The World of Interiors June 2022

© BAYEUX MUSEUM swatch BAYEUX WATCH To behold the Bayeux Tapestry is to be gripped by the beguiling scenes depicted. And that, says Kassia St Clair, is testament to the expressive power of crewelwork itself THE MOST famous piece of crewelwork in existence is something of an oddity. The Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry but an embroidered recounting – approximately 70m long and 50cm high – of a short, brutish period of 11th-century history. It was composed and completed at breakneck speed using a meagre repertoire of stitches and just ten colours. And yet it is astonish- ingly visceral in its storytelling. Wandering its length, you encounter tilling farmers, allegories plucked from Nordic sagas and Aesop’s Fables, energetic war preparations, a veritable zoo of ani- mals and, near the end, scenes of horror: corpses litter the borders as war rages. Experts agree that it was designed by a man: of the 638 figures depicted, only six are women. Mystery shrouds the fe- male makers. We don’t know their nationality, status, feelings about the project or what degree of autonomy they enjoyed as they picked out their thread and stitches. Critics haven’t always been kind about the Bayeux – Charles Dickens dismissed it as the work of ‘feeble amateurs’ – but its muscular expressiveness is surely testament to the method used to create it. Crewel is a kind of loosely twisted woollen thread; crewelwork means any kind of embroidery worked in wool. This roomy definition makes crewel an excellent vehicle for creativity. In England, its popularity rose as wool prices dropped from the tenth century and it enjoyed a hey- day during the 16th and early 17th centuries. The yarn used was often spun and dyed by the embroi- derers, who therefore had control over the process. Crewelwork curtains, bed hangings and chair covers were valued highly enough to be itemised in inventories and specified in wills. Nor was it just the end results that were prized: the work itself had status. Celia Fiennes, who travelled around England between 1684 and 1703, marvelled at Windsor’s furnishings ‘of satten stitch done in worsteds, beasts, birds, ymages and fruites, all wrought very finely by Queen Mary and her Maids of Honour’. The Bayeux Tapestry is, at its heart, an ode to power. It’s surely no accident that its makers – in- visible in the work itself – chose the capacious freedom of crewel in which to express themselves $ The identities of the women who stitched the tapestry are unknown, though it is certain that a man – most likely Abbot Scolland, the head of the scriptorium at St Augustine’s Abbey – designed it. Only six females are depicted (four of them as victims of violence) and there are no scenes of domesticity



swatch Curiosity piqued by fabrics of the crewel kind? David Lipton can scratch that particular stitch 15 3 246 1 ‘Beaumesnil’, by Braquenié, £605, Pierre Frey. 2 ‘Chelsea’, £130, Welland & Wye. 3 Sunstone/indigo ‘Hardwick’, by Zoffany, £208, Sanderson Design Group. 4 ‘Somerton F4741-03’, £170, Colefax & Fowler. 5 ‘Elizabeth 31654-02’, £121, James Hare. 6 ‘Tree of Life with Squirrels’, £799, Chelsea Textiles. Prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

swatch 3 15 246 1 ‘Mojito F2887001’, £308, Pierre Frey. 2 ‘Las Pozas’, £329, Elitis. 3 ‘Jembala’, by Clarence House, £573, Turnell & Gigon. 4 ‘Sissinghurst’, £198, Coromandel Crewels. 5 Berry ‘Tanjore’, £178, Designers Guild. 6 ‘Crewel Garden Multi’, £488, Schumacher. Prices are per m and include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $



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Mies-begotten, Marolles medievalist, a longing for belongings, rue de rubbernecker books AN ACCIDENTAL MASTERPIECE: MIES VAN DER ROHE’S BARCELONA PAVILION opening ceremony, but were never used. Other countries mustered bands and celebrities for their openings; Berlin sent nobody of (by Dietrich Neumann with David Caralt; Birkhäuser, rrp £41.70 importance to join Spanish notables and the German ambassador. approx) What is there left to say about this icon of Modernism: a monument of luxurious minimalism that has been featured in Neumann, whose gift for sleuthing was rewarded when he books and documentaries, articles and scholarly papers? Mies identified a mid-1920s house in Wiesbaden as an early Mies work, van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion distilled the essence of archi- has explored German archives and drawn on the research of David tecture in travertine and onyx, glass and polished steel, and has Caralt. A companion volume contains 100 texts on the pavilion, become a pilgrimage site in the city of Gaudí. Neumann, a profes- including Von Schnitzler’s opening address, which is excerpted sor at Brown University, was inspired to research the back story here: ‘We reject anything that is labyrinthine, obscure, over- and write this enthralling account of the troubled birth and after- wrought and complicated – we want to… surround ourselves with life of an ephemeral masterpiece. things that are clear, straight and pure.’ Alas, the fair-going public much preferred a Disney-esque pueblo and the faux-historic struc- Very little of consequence, besides the Eiffel Tower, survives tures of other countries. Afterwards, the pavilion was dismantled from 170 years of international expositions. Only a few mono- and its elements were lost or recycled. chrome photographs sustained interest in the Barcelona Pavilion for more than half a century. And its debut was inauspicious. The In 1957, the Barcelona architect Oriol Bohigas wrote to Mies to cash-strapped Weimar Republic refused to allocate funds for a propose a reconstruction of the pavilion. His initiative found- national pavilion at the 1929 Exposition in Barcelona, preferring ered, but, when he became planning director in 1980 and began to showcase its industrial products in shared spaces. It was the to transform the city, he put the project into motion. Three of his German commissioner, Georg von Schnitzler, who selected Mies colleagues worked with Moma in New York, custodian of the and his associate Lilly Reich, paying for the costly pavilion out of Mies archives. Neumann gives a detailed account of how the re- his own pocket. Design and construction were rushed through in creation was achieved, working from sketchy records, matching three months on a prominent site, but too late to appear on the the original materials while reinforcing the structure with a metal official map. As a result, most visitors missed it or wandered through frame. He describes it as an ‘approximation’ of the original, but bemusedly on their way to another exhibit, wondering what this it offers a unique experience, transporting us back nearly a cen- empty space signified. Prototype ‘Barcelona’ chairs were imported tury to a work that Mies later described as ‘a luminous moment in to serve as temporary thrones for the king and queen of Spain at the my life’ $ MICHAEL WEBB is an architectural writer r Sasha Stone’s photograph of the German Pavilion in Barcelona, taken in late June 1929, emphasises the building’s horizontal lines

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books JEAN TOURET (by Anne Bony et al; Editions de l’Amateur, rrp £62.50 approx) From top left: oak Here is an unusual and significant figure: French artisan/artist Jean Touret figures in Touret’s (1916-2004), whose creative journey as painter, sculptor, furniture designer house/workshop and maker of sacred art took shape in the peaceful atmosphere of remote vil- lage life. Touret had planned to be an insurance clerk, albeit one whose hobby was draw- in Les Montils, ing. World War II, during which he was taken prisoner and spent five years working as a c1970; Jean Touret lumberjack on the German/Czech border, altered his life’s course. After the horrors of fighting, Touret experienced a profound sense of release in the stark environment of the in 1999; his first prison camp, a paradoxical feeling of freedom, which he would continue to associate with Marolles sideboard outdoors life and exacting physical work, and with the living presence of trees. sculpted in oak, After the war, Touret, nourished by his admiration for Rembrandt and Cézanne, with wrought-iron decided to become a painter, settling in the small village of Marolles in Loir-et-Cher. legs and handles, Against the backdrop of France’s postwar industrialised society and its increasing de- c1950; ‘Oiseau’ pendence on mass-produced objects, Touret, a lover of the traditional and the hand- made, organised local artisans into a collective, whose distinctive vernacular furniture, lamp, c1965 lighting, woven baskets and pottery became popular and attracted national interest. Above: staged in an attic in the village, this is the first Meanwhile, Touret’s creative journey took him from painting and furniture-making permanent exhibition by Les Artisans de Marolles, c1950 to sculpture. After moving with his family to the village of Les Montils and into a larger living space and workshop, Touret began to produce wooden statues, small to begin with, later increasingly monumental, until his living room, peopled with tall, expressive wooden figures, resembled a forest. Though he was inspired by Rodin, Zadkine and Moore, Touret never saw himself as an artist, but rather as an artisan akin to those anonymous Medieval sculptors who worked on cathedrals. Indeed, his practice, informed by a deep Catholic faith and austere sensibility, also developed, fittingly, into religious art. Here, Touret’s striving for simplicity and rigour, with nothing in excess, found its full- est expression: the shaping of wood or metal by hand was to him always an act of faith, an allusion to the divine act of creation. His most considerable project unfolded from the late 1960s at the Parisian church of Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal with a series of 11 stained- glass windows, numerous sculptures, a copper bas-relief altarpiece representing the Last Supper and a tooled zinc casing for the church’s organ. There was also a divisive bronze altar Touret designed in 1989 for Notre-Dame in Paris, featuring prophets and evangelists. It was damaged in the 2019 fire and is highly unlikely to be restored, such is the continu- ing resistance to Touret’s uncompromising aesthetic, even after 30 years. ‘The artisan doesn’t decorate life,’ Touret stated, in a rare piece of writing, ‘he main- tains it.’ Beautifully illustrated, this book charts a search for freedom of expression, a life of stubborn resistance to what Touret assessed flintily as ‘50 years of bad taste’, of humil- ity in the face of wood and metal, of seeking beauty in the spirit of poverty. Most striking perhaps is the way in which Touret’s love of age-old traditional skills yielded timeless, modern works $ MURIEL ZAGHA is a novelist, freelance writer and art critic r

THE HEVENINGHAM books COLLECTION www.heveningham.co.uk A FEW COLLECTORS (by [email protected] Pierre Le-Tan; New Ves- sel, rrp £17.99) ‘I have +44 (0) 1424 838483 owned, I confess, thou- sands of objects,’ writes urbane Pierre Le-Tan, who died in 2019. ‘Even if today most of them are nothing more than memories, I continue to seek, to find, to acquire.’ When not scouring provincial auc- tion houses, Le-Tan was an admired illustrator, his drawings distinguished by delicate crosshatching and an unwavering line in India ink and watercolour. He worked for magazines, making 18 covers for the New Yorker (and one – November 1989 – for The World of Interiors), made set designs and dustjackets; he worked for private clients and leading fashion brands, some- times against his better judgement, he said, but they paid well. He needed them to pay well, as his collecting verged on the maniacal. At one time or another, he amassed in bulk French Neo-Romantic drawings, paintings by neglected Victorians, Japanese arms and armour, ceramics and textiles, Renaissance sculpture, French Modernist design, reference books galore. This delightful book reveals he was also an indefatigable col- lector of collectors, and he pens portraits of those similarly and pathologically afflicted. Some are well known: Gilles Dufour, once studio director at Chanel, and Boris Kochno, Diaghilev’s amanuensis, but several have slipped from view, if they were ever in plain sight. Some seem scarcely credible at all. In her vast but now empty Paris apartment, the down-on- her-luck Princess of Brioni traced for Le-Tan the dusty outlines of the paintings that had once graced her walls, describing in detail what was now irretrievably gone. More disquieting is an antiquarian who kept rows of wax heads of dead criminals, each embroidered with tufts of their own hair. ‘We left him on the sofa. I learned that he sat there every evening as others might watch a football match on television,’ writes Le-Tan with com- mendable equanimity. Less guignol but no less idiosyncratic is another collector, a self-effacing man, who gathered crumpled bits of paper discarded by others: restaurant bills, metro tick- ets, shopping lists. What was written on them was of no inter- est, purely the play of light and shadow. Le-Tan is the master of epigrammatic understatement and his aperçus can be bleakly self-aware: ‘Collecting is for me both essential and completely useless,’ he says. ‘I’m never satisfied, even if at times this interrupted accumulation provokes a kind of nausea’ $ ROBIN MUIR is a curator and photographic historian r The London home of English antique dealer and former actor Peter Hinwood (WoI May 1991)

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books PONTI, AZURE GAWKERS: ART AND AUDIENCE IN LATE 19TH-CENTURY FRANCE (by Bridget Alsdorf; Princeton, rrp £48) Handsomely produced, BESPOKE CARPETS & TEXTILES exhaustively researched, Gawkers combines elegant prose with a knowingness that mimics the sly humour of its key figures WWW.VANDERHURD.COM (Vallotton, Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, the Lumière LONDON +44 207.313.5400 brothers) and penetrating visual analyses of their works. For this is a book devoted to the modes of spectatorship that emerged in Belle Epoque Paris, enabled by the development of new technologies. It manages to disrupt some of the prevailing clichés about late 19th-century art that treat the urban environ- ment as a place of bourgeois leisure, seen through the eyes of the flâneur. Alsdorf reminds us of another figure who had been lurking in the wings all this time: the badaud, a word not readily translatable into English. She opts for gawker; it has something too of the curious onlooker, perhaps even rubbernecker, as this can be a looking fraught with ethical predicaments: the scenes witnessed and transformed into spectacles here include acci- dents, deaths, capital punishments, funerals. This is looking en masse, as part of a homogenous crowd and, as Degas re- marked of Bonnard’s serendipitous approach, one that ‘cher- ishes the accidents’. The flâneur is a cultured, bourgeois man, while these gawkers represent all classes, ages and genders; badauderie is a collective pursuit, belonging to the crowd, a phenomenon pathologised by contemporary writers as emo- tional, hysterical, feminised. A darker side of Haussmann’s boulevards emerges, in which the streets are alive with dangers, in part caused by the political tensions and inequalities that contributed to protests and anarchist violence of the period. Alsdorf recognises the importance of new technologies – printmaking, photography, film, the growth in the sensation- alist press, aimed at a mass audience with attention-grabbing front-page illustrations – which contributed to a wide dissem- ination of artists’ work. In particular, the graphic efficiency of Vallotton’s black-and-white prints is democratic in subject matter and reproducibility. The street is explored as a theatrical space in the analysis of the Lumière brothers’ short films from the period: badauds watch the bird charmer who haunts the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens. But they have gathered to watch not the scene but its filming: Alsdorf spots the analogy between the flocking birds and the crowd. The Lumières’ View of Eiffel Tower (1900) represents modernity, but so too – quite shockingly – does the woman staring into the camera in an unabashed way $ LESLEY STEVENSON is the author of the forth- coming ‘Louise Moillon’ (Lund Humphries), published in spring 2023 Film still from Auguste and Louis Lumière, View of Eiffel Tower from the Pont d’Iéna, 1900. Grand format, 75mm. Camera operator: unknown

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b o o k sA E S T H E T E ’ S L I B R A RY EGO TRIPPER Whether roaming among Pompeian paintings or bourgeois boudoirs, few books on interiors have ever been as broad in their erudition as Mario Praz’s An Illustrated History of Furnis ing. In it, writes Mitchell Owens, the Italian scholar explores the idea that our inner sanctums are projections of the self FOR Mario Praz, that Italian scholar of 19th-century of Rome professor and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, plainly puzzled, observes in the 396-page book’s European literature, to decorate was to exist. Visitors to his final flat – now a museum in Rome’s Palazzo Primoli, erudite, lengthy and wonderfully rhythmical across the Tiber from Castel Sant’Angelo – introduction. ‘And I must say that any affection depart bedazzled by his acquisitiveness, from I feel for them is put to a severe test when I dis- the portraits and landscapes that patchwork its cover this failing in them.’ moss-green and rose-pink walls to the Empire canapés and Napoléon III capitonné that popu- Son of a translator and grandson of a count, late its golden parquet. Overstuffed yet orderly, Praz (1896-1982) is still known in some circles Museo Mario Praz exemplifies the lessons set as Malocchio, or Evil Eye, thanks to the unfor- forth in An Illustrated History of Furnishing, his tunate incidents that invariably marred his ap- peerless 1964 endeavour to scrutinise what hu- pearances at social events. ‘There was usually a mankind has chosen to live with and why, from stolen car at the end of the evening, or someone ancient Greece to Art Nouveau Paris. called away because his uncle had died,’ the novelist Muriel Spark recalled. Saying Praz’s ‘Every day I come in contact with those who real name aloud is theatrically avoided by su- are in many respects my similars, but who care perstitious sorts, in the same vein as thespians nothing for what surrounds them,’ the University referring to ‘the Scottish play’ when they mean Top: at his Ukrainian country house in the 1830s, war hero Prince Piotr Wittgenstein and his family relaxed amid lilac walls, green draperies and golden friezes. Gauze protects the portraits from fly specks. Above: the British cover of Praz’s seminal book, as published by Thames & Hudson in 1982

b o o k sA E S T H E T E ’ S L I B R A R Y We combine traditional Macbeth. With only two known affairs of the heart, he seems to craftsmanship with contemporary have been happiest among inanimate objects, on which he lavished genuine love as well as prodigious discernment. design in our handwoven rugs An Illustrated History of Furnishing is unlike any book about Vandra Rugs interiors on any shelf, anywhere. A vastly expanded edition of Stockholm, Sweden, www.vandra-rugs.com Praz’s 1945 study La Filosofia dell’Arredamento and repub- lished as The Illustrated History of Interior Decoration, most recently Represented in the UK by Sinclair Till by Thames & Hudson, it is deep where the majority are superfi- www.sinclairtill.co.uk cial, and it challenges rather than panders. What other book in this genre quotes William Cowper’s 1785 verse ‘I Sing the Sofa’, Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 novel, Dead Souls, and Swedenborgian philosophy in support of its thesis that our interiors are ‘a pro- jection of the ego’ and that to decorate them is ‘nothing but an indirect form of ego-worship’? Add to that memorably trench- ant commentary on narcissism, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and Praz’s ‘special weakness’ – namely visiting famous houses open to the public in whatever city he found himself in – and one has a book about decorating that is so much more on the one hand and anything but on the other. Another of Praz’s weaknesses was watercolours of domes- tic interiors, especially those painted between, say, 1800 and the 1850s, usually for aristocratic residents wishing to pre- serve a beloved décor for posterity. An Illustrated History of Furnishing offers hundreds of such views for perusal, some owned by Praz and others in private hands. Depicting bou- doirs, dining rooms, bedrooms and more, these images set many a decorator’s heart aflutter, due to their enrapturingly precise record of fabric-swagged walls, flower arrangements, loose covers, enchanting trellis-like room dividers that sup- port flowering vines (known as Zimmerlauben, or ‘room ar- bours’). Moreover, they’re often peopled with their inhabitants – kings as well as commoners – at work or play. Grand or humble, each interior illustrated benefits from Praz’s measured dissections, largely because he, like the peo- ple who commissioned the works, cared about the contents, right down to the fringe on a curtain, and the meanings that they convey. As he observes: ‘The house is the man: tel le logis, tel le maître, or if you prefer, “tell me how your house looks and I’ll tell you who you are”’ $ A spread contrasts two Bonaparte family properties – Caroline Murat’s mock-rustic log cottage in Austria and Pauline Borghese’s beguiling Villa Paolina (now recently restored) at Viareggio, Italy



BEACONS OF HOPE If your lamp’s days as a leading light are but a faded memory, don’t just switch off. A lightbulb moment has led us towards luminaries, from orbs and globes to brass and glass, that bring a warm glow and polished presence to any home. The future’s looking bright, says Benjamin Kempton. Photography: Michael Sinclair 2 4 1 3

shortlist 6 7 8 5 1 ‘Reeded Urn Hurricane’, £3,300, Cox London. 2 ‘Claw’, £2,136, Charles Edwards. 3 ‘Cologne’, £1,794; shade, £270; both Porta Romana. 4 French lamp, early 20th-century, Süe & Mare Workshop, £1,850, Sybil Colefax & John Fowler. 5 ‘Orb’, by Aimee Betts, £2,200, The New Craftsmen. 6 ‘Totem’, £6,000, Alexander Lamont & Miles. 7 ‘Last Order’, by Michael Anastassiades for Flos, £425, SCP. 8 ‘Argo’, £2,400, Soane Britain. Draper’s table, £5,700, Rose Uniacke. Chinese water jar, c1900, £900, Guinevere. Verveine ‘Portofino’ fabric, £125 per m, Pierre Frey. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

2 1 1 ‘Lilac Cowrie’, £1,170, Hector Finch. 2 ‘Sly’, £542, Julian Chichester. 3 ‘Lucid’, by Michaël Verheyden, £1,625, CTO Lighting. 4 ‘Boule’, £1,725, Rubelli. 5 ‘AM1N’, by Franco Albini for Nemo, £1,047, Aram. 6 ‘Silhouette’, £2,040; shade, £250; both Margit Wittig. 7 Plaster lamp, £2,250, Rose Uniacke. Chinese low table, 20th-century, £1,650, Guinevere. ‘Limen’ rug, by Mircea Teleaga˘, £9,276, The Rug Company. Shanxi elm court chair, c1870, £1,750 for the pair, Guinevere. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r

shortlist 6 4 7 3 5



shortlist 1 ‘Minerva’, by Allegra Hicks, £3,120, The Invisible Collection. 2 ‘Oxford’, £672, Vaughan. 3 ‘Mar ine’, £1,500, Dor ian Caf fot de Fawes. 4 ‘Ba x ter’, £1,176, Jamb. 5 ‘Bar ton’, £2,040, Ra lph Lauren Home. 6 ‘Lektor’, by Niclas Hof lin for Rubn, £524, Viaduct. 7 ‘Lanterne d’Hermès’, by Yan Kersalé, £16,470, Hermès. Pradoo table, £3,420, Guinevere. ‘Ilet’ sisal rug, £6,389, Liaigre. Honey ‘Alto’ fabric, £150 per m, Christopher Farr Cloth. Shanxi earthenware jar, c1900, £320, Guinevere. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book r 2 7 3 5 2 46 1

shortlist 1 3 4 2 1 Vase lamp, 18th-century, £1,800, Julia Boston Antiques. 2 ‘Artur’, £129; ‘Ikat Empire’ shade, by Matthew Williamson, £75; both Pooky. 3 ‘Dragon’, £820, Paolo Moschino. 4 ‘Bellhop’, by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby for Flos, £205, SCP. 5 Table lamp, c1950, £550, Max Rollitt. Shanxi elm altar table, c1850, £2,700, Guinevere. Italian Palladian portico model, c1800, £24,000, Hawker Antiques. Special thanks to JJ Productions. All prices include VAT. For suppliers’ details see Address Book $



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p u r s u i t sSERIOUS Auctions, antique fairs and diverting activities, chosen by Ariadne Fletcher COURTESY GALERIE CHRISTIAN COLLIN (4) 1 2 3 Past, present and future come into focus at 21 MAY-18 SEPTEMBER KEW GARDENS, KEW, 4 Somerset House at the seventh edition of 1 Frank Horvat, Deborah Dixon and Federico Fellini for PHOTO LONDON on 12-15 MAY. This year’s public LONDON TW9 SUSTAINABLE EDIBLES? The botanic Harper’s Bazaar, 1962; 2 Jamel Shabazz, NYC, 1983; programme has been framed as a homage to gardens launch Food Forever, a timely new both Photo London, 12-15 May. 3 ‘Betts’s New Portable the legendary Frank Horvart, whose ground- summer programme examining the future of Terrestrial Globe’, c1880, Christopher Clarke Antiques at breaking approach brought humour and nar- food in an ever-changing world. As well as Petworth, 13-15 May. 4 Bernard Boutet de Monvel, rative to the world of fashion photography, screenings and talks, there will also be large- Regard sur la Ville, 1907, Paris Print Fair, 19-22 May liberating models from the constraints of the scale art installations, each designed to high- studios and taking them out into the streets. light a different aspect of modern consump- With an array of international exhibitors tion or production. Details: kew.org. lined up, and the opportunity to buy as well as view, the fair celebrates photography in all its 28 MAY TENNANTS, THE AUCTION CENTRE, LEYBURN, forms. Details: photolondon.org. N. YORKS COSTUME, ACCESSORIES AND TEXTILES UNITED KINGDOM AUCTION. An extraordinary range of pieces 5 MAY THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS, BENNETT ST, BATH from the 17th century to the present, includ- ing modern costume, household linens, quilts HOME AID. Organised by Newton & Worthy and teddy bears. Details: tennants.co.uk. and hosted by comedian James Acaster, this interiors auction will raise funds for the peo- GLOBAL ple of Ukraine. Going under the hammer – wielded by former Sotheby’s auctioneer Ed FROM 9 MAY SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE, FRANCE NEW Rising – will be items and experiences donat- ed by interior designers, brands, makers and OPENING. A fragrant artistic oasis in the form of artists. Details: uk.givergy.com/homeaid. Arik Levy and Zoé Ouvrier’s sculpture park amid olive groves, fig trees, cypresses and lav- FROM 7 MAY VARIOUS LOCATIONS IN BRIGHTON AND ender. Levy’s studio will be open by appoint- ment. Details: ariklevysculpturepark.com. HOVE ARTISTS OPEN HOUSES. Meet your makers: celebrating its 40th anniversary, the festival will 19-22 MAY REFECTOIRE DU COUVENT DES CORDELIERS, take place every weekend in May, offering the chance to buy work directly from the creator – RUE DE L’ECOLE DE MEDECINE, PARIS PARIS PRINT and see their homes and studios, from Regency houses in Brunswick to colourful fishermen’s FAIR. This inaugural edition is certain to make a houses in Hanover. Details: aoh.org.uk. good first – ahem – impression. Held inside a historic monument dating to the 13th century, 13-15 MAY THE MARQUEE, PETWORTH HOUSE, and coinciding with Paris’s famed Salon du Dessin, or Drawing Week, it brings together PETWORTH, W. SUSSEX PETWORTH PARK ANTIQUES work by masters such as Dürer, Rembrandt and Picasso, as well as modern-day practition- AND FINE ART FAIR. Where better than the sub- ers. Details: parisprintfair.fr. lime grounds of this Baroque masterpiece, landscaped by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, 20-22 MAY VANDERBORGHT BUILDING, RUE DE to browse the wares of about 60 exhibitors? As if that weren’t temptation enough, visitors L’ECUYER, BRUSSELS COLLECTIBLE. The fair that will enjoy free access to the big house itself. showcases both established and emerging Details: petworthparkfair.com. artists, with everything on show a unique piece, bespoke commission or limited edi- tion. This year sees the launch of a new sec- tion, The Editors, presenting work curated by design editors. Details: collectible.design $

network Sophia Toce chooses the best merchandise and events worldwide As part of this year’s Masterpiece Fair (30 June-6 July), Philip Mould Gallery is partnering with Sims Hilditch, the interior-design firm behind an engaging scheme for the stand, which features the ‘Emma’ sofa and chairs from the ‘Sims Hilditch’ collection by George Smith. George Smith, 587-589 King’s Rd, London SW6 (020 7384 1004; georgesmith.com). In Design Centre Chelsea Harbour’s first-ever show house, 20 design- ers and international brands come together for a month (1 June-1 July) to create rooms. To elicit suitably ecstatic responses for the WOW!house from visitors, its spaces will be filled with wildly imaginative arrange- ments of colour, pattern and texture. Visit dcch.co.uk/wowhouse. ‘Matt White’ is the new cool and contemporary look from Armac Martin, specialists in fixtures and fittings. Bright, uplifting and perfect for modern and minimal spaces, it is available for cabinet hardware, hooks and shelf brackets, and adds to the company’s portfolio of 20 different finishes. Ring 0121 359 211, or visit armacmartin.co.uk. Lighting and furniture specialist Cox London has opened a new show- Chelsea Textiles has launched its first fabric and wallpaper collection room in the heart of Belgravia. The 185sq m gallery is the ideal space with costume/set designer Patrick Kinmonth. Two years in development in which to display a broad variety of the brand’s large-scale pieces, and available in six colours, ‘Venetian Damask’ is inspired by his memo- including two halves of a round ‘Magnolia’ chandelier. Cox London, ries of Venice and his love of 18th-century materials. Chelsea Textiles, 46 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 3328 9506; coxlondon.com). 40-42 Pimlico Rd, London SW1 (020 7584 5544; chelseatextiles.com). r

Switzerland www.thesign-textiles.com

network Inspired by British wildflowers, Asprey’s ‘Daisy’ collection shows off the venerable company’s expertise in jewellery-making. Flora and fauna is a recurrent theme in its designs, and this particular range, which fea- tures coloured gemstones and diamonds, is one of its most sought-after. Asprey, 26 Bruton St, London W1 (020 7493 6767; asprey.com). Ever since 1985, when she established her company, colour, creativity and craftsmanship have been at the very core of Kiki McDonough’s work. A fifth-generation jeweller, she has a reputation for designs that are both highly colourful and fun. Kiki McDonough, 12 Symons St, London SW3 (020 7730 3323; kiki.co.uk). Paris’s Palais des Beaux-Arts and Maison Chaumet have joined forces to presentVégétal: l’Ecole de la Beauté, a celebration of the latter’s designs inspired by nature. Curated by Marc Jeanson, director of gardens at the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakesh, the exhibition will showcase pieces in vari- ous settings and runs from 17 June to 4 September.Visit beauxartsparis.fr. The new ‘Oyster Perpetual Air-King’ watch from Rolex has been re- This joyously colourful jewellery by Hirsh is made from Paraíba tourma- designed to feature a case with an all-new crown guard. The updated lines, pink diamonds, platinum and 18ct rose gold. To enhance their natu- model has a bracelet with subtly tweaked proportions and has been ral beauty, the gems are also punctuated by brilliant white diamonds.Each equipped with an Oysterlock safety clasp. Rolex, 29 New Bond St, piece is one-of-a-kind and handcrafted in the company’s Mayfair atelier. London W1 (020 7493 2716; rolex.com). Hirsh, 15 New Bond St, London W1 (020 7499 6814; hirshlondon.com) $

Target the interior design school that allows you to start your career with confidence Full time and part time on campus and online design courses available. Inchbald is one of the most established interior design Amanda Inchbald Bursary: Amanda Inchbald schools in the world. For over 50 years we have been (1960-2020) was a passionate advocate of education creating successful interior design careers. and its availability to all. So many of the world’s leading designers are Inchbald To commemorate her commitment to Driving Diversity in Design, Inchbald are offering a bursary to those aged graduates. They have all benefi ted from the high 18-24. The opportunity would provide one year’s study standard of tutoring on which the school’s reputation on either the interior or garden design online diploma. is built. Closing date for applications is June 1st. Now they help our current students on their pathway to success by off ering advice, internships and frequently Find out more contact [email protected] employment. Some of Inchbald’s star graduates Henrietta Spencer Churchill, Staffen Tollgard, Nina Campbell, Kelly Hoppen, Stephan Ryan, Graca Viterbo 60 CREATING ESTABLISHED 1960 CAREERS YEARS 020 7730 5508 | [email protected] | inchbald.co.uk

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c o n t e n t sART & ANTIQUES JUNE 2022 93 THE VICE SQUAD Furniture restorer Tim Smith swears he doesn’t own a single tool that’s younger than he is. Ros Byam Shaw finds him dry- scraping a living in charmingly antiquated fashion in Ludlow 103 130 MIX MASTER MANHATTAN BROWN TONES How the architect Peter Marino The antique dealer R. Louis gave a Long Island library a Bofferding’s apartment in an well-overdue refresh, creating an Upper East Side town house art museum where his Basquiats might arguably make the most could hobnob with his classical compelling case yet for brown busts. Stephen Wallis checks in furniture, says Mitchell Owens C OV E R 118 Flat bust – a trompe-l’oeil dummy board made by Pierre Le-Tan shows the NETWORK impact of statuary limitation in the Manhattan home of R. Louis Bofferding, a friend of the late artist. To appreciate the antique dealer’s decorative flair Sophia Toce chooses some of in all its dimensions, mosey over to page 130. Photograph: Simon Upton the world’s best art and antiques COLUMN 3: PHILIP SAYER. COLUMN 4, TOP: SIMON UPTON 124 14 0 FIRING ALL CYLINDERS HOW VERY MODERN Four decades since WoI first Glyn Philpot went from profiled Magdalene Odundo, starchy society portraitist her ceramics have never been so to gay gadabout living in a popular – subject, as they are, Bauhaus studio in 1930s Paris of not one, not two but three – a coming-out that Simon exhibitions. Text: Hettie Judah Martin traces in his paintings 14 6 ART AND ANTIQUES FAIRS A guide to the best events on the international scene

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From a bandsaw and a wooden press to a Victorian penny used for scraping off varnish, most of Tim Smith’s tools are as old as the venerable shop/home in Ludlow where the furniture restorer plies his trade. It’s a bit of a squeeze, but wending your way up the wooden staircase reveals all manner of delights – including an 18th-century sofa covered in cherry-red velvet and one of the owner’s many grandfather clocks awaiting repair. Ros Byam Shaw pays a timely visit. Photography: Simon Upton A work day for Tim means being surrounded by hundreds of tools, all old, many antique. The carved wooden volute high on the far wall is the top half of the front leg from a huge 19th-century side table scrapped for its timber. It was a present from a fellow restorer who was retiring THE VICE SQUAD A&A JUNE 2022

The Emma Chair by Sims Hilditch London | New York | Chicago | Los Angeles georgesmith.com

Clockwise from top left: Tim’s workshop shelves brim John Betjeman called Ludlow ‘probably the loveliest town in England’. with salvaged wood, while in the window stands a It’s hard to disagree, what with the river, the castle and the streets an uninterrupted procession of historic charm, from half-timbered, jet- 19th-century cabinetmaker’s end vice; the name tied and gabled to sash-windowed symmetry. Down an alley just off the Mackenzie on the shop front refers to Tim’s former market square is a shop front with a multipane window that bulges like a pot business partner, Kenneth Mackenzie, now working belly. On display are a few items of antique furniture. If the light is on, and elsewhere; the kitchen is located at the back, behind you peer around, nose against the glass, you might see someone working at the workshop, beyond the staircase and through a a bench, surrounded by tools and barricaded in by tightly packed grandfather door marked private. The oxblood-red lino is the clocks, cabinets, cupboards and washstands. same as the flooring in Tim’s boarding school; This is furniture restorer Tim Smith, today dry-scraping the 19th-century there is a constant flow of incoming and outgoing ‘garnet’ varnish from a 17th-century oak table. His tool is a Victorian penny. pieces. The 18th-century Welsh dresser, loaded with blue-and-white china, has now been sold A&A JUNE 2022

‘After 1860, there is more alloy and less copper, which makes Top: seen across the first-floor landing, Tim’s bedroom is just big enough for them too hard.’ Once all the varnish is gone, he’ll feed the wood a bed and, of course, a grandfather clock (unseen). The bathroom retains with a coating of wax polish, using a hairdryer to melt it into the dry grain. ‘The hairdryer is as modern as it gets. All my other its old fittings, though Tim used fibreglass to repair a wall-mounted cistern. tools are old. Even the bandsaw was made before I was born.’ Above: an 18th-century sofa in velvet stretches across the living room. Tim trained as a mahogany restorer and has the skills to Behind the Gothic glazing of the corner cupboard is a collection of china mend a piece of grand 18th-century brown furniture so that his work is invisible. ‘When I first came to Ludlow, in 1997, there were 15 top-end antique shops, who all brought me work. Now there is one and I work for a mix of dealers and private clients.’ He also buys and sells, finding pieces at auction that require specialist attention. A favourite is grandfather clocks. ‘There was a time 200 years ago when every country cottage and modest town house had one,’ he says. ‘They were given as wedding presents. There are still a lot of them around, but often wrecked. It’s satisfying to bring them back to life. I have one in every room, including my bedroom, and at least nine waiting to be worked on.’ As with the craftsmen of the past, Tim lives above the shop. Wend your way around the furniture barricade, past stacked planks of oak, walnut and yew – much of it collected from fallen trees by a local ‘wood rat’ – and shelves holding glass bottles of ‘Flake White’ or ‘Dragon’s Blood’, and you will find a winding wooden staircase. Beyond that is a kitchen. Low-ceilinged, beamed, with an Aga tucked into the fireplace, the room has a quiet, old-fashioned feel, complete with a dresser of old china, a stuffed canary and a grandfather clock. Settled at the scrubbed-pine table with a cup of tea, Tim tells the story of how he came upon this place. ‘It’s always been a shop,’ he says. ‘When it came up for sale 20 years ago, it was being rented as a photocopy shop. The tenant buttonholed me and said: “For God’s sake don’t buy it – it’s a nightmare.” But I fell for it, even though I had to paddle through six inches of water because the downpipes were blocked. Upstairs, there were indoor saplings growing through the walls.’ The tenant wasn’t the only sceptic. After he moved in, a friend described the kitchen as ‘Tutankhamun’s tomb’. And when he prioritised a chimney piece in the sitting room over central heating, his then girlfriend moved out. ‘To be fair, we had come down one morning to find the butter frozen.’ But this is a man for whom replacing an anachronistic fireplace was always going to be more important than warmth. Making the place habitable was a long process – years rather than months. Tim’s top tale of the afternoon is about how he decided to train as a furniture restorer. ‘As a teenager, I spent my spare time exploring abandoned old houses and my only ambition was to be Charles Ryder [from Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited]. Instead, I ended up working in a pork pie factory, then I mixed cement. When I bumped into an old girlfriend who was doing hair-wrapping on Greek beaches, I tagged along. We were liv- ing in a cave on a Greek island when her ex-girlfriend turned up and they decided to get back together. I had 30p and begged her to teach me how to do hair-wrapping before she left. I earned enough to get home. It gave me the jolt I needed to realise I could make a living doing something with my hands.’ From cave-dwelling hair-wrapper to sought-after furniture restorer, via West Dean College and an apprenticeship at Plowden & Smith, is quite a leap. ‘Well, I haven’t managed to replicate Brideshead, but I do love it here’ $ A&A JUNE 2022



RONALD PHILLIPS GREAT ENGLISH FURNITURE 26 BRUTON STREET, LONDON W1J 6QL +44 (0)20 7493 2341 [email protected] RONALDPHILLIPSANTIQUES.CO.UK