Without...

wishing to appear mawkish, thank you.



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Eye for the rich and the splendid

The Christie's catalogue for the Geoffrey Bennison sale.



Bennison's Malabar, and its companion Malabar Stripe, used fearlessly and lavishly just as Geoffrey Bennison had intended.


There, under low ceilings, he created rooms that felt more like an Irish-Georgian country house than Mayfair. Pictures were massed between groaning, untidy bookshelves. His own deliciously faded-looking fabrics and old crewelwork draperies were mixed with Moroccan textiles, and all these elements were held together by his favorite Red Riding Hood red, a beautifully subtle scarlet described by Bennison’s friend and fellow antiquarian Christopher Gibbs as the color that lines the insides of old Moroccan chests.

This interior, with its Caravaggesque light, its perfectly judged drama and easy comfort, was in many ways the culmination of the designer’s ideas concerning decoration. His sense of color was unfailingly sure: He would sit for hours in a room just watching the play of light, and he mixed his paints himself. “Never,” he said, “trust a painter or a color chart.” When it came to objects, his philosophy could be summed up in another of his memorable phrases: Always put “something mad on top of something very good, or something very good on top of something mad.” On Geoffrey Bennison’s death, as all dealers perhaps ultimately wish, his things—the very good and the very mad—were dispersed in a great sale

Stephen Calloway
Geoffrey Bennison: Extravagant Patterns and Remarkable Objects Define Exotic English Rooms
Architectural Digest, January 2000

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Speaking of Richardson

Richardson's library.




John Richardson interviewed in his New York loft by Charlie Rose.


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The happy few

The late Bill Blass's New York dining room.



The late great Geoffrey Bennison once remarked to the art historian John Richardson regarding Bill Blass, Bill’s one of my favourite clients...no cobwebs on his cheque book.



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Languid

Iris doesn't live here anymore

The main gate of La Foce.



The gardens were done by Cecil Pinsent (1884 - 1963), the Edwardian garden designer who also created the gardens at Bernard Berenson's villa I Tatti.




La Foce: A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany by Benedetta Origo


La Foce, once the Tuscan estate of the elegant and intelligent Anglo-American writer Iris Origo (1902 - 1988) , Marchesa of Val d'Orcia.

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Summer addition

Aquilegia vulgaris - Black Barlow




Geraniun phaeum - Mourning Widow




Alcea rosea nigra - Black Hollyhock




Acanthus mollis - Bear's Breeches


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King's colour

Orpiment crystals, the toxic mineral once used to produce Chinese Yellow.




The tiled roofs of the Forbidden City.




A large Chinese Imperial Yellow brushpot, c. 1900.




Homage to the Square: Departing in Yellow
Josef Albers, 1964


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Youkali

Youkali

Youkali: Tango Habanera was composed in 1934 by Kurt Weill as incidental music for the play Marie Galante. In 1946, lyrics were added by Roger Fernay.


Youkali exists as a dreamscape, a wistful hope of happiness that can never be realised.

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The real House of Beauty & Culture

Originally the collaboration between shoe designer John Moore, fashion designer Christopher Nemeth and jewellery designer Judy Blame. Like gods, they fashioned their world, both collectively and respectively, in their own image.




A House of Beauty & Culture cropped white denim jacket, 1980s, the back inset with knitted panel Casa Vaselina together with a bracelet made from slivers of antler, by Judy Blame, with a pair of high-waisted black Demob trousers.



John Moore, London 1981






Legendary stylist and designer Judy Blame.




Detail of the sculpted style of Christopher Nemeth, who has long since decamped for life in Tokyo.


There is a lot of peer pressure today, that didn't exist before. There weren't any reality tv fashion shows back in 1981, to tell you what was cool. Popular opinion/taste is tyrannical. There is so much pressure to be cool today. Ultimately it is a marketing conspiracy . They are selling cool. It sells. And, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with it. Just acknowledge what it is though, and acknowledge there is a difference. What is today mostly isn't art though, it is fashion. There's a difference between what John Moore and people of his generation were doing back then, that really doesn't exist anymore. - from John More Defined a Generation by Joel Nikolaou



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And this...

belongs



here.

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I, Quentin

Quentin Crisp: A Film By Denis Mitchell (1968)

Made in 1968 after Crisp's initial success with The Naked Civil Servant and broadcast in 1970 as part of Granada TV's World In Action series. It was this exposure that led to The Naked Civil Servant being made into a film.


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More ways to waste time

Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)

The film adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony Award winning play, with Jason Alexander (Buzz Hauser), Randy Becker (Ramon Fornos), Stephen Bogardus (Gregory Mitchell), John Glover (John and James Jeckyll), John Benjamin Hickey (Arthur Pape), Justin Kirk (Bobby Brahms) and Stephen Spinella (Perry Sellars).


Gregory -

I love my house.



Everybody does.



It was built in 1895



and still has most
of the original roof.



The wallpaper in the dining room
is original, too.



So is a lot of the woodwork.



You'd have to be a fool
to change it.



I hope you appreciate detail.



The marble fireplace
is hand-carved.



The main stairs have
a very gentle rise.



Everyone comments how easy
it is to climb them.



I like to fill it with my friends.



Over the years,
we've become more like a family.



It makes me happy to have us
all together in our home.



Mine and Bobby's.



They don't build houses
like this anymore.



The golden age
of American house building.



Not architecture, mind you,



but house building.



This house
was meant to stand.



Welcome.


Make yourself at home.








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In no need of chintz to distract the eye

A Diego Giacometti table sits comfortably with Georgian pieces.



In a guest room, a pair of chairs from the Edward James sale in their original Severini fabric.


The house which was used for What's wrong in this picture? appeared in the June issue of The World of Interiors. In fact it is Woolbeding House, a restored pile dating from the 1720s in West Sussex, home to the late cultural benefactor, Simon Sainsbury.

I was so taken with the individual pieces (and there are some incredible pieces ranging from Chippendale to Giacometti) I failed to take in the whole. The comments left by Mamacita and Hello Gorgeous gave me pause for thought. It never occurred to me that the room itself would not be well received. After all, it does have that typically English country house look which is usually so popular.

In spite of its fine architecture, it is not a pretty house or rather it has not been prettily done. Though, it does appear comfortable and inviting; which, from a cultural perspective especially, has always taken precedence. There is, however, an uncommon sense of connoisseurship in the understated English Georgian furniture and British pictures that is atypical of the English country house look.


Simon Sainsbury built the collection to furnish and complement Woolbeding House, which was leased from the National Trust. It was this and his personal taste that formed the nature of the collection.


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I'm thinking...

Set of 5 Plaster Geometric Shapes



Set of 15 Plaster Geometric Shapes




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Precious

Green Tourmaline and 18K Gold Box
By Manfred Wild
Idar-Oberstein, Germany
Of Baroque design, mounted with broad borders of 18K yellow gold, the hinged lid and body of the box each formed of a single piece of Brazilian green tourmaline of the finest quality having a brilliant saturation of color and a high degree of transparency, with a sizeable weight of approximately 438.0 carats, signed M. Wild, length 2 ¾ in.

Bonhams


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Tit of the week

And here's why.



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The name is Baas

Maarten Bass

Clay Furniture

Introduced at Salone del Mobile, Milan, 2006.

Made of a synthetic Clay on a metal skeleton. Each piece is modelled by hand. As no moulds are used in the production, each piece is unique. Available in eight standard colours: black, white, brown, red, yellow, blue, orange and green.


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It is all connected

Mondrian's close friend, Maude van Loon, describes the painter's studio:

The front door was nothing special; just a wooden door. Between the front door and the studio there was a little vestibule and a dark corridor. Then you went through his door and suddenly there was a marvelous white studio with a colour plane here and there. It was like stepping into paradise….



Mondrian’s Paris studio, restored to colour ( Berlin, 1995)
Frans Postma and Cees Boekraad, with the assistance of Hans de Herder, RKD
National Gallery of Art





Piet Mondrian's Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930




Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian day dress, autumn 1965
The Metropolitan Museum of Art





Architects Titina Ammanati and Giampiero Vitelli's Mobile Totale living unit, 1965
Phillips de Pury



See?



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I am the Gothic version of Garbo

So said Valentina (Valentina Nicholaevna Schlee, nee Sanina, c.1899 - 1989), the legendary Russian emigrée who was America's answer to Mme Grés and Madeleine Vionnet.




Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity by Kohle Yohannan





Author, curator and historian Kohle Yohannan on Valentina.


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