Imagine

Miss Hattie McDaniel

Miss McDaniel wrote: I desire a white casket and a white shroud; white gardenias in my hair and in my hands, together with a white gardenia blanket and a pillow of red roses - I also wish to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery.

Her wish to be buried among her fellow movie stars in the Hollywood Cemetery was denied. The owner, Jules Roth (a nasty piece of work), refused to allow her to be interred there, because they did not take blacks. Her second choice was Rosedale Cemetery, where she lies today.

In 1952 thousands of mourners turned out to remember her life and her accomplishments.



Miss McDaniel in a scene from Song of the South (1946).



Miss McDaniel's 1939 Oscar acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone With the Wind

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Handbags at dawn

Maison21's obsessive compulsive decorating disorder challenge - the objective is to take disparate elements (in this case the tusk dining table base, the cerused oak flooring and the beige colour scheme) and make them work.


Contemporary alabaster ceiling light from Antiquario. Hand carved from a solid block by a Bay Area artisan.



Maison21's tusk dining table base, which would be done with a composite stone top (as I positively loathe glass topped dining tables) to match the base in colour and mirror its profile.



Billy Baldwin dining slipper chair with raffia body.


Lee Jofa's Zephyr in granite for the seat cushions and the curtains.



Pair of French industrial steel cabinets from Briggs House Antiques.



Zoffany's Paper-White for woodwork and ceiling, and Barley for the walls.



Cerused oak flooring.



Spider Diptych, 2004, watercolour on paper (480 x 300cm) by Alf Löhr.


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George ous

A George II giltwood mirror, the replaced bevelled rectangular plate to an eared frame with a punched ground and egg and dart carved border, the sides hung with oak leaves and acorns, the broken swan neck pediment with rosette terminals above acanthus swags.




A George III mahogany and floral marquetry inlaid linen press, with pierced swan neck pediment enclosing three oak slides, the base with two short and one long drawer, raised upon bracket feet.


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More ways to waste time

Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950)
Starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, and Richard Todd. With a stellar supporting cast including Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Kay Walsh, and Joyce Grenfell.



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You want protest? I'll give you protest

One can't help but wonder how Cai Mingchao, the bogus bidder who won the Chinese bronzes as an act of protest, would feel if Pierre Berge did in fact return the bronzes in question to China. If I were Monsieur Berge that is exactly what I would do. But first, as an act of protest at the sheer high-handedness of it all, I would have them melted down. Into a nice neat cube.


The bronze sculptures.

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Let go and let God

Maslow's hierarchy of needs.*

Sometimes things simply don't turn out the way one wants. No matter how hard one tries. Being tactful usually means people will blissfully make do with what is wrong. Wrong being the dumpy (and very expensive, as I was continually reminded) sofa, the Eames chair and ottoman, the monolithic coffee table, the uplighters, and the ugly Victorian dumbwaiter.

*The images have been changed to protect the bicthy.

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s h o p p i n g

Georgian silver mounted horn snuff mull, set with a faceted citrine.



A Late 18th Century Horn Mull. The lid mounted with a small round brass plaque and pin-fixed butterfly hinge attached to the brass rim band.



An 18th Century Horn Mull. The hinged lid with a scalloped rim band and an engraved oval plaque.

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More ways to waste time

Life is cruel to people who aren't fabulous, so sayeth Reality Nirvana Tuttle doorwhore extraordinaire and protagonist of Lee Tulloch's late 80s romp Fabulous Nobodies.

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Ding-dong the bells did chime

Pre lippy and on the way to Westminster Register Office,
La Talia did indeed get hitched.

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Boxing clever

George III silver mounted cowrie shell snuff mull.
The plain lid with integral hinge, 6 x 4cm, London 1814.


A French tortoiseshell and specimen stone oblong snuff box.
The central oval aggregate and banded agate and lapis lazuli spandrel roundels in chased laurel mounts, 8.5cm wide, circa 1820.

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So many chairs, so little time

Victorian oak Aesthetic style spindle back dining chairs with turned and tapering front legs.


Eric Cohler's Darley horsehair in Bark




Regency pollard oak dining chairs with tapering turned reeded front legs.


Lee Jofa's Musetta Print in Grass




17th Century dining chairs with foliate and bird carving above a cane panel flanked by carved scroll uprights and cane seats, with scroll carved supports and stretchers.


Lee Jofa's Karsa Flamestich in Fall


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Duality

What Do You Want From Me?, Claude Cahun (1928)





Claude Cahun (1894–1954) the French surrealist artist, photographer and writer. Born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob, she was the niece of writer Marcel Schwob and the great-niece of Orientalist David Léon Cahun. She was raised by her maternal grandmother, Mathilde Cahun.

Cahun began taking photographic self-portraits as early as 1912, when she was merely 18 years old, and continued doing so through the 1930s. Her work, which was both political and personal, questioned the accepted notions of sexuality, gender, beauty, and logic. She collaborated with her stepsister and lover Suzanne Malherbe, who had adopted the pseudonym Marcel Moore.

In 1937 she and Moore fled France and settled in the Bay of St Brelade on Jersey. Forever the radical activists, they carried out acts of resistance against the occupying German force. In 1944 Cahun was arrested and condemned to death, but the island was liberated before the sentence could be carried out. She died on Jersey 10 years later.


Further reading:

Disavowals: or Cancelled Confessions by Claude Cahun
Don't Kiss Me by Claude Cahun, Marcel Moore


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So very Miss Marple

English Riviera



Blyth Beach

I have always wanted to do one of of these. Though I thought I would have to wait until we got one or our own. Not so, a client has asked for me to do theirs. Practice makes perfect.

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More ways to waste time

Ash Wednesday (1973), featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Henry Fonda, Helmut Berger, Keith Baxter, and Maurice Teynac. Directed by Larry Peerce.

Can Barbara Sawyer (Elizabeth Taylor), a woman too old to be young and too young to be old, rekindle her husband Mark's (Henry Fonda) waning desire by submitting herself to the rigours of the plastic surgeon's knife?

Sadly, only available on VHS but well worth the effort.


Before.


And after - both are the work of makeup artist Alberto De Rossi .


Image from Dr. Marco's comprehensive site.



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Long before Treacy there was Jones

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones
24 February – 31 May 2009
V&A South Kensington


Portrait of Stephen Jones by Peter Ashworth, 2008.



Wash and Go by Stephen Jones
Image courtesy of Justinephotography



Straw boater by Madame Suzy c.1937




The companion publication to the exhibition, Hats: An Anthology
By Stephen Jones & Oriole Cullen, Foreword by John Galliano

Hats: An Anthology offers an unprecedented view of the world of millinery, drawing on the V&A’s extensive collection of hats, Stephen Jones’s own archive and iconic headgear from around the globe. Beautifully illustrated chapters examine the inspiration behind the creation of hats, the history of their construction, the lure of the hat shop and finally the etiquette and occasion of hat wearing for the client.




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Bearable lightness

An early 19th Century Pennsylvania Sheraton cherry and mahogany games table.


Along with Thomas Chippendale and George Hepplewhite, Thomas Sheraton ( 1751 - 1806) was one of the most influential English furniture designers. His designs were distinctive in their grace and delicacy, and noted for their extensive use of satinwood and elegant inlays. His furniture design manuals, published between 1791 and 1803, set the fashion of English furniture.




Thomas Sheraton style (1780 -1820) dining chairs with pierced lattice work backs, stud upholstered seats and supported on turned and tapering front legs.


The Edwardian movement owed much to the neo-classical Sheraton style.



An Edwardian satinwood Sheraton revival console table with painted foliate decoration on square tapering legs.








The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book: Frontispiece and title page (vol. 1), plates 33 and 35 (vol. 2), 1793
Thomas Sheraton (British, 1751–1806)
London

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art




Thomas Sheraton-Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer's Drawing Book and Repository

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Goddess

Tilda Swinton wearing Lanvin at the 81st Annual Academy Awards.
Note, it is not Lanvin wearing Tilda Swinton. A lesson a good many of the Hollywood set (and those who take their cues from them) should heed. Neither over styled, nor over dressed for the occasion.

If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?
- Edith Sitwell


Image from fabsugar


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It's just flowers (the fresh is redundant)

A large shallow glass cylinder lined with moss and planted with fritillaria (at least a dozen or so) makes for a very smart arrangement.





Fritillaria meleagris




A more casual approach from Martha Stewart using Fritillarias and Epimediums (native orchids) in vintage chemistry measures.


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