Given the copious amounts of snow we are experiencing in our picturesque corner of the world, this handsome boot rack would be welcome near the front door.
According to the Prince of Wales's charitable-gifts website, The Highgrove Shop, it is "handmade by craftsmen ... using air-dried hardwood from a sustainable broad-leaved Welsh woodland." And the cunning little urn detail replicates the stone urns that march along the roofline of Highgrove House, the Prince's residence near Tetbury, Gloucestershire. Built between 1796 and 1798 by a rich Huguenot cloth-trader with the amusing name of John Paul Paul, Highgrove was elegantly Palladianized for the Prince of Wales, circa 1989, by architect Peter Falconer. His redesign was inspired by an idealized painting of the house by Felix Kelly.
The Highgrove boot rack is priced at £65 (approximately $105). To order one, click here. All profits go to The Prince's Charities Foundation.
The Prince of Wales certainly improved the look of Highgrove with the installation of neoclassical impedimenta, and he has of course added to it, (both the amount of land he now owns and the stunning gardens he has created there). I'm sure he will be sad to leave it for the official residences of the monarch, should he succeed. I am well acquainted with Felix Kelly's work, and bid a couple of years ago on one of his works at an auction I actually attended in person, at Christie's in South Kensington. It didn't go for a mad price, but I rather wish I'd stumped up for it, as he is very collectible.
ReplyDeleteI am mad for this handsome and useful rack, presuming it holds two pairs of upside-down rubber Wellington type boots.
ReplyDeleteSeveral of my clients commissioned Felix Kelly to paint a portrait of their home during the 1970s (before my involvement). In each case, the architecture was accurately rendered, but the landscape was given a more fantastic interpretation with the whole effect being attractively dreamlike.
Lord have Mercy!!
ReplyDeleteAnother absolute GEM discovered by the "Aesthete"!
l LOVE so many of the things in that shop! So many cool things! Maybe my favorite is the bee hive? So hard to say!
I am in a tizzy! Tweed draft-stopper???? A dachsund?
Such a trove! Thank you!!
ps the boot rack is a must.....even in Santa Barbara!