Seasonal Denial: Tom Scheerer's Bahamian Idylls

My denial is not absolute - I actually love this time of year - but while every other child in the world seems to have started the new school year (which I know because of Instagram) Sholto's school still hasn't finished being built, so my usual 'ooh it's September' excitement and drive hasn't had a chance.  Days are still consumed with building his lego with one hand, preventing Esmeralda from destroying it with the other, playing Sylvanian Families with her at the same time as expressing an interest in his drawings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ("Gosh darling - is that Leonardo or Michelangelo?") while all the time wondering how I can disguise broccoli as chicken gujons.  So forgive me when I tell you that my children don't currently figure particularly largely in my dreams of escapism - speaking of which, it's a toss up between being a cow girl in Colorado (based at Ralph Lauren's ranch, obviously) and wanting to move to the Bahamas.  And the main inspiration behind the longing for an island life is this:

The Lyford Cay Club, decorated by Tom Scheerer.  Those palm trees are hand-painted.

I mean, those walls!  The New York Times described the room as setting "a new standard for the vitality and relevance of American aristocratic decorating," while adding that  "Slim Aarons didn't live long enough to shoot this one, but he would have deemed it worthy."  All I know is I want to live in it because, in spite of the grandeur and scale of those trees, it looks supremely comfortable, does it not? "Elegance," Scheerer has been quoted as saying "is really about economy."  

And then I found another house in the Bahamas that Scheerer has decorated - I could so live here.  And India Hicks makes Bahamian life look so especially idyllic . . . .  Which is actually totally relevant because while Scheerer studied architecture at Cooper Union, when it comes to interior design he credits David Hicks, India's father, as a mentor, naming him a master of "fresh, civilised, beautiful, unpretentious spaces."  Which basically describes Scheerer's own style:

To finish, here's another view of those palm trees. 

(Were I a more patient mother I would doubtlessly get the children to paint approximations on the walls at home - in a Matisse cut-out kind of way.  But the Chelsea Textiles cushions still haven't entirely recovered from my "Let's paint Carnival!" idea, enthusiasm born of two days worth of steel bands and sound systems directly outside our house . . .  The paints have been definitively hidden.) FMJ.

All photographs throughout are by Pieter Estersohn

www.tomscheerer.com

Frocks, Fantasy, Faraway Lands and Fabulous Interiors: Horst P. Horst at the V&A

Having spent the entirety of my twenties at Conde Nast, I am happily on familiar terms with the Vogue library, which is situated in the basement of Vogue House and contains all the back issues of every Vogue, ever.  Flicking through them is like discovering that fabled other country of the past - here are glimpses into an era when women dressed for dinner, here are adventures undertaken by Norman Parkinson, here is Her Majesty the Queen as a young girl photographed by Cecil Beaton, and here are couture gowns of the thirties and forties, eternalised by Horst.  (And then your eyes go funny, in the desperate search for the Irving Penn image of the woman having milk splashed in her face/ the Willy Rizzo image of a woman in a hat and net over her face/ any other iconic image by any other iconic photographer that you know is somewhere, in either British/ French/ American/ Italian Vogue, sometime in the 60s, but if it was syndicated, where did it appear first?  AND WHEN WILL ALL THE ARCHIVES ALL BE DIGITALISED?!)

Helen Bennett, 1939  © Condé Nast/Horst Estate

But all that is an aside; this is about Horst, who is the subject of a new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum - who call it "the definitive retrospective exhibition of the work of master photographer Horst P. Horst (1906-1999) - one of the leading photographers of the 20th Century" - which opens this weekend, and I would urge anybody to go, whether or not they have an interest in frocks.  For while the exhibition explores his collaborations and friendships with such luminaries as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli - and Marlene Dietrich and Noel Coward and Salvador Dali - it also shows Horst's other work.  His nude studies (there's a particularly exquisite Odalisque), his patterns created from natural forms (these didn't actually do much for me, though there were a few which I thought could become rather exquisite Luke Irwin rugs) and his travel photography from the Middle East, which is amazing, and all the more fascinating because, these days, even the most intrepid traveller can't readily reach places that he visited.  In this instance, the past really is another country.

View of ruins at the palace of Persepolis, Persia, 1949. © Condé Nast/Horst Estate

Patterns from Nature Photographic Collage, about 1945. © Condé Nast/Horst Estate

Not Horst.  One of Luke Irwin's rugs from his Tarantella collection.  I'm still dreaming of a Luke Irwin rug. 

And Horst photographed interiors, too.  He was published in House & Garden as well as Vogue, and it was he that is responsible for that incredibly famous image of Diana Vreeland, then Editor of American Vogue, in her drawing room which she arranged to be red, 'like a garden in hell'.  The picture isn't actually in the exhibition, but here it is:

Diana Vreeland, at home.  There's a wonderful letter from Vreeland to Horst in the exhibition:  "Dear Horst," she writes.  "I cannot tell you how perfectly beautiful I think your pictures of Persia are . . . "

(Incidentally, I am currently obsessed with red.  Obsessed.  I'm going to have a chair upholstered in this amazing fabric - Snow Tree by Colefax & Fowler - it was inspired by a paper from Drottningholm Court Theatre in Sweden, a piece of which was given to Nancy Lancaster, who was then owner of Colefax & Fowler, by the King of Sweden.  Is it not heaven?)

Snow Tree in red, by Colefax & Fowler

And Horst photographed Nancy Lancaster's house, too.  Obviously.  For after all she was one of the greatest influences on interior decoration and garden design in Great Britain and America in the second half of the 20th Century.  Those images, too, aren't in the exhibition, but many others are, including one of the apartment that Horst lived in in Paris, which was published in British Vogue in 1931, and which - unlike my house - is a masterclass in serenity.  (He also photographed Karl Lagerfeld's Art Deco apartment, and Yves Saint Laurent at home, but I bumped into my friend Deep, who is Fashion Director of Tatler, before I got to the final room . . .  and we were discussing jean shopping for the New York shows which she's about to fly out for, and the changing fonts on the the covers of Vogues of yesteryear - there's a great collection of covers with some seriously great fonts . . . . and then I remembered I had a lunch.  I have to go back.)  

So go.  It chronicles an era (rather like this post, colour appears half way through) and has moments of beauty that touch on the sublime.  FMJ.

Horst is at the V&A until the 4th January (and, while you're there, you could always pop into the Disobedient Objects, too . . . )

www.lukeirwin.com

www.colefax.com

A Garden is a Lovesome Thing . . .

I've spent rather a lot of time thinking about gardens recently.  Firstly, there was the Chelsea Flower Show, which may seem forever ago now but one particular garden - namely The Topiarist Garden - seems to have become imprinted on the cornea of my mind's eye in such a manner that I literally can't stop seeing it, and therefore dreaming about it.

I just want a bit of room to practice some topiary and grow some box hedges of my own, and that is not going to happen on my balcony.

Fortunately, some (very) bright spark has come up with the idea of a new sort of 'garden' show:  Grow London, a garden show for people who don't have gardens.  That spark is Will Ramsay, who also founded the Affordable Art Fair (bringing original art to the walls of the masses); he's now aiming to 'democratise' gardening for people who only have access to window boxes, i.e. me.   It's on all weekend, in Hampstead (you can get the overground to Hampstead Heath) and I thoroughly recommend it.  (And, should you wish to make a whole day of it, the utterly amazing 2 Willow Road, Erno Goldfinger's former modernist home, is just around the corner.)  The only problem is that your longing for a garden won't necessarily decrease having been . . .

But how could it, having seen foxgloves like these?  I'd forgotten just how perfectly exquisite foxgloves are.

And look!  Olive trees and lavender, the most perfect combination ever.  Cleverly, everything here is in pots, so you really can conjure up a Mediterranean-style garden on a tiny concrete balcony (though perhaps not if your balcony is quite as tiny as mine.)

There were also a whole host of garden-type accessories:

I desperately want an Edwardian sun shelter from Deckchair Stripes.  Desperately.  Again, however, it's not going to fit on my balcony . . . 

I can, however, buy deckchair canvas by the metre.  Not that I'm immediately sure what I'll do with it, but oh my goodness the colours!

And check out their bobble trim.  Did you ever see anything so heavenly?  Seriously, when I do have a garden, I'm going to know exactly how to accessorise it.

The other stand I fell for, totally hopelessly head over heels, was Rush Matters, which is a company owned by Felicity Irons, and I hope (crossed fingers) that we're going to be able to stock her products on English Abode.

Here is Felicity harvesting the rush.

Then she turns the rush into the most insanely comfortable cushions, as per this image, and rush rugs and mats etc.  Did you know that you need to occasionally water a rush rug?  Because I didn't.  One of the things that she makes is rush bath mats; a bathroom, she explained, being absolutely the ideal place for rush to live because it gets watered on a regular basis.

And then she makes these utterly amazing rush shoes.  When I have a garden, these are all I shall wear in them.

For now though, the garden is still far off - however long I spend reading gardening books and reviewing them on English Abode.  But speaking of English Abode, we have got some rather amazing gardening pieces for people-who-don't-have-gardens, ourselves:

These Foodie Garden growing kits, for instance.  Ready prepared trays for tomatoes, peppers, basil and more are all available (they take about a week to start germinating) and I've just ordered the lot.  I'm very keen that Sholto and Esmeralda should have a chance to grow there own something this summer, and I'm hoping that the experience is going to go some way to stopping me buying an old Citroen van and setting off around England selling hydrangea and lavender from the back of it.

Because that's basically all I want to do at this precise moment in time.  And looking at this, don't you?!

Grow London - www.growlondon.com - continues through Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm at the Lower Fairground Site, East Heath Road, Hampstead.  Go.

www.deckchairstripes.com

For everything else, there's www.englishabode.com

Self Service

Any regular readers (and I still don't really believe that means anyone aside from Grandfather, my friends Kim and Simon and my sisters, but the statistics say otherwise) will have noticed that I don't seem to have written much recently.  There is one overwhelming reason why, and that is that I have been focusing on getting English Abode live, English Abode being the online magazine and shopping platform which I've set up, with a little (i.e. a massive amount of invaluable) help from my friends Emma M-T and Christopher T-R.  I'm delighted to be able to inform you that, from us, you can now buy everything from antiques to contemporary design, via cushions (obviously), wallpaper, fabric, Potichomania lamps, silk ikat lampshades, Rajhastani dhurries, antique Venetian mirrors, and some of the prettiest laundry baskets I've ever seen.  I'm actually having a hard time resisting buying all the stock myself - fortunately we've got more coming soon.

Susan Deliss silk ikat cushions and lampshade

Rose de Borman hand-printed silkscreen cushion.  See how hard it is for me?!

Anyway, this isn't meant to be all about English Abode, this post is actually about the night we launched when I finally left the office for the first time in what felt like months (but obviously wasn't) and went to Linley on the Pimlico Road for an exhibition celebrating 'British Design, Craftsmanship, Engineering and Innovation,' which is on until mid-March.  

The entrance was kind of fabulous.  Check out the JCBs.  

Anyway, inside was packed, not least with Elizabeth Hurley holding court next to Gladstone Motorcycles (admittedly her date for the evening was Henry Cole, CEO of said motorcycles) - incidentally, just to illustrate how busy I've been, I hadn't even realised that she and Shane Warne had broken up for good, i.e. I haven't even had time to keep up with the Daily Mail sidebar - but also because every stand was so worth looking at properly.   They weren't just presenting wares, but were showing exactly what goes into everything.  For instance, my friend Bettina who was there with her quite stunningly amazing bespoke handbags was accompanied by Ruth, who actually makes the handbags, and things like a length of ostrich skin, to demonstrate how little of each can actually be used (I never knew that it wasn't all spotty).  There was stationery (Smythson's have got competition), millinery, guns (I genuinely know somebody who was given a pair of Purdeys as a confirmation present), cars, luggage (OMG I love Globetrotter so much - I actually travelled all across Russia, Mongolia, China and then flew to Vanuatu accompanied by nothing but a single ancient Globetrotter one summer, a million years ago) - indeed everything, almost. (There were no cushions.)

You should totally go and see it.  But you should especially go and see Bettina's handbags, because they are both beautifully crafted (we're talking Hermes standard) and immensely practical:  the straps are reinforced to make sure that they don't stretch, they're just the right length to carry over your arm comfortably - in fact she offers two sets of straps so that you can change how you wear the bag - travel bag straps are non slip(!), there are all the pockets and pull-outs you could dream of, and they actually stay looking pristine for a mega long time because Bettina has found some wonder coat-er which protects the suede and the leather.  Oh, and because they're bespoke, you can actually change whatever you like.  

This gives an indication of the different sizes.

Different colours - though actually any colour is possible - but gosh I would like the caramel coloured one on the left . . . 

What's included:  spare straps, detachable wallet with inside pockets for different currency etc.

Tragically (for me) Bettina's bags are, as to be expected, quite expensive - though in comparison to other brands (I'm whispering Hermes) insanely good value - so I can't afford one, yet.  However, if enough people buy enough on English Abode, I might be able to, soon.

The title of this post ought to make sense now.

www.englishabode.com
www.bvs-design.com
The exhibition is at Linley Belgravia, 60 Pimlico Road, London SW1W 8LP until the 14th March

Wallpaper OBSESSION

So, fantasising about a bigger house, I started browsing Prime Location.  Tragically, it transpires that I can't yet quite afford a white stuccoed number in Maida Vale.  In fact, it seems I can't afford an actual house anywhere I think I want to live (remembering I am spoilt from years of living in Kensington followed by Chelsea followed by Notting Hill) and so we are destined to remain in our tiny flat forever.

No matter.  I discovered The Great Interior Design Challenge, and have convinced myself that, given three days, I could totally transform our house.  I have become obsessed with wallpaper, you see, and figure that if we're going to be here for a while (or at least until I've made enough for a little mews house nearby, a snip at around £3million) I may as well carry out my design dreams within our present abode - there's no point in mood boards featuring Hermes wallpaper for a dining room that I might never have. (Although I will have it, one day.  It is as certain as eggs are eggs.)

First up, my bedroom.  It's currently painted pale pink, with a pink and green quilt and a vintage pink and yellow and white Welsh blanket, the curtains are blue and pink with ornamental pheasants (I love them, my mother just produced them from a box when I explained I needed some) and there's something of a wealth of cushions:  Chelsea Textiles, Yastik pink and green ikat spots, Neisha Crosland pineapples on a lemon curd background, not to mention the most beautiful bedside lamp in the world by Cressida Bell.  This is a very longwinded way of explaining that there is already quite a lot of pattern - but there are two plain cream jacquard bedroom armchairs should one's eye need a rest, and anyway it's me who spends the most amount of time in my bedroom and I love pattern, so I'm tossing up between the following:

 

Colefax & Fowler, Alderney.  I love it.  Love it. 

Barneby Gates, Honey Bees.  I also love this, but the more I think about it the more I think I'll save it for a spare bedroom in a future house - there's a fabric that matches, so I could do curtains and valances in the same, and even, maybe, explore the possibility of a tented room? (I've always wanted a tented room.)

This is one of the bedrooms at Kingston Lacey.  Now try and tell me that you wouldn't also like a tented bedroom.

But back to my house:  the children's bedroom is simple, and actually there isn't too much pattern going on in there, except for their own Chelsea Textiles cushions of course, and a blue and white dhurrie and the tent I made Sholto that matches his quilt and some other cushions (positively restrained, see?!), and would potentially come down to budget:

Either Celia Birtwell, Beasties

Or Brunschwig et Fils, Bengali, in Periwinkle (I've got a feeling Celia might be cheaper . . .  But oh my goodness I love it.  It's definitely got to find somewhere to live in the next house.)

The bathroom is more complex, because we half got around to doing it up last year in shades of grey, pink and white, with an amazing Neisha Crosland floor - seriously, if anyone is looking for tiling, stop spending hours going backwards and forwards from Fired Earth with different samples, and go to John Lewis and buy these:

They're both insanely practical, and genuinely not even a bit bankrupting.  

But the walls are still just painted (except the ones that are tiled in totally plain white matt tiles from the aforementioned Fired Earth), and now I either want to give it the Hermes treatment (in the absence of a dining room) or this:

Brunschwig et Fils, Shell Toile, blue on pineapple.  But it's just not going to go with anything else. Except perhaps monogrammed towels that I've thus far only ordered in my head.

Barneby Gates, English Robin.  My friend Kitty's bathroom is done in this.  And, get this, her husband did it for her as a surprise!  I can't think of anything more romantic.

Or of course my original Hermes obsession.  Which actually wouldn't screw up the colour scheme too much, I don't think.  Seriously.  Oh I love it so much.

Downstairs is more problematic.  It's currently painted pale grey, i.e Farrow & Ball Cornforth White.  But suddenly nearly every house I go into is pale grey.  It's become the new Magnolia.  And I long for something - oh I don't know - I do actually really like the colour of our walls downstairs.  But there is a bit of me that wants this:

Barneby Gates, Horse Trellis, acid on grey - but it totally wouldn't go with my Chelsea Textiles blinds, which are one of my greatest loves.

Then there's this:

Manuel Canovas, Bengale.  Like, seriously, how amazing?!  How amazing?!  Obviously it's not going to go with the Chelsea Textiles blinds either - or indeed anything else in the whole room, except perhaps for the Psalt Design bench which I've also thus far only ordered in my head, but one day, in one house, I will have this . . . 

This, however, would kind of go:  Jane Churchill, Bruton Damask.  I like the fact that it's quite subdued, too - it wouldn't overwhelm the room at all.  I've still got to sort out the accidental tie-dye sofa, I thinking of undying it, and then redying it a sort of old rose, which would look quite pretty with this, I feel.  But it might look too pretty pretty.

What's certain is that there's lots to think about. And I'm probably going to have a while to mull it over, as when I suggested to Andrew that he took the children to visit his parents for a few days over half-term, thus enabling me to 'do a little work on the house' in his absence (I'd like to paint the floors, too, and a couple of bookcases) he basically refused to leave.  So I'm going to have to wait until he's not expecting it, and re-suggest it, this time without mentioning wallpaper.  It'll also give me time to save up:  On The Great Interior Design Challenge they get £1000 each for the house transformation, and I've got a feeling that I'm rather seriously over budget . . .. 

www.colefax.com - they stock their own line, plus Jane Churchill and Manuel Canovas

www.barnebygates.com - their papers are going to be stocked on www.englishabode.com seriously soon - and I mean seriously, we are days away from going live

www.celiabirtwell.com

www.johnlewis.com

www.brunschwig.com

Decorating Dining Rooms - Part One

I'm ridiculously broody at the moment.  My head if full of thoughts of more babies, despite the fact that we have nowhere to put them (literally.) So, thinking laterally, I'm considering the need for a new house. This is actually an impossibility, due to the fact that neither Andrew nor I have proper jobs, and so can not get a mortgage, and is also complicated by the fact that Sholto starts school in September, and if he gets into my first choice of school then I won't want to move away from this area, ever.  Nonetheless, and firmly in the realms of fantasy, I'm picturing moving all of us into a large house in Maida Vale.  Large enough to have a proper dining room.  Because the more I read about their extinction, and everybody simply using kitchens, the more I want a return to more formal living.  (Combined with two more children.  There's no logic to procreation at all.)

But I can logically trace the origin of the dining room whim:  a trip to Maison & Objet in Paris last week, followed by two days in Venice.  It was china and porcelain galore, and then a visit to the Murano glass foundries and time spent examining the most exquisite examples of hand-blown and hand-engraved glass imaginable.  

First up, Maison & Objet.  It's huge.  HUGE.  It goes on forever.  We (myself and Emma M-T, our Head Buyer at English Abode) got stuck in section 5a for what felt like days.  And after the initial excitement of meeting Michael Aram in person - (I have long wanted his pomegranate salt and pepper shakers - look:

I once did a story on the house of Russian Prince who was married to a French Princess and they had a pair of these on their dining room table, and they looked just beyond exquisite, and very, very expensive, which, in actual fact, they're not.  Anyway, tragically, Andrew doesn't love them as I do.) 

- we began to wonder if we'd ever see anything truly beautiful ever again.  So we set off for the luxury section, but, on our way, I got distracted by Gien.  I love Gien.

The rabbits and those green plates come from their 'Coloured Enamels' range, and the tea pot, sugar bowl and tea-cups are new for this summer.  Aren't they just heaven?  Don't they make you long for an end to winter already?  I so want the bunnies.  Actually, I want all of it, I would use it in the garden of my imaginary Maida Vale house.  Because it's not actually grand enough for my dining room, you see.

So, we got to luxury, and, once I'd managed to surreptitiously charge my phone while hanging out on a sofa in the Ungaro stand (house), and marvelled at Fendi's ability to shagreen absolutely every piece of furniture known to man (strict no camera policy in there, sorry) I discovered something very grand, in a Barbie dream house kind of way:  Sophie Vallepigue, who I also wasn't allowed to photograph, but here are some pieces she made earlier:

Yes those are jewels.  Amazing, no?  They totally appeal to the 'too much is never enough' side of me.  My only concern is what wallpaper I would use in the dining room, were I to fill it up with Sophie Vallepigue.  Also, I think I'd have to have gold-plated cutlery to go with it - the existing silver wouldn't quite have enough oomph.  And then I'm not sure if the overall effect would actually be chic.  Potentially not . . . 

It would probably be rather easier to adjust to living with these designs, by Flux, who were in the 'Now!' section and whom I have been obsessed with since discovering them at Tent.  (I'm rather hoping we're going to stock them at English Abode):

It's contemporary blue and white, and all made at Stoke on Trent!  And I love it.  In fact, I'd almost go so far as to suggest that it's more than half way to supplanting the below on my fantasy wish list, not least because it would actually look very good with our existing (Gien oiseau bleu) blue and white.  

But oh, the 'Etoiles' by Bernadaud.  It is beautiful, isn't it?  Maybe we'll need a second set of china in our Maida Vale house.  And I think it will look amazing with this wallpaper:

Brunschwig et Fils Beauport Promenade in Red.  My current number one choice for the dining room.

Obviously I'd have the pomegranate salt and pepper shakers, too.

Murano Glass will come in part two . . . .  However, just to finish up Maison & Objet, I'll leave you with the chopping board of my dreams, which one wouldn't actually want to use as a chopping board, but which would look amazing as a cheese board (in my new dining room.  Or even before then.)

By Bethan Gray.  And also I hope coming soon to English Abode.  I mean, how much do you want it? How much . . . . ?!

www.michaelaram.com

www.gien.com

www.designsophievillepigue.com

www.fluxstokeontrent.com

www.bernadaud.fr

www.brunschwig.com

www.bethangray.com

www.englishabode.com