
section, sheaves of wheat (blé) are a visual pun evoking the
family name, elsewhere highlighted in crown-topped initials
 Opposite: the gilded cabinet of St Cecilia, filled with symbolic iconography, was intended as a study for male contemplation.
This page, clockwise from top left: a face peers out of a ‘wooden’ cartouche; Venus, one of three goddesses represented in the room – the
others are Minerva and Juno; this little panel showing roses tied up by a ribbon can be read as art subduing nature; on one of the
bookcase doors either side of the fireplace, flowers evoke spiritual perfection and indicate Jacques du Blé’s awareness of botanical discoveries
193
 Top: in the marchioness’s chamber, the painting above the mantelpiece is Venus Asking Vulcan for Arms for Her Son Aeneas, attributed
to Quentin Varin, and represents maternal solicitude. Above left: Claude du Blé’s portrait was altered after her husband’s death – with
green dress rendered black, décolleté covered in tulle and a pearl necklace erased. Above right: papier-mâché ornaments covered in gold
leaf stud the coffered ceiling à la française. Opposite: in the lofty space (5.3m high), a four-poster’s velvet curtains help to retain warmth
195
 Opposite: adjoining both the antechamber and the gilded room is this cabinet of curiosities, to which mirrors were added by a
descendant in the 18th century to brighten things up. Beneath a ceiling inspired by Gentileschi’s in the Luxembourg Palace, a cornice
shelf between two rows of paintings allows for the display of objects. This page: topped with marine wonders, a skull and a porphyry
globe, this store chest, made in Antwerp in 1630, is enlivened by 12 reverse-glass paintings depicting scenes from Classical mythology
197
 ENTERING THIS forbidding building
in the south of Burgundy, built in the time of Louis
XIII, causes some trepidation. But the painted interior
décor by the Du Blé d’Huxelles family is as enchanting
as it is surprising for its sophistication, freshness and
mystery. It demands further inspection.
Situated deep in the countryside, the Château de
Cormatin is the result of the union of two families: one
provincial and bellicose, whose name was already regis-
tered in the charter of the nearby Cluny Abbey; the other
Parisian and intellectual. Antoine du Blé had just dis-
tinguished himself at war and taken on the D’Huxelles
lands when in 1607 he began to build his château on the
ruins of a family fortress. The idea was to assert his status
and to respond to the king’s desire for members of the
nobility to occupy rural areas.
His son Jacques married Claude Phélypeaux, the
daughter of a senior official, and finished the building
work; but he had only just begun the decoration when he
left again on campaign in 1627, leaving the remaining
tasks to his wife. Claude, who would become Marquise
d’Huxelles, came from a cultured background: her fa-
ther’s town house had been decorated by Eustache Le
Sueur, her brother collected paintings and owned several
by Nicolas Poussin and Pietro da Cortona. She had been
a frequent visitor to the home of Madame de Rambouillet,
who was the first to introduce a particular hierarchy of
spaces and an unusual form of circulation in her man-
sion. In the past all rooms would have been intercon-
nected, but at this time public and private space began
to be differentiated. This period, when La Princesse de
Clèves was written, was also the age of gallantry.
With her husband, Claude had also visited the re-
gent Marie de’ Medici, mother of Louis XIII, and her
newly finished Luxembourg Palace, in the middle of
what is now the gardens of the same name. Marie viewed
art as an instrument of power and she commissioned
paintings from Rubens, took her inspiration from the
Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and brought a whole team of
Italian artists, craftsmen and workmen to Paris. The
marquise was much inspired by this and brought the
same groups of craftsmen to Cormatin.
Decoration of this kind barely existed in France be-
fore 1650, and the work lasted two years, from 1627 to
1628. On the upper floor, the marchioness devised a
40m-long gallery, few traces of which remain, decorated
with portraits of the 13 Louis, designed for contempla-
tion as one strolled along, since ‘ideas come as you walk’.
She herself moved into the north wing. An antechamber
opens into two sets of rooms: on the right, the marquise’s
bedchamber and dressing room; on the left the rooms
belonging to Jacques (whose planned private apartments
remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1629).
The antechamber is the public room, with ‘high
panelling’ (walls painted from top to bottom) replac-
ing the usual tapestries. Red, the colour of power, is the
dominant hue. Here Diana and Minerva represent the
Opposite: the jib door leads from the cabinet of curiosities, with its floor of terracotta tomettes, to the gilded chamber. Its panel painting of
a thieving woodpecker is freighted with obscure symbols – the fruit likely represents the holy trinity, while the bird is associated with heresy
rights and duties of the nobility – namely hunting and
war – while Solomon denotes wisdom. Sheaves of blé
(wheat) illustrate the family name, along with their mot-
to, ‘En tout temps Du Blé’ (Always Du Blé), an allusion
both to the family’s longevity and the bread of the eucha-
rist. Elsewhere is a painted fly, too close to a candle, along-
side the words, ‘It consumes the unwary’, referring to the
king’s recent victory over the rebels at La Rochelle.
A small door hidden in the decoration leads to the
marquise’s bedchamber, a good deal larger with a 5.3m-
high ceiling. The walls are covered with hangings that
match the bed’s. A ‘chapel’ stands in an alcove. In front
of the fireplace, a table could be set up for a meal when
required. The painted decoration is focused on the blue
ceiling, its colour – synonymous with fidelity – made
fashionable by Madame de Rambouillet, and costly to
produce using ground lapis lazuli. The ‘lower panel-
ling’ is painted with flowers and fruit symbolising femi-
ninity, while the depiction of Venus and Vulcan over
the fireplace is an ode to maternity as the Du Blés had
several children. It is possible to return discreetly to
the antechamber through the adjacent dressing room.
The cabinet of curiosities on the other side was deco-
rated with mirrors in the 18th century by a descendant
of Jacques and Claude who spent several months living
here in disgrace. Featuring shells, stuffed animals and
other natural wonders, it was no doubt inspired by the
Medicis’ Studiolo in Florence.
In the gilded cabinet of St Cecilia, literary and phil-
osophical themes are supposed to be deciphered like
riddles. At shoulder height, for instance, the idea of
moderation is illustrated by Paris’s choice between the
Three Graces. This alternates with vases of flowers rep-
resenting both spiritual values and botanical know-
ledge, which was then fashionable. Even the placement
of figures is significant – over the fireplace St Cecilia
faces towards the North Star, considered the centre of
the universe. The man of the house was supposed to
withdraw into this small room, as secluded as it is sump-
tuous, to think alone or with a few peers capable of match-
ing him. But, as in all châteaux, he would especially look
forward to the king’s visit in order to dazzle him with
his knowledge. Although Louis XIII never made it, Rich-
elieu, his chief minister, did stop by one evening in 1629,
the year Jacques du Blé died.
So the show was over. Nothing was finished when the
marchioness went into mourning and left Burgundy.
Cormatin would remain empty for many years: sold by
the Du Blé family in 1766, it changed hands forlornly
for years until, in 1980, three art-historian friends, Anne-
Marie Joly, Marc Simonet-Lenglart and Pierre-Albert
Almendros, succumbed to its Sleeping Beauty charms.
Together, they took great pains to restore this wonder,
whose décor, though already quite outmoded in the time
of Louis XIV, beguiles us once more today $
Château de Cormatin, 71460 Cormatin, France. For opening
times, ring 00 33 3 85 50 16 55, or visit chateaudecormatin.com
199
 THIS PAGE © THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2016. PRIVATE COLLECTION, ON LOAN TO TATE. PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY TATE, LONDON. OPPOSITE, FROM TOP: © ESTATE HELMAR LERSKI, MUSEUM FOLKWANG, ESSEN; © THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2016

Above: this painted wooden screen of c1929 might be considered Bacon’s first triptych. Opposite, from top: avant-garde cinematographer Helmar Lerski
took this dramatic portrait of the artist during his wanderings in Berlin in the late 1920s; the invitation card to Bacon’s first show, with its geometric letterhead
THE MAKING
O F B AC O N
Aged 21, Francis Bacon was an unknown decorator when
a magazine ran a piece on his Bauhaus-style chairs and
geometric rugs. By 1933, he had abandoned design for
painting, but his early works – such as a screen foreshad-
owing his celebrated triptychs – reveal an abiding fascina-
tion with interiors and, as Rebecca Daniels reveals, paint
a portrait of the artist this young man was to become
Left: Roy de Maistre’s Interior, 1930, shows Bacon’s designs in the latter’s
London studio. The central stool, described at the time as blue-green, is
in fact closer to eau de Nil (below). Bottom left: Bacon’s wool rugs, c1929,
were likely to have been made by Wilton Carpets. Bottom right: De Maistre’s
patron Gladys MacDermot bought a rug of this design when she commis-
sioned Bacon to decorate her apartment in 1932. Opposite: Bacon’s Queens-
berry Mews West atelier, photographed for The Studio magazine in 1930

TOP LEFT: © CAROLINE DE MESTRE WALKER. PRIVATE COLLECTION. TOP RIGHT: © THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2016. MB ART COLLECTION, MONACO.
BOTTOM LEFT AND BOTTOM RIGHT: © THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2016. PRIVATE COLLECTION, ON LOAN TO TATE. PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY TATE, LONDON
WHEN Francis Bacon posed for his portrait at the Berlin
studio of photographer Helmar Lerski, he was about to launch
his career as an interior designer. It is not known whether this
ambitious young man had received any formal training in that
field, but if he did it is likely to have been during his sojourns in
Europe. In the early spring of 1927, he had travelled from London
to Berlin and then on to Paris. Here he stayed with a family near
Chantilly, before moving in the autumn of 1928 to the Hôtel
Delambre in Montparnasse, a well-known destination for artists
that was just round the corner from the vibrant and bohemian
brasserie La Coupole. Bacon was already working in the design
world at this point, but there is no record of his earliest projects.
He returned to London in around spring 1929. Information
about this period is scarce, since he was reluctant to be drawn into
detail later in life, telling David Sylvester during a 1973 interview
only that his work ‘was awfully influenced by French design of that
time. I don’t think anything was very original.’ The post-Cubist
motifs that emerged in his design practice
certainly owed something to Picasso, Léger
and Jean Lurçat, as well as to Le Corbusier
(indeed, Bacon’s ongoing dialogue with
France is the subject of an exhibition this
summer in Monaco, where he lived from the
mid-1940s to the early 1950s). The Bauhaus
was an inspiration too – witness his simpli-
fied metal-framed furniture. But Bacon’s
self-deprecating remarks to Sylvester down-
play the originality of his work. From the
outset, his individuality and artistic flair as a
designer received critical attention.
In August 1930 an article in The Studio
magazine featured Bacon’s furniture and
rugs. ‘Francis Bacon’, it read, ‘is a young
English decorator who has worked in Paris
and Germany for some years and is now
established in London.’ Bacon’s interior ap-
peared alongside a room designed by Van-
essa Bell and Duncan Grant, and the sitting room of the prestigious
designer Serge Chermayeff, in a section called ‘The 1930 Look’. To
have his work featured in this company seems extraordinary, not
least since Bacon was just 21 years old and completely unknown.
The furniture had been photographed for The Studio at 17
Queensberry Mews West in South Kensington, where from 4 to 22
November 1930 Bacon held his first exhibition, consisting of four
paintings, a print and four rugs. No mention is made of the furni-
ture in the accompanying catalogue, although reviews prove that
it was on display. The invitation card, almost certainly designed
by Bacon, was printed with geometric patterns and advertised
that he sold ‘modern decoration’ and made ‘furniture in metal,
glass and wood; rugs and lights’. Although organised by Bacon, it
was a group show that also featured drawings by Jean Shepeard
and paintings by Roy de Maistre. De Maistre, an Australian Mod-
ernist artist, had himself previously worked as an interior designer
in Sydney and organised an important exhibition there at Bur-
dekin House in 1929. One of the lenders to that show was Gladys
MacDermot, who then in 1932, having moved back to England,
commissioned Bacon to furnish her apartment in Ridgmount
Gardens, Bloomsbury. The rug she bought for her apartment sur-
vives and is Bacon’s most cohesive geometric design. Although the
family used the rest of the furniture for decades, none has survived.
Another extant rug designed by Bacon depicts a stylised vio-
lin and a brick wall; he used the same subject in his first painting,
‘Gouache’, of 1929, which shows his design and painting inter-
relating for the first time. On 9 December 1983 Bacon wrote on
the back of a photograph of it: ‘this is a rug designed by me in
1929 and made up by Wiltons,’ proving the long-held belief that
the Wilton Carpets factory had produced these pieces.
Bacon and De Maistre laid out their 1930 exhibition as a har-
monious scheme, perhaps recalling the colour-coordinated mises-
en-scène James McNeill Whistler designed for his own exhibitions
(WoI Dec 2008). A contemporary review noted that ‘the pictures
continue on the dead-white walls the shapes and designs of the
metal furniture and of the rugs. Mr de Mestre [later changed to de
Maistre] often makes use of these objects in his paintings, a fact
which in the present surrounding makes them appear like mirrors
reflecting the room in different angles.’ This is a reference to De
Maistre’s painting Interior of 1930, which depicts the same furni-
ture that Bacon was displaying, such as the painted screen – argu-
ably his first triptych – visible folded on the stairs. The screen’s
palette included orange and grey – colours that would later be-
come pivotal to Bacon when he abandoned
decoration to focus on painting.
Bacon bravely embarked on a career as
a decorator during the Depression. Much
of his furniture was designed to be afford-
able and, as a cost-saving device, was in-
tended to have multiple uses. A desk could
also function as a dressing-table, and a ply-
wood stool could be used as a dining or
desk chair. In 1930 plywood was still only
available in England from a few highly spe-
cialised importers, suggesting how mod-
ern Bacon aimed to make his furniture. His
stool was described contemporaneously
THIS PAGE: PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON WITHAM. OPPOSITE: © THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS BACON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, DACS 2016. MB ART COLLECTION, MONACO
as blue-green, although it is, in fact, more
like eau de Nil. The screen was painted with
the same ground colour, so that together
they would form part of the room’s scheme.
The metal furniture was more vibrant than
the surviving photograph suggests; the
circular table had pink legs and was fitted with a glass top, half-
clear and half-frosted. His seemingly plain upholstered chairs
had extraordinarily deep seats.
Bacon’s career in design lasted only a few years. He contin-
ued to undertake the odd commission, but from 1933 he was
almost entirely devoted to painting. The legacy of that stage in
his career is felt strongly in his art, however – a point made (al-
though only obliquely illustrated) by an exhibition at Tate Liver-
pool this summer. Metal rails and space frames, used as a struc-
tural device in his compositions, closely relate to his interior
pieces, in some cases echoing specific tables that he designed.
Bacon often placed his painted figures in an enclosed room with
furniture and objects: mirrors, naked bulbs hanging from cords,
and blind pulls with tassels are repeated motifs. The use of white
rubber curtains was a noted aspect of his interior design, and
curtaining likewise features heavily as a background in his paint-
ings. Bacon did keep one of the circular mirrors from the 1930
exhibition in his Reece Mews studio (WoI June 2001). It broke, but
he left it there, as he said he enjoyed the fractured reflections it
emitted. His design influenced his painting in much the same way $
‘Francis Bacon: Invisible Rooms’ is at Tate Liverpool (0151 702 7400; tate.
org.uk), 18 May-18 Sept; ‘Francis Bacon: Monaco and French Culture’ is
at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco (00 377 99 99 30 00; grimaldiforum.com),
2 July-4 Sept; ‘Francis Bacon: Catalogue Raisonné’, ed. Martin Harrison,
will be published by Heni on 30 June. Rebecca Daniels’s book on Bacon’s
interior designs will be published in 2017
Opposite: the August 1930 issue of The Studio, which praised Bacon’s ‘individualistic variations’ on the use of steel and glass, and called his rugs ‘particularly
representative of to-day’. This page: the forms in Rug/Composition of 1929 are repeated in his first painting, ‘Gouache’, which he created in the same year
Francisco’s ‘Loft’.
In contrast to the
rough Brazilian
walnut table and
benches, bought
in Montevideo at
an auction, the
beams and pillars
are made of pine
and eucalyptus
from the estate
 BACK AT THE RANCH
Antique dealer Francisco Garrido had been living in Europe for 25 years when, fancying a change of tack, he bought an
old farmstead in his native Uruguay. Having redone the existing house, he began building new ones for family and friends
in timber and corrugated iron, rounding up the objects and furniture to fill them. Now that hens, horses and his beloved
donkeys roam its woods, this rural retreat’s got the whole caboodle. Text: Lee Marshall. Photography: Ricardo Labougle
Top and bottom:
Francisco designed
the Loft himself,
inspired by an
Australian house
he once saw in a
magazine. ‘The
main thing I took
from it was the
curve of the sheet
metal between roof
and walls, and the
jut of the roof
above the façade,
which helps to
protect the wood
from rain.’ Middle
left: inside, beneath
the mezzanine
floor, are a chair
and footstool he
picked up in a junk
shop. The tree trunk
behind is a bonsai
experiment gone
wrong. Middle
right: Francisco
himself, on the
porch of Casa
Torre, one of the
houses on the estate
 Top: the Loft’s
bedroom, kitted
out with Danish
armchairs, is
situated on the
mezzanine level.
Middle left: the
brass lamp beside
the bed used to sit in
an old government
office in the 1930s.
Middle right: the
floor downstairs is
made of polished
concrete. Francisco
thinks that the sink
to the left originated
in a ship, as it’s
made of tin rather
than zinc, and
is painted with a
durable varnish. The
cabinet opposite it
used to belonged to
an optician. An eye
chart would have
once hung on the
bare panel. Bottom:
a 1980s Plexiglas
lamp lights the
other side of the bed
Top: the exterior of
Casa Torre. Middle
left: the dining
room was meant to
house the estate
custodian’s tractor
until Francisco
decided the house
was to be his
sister’s. The cow
horns are intended
as lasso or coat
hooks (in the kitchen
they’re cupboard-
door handles).
Middle right: stable
doors open on to
the veranda, letting
the breeze in but
keeping animals
out. Of Francisco’s
ten woven chairs
(opposite), six are
1960s originals. He
had four replicas
made. Bottom: in
the sitting room
a 19th-century
Japanese screen
crowns a 1950s
faux-leather sofa
211
212
Casa Torre’s bedroom
is fitted with a huge
polished-concrete
fireplace, either side
of which are windows
hung with slats. The
blinds can be pulled
up, giving a view
into the sitting room
 A FEW MILES back from the chic Uruguayan
beach resorts of Punta del Este and José Ignacio lies another
world, more pampas than pampering. Long, lazy country
roads, edged by eucalyptus and pine, connect small chacras
– rural farmsteads – and larger estancias (not unlike ranches),
most of them given over to raising cattle. One such, Route
104, links the increasingly hip seaside enclave of Manantiales
with the workaday inland town of San Carlos, passing in
front of the sculpture park and artistic foundation set up in
2007 by Italy-based Uruguayan sculptor Pablo Atchugarry.
And although Francisco Garrido also spends most of
the year in northern Italy, and although he began his career,
in his teens, as a wood carver, the fact that he found his ideal
country retreat just a mile away from the fundación is pure
coincidence – or perhaps it’s a case of elective affinities.
Francisco got there first, in 2004, after an offer he’d put
in for a house in the Spanish countryside was bested. By this
time he had spent most of his adult life in Europe, having
left Montevideo in 1979 because, he says, ‘I was curious
about life.’ After a short sojourn in Ibiza, he spent 13 years
in Barcelona, selling antiques – especially 18th-century jew-
ellery – and restoring pieces in wood. In the early 1990s, he
moved to Bologna for seven years, where he studied paint-
ing restoration while continuing to ply the antique trade.
Milan, Francisco’s current home, came next: as well as sat-
isfying his curiosity about life, it also provided a good logis-
tical base for his frequent trips to antique fairs in Parma,
London, Paris and further afield.
It was while on a trip back to Uruguay, still smarting from
his Spanish gazumping, that a thought came to Francisco:
‘This isn’t bad – I could actually live here.’ So he began to
scout round for a property with a bit of land. He soon came
across a dusty, unkempt chacra southeast of San Carlos,
which he describes as ‘a typical Uruguayan rural town: calm,
colourful and ordinary’. The 25-hectare estate, known as
KM7, had belonged to a local family who inherited what was
then a working farm from an aunt, but they did little more
than ‘camp out here each summer’.
Francisco had never seen himself as a farmer, but a farm
without animals is like a bicycle without wheels, so he began
to buy livestock: cows, sheep, horses, donkeys (‘I love don-
keys,’ he says), rabbits, hens and pheasants. They’re tended,
along with a large kitchen garden, by a local couple who live
on the farm and who introduced the city-born Garrido to ‘a
peasant culture I’d never really known’. Wild animals – in-
cluding more than 140 different bird species – also make
the chacra their home. Some are enchanting, the owner says
– among them the skunks that live under the house and come
out at twilight. ‘The baby ones walk along with their tails en-
twined,’ he enthuses, ‘just to show off’. Others are less wel-
come, like the wild dogs that killed eight of his 11 sheep
before he had finished fencing in the property.
On arrival, he set about ‘beautifying what I found there…
I wanted to reclaim nature, not distort it’. The animals need-
ed water and shade – so he made sure there was plenty of
both. A natural spring feeds a series of ponds on the prop-
erty, which is well supplied with tree cover, including a two-
hectare eucalyptus wood.
There was a simple house on the estate from the 1920s.
Francisco set about fixing it up, in an experimental, can-do
214
spirit that he later realised he must have inherited from his
father, ‘who also converted a house without having any ar-
chitectural qualifications’. As he was based in Milan for much
of the year, he would send the builder cardboard profiles of
key structural elements for him to copy.
The proliferation of buildings on the estate followed a
certain logic. ‘The casero [custodian] needed a house,’ he ex-
plains, ‘but his, Casa Torre, turned out too nice – so I decided
to use that for guests and build him and his wife another one,
which is still very cute.’ There was also the issue of Garrido’s
sister, who had bought a minority stake in the property. Not
wanting her and her friends under his feet (‘I like to breakfast
alone,’ he says diplomatically), he built her a lake-view house
with a pool at some distance from his own. Then it was time
to plant the kitchen garden and to fill in the gaps in an or-
chard that consisted of some venerable orange and peach
trees. Only when this was finished did he move on to the final
and most adventurous construction – a corrugated-iron-
clad studio pavilion in the woods that he refers to as ‘the Loft’.
Francisco’s houses have the playful air of being built by
a kid with a construction kit – a kit he assembled as he went
along. A ‘proper’ architect may have baulked at using cor-
rugated metal to line walls inside as well as out, as he did in
the Loft and in the dining room of Casa Torre. In the latter,
he also carries a line of slatted wooden roll-up blinds from
the windows on two sides to the windowless wall beyond,
where they become fixed elements, an elegantly neutral
background for an orange 1920s dentist’s cabinet or a series
of cow-horn clothes hooks. As for the movables, with the
exception of a few pieces he came across in the course of his
antique-fair peregrinations, they’re mostly locally sourced,
from cowhide rugs to a stunted plane-tree trunk – a bonsai
experiment gone wrong – that a local nursery owner in Punta
del Este was keen to get rid of, and which now brings a touch
of Macbeth’s blasted heath to a corner of the Loft.
The striking design of the latter, with its wraparound met-
allic roof, was suggested by a contemporary Australian house
that had caught his eye in a magazine years before. The out-
back inspiration is not too much of a stretch: surrounded by
eucalyptus trees, which provided the material for its wooden
frame, the Loft could as easily be in the Blue Mountains as the
Uruguayan pampas. But although he was committed to using
simple, natural materials inside and out – wood, iron, brick,
wicker, leather – Francisco had learned to tame what he jok-
ingly calls his ‘WWF tendencies’ by the time the Loft was built.
At first, he refused to use treated beams – until he was forced
to tear down a whole house and start again when the wood
was infested by termites.
Just before I left, he asked me if I’d heard of Uruguay’s for-
mer president José ‘Pepe’ Mujica, a chrysanthemum-growing
farmer famous for his austere lifestyle and unusual views (for
a politician), such as his belief that progress is pointless
if it reduces the sum of human happiness. I realised at this
point that I’d spent too much of our hour together quizzing
Francisco about building materials and provenance. What
he really wanted to say about his rural retreat was summed
up in a dreamy parting shot: ‘There’s a special light in this
place… And the sunsets are incredible’ $
To rent one of the properties at KM7, ring 00 39 335 631917, or
visit casadecampoyplaya.com.uy
A eucalyptus
trunk becomes
a bedside table,
while the glass
table – ‘a cheap
1950s thing’
Francisco found
in Rome – holds
a mirror. The
cowhide was
bought locally
A FINE BALANCE
Conceived by two European expats in India, Jaipur wining and dining spot Bar Palladio has an international air. Set
as Indian textiles, irreverently updated in flashing neons, find parity with Empire furniture, while Gothic doors and a
in the grounds of an Edwardian Rajput palace, it strikes a clever equilibrium between East and West,
chequered floor make graceful counterpoints to its Mogul-style motifs. Text and photography: Henry Wilson
Previous pages: the
jali lamps hanging
in the main bar are
replicas of those in
the Jama mosque of
Fatehpur Sikri.
This page, clockwise
from top: Empire-
style chairs and
a black-and-white
floor preserve
the building’s
European style; this
marble planter,
carved with rams’
heads and acanthus
leaves, was the
springboard for
Barbara Miolino’s
vision for the bar;
grand details – a
stone balustrade,
carved elephants’
heads and solid
buttresses – lend
the diminutive
bungalow’s façade a
heightened sense
of grandeur, which
is amplified by a
scallop-edged
awning referencing
the decorative
tenting used in
traditional palaces;
a sofa in the
conservatory is
covered with fabric
block-printed to
resemble ticking
This page, clockwise
from top: impost
blocks mounted on
the walls support a
proscenium-like
arch in the main
bar. The painted
white patterning,
executed by Vikas
Soni of Jeypur
Arts, is customary
in northwestern
India; above the
doors fanlights
fitted with pierced
jali screens allow
air to circulate
throughout the bar
and contribute
to the décor; a
detail of the fabric
used on the bar’s
ottomans, which is
block-printed by
hand. While its
small and compact
floral designs
are traditional,
the neon colour
scheme is not;
the main bar has
doorways leading
off it on all four
walls, allowing for
through-views from
every vantage point,
an effect further
enhanced by the
mirrors hung
in between them
This page, top:
symmetry plays
an important part
in Rajput and
Mogul architecture,
as is evident in
the salon. Middle
left: stairs lead to
a shallow balcony,
designed more
for decorative effect
than practicality.
In front hangs a
lantern, its bowl
collared with brass.
Known in India as
hundi, these lights
were popular in the
Georgian period
and became highly
fashionable in the
British Raj. Middle
right: a spectacular
(and symmetrical)
fountain of
flowers and leaves
adorns the centre
of the back wall.
To its right,
infinite reflections
give the illusion
of the coach-like
room being wider
than it is. Bottom:
a detail of the
jali balustrade.
Opposite: the
tented ceiling nods
to the nomadic
Rajput lifestyle
221
 THERE’S A REGULAR hullabaloo
beyond the seclusion of the Narain Niwas Palace compound in
Jaipur. Modernity is relentlessly on the rise around its boundary
wall, and brash glass-fronted multistorey shopping complexes
and offices tower over an oasis of greenery. The palace, built in 1928
by General Amar Singh as his country retreat, retains a quality of
the past that is in fast retreat across many parts of the city. Tran-
quillity seems a spurious notion now that this location has be-
come the heart of the new city. Narain Niwas has, at its centre, the
palace and an assortment of bungalows. These outbuildings are
dispersed among beautiful mature trees in which cavalcades of
peacocks and hens still roost at night. Their gorgeous plaintive
chorus reverberates at twilight through the umbrella of trees.
Italian expat Barbara Miolini is based
in Jaipur, where she runs a thriving busi-
ness supplying the commercial fashion
industry in Europe. She designed Bar
Palladio as somewhere she could take her
friends and clients for lunch or dinner. A
dream encouraged her to ask the current
incumbent of Narain Niwas Palace if she
could take one of the bungalows. Having
begun her career in hospitality, Barbara
had gained experience in various five-
star establishments across Switzerland.
‘I wanted to bring my culinary heritage
in a pure form to Jaipur,’ she says.
Having acquired one of the bunga-
lows, with its mix of Edwardian and Raj-
put architectural elements, to create a
social and food hub for both locals and
visiting foreigners, Barbara approached
fellow European expatriate Marie-Anne
Oudejans, an international jewellery
designer who works closely with Jaipur’s
renowned Gem Palace company, to be
her interior designer. ‘The project was
a pleasure from the start,’ says Marie-
Anne. ‘Barbara gave me carte blanche,
and I was comfortable with her concept
for the bar.’ Barbara had a definite idea of
the ambience she wanted for the interior: ‘a gentleman’s club with
clear references to Rajasthan’s royal past, the regal era of the maha-
raja’. The words ‘grand’ and ‘masculine’ were both key. Further-
more, Barbara expands, ‘Marie-Anne and I agreed that the interior
must be decorative and reflect Rajasthan’s wall-painting heritage.
The interior would have a dual purpose, to serve as a reminder of
the rich cultural language of the royal state, and to be enchanting.’
The huge marble planter on a table in the light-flooded en-
trance, spotted in a marble workshop in the city, was a prime inspi-
ration, says Barbara. Its grand scale lends the space gravitas, and
the rams’ heads and acanthus leaves radiate Classical grandeur.
Clearly the building already featured strong European architec-
tural elements, such as the balustrade, which marches along the
roof at the front of the building. Additionally, the façade is made
up of Gothic-flavoured glass-panelled doors crowned with dra-
matic fanlights. To bolster the European look Marie-Anne intro-
duced the chic floors of black-and-white-marble chequerboard,
a nod to Palladio. She also commissioned local carvers of that
material to produce the dramatic panel of tigers, plantain trees
222
and a fountain that decorates the bar counter. The piece enhances
the air of masculinity as well as reminding visitors of that most
royal of Indian pastimes, the great tiger hunt.
So much for the European influences. The Rajputs of Rajasthan,
together with the Moguls, who originated from Turkic lands, had a
passion for floral decorative motifs. Their love of miniature paint-
ing, particularly botanical studies, extended to the walls of their
palaces. So Marie-Anne commissioned local artist Vikas Soni to
paint the interiors with florals. He has been artful in avoiding
pastiche, however, giving the motifs that adorn the building’s
interior – the arches, cornices and columns – a contemporary
feel. Soni’s curling arabesques and lively fountains of flowering
shrubs are exuberant. Rather than using the traditional poly-
chrome palate, they have gone for an
austere and graphic two-colour finish.
The consistent use of white on blue and
blue on white harmonises the whole inte-
rior and ensures a cool, refreshing mood
to step into from the heat.
Each area of Bar Palladio has an ac-
cent of its own. A spangled constellation
of brass jali lamps with perforated shades
enlivens the main area. The salon, a train-
carriage-like room with a tented ceiling,
acknowledges the historically nomad-
ic lifestyle of the Rajputs. Another room
features a wall that cascades with bloom-
ing shrubs in bright blue on white, a clear
reference to the Mogul tradition of floral
patterning that emanated from the royal
court at Agra. The coup de maître, how-
ever, is Marie-Anne’s daring idea to com-
mission botanical oil-painted canvases
like those by Audubon. They add to the
masculine aura that Barbara had envis-
aged for the bar; undeniably quirky, they
are an unlikely pairing of the cerebral and
the exotic. The fluorescent cushions were
another masterstroke of counterintuitive
inspiration. These neon flashes brilliant-
ly reinvigorate the floral block-printing
tradition Jaipur has been famed for over the centuries. This irrever-
ence is grounded by a counterpoint of functional blue-and-white
ticking upholstery. For the hand-blocked fabrics Marie-Anne
commissioned the renowned Jaipur printer Gito, who is, appar-
ently, ‘meticulous in every way’.
‘I never intended to come to India and stay,’ explains Barbara,
‘but I fell in love with the country, particularly Rajasthan. It’s an
intangible calling… Although I have no wish to push a feminist
agenda, you do have to be courageous to build a business in India,
especially as a woman and a foreigner.’ An infectious enthusiasm
masks her steely determination. We must be grateful that India,
as only India can do, adopted her, and that she returned to her
roots in hospitality; she is soon to establish another Jaipur water-
ing hole too: a café, due to open in July. Bar Palladio, meanwhile,
is proving hugely successful for her and Marie-Anne Oudejans
– an exuberantly contemporary celebration of tradition $
Bar Palladio, Narain Niwas Palace Hotel, Kanota Bagh, Narain Singh
Rd, Jaipur, RJ 302004, India (00 91 141 256 5556; bar-palladio.com). ‘The
Floral Patterns of India’, by Henry Wilson, is published by Thames & Hudson
 An anteroom is (opposite), are
decorated with a painted in a
blue-on-white traditional Mogul
colour scheme, in style. Similar, more
contrast to the rest colourful examples
of the interiors. can be seen in
The riotous walls, the royal court at
reflected in a mirror the Red Fort in Agra
CREAM OF
CARAMEL
Bar requests for a cosy brown-and-ivory colour scheme,
a sumptuous four-poster and lots of storage, decorator
James McWhirter was given carte blanche when it came
to redesigning this tiny London bolthole. His resulting
confection – featuring biscuit-coloured walls of fine
parcel paper, choice chintzes and a fire grate that once
belonged to Syrie Maugham – really hits the sweet
spot, says Ruth Guilding. Photography: Tim Beddow

Left: chairs sit either side of the sitting-room fireplace, in which is

fitted a Regency grate that once belonged to Syrie Maugham. The
Louis XV chair to the right is covered with an original Colefax &
Fowler chintz, named ‘Haseley Acorn’ after Nancy Lancaster’s last
house. Top: a slab of Derbyshire fossil marble, from Nicholas
Gifford-Mead, was the starting point for the bespoke chimney piece
226
Left: on walls hung with Claremont’s biscuit-brown wrapping
paper, a painting of a spaniel pays deliberate homage to the
Colefax & Fowler country-house style. Top: a wall displays

deer sheltering underneath a large Turkey oak reflected in a pond

228
 Opposite: above the bathroom basin, carved by hand in limestone, an Edwardian giltwood
mirror opens into a medicine cabinet cunningly concealed behind. Watercolours of carriages
decorate the walls, which are covered with beige ‘Small Damask’ by Blithfield. The door leads
into the central circulation area (above), which has been panelled in a Soaneian Regency style
229
 Top: James used two Regency mahogany columns to make the
custom four-poster bed, which is now draped with a diaper chintz
printed with a seaweed pattern. Above: an architectural engraving
from Isaac & Ede hangs on walls lined with paper-backed ‘Toile
des Lapins’ by Nicholas Herbert. Right: the large clothes
closet is set with mirrored panels and painted with a dragged finish
231
 JAMES McWhirter’s early training equipped
him perfectly for his role as the decorator and furnisher
of the little London pied-à-terre in which we are both sit-
ting. On the upper floor of a discreet mansion block in St
James’s, it comprises just two main rooms, plus its neatly
ordered passages, the ablutions and a tiny kitchen. I am
looking at the ‘before’ photos, taken when he first saw it,
of a rather bleak bachelor pad with white walls, matt-
black floors and paintwork, a trophy Noguchi coffee
table set on a mustard carpet square its statement piece.
Its new incarnation is, like its creator, ‘quietly British
and resolutely anti-fashion’. The prevailing aesthetic is
of calm and orderly miniaturised ‘roomscapes’ in the
high-1980s style of Colefax & Fowler’s country-house
manner, but with those trademark bounteous flounces
and exuberances retailored, refined and modernised.
Homage to Colefax is probably what James McWhirter
does best, and it was exactly what his client was looking
for. The flat is her home-from-home outside America,
and her refuge from a life that involves a large amount
of travel. ‘It’s about feeling cosy, and I’m crazy about it!’
she says. ‘When you travel a lot you stay in such sterile
environments – in those international-style cream-and-
beige hotels you could be anywhere. But I really wanted
to feel that I was in England.’
When he was in his twenties James took what was
then known colloquially as the ‘V&A course’, attend-
ing lectures on the fine and decorative arts given by
curators, moonlighting from the museum, in a nearby
church hall, so as to equip himself to work in the world
of art and antiques. His first job, in the early 1980s, was
with the New York-based furniture dealer Stair & Co at
its London outlet in Mount Street, which taught him to
‘make it fun and professional’.
After seven years he moved on to trade indepen-
dently, setting up on Chelsea’s Park Walk. He became
known for his good eye and as a purveyor of a certain
kind of fine antique furniture. Eventually some of his
clients asked him to advise on their interior decoration
as well. Just over a decade ago he joined up with accom-
plished decorator Sarah Morris (who had been running
her own design team at Colefax & Fowler), and together
they established McWhirter Morris Interior Decoration
in a showroom/office in Langton Street. It was a back-
ground that appealed to this particular client, who had
spent all her spare time visiting art galleries and country
houses when she and her husband were young bankers
working in London in the 1980s. ‘James has a great depth
of knowledge and I like the academic angle,’ she says. ‘I
thought then: If we are lucky enough to come back, it
would be all about the decorative arts for me.’
James is quietly proud of what has been achieved
here. Eighteen months ago every floorboard, skirting
and wall surface was renewed or reworked. He likens
working in such a small space to fitting out the cabins of
Opposite: in the tiny hallway hangs a collection of nine miniatures from India. In
an unusual deviation from the client’s brief for a brown-and-cream colour
scheme, the painted works have been mounted in dashing geranium-pink surrounds
232
a little boat, working in centimetres rather than metres.
With the help of the skilful architectural draughtsman
João Reis, James has managed to wrest valuable space
from thin air. The miniature laundry, enclosed in a tall
cupboard in the flat’s link passage, is as nifty as any-
thing designed for the use of a yachtsman or bargee.
The furnishings are exquisite, unique pieces: the 1840s
urn-shaped cast-iron chestnut grate bought from a
descendant of the legendary decorator Syrie Maugham,
some document Colefax chintz upholstery and a lovely
smoky convex Regency looking glass found at Bonhams
– ‘things that are worth owning’, as he puts it. His client
asked for a brown-and-cream colour scheme, so the
walls of the little sitting room are papered in the biscuity,
high-quality brown paper used by the furnishing-textiles
company Claremont to parcel up its fabric. The curtains
are ‘not too puffy’, and though the side chairs and sofa
cushions are deliberately on the small side, the sofa’s
deep bullion fringe and hand-dyed ottoman piping are
highly finessed. Above it, a spaniel painting hangs under
a grey silk-taffeta bow. ‘She is a very good patron; she
allows it to be my creation,’ says James.
James’s client had particularly asked for a four-poster
bed that would cocoon her – a nest she could clamber
into after having been squashed into the passenger seat
of a British Airways plane for too many hours. Today,
she marvels at how practical and mindful James was of
the bedroom’s limited storage: he even ‘measured how
wide our suitcases were so that we could slide them under
the bed’. The details and finishes are so immaculate
that, when she first arrived and saw only three closet
doors (she’d specified five), she had decided that ‘they
must have run into some snag.’ In fact, the additional
flanking jib doors were so finely crafted and well-aligned
that she only discovered them days later.
Did she know that James was ‘The One’ as soon as
they met? ‘I sort of did!’ she says. ‘It’s a real partnership
when you work with someone on your own house. It’s
very personal for you and very professional for them.
I’m American and I’m quite opinionated, and I wanted
someone who would say: “No, you can’t have that!”. The
best thing a client can do is find the best possible per-
son and then get the hell out of the way.’
In this once-sterile space James has confidently and
fortuitously mixed all the proportionality, the eclecti-
cism, the brown and painted furniture and decorative
grace notes that gave Colefax & Fowler its reputation as
the acme of English taste and style.
And despite its miniature scale (‘I say: “James, you’re
decorating a closet,”’ his client says cheerfully) it is en-
tirely fit for purpose. ‘We had a cocktail party for eight
and it was super fun,’ she says. ‘We could have had ten,
if everyone hadn’t wanted to sit down!’ $
McWhirter Morris, 11 Langton St, London SW10 (020 7349
2575; mcwhirtermorris.com)
233
 inspiration
Some of the design effects in this issue, recreated by Augusta Pownall

1 When the mercury rises Bar Palladio shades

its outdoor sippers under canopy parasols with
a zigzag trim (page 218). Ready yourself for an
Indian summer by snapping up Raj Tent Club’s
similarly jaunty ‘Gold Star’ sunshade, £750,
and cross your fingers for blue skies. Ring 020
1 7820 0010, or visit rajtentclub.com.

2 If there was a word – in the ‘monochrome’

mould – for blue/white, it would
surely fit Bar Palladio (page 216).
As it would these wallpapers
from Schumacher (from left):
‘Agadir Screen Lapis’ (£120.40
per 4.1m roll), ‘Taj Trellis Jai-
pur’ (£108 per 4.1m roll) and
3 ‘Fez Lapis’ (£116.20 per 4.1m
roll). Ring 020 7259 7280, or
visit turnellandgigon.com.
2
3 Shop Latitude tracks down the
best makers worldwide and sells their wares by
region. The Indian bar’s trademark floral prints
(page 219) appear on the ‘Red Mughal’ place-
mat and napkin sets ($74), and we’re fans of
the ‘Green Palladio’ ($100) design too. Ring
001 877 785 8420, or visit shoplatitude.com.

4 A gin and tonic is just the ticket after a day in

bustling Jaipur, and the watering hole’s Empire-
style chairs are the hottest spots (page 221).
Ralph Lauren Home’s ‘Mayfair Bergère’ chair,
£5,000, has curves in all the right places. Ring
020 7590 7990, or visit ralphlaurenhome.com.

5 Of all the floor coverings at Cormatin, the

château’s polished hexagonal tiles (page 197)
have the edge, or six. French tomettes from Auth-
4
entic Reclamation cost £96 per sq m. Ring 01580
201258, or visit authentic-reclamation.co.uk.

6 Like paint, fabric fades with exposure to sun-

light. We’d hazard a guess that the wallcover-
ings and drapes at Cormatin (page
194) were brighter when initial-
ly hung. Not dissimilar to Clare-
mont’s blue ‘Stanhope Damask’
(£312 per m), and gold ‘Amelia
5
Crackle Damask’ (£340.80 per m),
6 perhaps. Ring 020 7581 9575, or
visit claremontfurnishing.com.

234
 7

7 The threesome behind Antoinette Poisson

are in the enviable position of making pieces
that decorate their own home. Keep an eye out
for the box (£104 approx) and cushion (£90
approx) shown here in their apartment (page 8
162) and snap them up for your own abode.
Ring 00 33 1 44 27 00 81, or visit galeriesalon.fr.

8 Handel, Shakespeare, Lincoln... only the big

hitters are honoured with a plaster plaque by
Peter Hone, £33 each. In the Paris apartment,
they’ve plumped for a curly-haired romantic 9
and a Greek philosopher, complete with laurel
wreath (page 162). Who will you pick? Ring 020
7430 2526, or visit pentreath-hall.com.

9 Does the joyful hue in Jean-Baptiste Martin

and Vincent Farelly’s sitting room make you
poisonous with envy (page 162)? Le Jardin des
Nuances’ arsenic-yellow paint (‘JDN461’) costs
£18.60 approx per litre. Ring 00 33 2 32 43 74 06,
or visit le-jardin-des-nuances.fr.

10 Don’t confuse chakras with chacras, the

Spanish for farmstead, as in the Uruguayan re-
treat (page 206). Whether or not they promote
inner balance, Anthropologie’s salvaged ‘Treas-
ured Trinkets’ dresser (£4,495) and wooden 10
side table (£218) would look right at home. Ring
020 7529 9800, or visit anthropologie.com.

11 Carl Hansen’s ‘Colonial’ chair (£2,299)

and footstool (£984), by Danish furniture de-
signer Ole Wanscher – a leading figure of the
1950s Scandinavian Design
movement – are dead ring-
ers for those under the mez-
zanine on this farm near the
Uruguayan coast (page 208).
Ring 020 7935 2077, or visit
skandium.com.

12 In rugs, as in most things

in life, two is better than one.
So why not get your hands on a
pair of Edelman’s ‘Exotic’ nat-
ural cowhides, similar to those
beside Francisco Garrido’s bed
(page 215)? They cost £1,683
each. Ring 020 7351 7305, or
visit edelmanleather.com. r

11 12

235
 inspiration

1 To keep prying eyes at bay, Helen Magowan

designed an unusual coffee-filter curtain to
hang over her and her husband’s ‘shop front’
1 window (page 178). Readers unwilling to sur-
render their morning cup should instead go
for Creation Baumann’s ‘Eterna’ (£369 per m),
which looks like floating fabric ribbons. Ring
020 7226 7748, or visit creationbaumann.com.

2 A skylight in the double-height bedroom of

this west London home lets in light, but for bed-
2
time reading the owners turn to their bespoke
British-made bronze Factorylux ‘Maria 180
Architectural’ lights (from £207.90 each), which
hang from the ceiling (page 184). Ring 020 7193
2119, or visit urbancottageindustries.com.

3 3 Polymathic designer Anna Glover made

some of the ribbons snaking through the home
on page 178, as well as this silk-
backed ‘Night Garden’ wallpaper
(£160 per sq m) and ‘Span’ day-
bed (£4,900). Ring 07977 515102,
or visit annaglover.co.uk for the wall-
paper, and for the daybed ring 07841
339159, or visit temperstudio.com.

4 Jennifer Shorto’s ‘fabricophilia’ sprang in

part from her love of an early 20th-century
4 West African textile. Little wonder, then, that
the Nigerian Ewe cloth that covers the chair in
this London bolthole (page 224) reminds us
5
of Shorto’s ‘Hot Still Scape’ fabric (£150 per m),
available in orange and bright pink. Ring 020
7371 7787, or visit redlohhousefabrics.com.

5 Seeking a gilded wall bracket, like the one in

the living room decorated by James McWhirter
(page 227)? Jonathan Sainsbury’s 18th-century
design is adorned with a lotus-leaf collar, and
costs from £810 for a 36cm-high bracket. Ring
01258 857573, or visit jonathan-sainsbury.com.

6 Small spaces require sacrifices, but the owner

of this petite pied-à-terre has spared her books
(page 224). This mahogany ‘Vienna’ bookcase
(£4,180), from Paolo Moschino for Nicholas
Haslam, ticks (or crosses) all the right boxes.
And for those with even smaller gaps to fill, it
can be ordered in bespoke sizes. Ring 020 7730
0445, or visit nicholashaslam.com $

236
Interiors to include the contents of Pen Moel
Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art
Auction date: 1st & 2nd June 2016
info@dnfa.com | 020 3291 3539 | www.dreweatts.com

THE ANTIQUE BRONZE LIGHTSWITCH

205A St John’s Hill, London, SW11 1TH www.forbesandlomax.com D&D Building, New York, NY 10022
238
 Back to the Land, scent of a woman, bonfire of the nudities, plus Charlotte Edwards’s listings

EXHIBITION diary
PHOTOGRAPHS: NOT VITAL (OPPOSITE); DAVID HRANKOVIC (THIS PAGE, TOP LEFT); KUNSTRAUM DORNBIRN (TOP RIGHT). ALL WORKS COURTESY NOT VITAL STUDIO

Not Vital YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK West Bretton, Wakefield

Imagine wandering through a picturesque valley in the mountains
of Switzerland, only to have a house suddenly appear where there
was none before, rising from the ground at the touch of a button.
Or sailing around the scenic archipelago of Patagonia, and dis-
covering on one island, hewn into the natural marble, a smooth,
architectural tunnel that leads into an inner sanctum, from which
the occupant can gaze out at framed sunsets. Or happening upon
a sculpted house in the Agadez desert of Niger, constructed en-
tirely of local hay and clay. These fantastical constructions, and
many others in the Philippines, the Amazon and Indonesia, are
the work of Swiss artist Not Vital, who will bring his monumental
way of thinking to Yorkshire Sculpture Park this summer.
‘There’s something very earthy and visceral about Not’s work,’
explains Clare Lilley, YSP’s director of programme, just back from
his island in Patagonia. ‘It appeals to the animal deep inside you.’
Born in 1948, Vital developed a career shaped by the Land Art
movement of the 1960s and 70s, in which artists sought to free
their work from the commercialisation of the gallery world, get-
ting it out of doors, using natural materials and creating new land-
scapes. The Swiss stays true to this vision, but over the years other
developments have come with it. A neo-nomadic dreamer, tra-
versing the globe in search of ideas to be realised, he’s also an archi-
tect of sorts, but always with a slant – figuratively speaking, there
are very few straight lines in a Vital construction, and his style is
dictated by location. There is a socio-political dimension too. As
well as making work in response to hardships or injustices he
encounters on his way, he uses local materials and craftsmen to
construct and eventually maintain his works, generating jobs at
the same time as he poetically rethinks the land and its beauty.
Sewn into the idyllic hills of the park, the Yorkshire exhibition
will be Vital’s first in a British museum, and given his work’s scale
and engagement with landscape it’s hard to imagine a better loca-
tion. It will also be his largest show to date, with sculptures, self-
portraits and works on paper as well as new commissions. Among
the major works featured will be an outdoor installation of Let One
Hundred Flowers Bloom (2008), made up of 100 three-metre-long
lotus buds hand-rendered in stainless steel. The title is a quote
from Chairman Mao, who used the phrase to encourage artists to
express themselves, only to imprison many of them for their re-
sulting works. Vital’s flowers are forever on the point of blooming.
80 Cow Dungs (1990-) comes from a series begun when Vital
witnessed children in Nepal suffering extreme burns as they set
fire to manure for fuel. His cast-bronze cowpats emphasise the
preciousness in the relationship between animals and land, and
all proceeds from the sale of these works have gone towards cre-
ating a special burns unit in a hospital in Nepal, now active.
Commissioned specially for YSP, Vital is going to debut a
site-specific aluminium bridge that will draw visitors towards
the sublime vistas at the park’s lakeside. The second in a series
of seven bridges the artist is making around the world, it forges
both a lasting legacy here, and a link to an extraordinary global
constellation of work. NOT VITAL runs 21 May-2 Jan, Mon-Sun 10-6,
Underground Gallery 10-5 $ PERNILLA HOLMES is a writer, curator
and art advisor based in London

Opposite: House to Watch the Sunset, 2005, Aladab, Niger, mud and straw, 13m high. This page, top left: Big Stairs (39 steps with arrayan tree),
2008-14, on Not Vital’s island, NotOna, in Patagonia, Chile, marble and concrete. Top right: Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom, 2008, 100 stainless-steel lotus buds
 Nicholas Herbert Ltd.
Fabrics & Wallpapers

118 Lots Road London SW10 0RJ [ 020 7376 5596

enquiries@nicholasherbert.com [ www.nicholasherbert.com

The English Rose BOWES MUSEUM Newgate, Barnard Castle
When Van Dyck took a portrait commission, his first request was
for the sitter’s clothes to be sent to his studio in advance. The poet
Robert Herrick understood this perfectly: ‘Whenas in silks my
Julia goes/ Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows/That lique-
TOP LEFT: ABBOT HALL ART GALLERY, KENDAL. TOP RIGHT: BOWES MUSEUM, BARNARD CASTLE. BOTTOM: LAING ART GALLERY, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
faction of her clothes.’ Van Dyck’s sessions with the sitter lasted
no more than one hour. Attention to clothing was paramount.
In the Bowes Museum – an ebullient French château posed sur-
really, like a petticoat, in rugged County Durham
– there is a portrait by Van Dyck of Olivia, Mrs
Endymion Porter, lady-in-waiting to Queen
Henrietta Maria (1630). Set conventionally in
an oval, her style is clearly dictated by her boss.
A newly acquired painting of c1637 is much
bolder, the clothing daringly minimal. Our
well-connected heroine is set against a rocky
landscape, dressed in only a choker of pearls
and a shift, with a length of black silk as its amor-
phous envelope. She looks away while moving
at speed through her wilderness, this Diana of
the Stuart court, relieved of her bow, quiver and
errant voyeur as prey. (That, indeed, is our role.)
In The English Rose, fashion and showbiz are
centre stage. Gainsborough’s Mrs Sarah Sid-
dons sits in imperious profile, elaborately par-
celled up in bands of silk and lace with a drift
of fur. Elizabeth and Mary Linley, disarmingly
slight in their wispy lace frocks, were profes-
sional singers, and Elizabeth married Richard
Brinsley Sheridan, who fought a duel for her
hand. Romney’s Emma Hart as Miranda contin-
ues this trend in close-up.
Top left: George Romney, Emma Hart as Miranda, 1785-86, oil on canvas. Top right: Anthony van Dyck, Portrait
of Olivia, Mrs Endymion Porter, c1637, oil on canvas. Above: John Laver y, Hazel in Black and Gold, 1916, oil on canvas
EXHIBITION diary
Lely made his fortune fashioning a ‘look’ familiar to all country-
house visitors: slightly protruding eyes, voluptuous lips and an
incipient double chin, all set pendulously above a milk-white cleav-
age. While his male subjects can be intriguing and characterful, he
painted women who bought happily into this formula. Lely was
very slick with the silks. (‘O how that glittering taketh me!’)
William Powell Frith’s The Fair Toxophilites of 1872 challenges
photography with its overlapping figures, and
my goodness, these girls look dangerous. Their
silks and hats are as taut as the bow being flexed:
Diana again, this time her predation a barely
contained hobby. What a relief to meet Luke
Fildes’s warm, vibrant Annie Winifred Marsden-
Smedley of 1900. In a return to the oval, Annie
has learned the skill of expensive simplicity; her
slight row of pearls the smallest imaginable, her
bodice a modest but minimal flourish of lace
and chiffon, clasped with a brief spray of roses.
For those who might tire of this visual rus-
tling, there is a neat conceptual inversion in
Rose English’s (yes) installation at the Harley
Gallery near Worksop (until 5 June). Inspired
by Country Life beauties, young women in a uni-
form of aprons, tails, bridles and hoof-heels
‘perform’ an inseparable relation between fe-
male beauty and equestrian choreography; sex
and provocation decorously held in check. The
English rose has many petals. THE ENGLISH ROSE:
FEMININE BEAUTY FROM VAN DYCK TO SARGENT runs 14
May-25 Sept, Mon-Sun 10-5 $ LINDSEY SHAW-
MILLER is a writer living in the Mendips
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Below: Frank Dobson, Reclining Nude with Mediterranean Window, 1927, water-
colour. Bottom: Frank Dobson, Bust of a Lady, c1928, bronze, unique cast
True and Pure: Frank Dobson and Eric Gill Drawing From Life
DANIEL KATZ GALLERY Hill St, London W1
British sculptor Frank Dobson (1886-1963) is hardly a household
name, one all too easily confused with the Royalist painter William
Dobson (1611-46). But he was a rising star of the 1920s and highly
praised by the Bloomsbury critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell. This
exhibition at Daniel Katz invites us to look again at his sculp-
tures and especially at his revelatory life drawings of the female
nude. The show has been devised as a face-off (or, rather, bottom-
off) with Dobson’s more famous contemporary Eric Gill, and the
former emerges as a more substantial figure – in every sense.
It comes with a good catalogue, including an essay by Gill
scholar Judith Collins.
Dobson was born in London, the son of a commer-
cial artist who designed greetings cards. At art school
he studied painting and drawing, and was heavily
influenced by French art, both the old masters and the
avant-garde. He was a devotee of life drawing, and
adored the line works of Ingres as well as the red-
chalk compositions of French Rococo artists, while
his early paintings were much influenced by Cézanne
and Gauguin. Dobson began carving before World
War I, and in the 1920s responded to the Neoclassicism
of the French sculptor Maillol, who became a friend.
Roger Fry believed his work to be ‘true and pure’
but seriously underestimated its eroticism.
Many of the drawings incorporate water-
colour and gouache, and Collins rightly ad-
mires their chromatic richness. In this group,
EXHIBITION diary
Reclining Nude with Mediterranean Window is one of the finest
British drawings of the 1920s. It’s a variation on Velázquez’s
Rokeby Venus, with the lithely pneumatic nude seen from behind,
buttocks looming largest, and with an enigmatically rippling
window substituting for Venus’s misty mirror. What makes the
drawing so compelling is the way Dobson has selectively dap-
pled her with dirty green shadows, as though this were a stone
garden sculpture caressed by lichens and moss. These polarities
– flesh or stone? warm or cold? – are explored in his
sculptures too, and they give his reclining figures
an independent life of their own.
These are rare survivals. After Dobson’s death
his widow embarked on a holocaust that was wit-
nessed by the late Brian Sewell: ‘I was appalled
at the destruction that she wrought, smashing
to smithereens small clay and terracotta mod-
els, tearing fine drawings in red and black chalk,
hundreds of them, burying the fragments in a
dustbin, all because the subjects were erotic.’ She
also burned drawings, ‘as explicit as any by his old friend
Eric Gill’, accepting ‘no argument that they were fired
by a quality not to be found in the “pure essence” of the
torsos that survive’. Now at least we can judge for
ourselves. TRUE AND PURE: FRANK DOBSON AND ERIC GILL
DRAWING FROM LIFE runs 24 May-24 June, Mon-Fri
9-6 $ JAMES HALL is the author of ‘The Self-Portrait:
A Cultural History’ (Thames & Hudson)
243
 EXHIBITION diary
1
1 Uncanny valley – LONDON
Stephen Shore, ANNELY JUDA FINE ART DERING ST, W1 Until 24 June.
Bellevue, Alberta, Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 11-5. Table-top artwork by
August 21, 1974, Anthony Caro: little bronzes and stoneware
at Parasol Unit. ‘book’ sculptures. Plus, François Morellet’s
2 Red planet – neons and geometric canvases.
Mona Hatoum, BARBICAN ART GALLERY SILK ST, EC2 Until 19 June.
Hot Spot III, 2009, Mon-Wed, Sat, Sun 10-6, Thurs, Fri 10-9, bank hols
at Tate Modern. 12-6. Pictures of Britain by international pho-
3 No oil painting – tographers. See April issue. Until 10 July. Mon-
Minna Keene, Wed, Sat, Sun 11-8, Thurs, Fri 11-9, bank hols 12-8.
Decorative Study No.1, Imran Qureshi’s exquisite miniatures glow in
Pomegranates, the darkness of the Curve Gallery.
c1906, at Tate Britain. BRUNEI GALLERY AT SOAS THORNHAUGH ST, WC1
2 Until 25 June. Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 10.30-5, Thurs
10.30-8. Tie-dyed and time: live demonstra-
tions by master weavers animate a 200-piece
exhibition of ikat textiles new and old.
CAMDEN ARTS CENTRE ARKWRIGHT RD, NW3 Until 5
June. Tues, Thurs-Sun 10-6, Wed 10-9. Films, books
and stage design by avant-garde Polish poly-
maths Franciszka and Stefan Themerson.
Plus, Karl Holmqvist’s text-based art.
CONNAUGHT BROWN ALBEMARLE ST, W1 Until 3 July.
Mon-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-12.30. European postwar
abstraction inspired by organic forms and
the landscape, featuring Jean Arp, Roger
Bissière, Roger Hilton and Serge Poliakoff.
FLOWERS KINGSLAND RD, E2 18 May-25 June. Tues-
Sat 10-6. South Korean artist Boomoon’s pho-
tographs of Skógafoss in Iceland are closely
3 4 cropped and horizontal in format, defying
the scale and height of the waterfall.
FOUNDRY GALLERY OLD CHURCH ST, SW3 1-10 June.
Mon-Fri 10-5. Cuts both ways: exploring mul-
ticultural exchange and identity, London-
based artist Hormazd Narielwalla assembles
his collages using French dress patterns and
motifs from traditional Indian printmaking.
HAMPTON COURT PALACE HAMPTON COURT WAY,
KT8 Until 4 Sept. Mon-Sun 10-6. Long forgotten
in the stores of the State Hermitage Museum
in St Petersburg, John Spyers’s watercolours
of the palace gardens in Capability Brown’s
day go on public display for the first time.
JEWISH MUSEUM ALBERT ST, NW1 Until 19 June.
Mon-Thurs, Sat, Sun 10-5, Fri 10-2. A history
of London tailoring, charting the suc-
5 cesses of Jewish immigrants such as
4 Old soul – Jain Montague Burton and Moses Moss.
painted textile, at Until 29 Aug, Dorothy Bohm’s pho-
the Wellcome. tographs of 1960s London.
5 Bowled over – MARIAN GOODMAN LOWER JOHN ST,
Edith Lawrence, The W1 Until 4 June. Tues-Sat 10-6. Ettore
Cricket Match, Spalletti’s installations of multi-panel,
1929, at Osborne single-colour paintings, hung flush with
Samuel. 6 Capable the walls or jutting into space.
hands – a John NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY ST MARTIN’S
Spyers watercolour, PLACE, WC2 Until 26 June. Mon-Wed, Sat,
1778, at Hampton Sun 10-6, Thurs, Fri 10-9. Russia’s cultural
Court. 7 Fancy pants colossi loom large in late 19th-century
– 1950s display portraits on loan from Moscow’s State
figure, at the V&A Tretyakov Gallery.
6
244
OSBORNE SAMUEL BRUTON ST, W1 Until 4 June. Mon-
Fri 10-6, Sat 10-2. British prints 1914-64, includ-
ing Grosvenor School linocuts and early lith-
ographs by Moore and Lanyon.
PANGOLIN LONDON YORK WAY, N1 13 May-9 July.
Mon-Sat 10-6. Exterior angle: an indoor garden
displays outdoor sculpture by Lynn Chad-
wick, Ann Christopher and others.
PARASOL UNIT WHARF RD, N1 Until 19 June. Tues-Sat
10-6, Sun 12-5. Seven photographers who cap-
ture or create (by manipulating or computer-
generating) a peculiar atmosphere.
SARAH MYERSCOUGH BRICK LANE, E1 10-30 June.
Tues-Sat 10-6. Strings of pearls form nooses or
chains in Maisie Broadhead’s (WoI June 2009)
photographic constructions that delve into
the codes of 17th-century portraiture.
SIMON LEE GALLERY BERKELEY ST, W1 13 May-18
June. Mon-Sat 10-6. Brooklyn-based Sarah Crow-
ner covers the walls and floor with a celadon-
green mural and glazed white pentagonal tiles
as settings for her stitched canvases.
TATE BRITAIN MILLBANK, SW1 Until 29 Aug. Mon-
Sun 10-6. British conceptual art in a nutshell.
11 May-25 Sept, the relationship between the
first photographers and the painters of the
time, from a shared admiration for certain
models to stereographic restagings of pop-
ular pictures such as The Death of Chatterton.
TATE MODERN BANKSIDE, SE1 Until 12 June. Mon-
Thurs, Sun 10-6, Fri, Sat 10-10. Curtain call for a
show connecting performance art and pho-
tography. Until 21 Aug, the body and the home
as prisons or conflict zones are key concerns
of Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum. 1 June-6
Nov, Bhupen Khakhar’s lyrical, often fantasti-
cal landscapes, sketchbooks of erotic water-
colours and misshapen ceramics.
V&A CROMWELL RD, SW7 Until 3 July. Mon-Thurs, Sat,
Sun 10-5.45, Fri 10-10. Imitation game: Botticelli
paintings reinterpreted by artists, film-makers
and designers. Plus, Paul Strand. See feature,
page 106. Until 12 March, smalls-minded: a
revealing history of underwear.
WELLCOME COLLECTION EUSTON RD, NW1 Until 31
July. Tues, Wed, Fri, Sat 10-6, Thurs 10-10, Sun 11-6.
The Wellcome has got its cerebral cross-
disciplinary exhibitions down to a fine art
– so much so that they’re staging two at
once. An ‘acoustic journey’ into the
human voice features audio elements,
manuscripts, medical illustrations
and ethnographic objects. Until 16 Oct,
explore the outer reachers of con-
sciousness, via Francis Crick’s Plasticine
brain, floating souls and lurking night-
mares by Blake and Fuseli, and excerpts
from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
WHITE RAINBOW MORTIMER ST, W1 18 May-
18 June. Tues-Fri 12-6, Sat 12-5. Photographs
by Shigeo Anzaï of fellow artists and art
performances during travels in Europe
and the USA in the 1980s and 90s.
7

OUTSIDE LONDON
BATH AMERICAN MUSEUM Until 1 July. Tues-Sun
12-5. Jeremiah Goodman’s deliriously roman-
tic room paintings, commissioned by the likes
of Rose Cumming and Carlos de Beistegui.
THE HOLBURNE MUSEUM Until 5 June. Mon-Sat 10-5,
Sun, bank hols 11-5. Impressionist masterpieces
from British public collections.
BEXHILL ON SEA DE LA WARR PAVILION Until 4 Sept.
Mon-Sun 10-5. Willem Sandberg (1897-1984)
was a hands-on director of the Stedelijk Mu-
seum in Amsterdam – to the extent that he
painted the whole place white. He also trans-
formed the collections, curated major shows,
designed the posters and catalogues –and his
wartime activities attest that he was also a bit
of a hero. His work, surveyed here, was char-
acterised by torn-paper shapes, blurring, lay-
ering and a De Stijl palette.
CANTERBURY THE BEANEY Until 19 June. Mon-Wed,
Fri, Sat 9-5. Thurs 9-7, Sun 10-5. Flicker tag: eight
artists respond to the magic lantern.
CHICHESTER PALLANT HOUSE Until 5 June. Tues, Wed,
Fri, Sat 10-5, Thurs 10-8, Sun, bank hols 11-5. Clare
Woods’s paintings paired with plaster sculp-
tures by Des Hughes. Until 12 June, John Piper
textiles. See Henley. Plus, a Craftspace/Outside
In touring show of craft by makers margin-
alised by their circumstances – or by choice.
No doubt, you’ll all be wanting one of Erkki
Pekkarinen’s woven birch-bark suits.
CHIPPING CAMPDEN COURT BARN MUSEUM Until
5 June. Tues-Sun 10-5. A private collection of
Winchcombe pottery by Michael Cardew.
COMPTON WATTS GALLERY Until 5 June. Tues-Sun
11-5. Paintings by Pre-Raphaelite model-
turned-artist Marie Spartali Stillman, includ-
ing some charming views of Kelmscott. Plus,
Watts landscapes: Surrey, Egypt, the Alps.
DERBY DERBY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY Until 12
June. Tues-Sat 10-5, Sun 12-4. Follow Joseph
Wright on his jolly to Italy in 1773-75 as part
of the ‘Grand Tour’ season of exhibitions
across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
EAST WINTERSLOW NEW ART CENTRE, ROCHE COURT
14 May-24 July. Mon-Sun 11-4. How to explain the
soaring popularity of clay as medium, espe-
cially given the closure of so many of the rel-
evant art-school courses? This show unites
seasoned producers of ceramic works with
younger artists such as Jesse Wine, a sculptor
at the RCA who ‘discovered’ clay while study-
ing in New York.
EDINBURGH SCOTTISH NATIONAL
GALLERY Until 12 June. Mon-Wed,
Fri-Sun 10-5, Thurs 10-7. Rare
lithographs of a ‘beautiful
dream’ nurtured by Prussian
architect and planner Karl
Friedrich Schinkel: unreal-
ised designs for two stupidly
lavish royal palaces in Athens
and the Crimea.
EXHIBITION diary
1
EXETER ROYAL ALBERT MEMORIAL MUSEUM 14 May- 1 Meissen easy –
2 July. Tues-Sun 10-5. Sean Lynch’s latest video detail of porcelain
works, commissioned by Spacex, excavate brush handle, c1745-
truths and half-truths about museum arte- 47, in New York.
facts. One film follows the recent proces- 2 Word of honour
sion of a choir screen to the site of the friary – a Willem Sandberg
whence it came – now a Debenhams. design for a library
HARROGATE 108 FINE ART 14 May-4 June. Mon-Fri catalogue cover,
1-4, Sat 10-5. Kenneth Wood, who died this 1957, in Bexhill.
March aged 95, did everything from carving 3 Uncommon curtsy
marionettes to house-sharing with Edward – Edgar Degas’s
Bawden on the banks of the Tigris. The focus pastel over monotype
here is on his irrepressible landscapes and Dancer Onstage
designs for the British Embassy in Baghdad. with a Bouquet,
HENLEY-ON-THAMES BOHUN GALLERY Until 4 June. c1876, in New York.
Tues-Sat 10-1.15 & 2.15-5, Sat 10-5. Pieces of Piper: 2
‘Eye and Camera’ collages, ‘Foliate Head’ tap-
estries and collaborations with potter Geoff-
rey Eastop are juxtaposed with English ar-
chitecture subjects. See Chichester.
NOTTINGHAM NEW ART EXCHANGE Until 19 June.
Mon, Thurs, Sat, Sun 11-6, Tues, Wed 11-7, Fri 11-9.
Fore! Play a round of mini-golf on a course
designed by ten contemporary artists.
PADDOCK WOOD MASCALLS GALLERY Until 25 June.
Tues-Thurs 10-5, Fri, Sat 11-4. Leon Morrocco’s
big impasto paintings of Thames waterways.
WALSALL NEW ART GALLERY Until 24 July. Tues-Sat
10-5, Sun 12-4. A less romantic, more nuanced
picture of the sea emerges from a group show
(Gilman, Ravilious, William Scott and Bob & 3
Roberta Smith, among others) exploring the
ocean as a site of conflict and loss. Until 11 Feb
2017, Tate loans are teamed with related works
from the collection of Epstein’s wife Kathleen
Garman and her friend Sally Ryan.
FRANCE PARIS MUSEE D’ORSAY Until 17 July. Tues,
Wed, Fri-Sun 9.30-6, Thurs 9.30-9.45. How Henri
Rousseau’s interpretation of academy paint-
ing came to be hailed as the height of mod-
ernity. Picasso was especially taken with Le
Douanier’s portraits of nasty children. Until
11 Sept, neglected Romantic Charles Gleyre.
ITALY MILAN MOSHE TABIBNIA Until 2 July. Tues-Sat
10-7. Admire an array of 15th- to 19th-century
carpets, in paintings and in person. 4
JAPAN TOKYO 5-1-3 KOJIMACHI, KIOICHO Until 19 5
June. Tues-Sun 10-8. Case study: a pop-up stop 4 Pencil pusher
for this travelling show of Louis Vuitton’s – work by Dalton
trunk and bag archive (WoI March 2016). M. Ghetti, in
USA NEW YORK THE FRICK Until 5 June. Tues-Sat Chichester. 5 Tiny
10-6, Sun 11-5. One hundred Van Dyck por- terror – Henri
traits. 24 May-28 May 2017, a Rousseau, Child
jaw-dropping collection of with Doll, 1892, in
Meissen porcelain is accom- Paris. 6 Blue
panied by new work in the supporter – Amedeo
medium by Arlene Shechet. Modigliani,
MOMA Until 24 July. Mon-Thurs, Caryatid, c1912-14,
Sat, Sun 10.30-5.30, Fri 10.30-8. in Walsall. 7 Paws
Degas’s radical use of mono- for thought –
type printing to capture eve- James Rigler, Blue
rything from weather effects Feet, 2015, in
to the play of electric light $ East Winterslow
6
7
245
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259
JOURNAL OF AN UNDERWATER SCULPTOR

WORLDS BENEATH THE WAVES

INSTALLING HIS SCULPTURES ON BARREN SEABEDS, JASON DECAIRES TAYLOR BUILDS HIS CONCRETE COMMUNITIES OF PEOPLE AND PLANTS HOPING
TO ENCOURAGE NEW MARINE ECOSYSTEMS. HERE HE SAYS HOW HIS SUNKEN CITIES PROVIDE A PRECIOUS PARALLEL TO OUR LIFE ON TERRA FIRMA

For over ten years I have been submerging permanent works of art
beneath the surface of our oceans. The sculptures themselves range
from huge crowds of life-size figures to botanical gardens and build-
ings; immortalised snapshots of mundane life in a new alchemic
surrounding. The installations are designed with both a practical
agenda – to help revitalise marine life; and an artistic one – to con-
vey a sense of hope in the regenerative power of our oceans.
Today I am documenting white calcareous tubular worms. Hav-
ing recently installed a museum on Lanzarote’s seabed, I am inter-
ested to see how each sculpture has been colonised, and whether
the aim of the art museum/conservation project is being fulfilled.
The day looks promising, though the water is cold. I dive alone;
it’s not the recommended practice but I concentrate better that way
and I carry a spare air tank in case of emergencies. I use an enriched
type of oxygen, which also helps cure the odd hangover.
The site was barren three months ago; I want to see how quickly
the sea has assimilated the artworks. On my last visit I found an
octopus living on a sculpture’s leg, an angel shark buried in the
silt, and thousands of juvenile glassfish in the branches of a ‘tree’,
but today it’s the worms that have got me fired up. This particular
species builds a protective skeleton round its fragile body, encrust-
ing other surfaces (in this case, those of my sculptures) with a veil of
white lace as it goes. It’s a patina no sculptor could ever dream up.
My job can be quite surreal. While one day is spent checking
worms, the next may involve making plaster casts of members of
the public, filling the empty spaces they leave behind with marine
cement before then crossing over to the parallel world beneath
the waves to install and document them. Just as this variation has
afforded me some incredibly rich experiences, I have also been
faced with my fair share of challenges. My current task, for in-
stance, is working out how to move over 200 tons of grey concrete
stone from a second-storey studio across one mile of open ocean
and then 14 metres down to the seabed – safely.
Each sculpture can take a few years to finish, so I feel sad when
they finally leave the studio. But though they will never be quite
the same again, they will hopefully be enriched, inundated with
sea life. I imagine it feels quite like when one’s children leave home.
However, just like a proud father, I get to visit them and watch
them change, although having completed over 800 sculptures in
various parts of the world it’s hard for me to get quality time with
them these days. Some of my favourites are the first pieces I ever
made, in Grenada in 2006. Here, a nutrient-rich current passes
close by, which has led to a barrage of tropical sponges attaching
to the sculptures’ heads. They are of the deepest colours I have ever
seen; the reds are so bright they confuse the sensor on my camera,
and the flesh of the sponges is integrated with a network of translu-
cent capillaries, which somehow makes them look even more alive.
Seeing a community of statues in the middle of the vast blue
ocean makes me realise how fragile humanity really is. As we urban-
ILLUSTRATION: HARRY TENNANT

ise our surroundings we become further disconnected from the

environment; seeing the image of ourselves in a different context
allows us to reflect on the imbalance. It simultaneously gives me
a sense of loss and of hope as I witness our planet’s ability to re-
generate itself, in whatever form that might be $
For more information, visit underwatersculpture.com

260
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