Reformation of a minimalist

There are deep gouges in the parquet flooring, and paint flakes off the ceiling in the fashion designer Sacha Walckhoff’s fifth-floor apartment. He describes it as 'a little shabby’, and explains that the hairline cracks that creep their way up the walls are the result of this part of Paris’s 9th arrondissement being built on swampy ground above a small underground lake. Thus the building, from the 1820s, has been subjected to a fair bit of movement in its lifetime. 'When my mother visits she always says that we should repaint. But I love this. It feels so Parisian. - 

Sacha Walckhoff's eccentric Paris apartment by David Nicholls, The Telegraph

Now Playing: Julie Driscoll - This Wheel's On Fire

Ab Fab

In the 1980s and 90s Sara Thorn was Australian clubland's answer to Zandra Rhodes.

Galaxy,  Melbourne

photograph by Kate Gollings, 1986

The joint venture that Bruce Slorach and Thorn (pictured reclining) established in 1985.  

Galaxy was Thorn's and  Slorach's first shop selling their Abyss Studio label. 

I see textiles not just as fabric, but as a form of cultural communication. - Sara Thorn

Thorn's latest incarnation is WorldWeave, a collaboration with Piero Paolo Gesualdi.

Mermaid Throw

Embroidered Felt Throw

Now playing:  Eskimo Joe - Sarah

Mistress of swing

French born American designer Pauline Trigère (1909-2002)

Inside Fashion: Pauline Trigere, 1984

Patricia Neal dressed by Trigère in Breakfast at Tiffany's

Pauline Trigère was famous for her coat designs, especially for her swing coats. This notable example shows how she has adapted her swing silhouette for use with leopard skin. The dolman sleeves are an interesting touch that allows for an attractive display of this handsome fur. Designed by Trigère, this coat, according to accession information, was made by Jerry Sorbana in 1962.

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Now playing:  Ella Fitzgerald - It Don't Mean A Thing (1974)

Inspired

Alexander Rodchenko

Prototype 576 table light, 1971 

Made by Arteluce, 1971

Based on an idea of Germano Celant. Lights in the style of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s, particularly after works by Alexander Rodchenko. Having acquired consent from the artist's widow, lights 576 and 577 were realised in very limited editions in the early 1970s.

One has to take several different shots of a subject,  from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again - Alexander Rodchenko

Now playing: Arthur-Vincent Lourié - Synthesis for piano op. 16

By Jove

c'est Jouve!

Sirenes  ceramic wall lights by Georges Jouve

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each...
 
And they do sing to me.

Fabulous.

Now playing: This Mortal Coil - Song to the Siren

The curious Mr. McBean

Angus McBean
Self portrait as Neptune, 1939

"My mother and I completely redecorated our first £600 house. there was a variety of paints and styles, but there was one room which I had papered completely with a gold metal paper stuck on canvas, rather disgusting. and there was an awful lot of black paint everywhere. I had read somewhere that if you poured the top off gloss paint you got matt paint. So I did, and so it was, but alas it never really dried. When it was all done, my mother took against the house and so we advertised it for sale as ‘an artistically decorated house’. this term, applied to a house in South Wales, had never been heard before, it was something completely new. Newport was dazzled. people used to come and look round and say ‘Yes, it is artistic’– and so it was. We sold it at an £800 profit, with the money we bought a much better house, and my mother was bitten by the bug of buying and doing up houses in which I would do most of the painting and decorating.” - from Angus McBean: Facemaker by Adrian Woodhouse

Angus McBean photographed for Harpers & Queen, 1986
Flemings Hall, Suffolk

For more images of and insight into Flemings Hall see Smouldering brick and Mick Jagger by The Blue Remembered Hills.

Now playing: The Smiths - Asleep

Je n'aime pas à résister à la tentation.

I am not over-fond of resisting temptation.

from Vathek by William Beckford

William Beckford

by Sir Joshua Reynolds
oil on canvas, 1782
National Portrait Gallery



William Thomas Beckford  (1760-1844)

 Beckford was the only legitimate son of Alderman William Beckford, twice lord mayor of London and Member of Parliament. His mother, Maria (nee Hamilton), was descended from the royal House of Stuart. Being the only child of a late marriage, he was given every encouragement. At the age of five he received piano lessons from the nine-year-old Mozart. He also received instruction from Sir William Chambers and Alexander Cozens in architecture and drawing. Upon his father's death in 1770, he inherited a vast fortune built on the  Jamaican sugar trade. Making him, as his distant cousin Lord Byron later put it, England's richest son.

 While touring England in 1779, he developed what he called a strange wayward passion for William Courtenay, the eleven-year-old son and heir of Viscount Courtenay. Beckford also became involved with Louisa Beckford, the unhappily married wife of one of his cousins. In 1780, the restless Beckford embarked on a European tour that his family hoped would ease his inner turmoil and dispel any rumors surrounding his friendship with Courtenay.

In 1781, inspired by a Christmas party held in Courtenay's honour at Fonthill, Beckford wrote Vathek - the story  of an impious voluptuary who builds a tower. A tower so high that he not only can survey all the kingdoms of the  the world, but he can also challenge god in his heaven. Beckford claimed to have written the initial French-language draft of Vathek in one sitting over the course of three days and two nights. He had based his characters on historical figures and provided a wealth of detail. He intended to add to this story four episodic tales.  While composing them, he arranged for the Reverend Samuel Henley, an oriental enthusiast and former professor, to translate the entire work into English and to add footnotes explaining the allusions.

Unfortunately, completion of the episodes was to be interrupted. In the autumn of 1784 scandal broke . Beckford was charged with sexual misconduct with young Courtenay. Reports of the scandal spread quickly, and, though his guilt was never proved, he, with his wife (he married Lady Margaret Gordon in 1783) and baby daughter, was forced into exile. In May 1786, in Switzerland, his wife died of puerperal fever after giving birth to their second daughter. Beckford also learned that Vathek was to be published anonymously, with the preface claiming that  the work was directly translated from the Arabic. Subsequently, Beckford published a French edition in order to claim authorship (the uncompleted episodic tales were to remain unpublished until 1912).

In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Byron wrote, 

Unhappy Vathek, thou wert smitten with unhallowed thirst

Of nameless crime, and thy sad day must close

To scorn, and Solitude unsought - the worst of woes.

Beckford spent his time in exile traveling throughout Europe, eventually returning to England in 1796. Ostracised, he spent the remainder of his life collecting books, paintings, and rare works of art and building his extravagant Gothic pile, Fonthill Abbey. Beckford supervised the planning and building of what was to become the most extraordinary house in England. In 1807 the house's great central tower collapsed and was rebuilt. Beckford grew notorious as both the creator of the increasingly popular Vathek and as the reclusive owner of Fonthill, where he lived until financial difficulties forced him to sell in 1822. The tower again later collapsed, destroying part of the building.



The design of the interiors and the furnishings at Lansdown Tower,  the house Beckford later built in Bath,  gave tangible evidence to his creative genius. And quite possibly, if not laid ,  solidified the foundations of the English eclectic style.

One of a pair of silver-gilt waiters made by William Burwash for William Beckford

Coffer-shaped display cabinet
William Beckford and Henry Edmund Goodridge
probably made by English and Son, Bath
1831-41

Oak cabinet on stand made for the Scarlet Drawing Room 

Lansdown Tower, Bath

1831 - 1841

Oak cabinet

Most likely designed by Beckford and his architect Henry Edmund Goodridge

A superb example of the furniture Beckford commissioned during his final years.

Cabinet made in Paris around 1825

Richly encrusted with hardstones and mounted in gilt bronze

The panels were made at the noted Gobelins workshops in Paris, late 17th Century.

Roman chair, circa 1800 

Originally part of a suite of furniture at Fonthill Abbey

Sold at the Fonthill sale 1823

Siena marble console table    

Commissioned by William Beckford for the vestibule at Landsdown Tower, Bath. 
Most probably designed by the architect of the Tower, Henry Edmund Goodridge, in collaboration with Beckford.

Now playing:  Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade 

A philosopher's garden

Large Flowering Sensitive Plant

The Night-blowing Cereus

The Blue Passion Flower

The Winged Passion Flower

The Blue Egyptian Water Lily

The Artichoke Protea

Group of Auriculas

The Temple of Flora, or

Garden of the botanist, poet, painter and philosopher

Sept. 1st, 1811

Dr. Robert John Thornton (British, 1768-1837) Publisher, ca. 1811-1812

Now playing: Maxine Sullivan - Skylark

By special appointment to the Imperial Crown

House of Fabergé nephrite tray with silver and gilt enameled handles set with diamonds

  House of Fabergé nephrite tray design, Hermitage Museum


House of Fabergé

Now playing: Alexander Borodin - Symphony No. 2, III. Andante

Mission: Impossibly Smart

Illum Wikkelsø (1919-1999)

 

1960s Danish King Chair and sofa.

For some, the be all and end all is Wegner's Papa Bear Chair. 

If that concept existed here, then Wikkelsø's  King Chair would fill the bill.

Now playing: Kate Bush - King of the Mountain

Vintage

Baguès style gilt bronze ceiling light with obligatory glass accents.

 Now playing: The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

In the right light,

at the right time, everything is extraordinary. - Aaron Rose

PH-Septima 5  designed by Poul Henningsen

Pendant light with seven shades of clear glass, with alternate frosted fields.

Manufactured since 1931 by Louis Poulsen.

Now playing: Foy Vance - Shed a Little Light

Basking in the sun

View of San Sebastián, Circa 1930

King Alfonso XIII of Spain Visiting Bilbao, 1920

Portable Beach House of King Alphonse XIII Being Moved in San Sebastián, 1910

The historic Basque coastal town of San Sebastián. Ever since Doña Isabel II, Queen of the Spains first took the waters in 1845 San Sebastián played host to the Spanish court and Spain's summering aristocracy. It was here that Cristobal Balenciaga opened his first maison de couture in 1915.

Very apt, given Balenciaga's well known fascination with the aristocracy. Which has oft  been surmised to be nothing more than an indelible snobbery.  A fairer interpretation would be that Balenciaga was in fact fascinated with nobility and all that it entailed.





Now playing: The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead

Inspired

While Madame Ganna Walska rather famously said, I am an enemy of the average. 

She also opined, More is better.

''More is better,'' she said, and where traditionally one or two plants would do, Madame, in signature profusion, would place a hundred of the same species. She loved minerals. She adorned herself with jewels and her garden with amethyst crystals, lava rocks and seashells. Her sense of romance (it's hard to imagine being married six times without having some sense of the romantic) comes alive in her unique Blue Garden, which shimmers under a full moon. - Sean K. MacPherson 

Enemy Of The Average
April 14, 2002
The New York Times

Her legacy Lotusland,  beautifully captured by  Karl Gercens (via gardenvisit.com), is  living testament to her unique expression of spirit and perspective.





Now playing: Dead Can Dance - Toward the Within

Mission: Impossibly Smart

Bodo Rasch

Inselcafé chair, designed circa 1946

Beechwood, plywood, stained dark, nylon-work seat 

Now playing:  Holst - The Planets Op.32 Neptune, the Mystic

Before Mr. Chow

There was John J. Kan (1905-1972). More commonly known as Johnny Kan,  the man who introduced Peking duck to the American palate and also the man who taught Danny Kaye to cook. Originally a native of Portland Oregon, Mr. Kan was both a fixture and a force in San Francisco's Chinatown - his home since the age of four. 

This unusual photograph appeared in the March 1941 edition of San Francisco Life, a tourist publication that featured restaurants that paid for advertisements in the magazine. The photo was taken at Cathay House, 718 California, at Grant Ave., probably in January or early February 1941. - San Francisco Museum

In 1935 he opened the first large soda fountain and Chinese bakery in San Francisco's Chinatown and originated (what today would be called fusion) flavoured ices such as lychee, kumquat and ginger. In 1940 he initiated the Chinese Kitchen, a venture said to be the first delivery of Chinese food. And, after his service with the Army in World War II he opened Kan's Restaurant at 708 Grant Avenue. It was to become one of the finest, Chinese or otherwise, restaurants in San Francisco.

 In 1959 Mr. Kan commissioned artist Jake Lee (1911-1991) to paint a series of twelve watercolours depicting the ignominies and the glories of early Chinese American history. These paintings hung in the private  Gum Shan (Gold Mountain) dining room. 

Sometime after the death of Mr. Kan in 1972  the works disappeared. For decades they were believed to have been lost. That is, until eleven of the works surfaced at auction in Los Angeles in 2010.  Now, for the the first time in almost 30 years the complete series of paintings will be exhibited. On 12th February, 2011 the Chinese Historical Society of America will stage  Finding Jake Lee: The Paintings at Kan’s.

 

Eight Immortal Flavors by Johnny Kan

Now playing: Jerry Goldsmith - Love Theme from Chinatown