a Visit with Cecil...

Reddish House with its "lilac-coloured facade," with Cecil Beaton languishing by the door. This photo was just this size in the story, and reproducing it was- without great success-however I have tinted it to indicate a lilac brick. Still in all the brick is more-well- brick-coloured with a smidgen of that favourite-colour lilac, as seen in this photograph of Hamish Bowles at Reddish House paying homage to Beaton-Bowles is certainly a Beaton throw-back.

(Via Hamish's Instagam)

As I've been scouring old magazines and periodicals doing research for my book, I've been amazed at what I still haven't seen... If you follow instagram, pinterest, etc. etc. you know what I'm talking about. The wealth of photographs, new and old, and information (does anyone read anymore?) I do hope so. 

A VOGUE issue, circa 1949, some years after World War II, with rationing in Britain waning- bon vivant Cecil Beaton showed off his country house near Salisbury. Reddish House, according to Vogue's writer (not credited), CB himself ?-was one of Britain's most important 17th century small houses. Andre Kertesz was responsible for the photographs, and I must say nothing is amiss in the facade of Reddish House. It appears infinitely pleasing to my eye, and would be a perfect house to build today. Interesting to are the "colourless" photographs. Adjusting one's eye to a lack of colour details become more vivid. Later, and numerous photographs were taken of Reddish House in colour. They are out there. 

Note too, all Beaton's little extras, flowers in abundance, little chairs, stools, books in all his rooms. I wonder what his rooms were scented with? A Rose potpourri? I think so.

"a vest-pocket edition of a three volume novel"

Beaton's Drawing Room

"...with blackberry-coloured walls and banana-yellow curtains appliqued in red, its fine Aubusson rug, and Louis XV chairs," and a striped velvet sofa. Beaton famously photographed his favourite glamourous recluse, Greta Garbo sitting on this sofa-alone.

Look at Garbo's long hands... Beaton had added the pug, the fringe on the sofa, and gone chintz on the curtains.

In the drawing room, the 18th century deed to Reddish House is draped across a Louis XVI chair.

The Library

The Library was papered in sage green and gold accented by claret-coloured curtains. Noted in the story, Beaton papered the halls and bedrooms with period reproduction wallpapers in a white-with-black or brown design. Interesting.

"like a Balzac setting"

Beaton's Reddish House 30 years LATER with few changes in the Library. 

That- I Love-complete integrity in design.

Beaton's photographs of the library from Architectural Digest Celebrity Homes-1977

The Hall

Beaton used it for dining when entertaining a crowd- often no doubt.

..."coolly gray with marble columns, marble plaques, marble-topped William and Mary table, 18th century sculpture, and a screen made from a collection of 18th century equestrian prints. The curtains were "raspberry" velvet.

In the Master Bedroom a sepia and white print on the walls, bed hangings and lampshade.

This paper is the same as the library paper but in a different colour-way.

CB's Dressing Room

... drenched in a deep green wallpaper, the arrangement-pictures, paintings, and furniture- gave the room a touch of Victorian frivolity.

The Flower Room

Still-Life with Calla Lilies, Skull, and Gardening Gloves 

-and right out of a Tim Walker photo shoot.

 on the grounds- "with a manor-garden which includes a nut-walk, thatched roofed cottages and impeccable box topiary."

Idyllic, Reddish House is still the epitome of all that is good.

The article is littered with (-) hyphenated-words, and I have kept to that writing style in my text. Quotations indicate direct quotes from the article.

the Beaton "after" party

 The Bright Young Things:

Stephen Tennant, William Walton, Georgia Sitwell, Zita Jungman, Rex Whistler and Cecil Beaton, Wilsford, 1927

Beaton"after"

 Tim Walker for Love Magazine, Spring Summer 2014

 The Bright Young Things-Cecil Beaton

Beaton "after" 

Tim Walker for Love Magazine, Spring Summer 2014

The Bright Young Things-Cecil Beaton

Beaton "after"

 Tim Walker for Love Magazine, Spring Summer 2014

for more "beatonesque" photos and images visit my Pinterest page "Beatonesque" HERE

a-Maying

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Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn   
    Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.   
    See how Aurora throws her fair   
    Fresh-quilted colours through the air:   
    Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see          
    The dew bespangling herb and tree!   
Each flower has wept and bow’d toward the east   
Above an hour since, yet you not drest;   
    Nay! not so much as out of bed?   
    When all the birds have matins said   
    And sung their thankful hymns, ‘tis sin,   
    Nay, profanation, to keep in,   
Whereas a thousand virgins on this day   
Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.   
  
Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen   
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green,   
    And sweet as Flora. Take no care   
    For jewels for your gown or hair:   
    Fear not; the leaves will strew   
    Gems in abundance upon you:   
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, 

Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.   
    Come, and receive them while the light   
    Hangs on the dew-locks of the night:   
    And Titan on the eastern hill   
    Retires himself, or else stands still   
Till you come forth! Wash, dress, be brief in praying:   
Few beads are best when once we go a-Maying.   
  
Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark   
How each field turns a street, each street a park,   
    Made green and trimm’d with trees! see how   
    Devotion gives each house a bough   
    Or branch! each porch, each door, ere this,   
    An ark, a tabernacle is,   
Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove,   
As if here were those cooler shades of love.   
    Can such delights be in the street   
    And open fields, and we not see ‘t?   
    Come, we’ll abroad: and let ‘s obey   
    The proclamation made for May,   
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;   
But, my Corinna, come, let ‘s go a-Maying.   
  
There ‘s not a budding boy or girl this day   
But is got up and gone to bring in May.   
    A deal of youth ere this is come   
    Back, and with white-thorn laden home.   
    Some have despatch’d their cakes and cream,   
    Before that we have left to dream:   
And some have wept and woo’d, and plighted troth,   
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth:
    Many a green-gown has been given,   
    Many a kiss, both odd and even:   
    Many a glance, too, has been sent   
    From out the eye, love’s firmament:   
Many a jest told of the keys betraying
This night, and locks pick’d: yet we’re not a-Maying!   
  
Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,   
And take the harmless folly of the time!   
    We shall grow old apace, and die   
    Before we know our liberty.
    Our life is short, and our days run   
    As fast away as does the sun.   
And, as a vapour or a drop of rain,   
Once lost, can ne’er be found again,   
    So when or you or I are made
    A fable, song, or fleeting shade,   
    All love, all liking, all delight   
    Lies drown’d with us in endless night.   
Then, while time serves, and we are but decaying,   
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying. 

~Robert Herrick, 1591 - 1674

photograph of "Corinna & the one who loves her so", is by Tim Walker

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what's in a Name?

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I confess-I hated mauve back in the 80’s when I was just beginning to put colors together for would be clients. Hearing that worn phrase-oh so comforting to women-“blue and mauve,” I shuddered. From its glorious beginning in the 1850’s, then described as a shade of purple, it had been watered down so many times that by the Disco Era-it was sinking into a dismal cesspool where all ugly colors go to die.

In order to cleanse my lexicon of Mauve-I began to think of it as plum-lilac-thistle-violet. It worked. I’ve used the color in my own rooms since I’ve had my own rooms.

As a child I’d been fascinated by my great Aunt Maude’s color choices in her uniquely austere fashion sense. She was great-and she was impeccably turned out-albeit always in a dusky shade of the great color Mauve. Of course-my mother, nor my grandmother (standing alongside Maude in their lively Villager printed shirtwaists) asked about her costume, but I know they wondered. I certainly did.

You see Aunt Maude was old school, old Maryland, old aristocrat. Though the money was long gone by the time my grandfather was photographed on the porch of their home when tall Maude wed-in white naturally. When she was widowed the weeds turned to varied shades of that color- as my prickly aesthetic sensibilities struggled to call it-Mauve. I knew as a 10 year old there was something special about Maude-it turns out it was Mauve.

When the handsome 18 year old chemist William Perkin stumbled onto the color Mauve in his makeshift laboratory, 1858-it was a thing of beauty. The quasi-artist had been experimenting outside the rigors of his Royal College chemistry studies in hopes of discovering something else. That “else” doesn’t matter, the fashionable women and dandies of the 19^th century fell in love with Perkin’s “strangely beautiful colour.” His laboratory was makeshift-romantic even. According to  Simon Garfield his biographer, Perkin was “surrounded by landscape paintings and early photographs, and jugs and mugs, and other domestic trinkets that were as alien to a laboratory as delicate soda crystals were to any other house in this smoky residential neighbourhood.”

What a set up for the mercurial fantasies of photographer Tim Walker. 
I can see it now.

In 1906, fifty years after his discovery, the Mauve millionaire Perkin was in New York to be lauded over by American bigwigs that had no doubt gotten fat on Mauve and wanted to spread the love thank you Mauve, to William Perkin. The scene was Delmonico’s, the Belle Époque was on the wane, but four hundred gentlemen turned out that night to honour the man and his achievement wearing black tie, however this night the tie was Mauve, all 400 hundred dyed especially for the occasion. Perkin had to be pleased. A man in Mauve is a thing to behold-while four hundred had to be a feast for the eyes.

This year Pantone has stepped in to name the color of the year- Radiant Orchid, that’s Mauve to William Perkin and me.  Mauve is crawling out of the water and back into fashion-returning to its strange saturated best. Gone is that 1980’s Mauve  I hated and I call it like I see it-not mood ring “Radiant Orchid”-but Maude’s Mauve- that’s how I knew it & loved it as a child.

images:
William Perkin's Mauve colors
Collage of rooms, my own, John Singer Sargent, Blanche
Family photograph
Rochas gown
Tim Walker Horse of a different color
Collage of Blanche,  Ensor, Maverick in Mauve, Winterhalter, Pauline de Rothschild Dior gown, Valentina, Jackson Pollock, Uccello, Nicholas Haslam fabric, Perkin patent, Audrey Hepburn in Vogue, Hamish Bowles, Madame Recamier's Boudoir,1802.



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