tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31118863883240033242024-03-12T20:51:59.407-04:00An Aesthete's LamentDecoration * Inspiration * EdificationAn Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.comBlogger93125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-273473590826275882012-12-18T19:27:00.001-05:002012-12-18T19:27:42.229-05:00Au Revoir, Bébé<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvO5TxLXe30Lq_ij9L9ayZJO06td-K8RmWcHKZ-dfUurCfhG-C0nvcrXl5DM5uZf3nTHU6K6MxQarLjSrG2Iten9XqQrFs2kG9P7b0tomhY9xGOfPgiqBBf7MoY9W9x3nNmZ1Y7f8z85s/s1600/cn_image.size.roger-prigent-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvO5TxLXe30Lq_ij9L9ayZJO06td-K8RmWcHKZ-dfUurCfhG-C0nvcrXl5DM5uZf3nTHU6K6MxQarLjSrG2Iten9XqQrFs2kG9P7b0tomhY9xGOfPgiqBBf7MoY9W9x3nNmZ1Y7f8z85s/s400/cn_image.size.roger-prigent-01.jpg" width="346" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Roger Prigent of Malmaison Antiques (1923—2012)</i></td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2012/12/roger-prigent-fashion-photographer-in-memoriam">Read my Architectural Digest tribute</a> to Roger Prigent (1923—2012), a spirited, rascally, and knowledgeable antiques dealer, who became a friend and who had an impact on my early days as an editor and writer.An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-69250047677682213572012-11-17T10:36:00.002-05:002012-11-17T10:36:49.605-05:00Artful Interiors<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdg7AWZfqMcVkb3ruWFH6FSEBsqeESsFcYXonVg4zOzWf57HKPVJv5BBUxJPLF25OekhUhrLu4ouVdvPI9K4wywlmz4M7eSybpXGVhEUvSayjMVMXLAO3TRttP2E-HHxBT_sw7Q1yblPQ/s1600/cn_image.size.frick-pittsburg-04-opener.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdg7AWZfqMcVkb3ruWFH6FSEBsqeESsFcYXonVg4zOzWf57HKPVJv5BBUxJPLF25OekhUhrLu4ouVdvPI9K4wywlmz4M7eSybpXGVhEUvSayjMVMXLAO3TRttP2E-HHxBT_sw7Q1yblPQ/s400/cn_image.size.frick-pittsburg-04-opener.jpg" width="330" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Commode</i> (also known as <i>The Yellow Chair),</i> 1905/12, Walter Gay.<br />
Photo courtesy of the Frick Art & Historical Center.</td></tr>
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A skilled painting of an interior possesses a degree of magic and wonder that can't be replicated in a photograph of the same space. To see more proof, <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/11/frick-pittsburgh-walter-gay-isabelle-rey">click here to visit my blog at archdigest.com</a> and the accompanying slide show.<br />
<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-15021612846274534762012-10-18T20:51:00.004-04:002012-10-18T20:51:56.827-04:00Portraits in Time<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjscq2qDynuTrIR7VgpOfZ4npufD3JIiyoP_L3yPvpjCwa3KthxOwGB96KIaXnzS-Ug4YJZISOauyqw0Glj3xLijVQu6rqzCGv4vg3WQ0xigr2_PqAS_bbEtQtWNxK9s4ODWd7izGsRVj8/s1600/cn_image.size.01-ysl-foundation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjscq2qDynuTrIR7VgpOfZ4npufD3JIiyoP_L3yPvpjCwa3KthxOwGB96KIaXnzS-Ug4YJZISOauyqw0Glj3xLijVQu6rqzCGv4vg3WQ0xigr2_PqAS_bbEtQtWNxK9s4ODWd7izGsRVj8/s400/cn_image.size.01-ysl-foundation.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the exhibition’s rotunda are, left to right, portraits of writer
Pierre Louÿs, collector Count Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, novelist
Marcel Proust, author Maurice Barrès, and artist Paul Baignères. The
decor of the show was conceived by interior decorator Jacques Grange and
set designer Nathalie Crinière. Photo courtesy of the Fondation Pierre
Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent</td></tr>
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If you happen to be in Paris over the next few months, it would behoove you to spent some quality time at 5 avenue Marceau, home to the <a href="http://www.fondation-pb-ysl.net/%20-">Fondation Pierre Bergé—Yves Saint Laurent.</a><br />
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The foundation's latest exhibition is a evocative multi-room tribute to Belle Époque painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, who served as one of the inspirations for the artist Elstir in Proust's <i>À la recherche du temps perdu.</i><br />
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<i> </i>To read my take on the show, which opened last week and was decorated by Jacques Grange, <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2012/10/yves-saint-laurent-foundation-jacques-emile-blanche-exhibition-paris">click here.</a>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-90777279477811030182012-10-16T10:08:00.000-04:002012-10-16T10:08:40.067-04:00Splish Splash<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiysiytrmDKCyh5udIUWo7iwgYh9Cw9JTqiriqW6KUKrzJ_yH6um8YLC7MvpmaOv1dYE-YoTTn6eyfKU8fXaMCNcXnYejh_B-fS2lNZ7PeT9xzQAnJxlXdwBDh_saDfFKfsL6MD-K-Trks/s1600/cn_image_1.size.baths-living-rooms-04-hicks-bath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiysiytrmDKCyh5udIUWo7iwgYh9Cw9JTqiriqW6KUKrzJ_yH6um8YLC7MvpmaOv1dYE-YoTTn6eyfKU8fXaMCNcXnYejh_B-fS2lNZ7PeT9xzQAnJxlXdwBDh_saDfFKfsL6MD-K-Trks/s400/cn_image_1.size.baths-living-rooms-04-hicks-bath.jpg" width="381" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="body credits">
<i>The bathroom of British designer David Hicks, at his longtime country house in the English village of Britwell Salome, is
reminiscent of a library. Photo courtesy of the estate of David Hicks</i></div>
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When is a bath more than just a place for a thorough scrub? When it's been decorated by Brad Dunning, Nancy Lancaster, Elsie de Wolfe, and, yes, even me.<br />
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<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/10/bathrooms-steven-meisel-elsie-de-wolfe-david-hicks">To read all about it, click here to be swept away to the website of <i>Architectural Digest.</i></a>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-4253470513009722462012-10-03T20:28:00.001-04:002012-10-03T20:28:06.210-04:00Mrs. Astor Redux<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsir6DfHdQxfAJo1R2ZZkg8fHL5EbQNzRNqOI8Za5V0Wajv3abx9we_cEbhOD_d9hA7evbEHaJwz6RerQ5rskGKwe6xyHctrkPyxOKku1VrsuWPHaS7N86Z23YvSAM0cw4pUBW5IWvIiQ/s1600/cn_image.size.brooke-astor-01-portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsir6DfHdQxfAJo1R2ZZkg8fHL5EbQNzRNqOI8Za5V0Wajv3abx9we_cEbhOD_d9hA7evbEHaJwz6RerQ5rskGKwe6xyHctrkPyxOKku1VrsuWPHaS7N86Z23YvSAM0cw4pUBW5IWvIiQ/s400/cn_image.size.brooke-astor-01-portrait.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="body credits">
<i>Brooke Astor in her New York apartment in 1997.
Photo: Annie Leibovitz</i></div>
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Last week, Sotheby's sale of Mrs. Vincent Astor's estate brought in $18.8 million. And there's another sale with Brooke Astor provenance in just two days. "Where?" you ask? <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2012/10/brooke-astor-auction-stair-galleries">Click here to learn more.</a>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-78411722828102824002012-10-03T13:00:00.000-04:002012-10-03T13:00:08.832-04:00Merchant Class<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoL6KQBuHI2U1WEpsoJ5JDAz4j646bwELyULmKd9nvDLK5KoPBFeDnmmh8mcU-ozFFJ0euR5DaEDXmy3Va4xg_fGL_3XpZhTJnFq0HKY9KWSUT2lPyn4U71rscqx_11gJKbeB5aYm3Izs/s1600/cn_image.size.bofferding-01-drawing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoL6KQBuHI2U1WEpsoJ5JDAz4j646bwELyULmKd9nvDLK5KoPBFeDnmmh8mcU-ozFFJ0euR5DaEDXmy3Va4xg_fGL_3XpZhTJnFq0HKY9KWSUT2lPyn4U71rscqx_11gJKbeB5aYm3Izs/s400/cn_image.size.bofferding-01-drawing.jpg" width="331" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The exterior of R. Louis Bofferding's shop in New York City, executed by French artist Pierre Le-Tan.</i><br />
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<br />To read my take on <a href="http://www.bofferdingnewyork.com/">the new website</a> of renowned antiques dealer R. Louis Bofferding, <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2012/08/louis-bofferding-decorative-and-fine-arts-website">click here.</a><br />
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<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-53437361952394248972012-10-03T07:03:00.000-04:002012-10-03T07:03:54.504-04:00Remains of the Day<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" height="385" src="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/10/lopez-willshaw-christies-paris-anonymous-auction/_jcr_content/par/cn_contentwell/par-main/cn_blogpost/cn_image.size.lopez-willshaw-blog-opener-01.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><figure class="media image-center"><figcaption class="caption"><i>(Left to right) Dressed as a Chinese emperor
and his court, Alexis de Redé, Arturo Lopez-Willshaw, his wife,
Patricia, and interior decorator Georges Geffroy attend the Beistegui
ball in Venice, September 3, 1951. Photo courtesy of the Cecil Beaton
Studio Archive at Sotheby’s.</i></figcaption></figure></td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/shop/antiques-collecting/2012/lopez-willshaw-christies-paris-anonymous-auction-slideshow?cq_ck=1349212876698"> </a><br />
<br />For the back story behind one of the most spectacular auctions this month<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/10/lopez-willshaw-christies-paris-anonymous-auction">, click here.</a><br />
<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/shop/antiques-collecting/2012/lopez-willshaw-christies-paris-anonymous-auction-slideshow?cq_ck=1349212876698"> </a>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-36309762224147633102012-08-21T11:03:00.001-04:002012-08-21T11:03:55.352-04:00Lights Fantastic!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnaJ5PKZ0Mndr9Prfmj9LDucTGRK1R6sHUEAylaAOLsxxYpZBdv3EVcq0N0nj8qPJ6Mc13Ty1U8Z3dyl_VObChj2cwBX2NiBhHQNwXwPM0jRh0EAGHQwn1Lcg7fqfhQUj0EQz274qvIF4/s1600/cn_image.size.uplights-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="303" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnaJ5PKZ0Mndr9Prfmj9LDucTGRK1R6sHUEAylaAOLsxxYpZBdv3EVcq0N0nj8qPJ6Mc13Ty1U8Z3dyl_VObChj2cwBX2NiBhHQNwXwPM0jRh0EAGHQwn1Lcg7fqfhQUj0EQz274qvIF4/s400/cn_image.size.uplights-01.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Uplights highlight Egyptian artifacts in a Miami living room by Louis M.
Bromante from the May 1982 issue of </i><i>AD.</i> <i>Photo: Dan Forer</i></td></tr>
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Uplights get little respect in today's decorating world. But on the website of <a href="http://www.archdigest.com/"><i>Architectural Digest,</i></a> I give these mood-enhancing yeomen the love they deserve.<br />
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<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/08/uplights-lighting-revival-interior-design">To read the post, click here. </a><br />
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<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-30562010483129126012012-08-20T10:12:00.002-04:002012-08-20T10:12:46.846-04:00Curtains, Rothschild Style<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90bedDDGvQCT-jj5Pl6JAPZ7hO9Z7cjJ3xL_AkgQ2mJ_98En5DIPT1vj8lxggAU2hAWvCyc9D6vR_ksAhblAWcz_W03bLMZvAg6FPeQqI9sdPiXB9NUHbFIOy5FCirSEj_jqRXfN9hQY/s1600/cn_image_12.size.pauline-de-rothschild-02-portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90bedDDGvQCT-jj5Pl6JAPZ7hO9Z7cjJ3xL_AkgQ2mJ_98En5DIPT1vj8lxggAU2hAWvCyc9D6vR_ksAhblAWcz_W03bLMZvAg6FPeQqI9sdPiXB9NUHbFIOy5FCirSEj_jqRXfN9hQY/s320/cn_image_12.size.pauline-de-rothschild-02-portrait.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Baroness Philippe de Rothschild in the garden of her Paris apartment, 1969. Image by Horst P. Horst for Vogue.</i></td></tr>
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One of my longtime design obsessions, Pauline de Rothschild, had grace, intelligence—and quite a way with curtains.<br />
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Recently on The Aesthete, my blog at <a href="http://www.archdigest.com/">the website of <i>Architectural Digest,</i></a> I examined an idiosyncratic window treatment she created for her duplex at Albany, the renowned London apartment house. <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/08/pauline-de-rothschild-curtains-paris-london">To read it, click here.</a>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-18048429366962470982012-08-17T20:09:00.002-04:002012-08-17T20:09:27.224-04:00This Way, Please<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrWslFO7U_OSIIv1LFQElR7iI7BQcymWT1Wpbj_31fj_xQqaPdhwNIRimkJkNunEsbfELGeRbzvMIb1-5zYC06W1rWhguHMyVdipl8ycGSzhstrlEgkGeKo3B2Sc8IF7zFO9fPMpohgE/s1600/where-are-you-428x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrWslFO7U_OSIIv1LFQElR7iI7BQcymWT1Wpbj_31fj_xQqaPdhwNIRimkJkNunEsbfELGeRbzvMIb1-5zYC06W1rWhguHMyVdipl8ycGSzhstrlEgkGeKo3B2Sc8IF7zFO9fPMpohgE/s320/where-are-you-428x300.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Though I've been away from this address for several months, the virtual cards and letters keep coming in—and most of them ask, "Where can I find your new posts?"<br />
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At the website of<i> </i><a href="http://www.archdigest.com/"><i>Architectural Digest,</i> </a>of course! And in the <i>Daily AD</i> section, in particular.<br />
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Bearing that and similarly worded questions in mind, as a public service, I will continue to post here. Links, that is, to my blog entries at archdigest.com, of which there have been a few, including this morsel about a new book examining the rackety life and glorious creations of the late American-born interior designer and architect Bill Willis, a man who made Marrakech infinitely more exotic, with splendiferous houses for Rothschilds and their jet-set like.<br />
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<a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete/2012/05/bill-willis-book">To read it, do click here. And let me know what you think.</a><br />
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<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-65500638177512648322012-04-19T15:13:00.000-04:002012-04-19T15:13:57.808-04:00Forwarding Address<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkO9q7YV4wawHs-hj3rrTjScGbYYi-iWfglhR5spWozQWIvkQAF_ReXdWYl06BPT4xxDlKHpFyTnnSCZTvYOlyVJCYGR5lIg7S2jwB79-xpZl8t83uJKvKQ-fXELwx1YUbOa9rSjoG-Y/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-09+at+3.25.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkO9q7YV4wawHs-hj3rrTjScGbYYi-iWfglhR5spWozQWIvkQAF_ReXdWYl06BPT4xxDlKHpFyTnnSCZTvYOlyVJCYGR5lIg7S2jwB79-xpZl8t83uJKvKQ-fXELwx1YUbOa9rSjoG-Y/s400/Screen+shot+2011-12-09+at+3.25.14+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Mrs Winston F. C. Guest moves furniture from her family's apartment on Sutton Place to Templeton, their Long Island country house. Image by Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Vogue", 1 April 1963.</i></span></td></tr>
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The Aesthete has been a trifle antsy of late, anxious to find and furnish new digs.<br />
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Perhaps this deeply ingrained wanderlust has to do with being brought up in the U. S. military, when every year or two, my parents backed our bags, and our family embarked on a new adventure. Then again, I have been posting at Blogger since 2008, which is a century in cyberspace. So take note: I finally have settled on a new virtual residence, this one with high ceilings, fireplaces that draw properly, and masses of French doors.<br />
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That alluring address is the splendidly improved website of <i><a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/">Architectural Digest,</a></i> where I have been working as the special projects editor for nearly two years. The platform is more beautiful than any blog I could imagine designing on my own, thanks to the extraordinary talents at the magazine and on Condé Nast's digital team. Writing as <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete">The Aesthete,</a> I hope my posts on <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily">Daily <i>AD</i></a> will be as amusing, provocative, and informative as ever. The first, <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2012/04/geometric-patterns-islamic-art">an exploration of geometric motifs in Morocco,</a> one of my favorite places in the world, was published on 12 April.<br />
<br />
So join me at Daily <i>AD;</i> I don't want to leave anyone behind. <a href="http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/the-aesthete">Click here</a> to read what's on my mind. And thanks very much for following me and my musings for so long.<br />
<br />
Mitchell Owens<br />
Special Projects Editor<br />
<i>Architectural Digest</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-46076762611434372062012-03-01T21:20:00.001-05:002012-03-01T21:20:07.996-05:00Technical Difficulties<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For some inexplicable reason, words are running together on my posts, though all looks well on my screen. If any bright soul out there has a solution, do drop me a line.An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-37288808276846303872012-02-27T21:11:00.001-05:002012-02-27T21:13:53.485-05:00From the Archives: The Exquisite Amateur (2010)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcsQdTrnRYuZbtaDH5YzBWwKxTYqpfu-Oa4sVZgrfn2T0vhywjDD7l9m92xvlSwuZRKEPU6LYRMwFv8islLYgctUmp5cIgdB5pJOb7dtlVtYBum_tID9mo9NuuNrJv46vcS3CkIrbDs_c/s1600/8652+Drawing+Room+p.106.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcsQdTrnRYuZbtaDH5YzBWwKxTYqpfu-Oa4sVZgrfn2T0vhywjDD7l9m92xvlSwuZRKEPU6LYRMwFv8islLYgctUmp5cIgdB5pJOb7dtlVtYBum_tID9mo9NuuNrJv46vcS3CkIrbDs_c/s400/8652+Drawing+Room+p.106.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times;">The drawing room of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman's apartment at 21 St.
James's Place, London, England. Bearing vivid evidence of her associations with
interior decorators Henri Samuel, Stephane Boudin, Daniel Hamel, and others,
its contents were sold at Sotheby's New York on 28 April 2010. Image by
Fritz von der Schulenberg/Interior Archive, courtesy of Sotheby's.</span></i></span>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">NOTE: This post originally appeared on An Aesthete's Lament on 12 April 2010. Auction estimates have been updated with hammer prices.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">Design
groupies across the globe have been distracted in the past few weeks by the
latest <a href="http://www.sothebys.com/"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">Sotheby's</span></a> catalogue to be pushed
through the mail slot. Small wonder, given its contents. Entitled
"Property from the Collection of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman: The London
Residence," it is a 276-page paradise, allowing a long, lingering glimpse
into one small corner of the world of America's most discerning collector of
18th- and 19th-century European furniture, paintings, and decorative arts,
the philanthropist Jayne Wrightsman. The sale takes place at <a href="http://www.sothebys.com/"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">Sotheby's New York</span></a> on 28 April [2010].</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Jayne Wrightsman in her Palm Beach, Florida, residence in 1956.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">The
Michigan-born, California-bred widow of a brilliant Oklahoma oilman, Mrs.
Wrightsman is one of those women for whom the word "socialite" is a
label whose inaccuracy verges on rudeness. She is rich, yes, and has dressed
beautifully and entertained with finesse for more than six decades, in the grand
manner that has all but died out. And when it comes to collecting she is not
the only person of her position to live surrounded by important objects but I
would argue she has purchased them more seriously and with more care than her
peers. Few individuals in modern times have managed to hang on their walls
paintings and drawings by Rubens, Vermeer, Canaletto, Tiepolo, Guardi, Van
Dyck, Georges de La Tour, and Caspar David Friedrich, to name just a few. Or to
have acquired books and sculptures of astonishing rarity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">Churlish observers
might snipe that major-league collecting is done solely to impress others.
Trust me: Jayne Wrightsman has been exquisitely perceptive in her spending.
Anyone with sufficient capital and the desire to buy a brand can purchase a
painting by Jacques-Louis David, but it takes a real connoisseur to snap up the
French artist’s <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1977.10"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">sensational 1788
double portrait of the Lavoisiers,</span></a> accurately described "one of
the great portraits of the eighteenth century." (She and her husband donated it to the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">Metropolitan Museum of Art</span></a> in 1977.)
Frankly I’d love to see the paintings Jayne and Charles Wrightsman declined
over the years; that would be an important lesson in choosing quality over
quantity.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKIyAk21Nsr9BLqENEK0QZ969KDMUO9sKYpUS0FUjRqiiR7Wn03Hzztvg-NuUwXJWT134jnf78CRXujZ1e91xQ6eLay-X3pGhY6Lym1HKZTE9TXQCeV6vYUWeNQoGk3hB8-BERsM8EyY/s1600/8652+Lot+132,+Louis+XV+Giltwood+Bergere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKIyAk21Nsr9BLqENEK0QZ969KDMUO9sKYpUS0FUjRqiiR7Wn03Hzztvg-NuUwXJWT134jnf78CRXujZ1e91xQ6eLay-X3pGhY6Lym1HKZTE9TXQCeV6vYUWeNQoGk3hB8-BERsM8EyY/s400/8652+Lot+132,+Louis+XV+Giltwood+Bergere.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times;">Lot 132: a Louis XVI giltwood bergère à oreilles with five legs, circa
1760. Made by maître ébéniste Nicolas Heurtaut, it is upholstered in green
velvet appliquéd with a blaze of peacock-feather-pattern silk. Estimate
$20,000—$30,000. The chair ultimately sold for $37,500.</span></i></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">Not
long after Jayne Larkin's marriage in 1944 to Charles Wrightsman, the brunette beauty with
the wide houri eyes decided to collect the best examples of ancien-régime art
and cabinetmaking and thoroughly immersed herself in those subjects, an elegant
autodidact among lettered scholars. The skepticism that surely greeted this
daunting pursuit—after all, she possessed only a high-school diploma—soon
faded, eventually vanishing altogether as her familiarity with 18th- and
19th-century European masters grew to formidable levels. She read widely,
listened carefully, and befriended all the right experts: Bernard Berenson,
John Pope-Hennessy, Kenneth Clark, Sir Francis Watson of the Wallace
Collection, James Draper of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and French
decorator Stephane Boudin, among others. As American interior designer </span><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">Kitty</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;"> Hawks once noted of Jayne Wrightsman, "My mother [Slim Keith] admired two
things about—the things she learned and her discipline."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;">Lot 162: a Louis XV-style white-painted canapé designed and made by
Maison Jansen, circa 1950. It is upholstered in ruby-red silk velvet.
Estimated to bring $5,000—$8,000, it sold for $20,000.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">As
a result of that determination Mrs. Wrightsman has long more than held her own
among blue-chip curators. She has also generously shared the spoils. The
Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts at the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">Metropolitan Museum of Art,</span></a> where she
serves as an emeritus trustee, exist because of her largesse and vision, the
glittering and highly popular parade of exquisite French period rooms getting
better every year, again with her keen involvement. Important works of art
displayed throughout that august institution are Wrightsman gifts as well; type
her surname into the museum's search engine and hundreds of works can be
viewed. She put her self-education to good use for the nation too during the
celebrated restoration of the White House in the early 1960s, advising the new
First Lady as well as quietly funding aspects of the headline-making project,
which was overseen by the Wrightsmans' interior decorator at the time, Stephane
Boudin, a man whose rooms blended historicist erudition with handmade
passementerie.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgblnzEj1IFKwv2_gv-uZfSKGG49d77t0V_VVcBZta710xT9RQ60v2hU7ujjhKj0ALBxuWblGGY2BTOyEqKBJwSSXNQmzkJP-oBK-EI0fzFDhH4eU4PX6qsIIVq0jiwy5mXGhxSj4T42Hs/s1600/8652+Lot+15,+Pair+Regence+Stools.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgblnzEj1IFKwv2_gv-uZfSKGG49d77t0V_VVcBZta710xT9RQ60v2hU7ujjhKj0ALBxuWblGGY2BTOyEqKBJwSSXNQmzkJP-oBK-EI0fzFDhH4eU4PX6qsIIVq0jiwy5mXGhxSj4T42Hs/s400/8652+Lot+15,+Pair+Regence+Stools.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;">Lot 15: a pair of Régence-style benches upholstered in green velvet.
Mrs. Wrightsman purchased them in 1987 from French interior decorator Henri
Samuel. Estimate $1,200—$1,800; sold for $15,000.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">So
what was Mrs. Wrightsman's apartment in a 1960 building near <a href="http://www.spencerhouse.co.uk/"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">Spencer House</span></a> like until it was
recently dismantled and shipped to New York City to be auctioned off? In the
main it was sumptuous but spirited, luxurious but not stuffy. The comfortable
mélange of 18th- and 19th-century antiques that filled its rooms are dressed in
deep, bold colors (ruby, aquamarine, emerald); lush, occasionally quirky
patterns distracted the eye from the underfed moldings and low ceilings. I
honestly would give every piece of furniture I own, along with a few other
prized possessions, to win Lot 132, a French giltwood bergère clad in
pine-needle-green velvet appliquéd with a blaze of shimmering silk woven with
life-size peacock feathers, a Marie-Antoinette-ish leitmotif writ surreal.
Alas, however, it is the work of maître ébéniste Nicolas Heurtaut and is
expected to bring as much as $30,000. Nevertheless it is an inspiring example
of how a formal furnishing can be made chic yet funky by an inventive fabric
treatment. "Funky" is the last word anyone would associate with Mrs.
Wrightsman, but for a distinguished woman renowned for her taste, that
appreciation of peacock feathers is an endearing chink in her aesthetic armour.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgub8F5FzhpwCQd1Dzy0dU_h2-OHxcuggimTYptoXjZs96BEAxeQxrxzXfzzWw3IZ71gcR0I2ot2VlzXUwlgUJ861X-N9nhjIokHuWNcVVnoTKhoeMxH1cF4ejcPUWJXSK3sDUi2GY0b20/s1600/8652+Lot+89,+Pair+Louis+XVI+Chairs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgub8F5FzhpwCQd1Dzy0dU_h2-OHxcuggimTYptoXjZs96BEAxeQxrxzXfzzWw3IZ71gcR0I2ot2VlzXUwlgUJ861X-N9nhjIokHuWNcVVnoTKhoeMxH1cF4ejcPUWJXSK3sDUi2GY0b20/s400/8652+Lot+89,+Pair+Louis+XVI+Chairs.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
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<td style="padding: 0in;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Times;">Lot 89: a pair of Louis XVI mahogany chairs, circa 1785, attributed to
Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené. They are upholstered in leopard-spot silk velvet.
Estimate $8,000—$12,000; sold for $74,500.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; line-height: 140%;">As the photograph at the top of this post illustrates, a panache of peacock
plumes the approximate size of a showgirl's headdress bursts from a precious
Regency blue-john urn in the drawing room. It's a stylish takeaway: as blogger
Emily Evans Eerdmans, in <a href="http://emilyevanseerdmans.blogspot.com/2010/04/auction-spotlight-jayne-wrightsmans.html"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">a recent post</span></a>
about the forthcoming Wrightsman sale, pointed out, that entrancing fountain of
feathers is "a look that could be replicated albeit with a more humble
receptacle." In case you're interested, Lot 35 consists of about 500
individual peacock feathers (estimate $1,200—$1,800), while Lot 33 is a trio of
peacock feathers Mrs. Wrightsman picked up on a visit to <a href="http://www.houghtonhall.com/"><span style="color: blue; line-height: 140%;">Houghton Hall</span></a> in Norfolk in 1975 and
placed in a small circa-1780 Louis XVI giltwood frame (estimate $2,000—$3,000).</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGp4V6ejARrxV54obawIXzCLLMOBxBWJ8VLrPilYbz-81EUO46SkXRJvpG3NM1_5zUo-aZ79C6ehvea079Ig5ujfjL_vjSnZhYxkUG_IzXlRaClDiMm28m9QxQGqT72T35cx5ZU9a3Y8/s1600/8652+Lot+110,+Pair+George+III+Marble+Alabaster+Urns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHGp4V6ejARrxV54obawIXzCLLMOBxBWJ8VLrPilYbz-81EUO46SkXRJvpG3NM1_5zUo-aZ79C6ehvea079Ig5ujfjL_vjSnZhYxkUG_IzXlRaClDiMm28m9QxQGqT72T35cx5ZU9a3Y8/s400/8652+Lot+110,+Pair+George+III+Marble+Alabaster+Urns.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
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<td style="padding: 0in 0in 0in 0in;"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Lot 110: A near-pair of large George III urns made of blue john,
Derbyshire black marble, and alabaster. They are estimated to bring
between $12,000 and $18,000.</i></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 140%;">Another
object I covet from Mrs. Wrightsman's London flat is Lot 162, a 1950s Maison
Jansen canapé covered in silk velvet the color of crushed raspberries. The
seriously saturated colour is so intensely fruity that one's mouth literally
water. What makes this sofa special to me is not just its highly collectible
maker or the lavish fabric but the meticulous quality of the upholstery.
Stuffed with traditional down and horsehair, it is perfectly plump, even
voluptuous, the courtesan curves of the cushions balancing the sinuous Louis
XV-style frame in a way that few upholsterers today get exactly right. The seat
cushion alone is nearly a foot thick and surely weighs 20 pounds. Traditional
skills like these are slowly disappearing, and our appreciation of them
diminishes apace. Jayne Wrightsman, however, knows exactly how a sofa, whether
18th century in origin or 18th century in style, should be properly
upholstered. After all she's dedicated a great deal of her life to learning
rather than just lunching and shopping. The ridiculous creatures on the
"Real Housewives" reality series should take note.</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">Lot 179: an Italian chinoiserie six-panel painted-canvas screen,
mid-18th century, probably Piedmont. It was once owned by Belgian nobleman
Baron Paul de Becker-Rémy (1897—1953), whose former wife, Rénée, was one of the Wrightsmans' aesthetic mentors. Estimate $40,000—$60,000; sold for $134,500.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">Lot 282: a pair of Louis XVI-style low tables designed for storing
books. Supplied to Mrs. Wrightsman by French interior decorator Henri Samuel
in 1971, this practical and stylish design that deserves to be an
integral part of the decorating lexicon. Estimate $1,200—$1,800; sold for $7,500.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-35730756133641052122012-02-09T00:04:00.000-05:002012-02-09T00:04:11.191-05:00From the Archives: Thelma Foy's Top-Drawer Chic<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bUBqhei7cuUIvV29Qv45xDm0ubL47h6feFjBZXsvgXLRZudafikCRNhoKTTdPPF5kgaTbhgAhDLCt5G2_3u-tCFEkVDw9bWG1fXaYwBg3EHEJ0mOMq0J-QAk-Vdx3Dh3neirDu1tfo0/s1600/foy.longisland.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bUBqhei7cuUIvV29Qv45xDm0ubL47h6feFjBZXsvgXLRZudafikCRNhoKTTdPPF5kgaTbhgAhDLCt5G2_3u-tCFEkVDw9bWG1fXaYwBg3EHEJ0mOMq0J-QAk-Vdx3Dh3neirDu1tfo0/s400/foy.longisland.jpeg" width="338" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The reception room of Thelma and Byron Foy's country house, Foy Farm, in Locust Valley, New York, circa 1945. Image by Garrison from "House & Garden's Complete Guide to Interior Decoration" (Simon & Schuster, 1947).</i></td></tr>
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<b><i>NOTE: This article was originally posted on An Aesthete's Lament on 3 November 2008 and has been augmented with additional information.</i></b><br />
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Most of us will be lucky if our obituaries manage to get our names spelt correctly, let alone offer a glowing encomium. So imagine how gratifying must it have been for Thelma Chrysler Foy (1902—1957) to have seen, from whichever fluffy white cloud she landed on, <i>The New York Times </i>declare the slender, vivacious, and highly strung automobile heiress, on the day after her death from leukemia, "the woman of the greatest taste in the current life in New York."<br />
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Nice tribute, no? But what was it exactly that earned the publicly serene, privately tempestuous Mrs Foy her position at the top of the heap? I would argue this: a sensitivity to colour schemes, fashions, and furnishings that threw her brunette good looks into high relief, as well as a control-freak adherence to good housekeeping. As for Foy's nasty temper, perhaps it had something to do with her diet—writer Jean Nathan noted in <a href="http://cybdragon4.blog.com/a-swans-way/">an article written for <i>Vogue </i></a>that Foy seemed to live on little more than black coffee.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhof5AMdjt4vLo3wWwHL90ivVyenEGv2gL1sYvqYmMHGkQqz2h6Cwp52zZJdG7PG_WCmDXyDkJAaWmGchMRLFJEiH_EfKurtN2BiGESMDgKJbLYcTURud9AUShwqHZigMOTFAea8Xghs6M/s1600/ThelmaChryslerFoy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhof5AMdjt4vLo3wWwHL90ivVyenEGv2gL1sYvqYmMHGkQqz2h6Cwp52zZJdG7PG_WCmDXyDkJAaWmGchMRLFJEiH_EfKurtN2BiGESMDgKJbLYcTURud9AUShwqHZigMOTFAea8Xghs6M/s400/ThelmaChryslerFoy.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Automotive heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy</i></td></tr>
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Some evidence of Foy's high style lies in the archives of the Costume Institute of the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/">Metropolitan Museum of Art,</a> where dozens of her haute-couture clothes repose—including two stupendous gowns by Christian Dior, each looking like something plucked out of the armoire of the Snow Queen, their billowing skirts stupendously spattered with glittering paillettes and gleaming artificial pearls. Small wonder <i>Time</i> magazine, in its observation of her death, noted that she was "repeatedly voted among the world's ten best-dressed women." And why a society admirer once noted that Foy was so immaculate that she resembled "a picture that had been newly varnished."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB-UHsAbnAL_deSUXbH8_F7ktkxfg85RASjXxg81aIfXBoJu9oVMbYnpaBl5cfZvat0nWeCDJEEm8jvZZa0l2aYoV7jViJGQI4b0TCk5VdntAVRYR_J5ptWZ86j_6Fiu3iE2i85iyXhUI/s1600/junon1949.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB-UHsAbnAL_deSUXbH8_F7ktkxfg85RASjXxg81aIfXBoJu9oVMbYnpaBl5cfZvat0nWeCDJEEm8jvZZa0l2aYoV7jViJGQI4b0TCk5VdntAVRYR_J5ptWZ86j_6Fiu3iE2i85iyXhUI/s400/junon1949.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Junon gown made for Foy by Christian Dior, 1949. Image from the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/">Metropolitan Museum of Art.</a></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEJWWWbMOzvWCvEInWRwkR4jLpCRxL__R-aPUQqHND-R9SJUBNcZNgNmdz4siFxu5PEl-NeQRed5gnAINicInYvHM9lsZQhuJkBXXzY7rTSjHMAK4tRzm9-l_9yO-zKph-byYfQnfZ8qw/s1600/venus1949.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEJWWWbMOzvWCvEInWRwkR4jLpCRxL__R-aPUQqHND-R9SJUBNcZNgNmdz4siFxu5PEl-NeQRed5gnAINicInYvHM9lsZQhuJkBXXzY7rTSjHMAK4tRzm9-l_9yO-zKph-byYfQnfZ8qw/s400/venus1949.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Venus gown made for Foy by Christian Dior, 1949. Image from the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/">Metropolitan Museum of Art.</a></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWzt8x5buOwSjZbQVLXiPeQ8oHwAYOac5ELoykwWYHTX7vsvhxVXOhu4fowMGGC175SaRRfF34R3a9KTLAdWwYfptZ5qiZiinyj50e3TMohDcM2WB52as1ADHSdmRawGhi4BG20jMgIB8/s1600/gres1954.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWzt8x5buOwSjZbQVLXiPeQ8oHwAYOac5ELoykwWYHTX7vsvhxVXOhu4fowMGGC175SaRRfF34R3a9KTLAdWwYfptZ5qiZiinyj50e3TMohDcM2WB52as1ADHSdmRawGhi4BG20jMgIB8/s400/gres1954.jpg" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Gown made for Foy by Madame Grès, 1954. Image from the <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/">Metropolitan Museum of Art.</a></i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy4vjb1ON5foc8hdIXVLK8QFGu8fcO5Zsb65CCW8_pEfhJbCCt1bMHOy_w49nWQE3xfdhZFCleiwqwywDG6bxcWNRStUPJpW6xnTSxQ9bVRsVxEz6NZlGExmdoCKljPruR-p20PLvSJDE/s1600/auctioncatalogues.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy4vjb1ON5foc8hdIXVLK8QFGu8fcO5Zsb65CCW8_pEfhJbCCt1bMHOy_w49nWQE3xfdhZFCleiwqwywDG6bxcWNRStUPJpW6xnTSxQ9bVRsVxEz6NZlGExmdoCKljPruR-p20PLvSJDE/s400/auctioncatalogues.jpeg" width="288" /></a></div>
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Further proof recently came into my hands in the form of a two-volume catalogue of the auction of Foy's china, furniture, and art, a sale that took place at Parke-Bernet in New York City in 1959, two years after the socialite's death. Page after page provides evidence that she bought the best, and decoratively speaking, when it came to the boiseried rooms of the sprawling apartment on the 17th floor of 740 Park Avenue—where she lived with her husband, Byron, a dashing Texan and longtime Chrysler executive—it was all about white paint, oyster and grey silk, dashes of pink, signed 18th-century French furniture, and major Impressionist paintings. That fresh, diaphanous decor was a striking contrast to the humble houses of Foy's blue-collar childhood, back when her father, Walter Chrysler, was a mechanic, and nobody ever dreamed he would become one of America's automobile magnates.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlKUOyMrMJ2-oZe4EGFGuxxRU0-SEDb_eyJTQNcQ-4uFJNDOtDLGvAP3A4leAELdES2Qy8Tws9F6fu8eX3eDSMnGUef9vZhr0mjJcx773ulrM5y__lu3E4zv_TitfK-TqkFrbzTP7uPY/s1600/foybedroom+1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlKUOyMrMJ2-oZe4EGFGuxxRU0-SEDb_eyJTQNcQ-4uFJNDOtDLGvAP3A4leAELdES2Qy8Tws9F6fu8eX3eDSMnGUef9vZhr0mjJcx773ulrM5y__lu3E4zv_TitfK-TqkFrbzTP7uPY/s400/foybedroom+1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Thelma Chrysler Foy's bedroom at 740 Park Avenue, circa 1950. The colour scheme included white walls, white curtains, and 18th-century French furniture upholstered in a restrained white silk dappled with pale pink flowers. Image from the Foy catalogue by Parke-Bernet.</i></td></tr>
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That particular palette appeared to be the preferred scheme of the former Thelma Irene Chrysler, whatever the residence's geographic location. Known as Foy Farm, her summer house in Locust Valley, New York, was decorated in similar colours, as seen in the photograph of its reception room at the head of this post—ash-grey walls, pale-grey-and-pink-striped upholstery here, pale grey there, and sumptuous silk-taffeta curtains of a colour <i>House & Garden</i> described as "pink tourmaline." The automotive heiress must have looked like an exotic orchid against those fresh, pale backgrounds. <br />
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The lyrical settings, however, concealed a pathological undercurrent. "It was a perfectionist collection; no note of counterfeit intruded," Wesley Towner wrote in his book <i>The Elegant Auctioneers.</i> "Relentless in her quest, the curator of that concinnate display would ceaselessly add new
triumphs of acquisition, combing the world's great galleries to replace the almost perfect
piece with one a hairbreadth nearer perfection." Towner added to this recollection a startlingly strange detail of how the Foys occasionally spent evenings together at home: "After the servants had withdrawn, Mr. Foy would get out the
x-ray machine that was otherwise used medically—to stall the developing leukemia from
which Mrs. Foy suffered—and they would spend the evening x-raying the porcelains to make
sure the butler had not broken one and had it surreptitiously mended." <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJzSLHWWI1qsF9scJ8w8YUR-62e6PrMKsUgGEloAEeE4jA5xCWdHjfXynP1d8BHfjM9GJRh5LsnxLC7qVGtZQ2DD4XHpnY3LX1jD8OejfRuXdvVFLODJ-_VTW4xcwY7q22F0Zx9LF4Zts/s1600/Picture+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJzSLHWWI1qsF9scJ8w8YUR-62e6PrMKsUgGEloAEeE4jA5xCWdHjfXynP1d8BHfjM9GJRh5LsnxLC7qVGtZQ2DD4XHpnY3LX1jD8OejfRuXdvVFLODJ-_VTW4xcwY7q22F0Zx9LF4Zts/s400/Picture+2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A room at Thelma and Byron Foy's apartment at 740 Park Avenue, New York City, 1959. Image from Foy sale catalogue by Parke-Bernet.</i></td></tr>
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Much of the credit for the couple's domestic splendor must go to interior decorator Robert Samuels, the same courtly man her younger sister, Bernice Garbisch, hired to oversee the furnishing of her apartment at the Carlyle hotel in New York City. From 1908 until his death in 1962 he worked for his family's Francophile design firm, French & Co, an august establishment patronized by society swans such as Millicent Hearst, Janet Annenberg Hooker, and Gloria Vanderbilt (in her Mrs Sidney Lumet phase).<br />
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<i>The New York Times</i> noted in 1962 that Samuels's postwar interiors for Thelma Foy and her sister represented a sea-change in Manhattan decoration, "The smaller rooms, simpler taste, and more elegant lines of the French furnishings ... underlined by his way with soft greens, blues, and yellows." The decorator's work represented a sea-change in Foy's personal taste too.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdEsX9Du2MBJAqOxPW6yF3-S9Q2KPaXR2qyUSY7zKMs1xk6Yv48MmoY2lG2kW40xJfmkn5SqRiiE_6Fg90b3OHMpXuQQSG3ZLF6US9EDxM_QzM0x5rvsD707tZtB6x2eH9b-yDBLH2_GE/s1600/canape.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdEsX9Du2MBJAqOxPW6yF3-S9Q2KPaXR2qyUSY7zKMs1xk6Yv48MmoY2lG2kW40xJfmkn5SqRiiE_6Fg90b3OHMpXuQQSG3ZLF6US9EDxM_QzM0x5rvsD707tZtB6x2eH9b-yDBLH2_GE/s400/canape.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>18th-century canapé flageolet owned by Thelma Chrysler Foy, which was among the furnishings of her bedroom. Photograph from the Foy sale catalogue by Parke-Bernet.</i></td></tr>
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Thelma Foy once had been a devotée of English traditionalism, and she briefly flirted with the neo-Attic elegance purveyed by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings. But 90 percent of the furnishings that went on the block at the Parke-Bernet sale were absolutely ancien-régime in origin, amassed over the last 15 years of her life. The spark for this Gallic collecting focus apparently was the Foys' acquisition of a Louis XV-style mansion, at 60 East 93rd Street, in New York City, in the 1940s. Designed by John Russell Pope, the house had been completed in 1931 for mining heiress Virginia Fair Vanderbilt, and its opulent architecture required a complementary decor. After the Foys moved to Park Avenue in 1954, the former Vanderbilt property became the headquarters of the Roumanian government's delegation to the United Nations and later still, a segment of the Lycée Français de New York. Today 60 East 93rd Street, gloriously restored, is occupied by <a href="http://www.carltonhobbs.com/">the antiques gallery of Carlton Hobbs. </a><br />
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<i>Vogue</i> called the Foy's Park Avenue apartment "the finest French" residence in Manhattan, noting its antique gilded paneling and choice Impressionist paintings, including works by Renoir and Degas. "Everything reflects Mrs Foy's unerring collector's eye," the magazine observed, "her unswerving taste, and her talent for making a house gay and livable, as well as visually lovely." Milady's passion for pearl-coloured upholstery, however, raised some eyebrows. As a Parke-Bernet employee noted at the 1959 sale, "People ask us if anybody sat on her chairs. They certainly did. But, after they were used a few times, she ordered them to be cleaned or recovered."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5VRZgUtjmseiFW4Bpi-TVlI4TeA_CNNoI8DHXP04qvO8Cb6CdDbs1pAGn7vuqsnCfPCFnxRVqJ9R1aw255EtmQnZ_0DTS7O6-j7SCeZM-gn0NMyUbE_Ptqw1Te_NfITp5pJnl22pmbzU/s1600/commodes.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5VRZgUtjmseiFW4Bpi-TVlI4TeA_CNNoI8DHXP04qvO8Cb6CdDbs1pAGn7vuqsnCfPCFnxRVqJ9R1aw255EtmQnZ_0DTS7O6-j7SCeZM-gn0NMyUbE_Ptqw1Te_NfITp5pJnl22pmbzU/s400/commodes.jpeg" width="235" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>18th-century French commodes owned by Foy, which were among the furnishings of the bedroom shown above, 1959. Photograph from the Foy sale catalogue by Parke-Bernet.</i></td></tr>
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<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-16873767113371307322012-02-05T10:55:00.000-05:002012-02-05T10:55:21.064-05:00Well Said: Nancy Mitford<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQMC5rRr-jMNFyFv0CEqfcxvA2PnKViFiFl7S4yt1X_Zpton6b7As2SH7KpF_4TML9vlS6qmC-27k7ImVDsMXGxKAftz0qTxSZ3w92R2Uoy-9Ki5xhnfPK-Ffqyag-vV4uGg-rna1g82Q/s1600/flcatelberlin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQMC5rRr-jMNFyFv0CEqfcxvA2PnKViFiFl7S4yt1X_Zpton6b7As2SH7KpF_4TML9vlS6qmC-27k7ImVDsMXGxKAftz0qTxSZ3w92R2Uoy-9Ki5xhnfPK-Ffqyag-vV4uGg-rna1g82Q/s400/flcatelberlin.jpg" width="307" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>An 1824 portrait of architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Naples, Italy, by artist Franz-Ludwig Catel. The painting is in the collection of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany.</i></td></tr>
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<i><b>"I love the French window which marries a house to the firmament instead of dividing them like the stuffy sash."</b></i><br />
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So observed Nancy Mitford (1904—1973) in her 1961 essay "Portrait of a French Country House."An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-6909567525584435632012-01-20T09:08:00.000-05:002012-01-20T09:08:20.866-05:00Well Said: Lily Bart<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmO0bqAqZjhT_DTKGiDgxbZMN8dHjHcRhAS9w0-13jnNVyl0rco-oXMg3NeX2NjnDqoTnkfjxXewafKT-MstoLMRDuYv2P5YgDKLvgYSg5fnpBqHRCm5sdefMJ3Y0M-CNfJNTV24gkwaE/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-20+at+8.59.38+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmO0bqAqZjhT_DTKGiDgxbZMN8dHjHcRhAS9w0-13jnNVyl0rco-oXMg3NeX2NjnDqoTnkfjxXewafKT-MstoLMRDuYv2P5YgDKLvgYSg5fnpBqHRCm5sdefMJ3Y0M-CNfJNTV24gkwaE/s400/Screen+shot+2012-01-20+at+8.59.38+AM.png" width="289" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Manhattan debutante turned silent-movie actress Katherine Harris Barrymore (1891-1927). She portrayed Lily Bart in director Albert Capellani's 1918 film of "The House of Mirth."</i></td></tr>
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<b>"If only I could do over my aunt's drawing-room, I know I should be a better woman."</b><br />
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So said Lily Bart, tragic heroine of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel <i>The House of Mirth.</i>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-4282246882233648612012-01-18T14:42:00.000-05:002012-01-18T14:42:00.987-05:00Well Said: Elsa Schiaparelli<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><b><span class="body">"Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well
gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill
and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale."</span></b></i><br />
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<span class="body">So said <a href="http://www.schiaparelli.com/">Elsa Schiaparelli</a> (1890—1973), fashion provocateur, inspired hostess, patron of the arts, and author of the engaging memoir <i>Shocking Life.</i></span><br />
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<span class="body"><i> </i></span><br />
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<br /></div>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-87896769285284490212012-01-14T23:12:00.000-05:002012-01-20T08:53:37.543-05:00From the Archives: John Vesey, The Next Big Thing?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQSA0YZcJsdk33Vuh2AmTvzkLnlmi-xyORFEzPD_UX_BfnXNnGA7OX3gCygKnqMwqmboRGIJ38fXPvmryoUFFIDcOdHGd_fdcv3_DDQHCFsqxfWPoEZjCCnLauxmvtiZDjcwogCRkYy2w/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+4.21.59+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQSA0YZcJsdk33Vuh2AmTvzkLnlmi-xyORFEzPD_UX_BfnXNnGA7OX3gCygKnqMwqmboRGIJ38fXPvmryoUFFIDcOdHGd_fdcv3_DDQHCFsqxfWPoEZjCCnLauxmvtiZDjcwogCRkYy2w/s400/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+4.21.59+PM.png" width="333" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>John Vesey, furniture designer and future felon, sitting in a<br />
solid-aluminum Thonet-style rocking chair in his New York City<br />
showroom, 1965. Image from The New York Times.</i></td></tr>
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<b>NOTE: This article, originally published on this blog on 18 November 2008, has been updated with new images, additional text, and a bibliography. That last-named feature is a research source list that will become a feature of An Aesthete's Lament. <a href="http://www.modernmag.com/?p=928"></a></b><br />
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As the strippers in the musical <i>Gypsy!</i> state in clarion tones, "You gotta have a gimmick." This is true in so many professions, whether bumping and grinding or designing furniture. For John Vesey, shown above, a once prominent but now puzzlingly obscure American talent of the 1950s and 1960s, the gimmick was taking traditional furniture forms and translating them into crisp, cool metal, usually aluminum and stainless steel, often with accents of polished brass.<br />
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Who took his glittering bait? Oil magnate Howard Hughes, for one, as well as art dealer Leo Castelli, international public-relations man Count Rudi Crespi, fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy, and Ira Howard Levy, the president of Estée Lauder cosmetics. A Vesey profile published in 1965 fairly swooned listing the designer's high-society clients, among them fashion model-turned-Warhol superstar Jane Holzer; heiress Wendy Vanderbilt; Italian socialite Countess Gioconda Cicogna; automotive divorcée Anne McDonnell Ford; the beautiful Sunny von Bulow; the even lovelier Isabel Eberstadt; French aristocrat Count Charles de Rohan-Chabot; Greek shipping heiress Chrysanthe Goulandris; stylist Vidal Sassoon; Governor Nelson Rockefeller; and Condé Nast president and chairman <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/15/obituaries/iva-patcevitch-92-retired-chairman-of-magazine-firm.html">Iva Patcévitch.</a> The same article declared Diana Ross of The Supremes "one of John Vesey's best customers."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJWF4CMDyzfBQylfSGlWAWDFHFsF1h6MPrslpQKc7OGq4l9Fq8gDdBJFkNby_ehejwgrI0WWJlPzpLdDcyp9oZts6Pq6FVlMsD-sLCz4-LxKxs4PHvjCOR0kPoL3gOkjbPZbpKGeNYLko/s1600/%252CDanaInfo%253DSCNPNYA54.advancemags.com%252B%252531_multipart%25253F2_image002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJWF4CMDyzfBQylfSGlWAWDFHFsF1h6MPrslpQKc7OGq4l9Fq8gDdBJFkNby_ehejwgrI0WWJlPzpLdDcyp9oZts6Pq6FVlMsD-sLCz4-LxKxs4PHvjCOR0kPoL3gOkjbPZbpKGeNYLko/s400/%252CDanaInfo%253DSCNPNYA54.advancemags.com%252B%252531_multipart%25253F2_image002.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A pair of Vesey-designed metal chairs with wickerwork seats and backs, from the 1960s. The chairs are being offered at the 2012 Winter Antiques Show by dealer <a href="http://www.lizobrien.com/">Liz O'Brien.</a></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_3mZ-cTpD3T7GkJCu2uFCEEkiyci1AX1i4bxSdJOxOBRN7dndHW2Ili8AIbIucfYNgIBoP3hiK0E0QHT1iXhbjn2EVFa2bS2P96-IU6L40lOSTUrrxs0SWFIpay2YRLymfxCSJptVVlk/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+10.37.39+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_3mZ-cTpD3T7GkJCu2uFCEEkiyci1AX1i4bxSdJOxOBRN7dndHW2Ili8AIbIucfYNgIBoP3hiK0E0QHT1iXhbjn2EVFa2bS2P96-IU6L40lOSTUrrxs0SWFIpay2YRLymfxCSJptVVlk/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+10.37.39+PM.png" width="206" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A steel campaign-style chair by Vesey, 1957. Image from The New York Times.</i></td></tr>
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Today it is major dealers who are transfixed by Vesey's work, and they are bringing his designs to a new generation. Gallerists <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2010/01/dh_21.html">R. Louis Bofferding</a>, <a href="http://www.lizobrien.com/">Liz O'Brien,</a> and Gail Garlick of <a href="http://www.gooddesignshop.com/">Good Design</a> are among today's keenest admirers. Bofferding, for instance, once possessed one of Vesey's most striking designs, a round occasional table whose bulbous openwork metal base was sparked by, of all things, an American wool winder. In O'Brien's current stock is a pair of Directoire-inflected chairs, shown above, dating from the 1960s. She will have them on display in her booth at the <a href="http://www.winterantiquesshow.com/">Winter Antiques Show,</a> which opens to the public on Friday, 20 January.<br />
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As this blog noted at the time, at the 2008 Modernism Show in New York City, Garlick showcased several vintage Vesey pieces in Good Design's sparsely decorated
stand—two lounge chairs modelled after Cuban planter's chairs, a console
whose glass top is supported by stainless-steel sawhorses, and a
polished-aluminum campaign-style bench. It was arguably the biggest
collection of his work pulled together in one place within recent
memory. Garlick's next big Vesey show begins 20 January, at her gallery, Good Design; it runs for six weeks.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMNPXfzMINbJz3SUP7V14nrxCUkgjTwXAyOZmFMOPLVfmcNH8iD7xOlAfNu8lTqJZNSdIHDLM6zde8hc2a2me2BKeRoeXzGnttI0tGCPz9FQKBrdMAkj7yuOmyJsjcLUn8EYnPEqgdWuc/s1600/artwork_images_424613221_601804_john-vesey.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMNPXfzMINbJz3SUP7V14nrxCUkgjTwXAyOZmFMOPLVfmcNH8iD7xOlAfNu8lTqJZNSdIHDLM6zde8hc2a2me2BKeRoeXzGnttI0tGCPz9FQKBrdMAkj7yuOmyJsjcLUn8EYnPEqgdWuc/s320/artwork_images_424613221_601804_john-vesey.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A pair of
Vesey benches made of powder-coated wrought aluminum. The shape is a
modern rendition of the Savonarola chair of the Middle Ages. The benches
are offered by <a href="http://www.gooddesignshop.com/">Good Design, </a>and the image is from <a href="http://www.artnet.com/">Artnet.</a></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.designaddict.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik8zMwpOckK8jQ3qs8zTZvnjc1ZWPZug0QIsEUq2k08Mr8BOkZXYZcxHrCEIq-RLE6c4lf7GkF7GfMdIklkZf5cIp7aFz6wfbGlem8mW_dlVXsfGnvyJdjfO_JYaASEA3XsRptPqF4oVo/s320/Maximilian-Chairs-by-John-Vesey-600x600.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A pair of Vesey's calfskin-upholstered chairs from his "luxurious, costly" Maximilian Group, circa 1958. The chairs and its matching sofa were inspired by classic Cuban planter's chairs. Two of these were among the furnishings of photographer Cecil Beaton's London townhouse. A version with fine woven-aluminum mesh as the sole upholstery cost $355 in 1958. Image from <a href="http://www.designaddict.com/">Design Addict.</a></i></td></tr>
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Six-foot-six-inches tall and matinée-idol handsome, John Vesey Colclough Jr was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on 22 September 1924, the only son and youngest child of John Vesey Colclough Sr, an investment banker, and his wife, Bertha. (His elder siblings were Florence, Marjorie, and Norina.) The family was not only prosperous but distinguished, descended from a famous Irish landlord of the
18th century, Vesey Colclough, chatelain of a much-admired County Wexford landmark, <a href="http://www.wexfordweb.com/tintern.htm">Tintern Abbey.</a> And Colclough Sr's dynamic sister, <a href="http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/vawomen/2009/honoree.asp?bio=4">Pauline Adams,</a> was one of the bright lights of America's women's suffrage movement.<br />
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During the Depression, however, the finances of Colclough's parents collapsed. To make ends meet, his mother took a job managing an apartment house, while his father found employment as a salesman in the local traffic bureau. According to a profile published in 1958 in <i>The New York Times,</i> John Vesey Colclough Jr intended to be a museum curator and actually studied at Harvard for a year. But on 19 May 1943—after a brief stint in banking—he joined the Merchant Marine. Following World War II he surfaced in Manhattan as an antiques dealer with a specialty in 18th- and 19th-century French and English furniture and art. By this time he also had dropped his Irish surname (which was pronounced <i>COAL-claw</i> in case you were wondering).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYGu3yJG8HlSDq2oe-5Wix3NFMao89d0QTZYCf3YskbfrJZRK3RpiIrWXRa8kz6O7At9-eQGuyxNCtJsoOHqthRl3fFsiabb2coRVh4IGImbJRUTbeamNtl2nOdlHewYbDK5wWxWCGRd8/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+7.49.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYGu3yJG8HlSDq2oe-5Wix3NFMao89d0QTZYCf3YskbfrJZRK3RpiIrWXRa8kz6O7At9-eQGuyxNCtJsoOHqthRl3fFsiabb2coRVh4IGImbJRUTbeamNtl2nOdlHewYbDK5wWxWCGRd8/s400/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+7.49.03+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A button-tufted leather Chesterfield sofa with metal legs by John
Vesey, circa 1960. In 1965 an article in The New York Times illustrated a
smaller version anchoring the Manhattan living room of art dealer Leo Castelli, which had been decorated by interior designer John
Elmo. Another article pointed out that Vesey's sofa's cost $300 a foot. </i><i><a href="http://www.wright20.com/auctions/view/K6AF/K6AG/313/LA/none/K6CX/0">The example shown here sold for $55,000 at Wright last year. </a></i></td></tr>
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After experiencing some success and then selling off his stock of antiques at
Parke-Bernet Galleries, Vesey began exploring the possibilities of metal
in 1956, driven by a fascination with steel furniture of the past. In 1957 he opened a showroom at 150 East 54th Street in New York City, and by the next year he had produced 15 designs. That year he moved his business to 235 East 58th
Street (eventually he ended up at 969 Third Avenue), and an article about its debut describes a spacious
interior displaying arresting metal furnishings alongside luxurious fur rugs
and huge paintings. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBT8qFtJ3709fd_68UZ2kG_5W0kk4npGLxYLitQKKHYlio9lJRATljXaPbzqDjDwE-fl-wJHOtphE2Ka8Qvqn9u61Caibd3gJ0M8-4Xbl-peiQVkaGBJ5EHqNd2IaEUqEl2ugvoRBZHh8/s1600/7075_John-Vesey_Writing-Table-509x450.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBT8qFtJ3709fd_68UZ2kG_5W0kk4npGLxYLitQKKHYlio9lJRATljXaPbzqDjDwE-fl-wJHOtphE2Ka8Qvqn9u61Caibd3gJ0M8-4Xbl-peiQVkaGBJ5EHqNd2IaEUqEl2ugvoRBZHh8/s320/7075_John-Vesey_Writing-Table-509x450.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Once part of the furnishings of the Rome apartment of Rudi and Consuelo Crespi, this brass-and-steel Vesey writing table (now sold) was recently in the stock of Manhattan dealer <a href="http://www.geraldblandinc.com/2011/10/brass-and-steel-writing-table/">Gerald Bland.</a></i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKvmPqVkSN0AmlTB6naFCRrW3FlYGflONR-zSnDkFtaPWFIochkqGNnqRfge3ILvGwK8nag4zOyxT6g_FuYBSui25Z00AL7dY75_dMT3lwsRE9S1ynpHY2WBkEclWUzOOhyphenhyphen8CSI2s318/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+4.24.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKvmPqVkSN0AmlTB6naFCRrW3FlYGflONR-zSnDkFtaPWFIochkqGNnqRfge3ILvGwK8nag4zOyxT6g_FuYBSui25Z00AL7dY75_dMT3lwsRE9S1ynpHY2WBkEclWUzOOhyphenhyphen8CSI2s318/s400/Screen+shot+2012-01-14+at+4.24.17+PM.png" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Count Rodolfo "Rudi" Crespi at the same writing table, in the master bedroom of his apartment in <a href="http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi64.htm">Palazzo Odescalchi</a> in Rome, Italy, 1969, which was decorated by American expatriate designer Howard Dilday. Until recently the writing table stood in the New York City apartment of Crespi's widow, Consuelo. Image by <a href="http://www.jameshymanphotography.com/pages/artist/15009/patrick_morin.html">Patrick Morin</a> from The New York Times.</i></td></tr>
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"Steel is putty in John Vesey's hand," <i>The New York Times</i> reported in 1958, noting that the designer utilized craftsmen in Hoboken, New Jersey, and Long Island for the metalwork, while the leather upholstery was given over to artisans in Manhattan's Chinatown. "He bends [steel], tapers it, and turns it," the newspaper's reporter Rita Reif explained, "ending up with chairs and tables as beautiful as the antiques that inspired him."<br />
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Beautiful, yes, but the results meld surreality, industrial chic, and sadomasochism. There is something perverse, after all, in taking an otherwise uncontroversial furniture form like Thonet bentwood rocker and reproducing it in gleaming solid aluminum and replacing its woven-cane panels with fine, anodized metal mesh. That unexpected transmutation takes the Art Nouveau icon from cozily curlicue to brutally chic—and with exceptional attention to quality. Vesey's aluminum creations, <i>Design Forecast</i> magazine favorably noted in 1959, are "wrought, not cast; [the] frame of each chair or sofa is one solid piece." <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnQEMly9W_zlt1e3-imIb05u-3jOteBtv2aD92aSOhXsJCf-wcjxHpwWVvb7sxey3tRc-XFpTWtQba_d0SSU4uBylPbOnWWFC3jYOxt6Bu2PUipXB2Hy3tbt2lC7CZ85fkqdiATCjJx1E/s1600/4486.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnQEMly9W_zlt1e3-imIb05u-3jOteBtv2aD92aSOhXsJCf-wcjxHpwWVvb7sxey3tRc-XFpTWtQba_d0SSU4uBylPbOnWWFC3jYOxt6Bu2PUipXB2Hy3tbt2lC7CZ85fkqdiATCjJx1E/s400/4486.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A 19th-century American wool winder, used in the production of yarn, was the inspiration for this hallmark Vesey design: an openwork metal occasional table. This example is available from dealer <a href="http://www.johnsalibello.com/">John Salibello</a>.</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ReHAx1XUKjP_d-wDwigbphWEPoIvzb-4AAXAGG_f2xTS8tNBHYOrgzhHBrGq5aOMnMiYzlFqWG5CQvdaOd1jWdYvK46N5w5ANCzdJ42WVCxQdNgXD4ZdBRTmFNlTkhEY7rvSglRqJOE/s1600/IMG_1702.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ReHAx1XUKjP_d-wDwigbphWEPoIvzb-4AAXAGG_f2xTS8tNBHYOrgzhHBrGq5aOMnMiYzlFqWG5CQvdaOd1jWdYvK46N5w5ANCzdJ42WVCxQdNgXD4ZdBRTmFNlTkhEY7rvSglRqJOE/s320/IMG_1702.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A Vesey ottoman, circa 1965. Image from <a href="http://www.mondocane.com/archive/item/451">Mondo Cane.</a></i></td></tr>
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Over the next decade Vesey was a wild success, his talents spoken of in the same breath as contemporary tastemakers such as John Dickinson and Baron Alessandro Albrizzi. By 1969 he intended to take even greater leaps of style. As Vesey explained to <i>The New York Times, </i>"I want to copy this 1800 antler chair in metal. It would be a real kooky chair for a far-out apartment." Indeed it would have but whether that swinging design made it off his drawing board is unknown. What is certain is that Vesey's high-flying career came crashing to the ground two years later.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUNGd6Pn4cuFGt3wN5dQkWDgTEWZpVPCXKa5mV0sLRNK-UB-iySA9gmckFFCew8rWSrEnyju_DuyjBCNYbAZIe86RVTHtuBw9tqqgqLsvwTobsQmT3cYaOlf4vbO4y8-TG5SQFM1ZsHPA/s1600/picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUNGd6Pn4cuFGt3wN5dQkWDgTEWZpVPCXKa5mV0sLRNK-UB-iySA9gmckFFCew8rWSrEnyju_DuyjBCNYbAZIe86RVTHtuBw9tqqgqLsvwTobsQmT3cYaOlf4vbO4y8-TG5SQFM1ZsHPA/s320/picture.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A pair of Napoléon III-inspired armchairs by Vesey, made of chromed steel and leather. They sold in 2011 at <a href="http://www.ragoarts.com/">Rago Auctions</a> for $13,000. The original model cost $465 in 1958. Image from <a href="http://artnet./">Artnet.</a></i></td></tr>
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After sexually assaulting a 17-year-old high-school dropout he picked up early one morning at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and took to his duplex townhouse apartment at 105 East 64th Street, Vesey was sentenced to five years in prison. During this enforced absence from the American design scene, his company, John Vesey Designs Inc., was sold, sold again, and eventually closed. As for Vesey, after his release, he lived quietly and obscurely, ultimately dying of pneumonia on 14 April 1992 in Rhinebeck, New York.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpl4TWpDWfddUwo_AM0u6SS8ovMYUPYQs8Ych45iQ6A3mJ8WX_KnsOoIRjRO_4w9UeqXgT06i8ztwCGi3HsHf_JDCu2poaIlXtmbevS9xwagQNfAFamxtFuFGtKwIopYNvx8tj9LFyAwE/s1600/artwork_images_424613221_601810_john-vesey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpl4TWpDWfddUwo_AM0u6SS8ovMYUPYQs8Ych45iQ6A3mJ8WX_KnsOoIRjRO_4w9UeqXgT06i8ztwCGi3HsHf_JDCu2poaIlXtmbevS9xwagQNfAFamxtFuFGtKwIopYNvx8tj9LFyAwE/s400/artwork_images_424613221_601810_john-vesey.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Offered by the Manhattan gallery <a href="http://www.gooddesignshop.com/">Good Design,</a> this Vesey cocktail
table from the 1960s is made of polished stainless steel and brass and
bears its original 3/4-inch glass top. Image from <a href="http://artnet./">Artnet.</a></i></td></tr>
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<br />
<b>BIBLIOGRAPHY</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ancestry.com/">Ancestry.com</a><br />
<br />
Bender, Marylin, "In Rome, Home Can Be a Palace or a Nest of Steel and Plastic," <i>The New York Times,</i> 19 May 1969<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.hollandsociety.com/maen.html"><i>De Halve Maen</i> (Holland Society of New York</a>, 1981), page xxxiv <br />
<br />
<i>Design Forecast,</i> Volume 1 (Aluminum Company of America), 1 January 1959, page 20<br />
<br />
"Designer Gets 5 Years," <i>The New York Times,</i> 22 January 1972<br />
<br />
Drayton, Cynthia A. "John Vesey: Style and Scandal," <a href="http://www.modernmag.com/?p=928">Modern Magazine, Fall 2011</a> <br />
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Fosburgh, Lacey, "Furniture Designer Convicted of Homosexual Attack on Boy," The New York Times, 16 December 1971<br />
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"Home Beat: David Katz Has Made Secret Hiding Places His Business," <i>The New York Times,</i> 30 March 1978 <br />
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Klemensrud, Judy, "5 Place-Setting Men Test Skill at Table-Setting," <i>The New York Times, </i>21 September 1968<br />
<br />
O'Brien, George, "New on the Home Front," <i>The New York Times,</i> 15 March 1964 <br />
<br />
Reif, Rita, "A New Age of Metals," <i>The New York Times,</i> 8 August 1965<br />
<br />
Reif, Rita, "It's Lethal Looking, It's Weirdly Shaped—and It's Back in Style," <i>The New York Times, </i>19 March 1969 <br />
<br />
Reif, Rita, "New Styling on an Old Design," <i>The New York Times,</i> 11 November 1967<br />
<br />
Reif, Rita, "Steel Is Putty in Hands of Furniture Designer," <i>The New York Times,</i> 28 August 1958<br />
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Sheppard, Eugenia, "Newest Status Symbol—Furniture by John Vesey," <i>Corpus Christi Caller-Times, </i>19 May 1968, page 11G<br />
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"Steel Takes Its Place in Decoration," <i>The New York Times, </i>5 October 1957 <br />
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Sverbeyeff, Elizabeth, "Life with Pop," <i>The New York Times,</i> 2 May 1965<br />
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"Van Gogh Canvas to Be Auctioned," <i>The New York Times,</i> 6 November 1955<br />
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<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-73410158768294102792012-01-05T20:08:00.000-05:002012-01-05T20:08:20.395-05:00Well Said: Hélène Rochas<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0z8ZC6TmA0Y/TwZEeetASgI/AAAAAAAAGFg/jWTijrhv41o/s1600/c-2692-helene-rochas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="398" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0z8ZC6TmA0Y/TwZEeetASgI/AAAAAAAAGFg/jWTijrhv41o/s400/c-2692-helene-rochas.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An acrylic-and-silkscreen portrait of Hélène Rochas by Andy Warhol, 1974.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>“I’m against the idea of dressing young—that shows fear."</i></b></span><br />
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So said Hélène Rochas (1927—2011), former fashion model, international beauty, and director of the Paris perfume house of the same name, following the 1955 death of her first husband, Marcel Rochas. Among the scents she inspired or commissioned were Femme de Rochas (a wedding gift from her husband in 1944), Madame Rochas (launched in 1960), Eau de Roche (aka Eau de Rochas), and Muse de Rochas.An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-14025357138170424432011-12-31T13:01:00.002-05:002011-12-31T13:01:14.713-05:00Requiescat in Pace: Eva Zeisel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bU2ejzLLfoc/Tv9NhXNYXoI/AAAAAAAAGFU/WqVxDAsJktw/s1600/eva-zeisel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bU2ejzLLfoc/Tv9NhXNYXoI/AAAAAAAAGFU/WqVxDAsJktw/s400/eva-zeisel.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>“Men have no concept of how to design things for the home. Women should design the things they use.”</b></i></span><br />
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So said industrial designer Eva Zeisel, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/arts/design/eva-zeisel-ceramic-artist-and-designer-dies-at-105.html?pagewanted=all">who died yesterday at age 105, </a>after a rich, creative, and highly influential life.<br />An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-19234592526778063712011-12-20T06:59:00.000-05:002011-12-20T06:59:56.250-05:00Well Said: Coco Chanel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQerpMbfCEqN2nW22fDMPPAoJo4ojm1J9anrViwWU-B6M415lIVT5sdyPqsWgyH3snzg8FFMN9JQS43P2jSDyljBmdRfHW91_yX9Y6FboSRHLnNhe2wvvw4ilV5gVpuuHaiEZaVd-TY8/s1600/coco-chanel0041.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQerpMbfCEqN2nW22fDMPPAoJo4ojm1J9anrViwWU-B6M415lIVT5sdyPqsWgyH3snzg8FFMN9JQS43P2jSDyljBmdRfHW91_yX9Y6FboSRHLnNhe2wvvw4ilV5gVpuuHaiEZaVd-TY8/s400/coco-chanel0041.jpg" width="375" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"It is as dreadful to be too rich as to be too tall. In the first instance you don't find happiness and in the second you can't find a bed."</b></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">So said couturière Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (1883-1971), as quoted in <i>The Allure of Chanel </i>by Paul Morand (Pushkin Press, 2008).</span>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-83824025241525999712011-12-07T00:04:00.001-05:002011-12-28T13:43:29.068-05:00From the Archives: By George<style>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">Roumania-born, Tunisia-based tastemaker George Sebastian in the 1930s.</span></i></td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">NOTE: This post was originally published in 2009 and has been updated with additional research. As further information becomes available, it will be incorporated into the text. Many thanks to an anonymous reader, who has alerted me to a February 1935 "Country Life in America" article about Dar Sebastian, which has supplied more details. I would also like to thank Med Mehdi Sahli and </span></i><i><span style="font-size: small;">Julien Lévy for their contributions.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Design history is populated by
mysterious personalities—decorators who doggedly remain in the shadows, craftsmen of uncommon brilliance who left few documents
behind, patrons who languish in obscurity despite their onetime prominence. Consider George
Sebastian, for instance. A polyglot Roumanian with crystal-blue eyes and brilliantined hair, he put Hammamet, Tunisia, on the map in the early 1930s and built Dar Sebastian, one of North Africa's most
admired residences. (It is now the International Cultural Center of Hammamet.) American poet Robinson Jeffers, in a letter to a friend in 1940, called it "<span class="st" style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">the great Moorish house one always sees when a perfect
house is pictured in architectural magazines."</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Until recently the details of Sebastian's life have been largely conjecture but an enterprising Roumanian scholar, Mihai Sorin R</span><span style="font-size: small;">ă</span><span style="font-size: small;">dulescu, has cleared the fog. Karl Gheorghe Sebastian was born on
21 September 1896, in the city of Bacă</span><span style="font-size: small;">u, north of Bucharest. His father, Chiril Sebastian, may have been Russian; his mother, Moldovan aristocrat Maria Keminger de Lippa, was a baroness whose relations were stars of Romania’s glittering social goulash. </span><span style="font-size: small;">Her half brother Prince </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitrie_Ghica-Com%C4%83ne%C5%9Fti"><span style="font-size: small;">Dimitrie Ghika-Comăneşti</span></a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">was a celebrated explorer</span><span style="font-size: small;">, while another married the sister of Queen Natalie of Serbia. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marthe_Bibesco">Princess Marthe Bibesco,</a> the poet and novelist, was a relative; one cousin's wife was </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liane_de_Pougy">Liane de Pougy,</a> the ravishing French dancer and <i>grande
horizontale,</i> and</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Maria's nephew Prince <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbu_%C5%9Etirbey">Barbu </a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbu_%C5%9Etirbey">Ştirbey</a></span><span style="font-size: small;"> was the lover of Romania's queen consort—and likely the biological father of her youngest child. By blood or marriage, Madame Sebastian and her son were connected to most of Roumania's consonant-rich, crème-de-la-crème clans, including the Mavrocodatos, Cantacuzenes, </span><span style="font-size: small;">Ştirbeys</span><span style="font-size: small;">, Sturdzas, and Lahovarys. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Enveloped in an aura of power and privilege seasoned with Mitteleuropean exoticism, George Sebastian arrived on the international
scene in 1918 or thereabouts and settled in the fashionable Paris suburb of Neuilly sur Seine, at 2 rue Frédéric Passy. For a while, he was employed as a clerk, and he traveled at least once to the United States, in 1924, in the company of Roumanian diplomat and banker Radu Irimescu and his American tannery-heiress wife. With the relocation from Eastern Europe to France, significant friendships developed. Sebastian fell into the orbits of interior designer Jean-Michel Frank and society photographer
Baron de Meyer. </span><span style="font-size: small;">Somewhere
along the line he befriended the future Duchess of Windsor,
either (says one source)
during her youthful sojourn in Peking during her first marriage or (says
another)
through her second husband, Ernest Simpson. It was not, however, an unblemished association. As a letter Simpson wrote to his erstwhile wife attests, he was mortified when, at the Guards' Club, Sebastian "insisted on holding my hand throughout lunch,"</span><span style="font-size: small;"> for reasons unknown. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Perhaps the most intense relationship was with <a href="http://www.condenaststore.com/-st/Porter-Woodruff-Prints_c38687_.htm">Porter Woodruff </a>(1894—1959), an American artist, who designed covers for <i>House & Garden</i>
and sketched fashions for <i>Vogue. </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">Records suggest they met shortly after the first world war. A biography of artist and costume designer Gordon Conway, a mutual friend,
states that </span><span style="font-size: small;">Woodruff was Sebastian's inamorato and that the two lived together in France and Tunisia. (Woodruff painted <a href="http://www.trocadero.com/studio/items/328898/item328898store.html">some strikingly attractive views</a> of Hammamet as well as <a href="http://www.ebay.com/itm/PORTER-WOODRUFF-WATERCOLOR-PAINTING-ARABIAN-HORSEMEN-/360091216530">dashing scenes of North African life.)</a> Affairs of the heart aside, the suave Roumanian formed a marital alliance in 1929 with Flora Witmer, an attractive American widow a couple of decades his senior. Fifty-two to Sebastian's 32, she swiftly shaved
off a few years—seven to be exact—in an effort to reduce the chronological gap.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Flora E. Witmer, the future Mrs George Sebastian, in 1922.</i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRdSbNd7tiEGQ4Nc1080InZh89I5u7VSs5o5R01mSVqk59p19htwTGACh2KERkRvwTv0_YAwQvpYxqRwHA-uhdy03T1P03ySmbtcGe9MXRPdKNRR39uvuNY_LEagwhhnrd8XrUihHuGsY/s1600/florasebastian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRdSbNd7tiEGQ4Nc1080InZh89I5u7VSs5o5R01mSVqk59p19htwTGACh2KERkRvwTv0_YAwQvpYxqRwHA-uhdy03T1P03ySmbtcGe9MXRPdKNRR39uvuNY_LEagwhhnrd8XrUihHuGsY/s400/florasebastian.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Flora Sebastian in a detail from an early 1930s photograph, likely snapped at Dar Sebastian, her winter residence in Tunisia. Image courtesy of a Stifel family member.</span></i></td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">How bride and groom met is unknown, though a chance
meeting at one of Europe's watering holes wouldn't be surprising. More
important is what the widow Witmer brought to George Sebastian's life: a great
deal of money and an apparent willingness to allow him to spend it to
his heart's content. A native of Wheeling, West Virginia, the former Flora
Elizabeth <a href="http://wvweb.com/nature/family.asp">Stifel </a>(1877—1939)
was an heiress to a fortune built on the manufacture of <a href="http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/593">printed calico.</a>
The family firm, <a href="http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/593">J.
L. Stifel & Sons,</a> was founded in 1835 by her paternal
grandfather, a German immigrant, and it churned out millions of yards of indigo-dyed cotton a month. She also
possessed, in comparison, a fleabite legacy from her first husband,
Porterfield Krauth Witmer (1871—1920), cofounder of a Des Moines
insurance and real estate agency.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">How Mrs Witmer amused herself during nine years of widowhood has yet to be ascertained, though it appears she spent some time upgrading her appearance. A 1922 passport photograph shows a glum-looking creature with an unflattering bob and wearing a blouse with an untidy collar and a mannish striped tie; about a decade later, the camera records a woman who is the very model of American chic, draped with pearls, her dark hair elegantly coiffed and crowned by a smart halo-brimmed hat. Somehow, somewhere Flora Witmer crossed paths with George Sebastian. And eventually, dear reader, she married him. One month after they sailed together to New York City from Cherbourg, aboard the <i>Leviathan,</i> </span><span style="font-size: small;">Mrs Porterfield Krauth Witmer became Madame Charles George
Sebastian on the evening of 23 November 1929. </span><span style="font-size: small;">Following the brief Lutheran ceremony—held in, of all locations, Porter Woodruff's apartment at 230 East 50th Street<i>—</i>the newlyweds traveled to Canada for a honeymoon and, thence, to Paris, which would be their home base. Winters would be spent in palm-shaded Hammamet.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;">The main entrance
of Dar Sebastian, which was constructed circa 1932 by George
Sebastian, with the assistance of a Sicilian builder, Vincenzo Dicara. The door surround is made of carved marble; on the roof is glimpsed a bit of Flora Sebastian's breakfast room. Image by David Massey from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/MAISONS-HAMMAMET-Ashraf-Massey-Azzouz/dp/9973755006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323362519&sr=1-1">"Maisons de Hammamet" (Dar Ashraf Editions, 1988).</a></span></i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">A 1930s photograph of the bay-side façade of the Sebastian
mansion, which is made of concrete and stucco painted a blinding shade of white. Image by George Hoyningen-Huene.</span></i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"> </span></i>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd4GLOoXzygY6ej32TJD52F5ymP6e8EJxZhwXU-Q1-_DKFXwjwkKl5r2F-CIXMPLL9zCQTqkuUtMN-45ANW_USR7vypntXSnjPGLabEom0STvRaRV2T4mj010zfq5st1H0fl2C8lMQhj4/s1600/george4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A 1930s view of the breakfast room on the roof
of Dar Sebastian, which is walled with traditional </span></i><span style="font-size: small;"><i>mashrabiya panels</i></span><i><span style="font-size: small;">; the interior of the space featured yellow cushions, a departure from the house's largely black-and-white decor. Image by George Hoyningen-Huene.</span>
</i></td></tr>
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</style><span style="font-size: small;">A sleepy fishing village with a ravishing beach and houses as square and white as sugar cubes, Hammamet had come into fashion in the 1920s, some four decades after Tunisia had been taken over as a French protectorate. Its relative proximity to Italy, located little more than 100 miles northeast across the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Sicily">Strait of Sicily,</a> helped too. Hammamet—beautiful, unspoiled, exotic—became a station of the cross for thrill-seeking socialites, who snapped up local embroideries, dined on coucous, and bronzed themselves by the shore as jasmine perfumed the air. George Sebastian lost no time in establishing a foothold there, his first visit being in 1925. Soon he acquired some 42 acres of farmland on the Bay of Hammamet and began planning a winter residence. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">The construction date is unclear. One source
claims the house was built in 1927, another declares that 1932 is
the
correct completion date, and
yet another says construction began in 1923 and was finished seven years
later. The book <i>Maisons de Hammamet</i> states that ground was
broken in
1927 and construction completed in 1930. A correspondent, however, has
mentioned that a plan of the house indicates it was constructed in
stages, from the late 1920s through the early 1930s, and has provided a supporting image, which is reproduced below.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Originally called Dar el Kbira</span><span style="font-size: small;"> (The Big House) and now known as Dar Sebastian (Sebastian House), this North African pleasure dome was designed by George Sebastian, who plucked ideas from regional mosques, marabouts, and museums and combined them with the assistance of a local builder, Vincenzo Dicara, a native of Sicily. (Flora, presumably, picked up the tab as the house became ever larger.) </span><span style="font-size: small;">Low-slung,
snow-white, and dappled with delicate handcarved screens known as <i>mashrabiya,</i>
</span><span style="font-size: small;">the house won the approval of French <i>Vogue,</i> which called its style <i>"arabe modernisée"</i> and admired its <i>"lignes sobres et pures."</i> Le Corbusier
and Frank Lloyd Wright found the lean, uncomplicated structure worthy of abundant praise, with the latter
apparently describing it as "the most beautiful house I know," hailing the structure's arcaded swimming pool and air of fantasy.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3VCmVpxoXXMADsWGF9R0hpFm_TdueXIAvvDE1EjcCVNBEA-KWKr9MqyD9b2MSH7crO4YbDdNFkyfwVQC74x3zk_pG3-a2Kp6qKwqpm0wOpf0gNANlgwEFcClDbdMk63ti7xM4VBlOUbU/s1600/blueprint.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3VCmVpxoXXMADsWGF9R0hpFm_TdueXIAvvDE1EjcCVNBEA-KWKr9MqyD9b2MSH7crO4YbDdNFkyfwVQC74x3zk_pG3-a2Kp6qKwqpm0wOpf0gNANlgwEFcClDbdMk63ti7xM4VBlOUbU/s400/blueprint.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">Propped above the living room fireplace is displayed a framed plan of the Sebastian residence. The completed house is shown at center—a reverse L-shape, with the pool tucked into the right angle, the covered patio alongside, and, below that space, the long living room. Pictured at the right of this plan are three insets showing the various stages of construction, from top to bottom.</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbGsmr1JZvXrih6QaoVYk6Npw3_GyhrUEBIWDmv6xKZqdb4z0A36wCgQJgQJGjJnjewFk7MEjm1B8QNUmRp042b8VdxPdo7UU394nOYYPw56_zepeONRjrWWpvYWaJ18d-vQKkrn1rVE/s1600/houseexterior.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMbGsmr1JZvXrih6QaoVYk6Npw3_GyhrUEBIWDmv6xKZqdb4z0A36wCgQJgQJGjJnjewFk7MEjm1B8QNUmRp042b8VdxPdo7UU394nOYYPw56_zepeONRjrWWpvYWaJ18d-vQKkrn1rVE/s400/houseexterior.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Exterior of Dar Sebastian, showing the main entrance (left) and the bay-side loggia (center). On the roof of the house is a suite of rooms, including a lattice-walled breakfast room and a bath with a sunken marble tub. Image by George Hoyningen-Huene, French "Vogue," January 1935.</i></span></td></tr>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"The
house, perfect and requiring no ornament, is like a line that never breaks," couturière Elsa Schiaparelli, a part-time Hammamet resident, recalled in her enchanting autobiography, <i>Shocking Life.</i> "The architecture
is white and smooth—arcade after arcade, alleys of ever growing cypresses, and a
vast crystal blue swimming pool; a long black marble table, on banquet days veiled
with tuberoses, asphodels, and lilies of the sand." Indoors groin-vaulted rooms sheltered spare gatherings of sinewy furniture by Frank, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/04/garden/a-lost-designer-is-rediscovered.html">Eyre de Lanux,</a> and other
gilded <i>createurs</i> of the time, and here and there stood painted screens by George Sebastian's friend, Porter Woodruff, as did hassocks of red leather. A </span><span style="font-size: small;">mashrabiya-paneled<i> </i></span><span style="font-size: small;">room on the roof of the house—overlooking the bay and variously described as a breakfast room or a reading room—featured goldenrod-yellow cushions, while the ground-floor patio had a translucent ceiling made of squares of Lalique glass.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Flora
Sebastian at her winter residence in Tunisia, accompanied by a fox terrier. She
is seated in what appears to be a classic Roorkhee campaign chair, versions of
which are still retailed today, notably by <a href="http://www.melvillandmoon.com/roorkhee_instructions.html">Melvill &
Moon.</a> Image by George Hoyningen-Huene, French "Vogue," January 1935.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Everyone from Wallis Simpson to Jean Cocteau gladly made
the 40-mile trip from Tunis to Hammamet to bask in the Sebastians'
hospitality. </span><span style="font-size: small;">(Somerset Maugham and Greta Garbo came too, as did Cecil Beaton.) The photographer Horst, another Hammamet habitué, recalled being bedazzled by the Sebastians' "many handsome Berber servants." Among them, presumably, was the live-in cook, Sadok, a cleancut gentleman whose culinary expertise was the focus of an article published in American <i>Vogue</i> in August 1935; entitled "My Cook is an Arab," it extolls Sadok's skills, notably his way with couscous, chachouka (lightly fried eggs set atop chopped and cooked vegetables), and roast Tunisian partridge, which the article described as "remarkably plump ... with succulent white flesh, less gamy and more tender than the smaller [European] birds"). Meals at Dar Sebastian typically ended with fresh white or black figs from the garden, watermelon, or ice cream. The last-named confection was produced in a machine called an Economy Cream Maker, which the Sebastians proclaimed "a salvation ... for any one who lives in a country where the dairy resources are not of the best." The couple's enjoyment of Hammamet was so enriched by their cook that, they observed in the <i>Vogue</i> article, "should any strange circumstance ever draw us from Hammamet it would undoubtedly draw Sadok with it, so integral a part of our household has he become."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Prior to engaging Sadok, however, the Hammamet kitchen was manned by François Rysavy, the Czech-born chef of the Paris restaurant Au Danube Bleu, whom they hired shortly after their marriage. </span><span style="font-size: small;">"Two automobiles were waiting for us when we got off the
boat in Tunis," recalled </span><span style="font-size: small;">Rysavy—later to be
White House chef during the Eisenhower Administration—"</span><span style="font-size: small;">and Sebastian chose to drive his Renault convertible himself,
with his wife [who spoke no French] beside him, while I road grandly in the back seat of a
chauffeur-driven Mercedes ..." (The driver was likely </span><span style="font-size: small;">Sebastian's young Austrian valet and chauffeur, Franz Leitner.) </span><span style="font-size: small;">The dish Rysavy's new employers loved most was the French classic Poulet Sauté Chausseur, or sautéed chicken with mushrooms and tomato sauce. The dish was the main course of a meal he created for Wallis and Ernest Simpson when they stayed with the Sebastians in March 1932. (Knowing the couple was strapped for cash at the time, their host sent them round-trip tickets, leading Wallis to splurge on a new linen suit. Ernest and his fourth wife, Avril, would visit the Sebastian house again after their wedding in 1948.) Presumably it was served beside the swimming pool, at that great black marble refectory table that Schiaparelli so admired and which was adapted from a Jean-Michel Frank design.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">When the Sebastians' guests weren't dining well—Rysavy stayed in their employ for several years, and the couple sent him to London to learn English, so he could talk with Flora—they were being inspired culinarily. Mary Oliver, a childhood friend of Paul Bowles' and the wife of a British department-store heir, stayed frequently at Dar Sebastian and came up with Stuffed Peppers Hammamet, which made it into <i>The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.</i> The directions are as follows: "Boil barley in salted water until tender—it should absorb all the water. Mix with chopped onions and parsley. Fill green peppers with this mixture, cover with olive oil, and put in oven. Serve with sauce made of lemon juice and paprika." </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeYXWry84RC0y98mv8hwsGUMlm_-HReH8qY7Nuu8CHRSkdgKVbaYLrSf7f3Ml9nP3Edst1zzeyE1pJ1veEVx2Rb9-41NjhAq2XJYrNwmak3rDNV6FGLpYP-y6LbZ0fd34HwQ-liqx4aJA/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-07+at+3.46.54+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeYXWry84RC0y98mv8hwsGUMlm_-HReH8qY7Nuu8CHRSkdgKVbaYLrSf7f3Ml9nP3Edst1zzeyE1pJ1veEVx2Rb9-41NjhAq2XJYrNwmak3rDNV6FGLpYP-y6LbZ0fd34HwQ-liqx4aJA/s400/Screen+shot+2011-12-07+at+3.46.54+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The living
room, with chalk-white walls and vaulted ceiling and
white
marble floor. Armchairs designed by Eyre
de Lanux were upholstered in white wool and gathered around a vast
white divan
that was flanked by white-plaster lamps with molded swags. The other
dominant color
accent in the house was black, in the painted door frames and window grilles as well as some furnishings. Alongside the divan, as well as standing in the far corner, are Jean-Michel Frank's Ananas low tables. A leather hassock and a zebra-skin rug can be glimpsed at the photograph's lower right-hand corner. Image
by George
Hoyningen-Huene for French "Vogue," January 1935.</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoVfyVSMGPlcb7tDr9xLpTXehdIgVSklq0LvX9CI_6Jge9RKULRMW6EFTBt-oYy6PHBuM2lxJVtNqOYnJ0tTuJsydUvmtsAaKZwBdVFKw3em04EdGzhmggbnW59RBptoJ4NU4ayE3kYLE/s1600/picture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoVfyVSMGPlcb7tDr9xLpTXehdIgVSklq0LvX9CI_6Jge9RKULRMW6EFTBt-oYy6PHBuM2lxJVtNqOYnJ0tTuJsydUvmtsAaKZwBdVFKw3em04EdGzhmggbnW59RBptoJ4NU4ayE3kYLE/s400/picture.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>A pair of Eyre de Lanux armchairs. Multiples of the same model were purchased by Flora and George Sebastian for their Hammamet house. Designed around 1925, the chairs sold in 2007 at Christie's New York for $85,000.</i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijYiiyU9N6IZ2_ilsVpFLCvJS4C07jVqxU-98fqqoykqdZgBPggc0otnUH2a4-JDyHM0rBg638j__NadmZjNUoJuvlZl74ctK9iI8anFrB0ZBYrlSdeJk7DAMhttMBxUyBVLTr5MKnV_I/s1600/361564.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijYiiyU9N6IZ2_ilsVpFLCvJS4C07jVqxU-98fqqoykqdZgBPggc0otnUH2a4-JDyHM0rBg638j__NadmZjNUoJuvlZl74ctK9iI8anFrB0ZBYrlSdeJk7DAMhttMBxUyBVLTr5MKnV_I/s400/361564.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>A circa-1934 Ananas low table by Jean-Michel Frank. Several were used throughout Dar Sebastian, though in raw waxed oak. <a href="http://www.artnet.com/galleries/artwork_detail.asp?G=&gid=1078&which=&ViewArtistBy=&aid=172392&wid=425414420&source=artist&rta=http://www.artnet.com">Offered by Galerie Vallois, Paris. Image from Artnet.com.</a></i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoyVyvt92LdfkE56QYIumhP-9lHDS-pb8BguZLF9c23-4v7boPXUNilDSn-DcPh0WHC5Tb6M7YIyTQJ5btAWXuXzGxuYoeH-d9aZ6siDQy4sAbUxrs7hHtdG8rUQi2W2YHZ-HOBbEkHcs/s1600/IMG_3867.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoyVyvt92LdfkE56QYIumhP-9lHDS-pb8BguZLF9c23-4v7boPXUNilDSn-DcPh0WHC5Tb6M7YIyTQJ5btAWXuXzGxuYoeH-d9aZ6siDQy4sAbUxrs7hHtdG8rUQi2W2YHZ-HOBbEkHcs/s400/IMG_3867.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The living room of Dar Sebastian today. The doors at the left lead to the pool; the doors at the center open to the patio, and the door at right leads to the bay-side loggia. Image from
<a href="http://tunisia.com./">Tunisia.com.</a>
</i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWEhWZ59haC1wZOyqmRK0c-dqg3p4kPFRUHPH-koEnHoB_6MqwuPdp9sgsskPKpYDtBNY6q4_fqXB6FOTP_0geNthT_iuuKBVX-hiUKQLpiGmOSCWqkN5H6qgDxFh4Jj4om15W_9WdmU/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-12-07+at+3.21.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWEhWZ59haC1wZOyqmRK0c-dqg3p4kPFRUHPH-koEnHoB_6MqwuPdp9sgsskPKpYDtBNY6q4_fqXB6FOTP_0geNthT_iuuKBVX-hiUKQLpiGmOSCWqkN5H6qgDxFh4Jj4om15W_9WdmU/s400/Screen+shot+2011-12-07+at+3.21.18+PM.png" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">The patio, strewn with zebra hides and furnished with leather hassocks, that connects the living room with the pool area. The glass for the ceiling reportedly was manufactured by Lalique. Image by George Hoyningen-Huene, French "Vogue," January 1935.</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEa-yrY0rV8zDAxpRF8x_BHqZ9Q3zHLEOEhZiqzV-Dd4hX_JaKAhu8K1d5WUdd1t6c35qxMuuvMiYLQ7g0nFOUE3ZX7MNzwKwEXE3OSKPUi9fAspjuMryi6mxmNTxMJF2LLLFzXDQOh9U/s1600/casa-george-sebastian-002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEa-yrY0rV8zDAxpRF8x_BHqZ9Q3zHLEOEhZiqzV-Dd4hX_JaKAhu8K1d5WUdd1t6c35qxMuuvMiYLQ7g0nFOUE3ZX7MNzwKwEXE3OSKPUi9fAspjuMryi6mxmNTxMJF2LLLFzXDQOh9U/s320/casa-george-sebastian-002.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i>The patio as seen today. The column-and-arch sequences throughout the house were adapted from similar architectural details at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque_of_Uqba">Great Mosque of Sidi-Uqba</a> in Kairouan, Tunisia. Image from <a href="http://www.sejurtunisia.ro/obiective-turistice/casa-george-sebastian.php">Sejurtunisia.ro.</a></i></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">A scan of a Porter Woodruff illustration of the patio at Dar Sebastian. The work, presumably executed in the 1930s, is used courtesy of a Stifel family member.</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i>A bronze bust of George Sebastian, displayed in the patio; it has since been <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/garr8/5132777044/">hideously polished.</a> Image from the blog <a href="http://haihuiprintunisia.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/dar-sebastian-sau-un-roman-in-tunisia/">Hai-hui prin Tunisia.</a></i></span> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Though the house is almost entirely empty now, being used as a gallery and for receptions, a handful of original furnishings remain on the premises. There are several low oak <a href="http://www.artnet.com/galleries/artwork_detail.asp?G=&gid=1078&which=&ViewArtistBy=&aid=172392&wid=425414420&source=artist&rta=http://www.artnet.com">Ananas cocktail tables</a> by Frank, which when I last saw them were sway-backed by exposure to the elements. (I had the good fortune to spend a brief but fruitful
sojourn in Hammamet more than a decade ago, but that’s another story.) </span><span style="font-size: small;">That weighty poolside dining table remains in place too. Other</span><span style="font-size: small;"> Frank designs were purchased for the house too,
including an upholstered stool paired with a dressing table (both pieces
have vanished).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">The</span><span style="font-size: small;"> most extraordinary space is a ground-floor suite whose bath is centered on a sunken marble tub inspired by a sixth-century
Paleo-Christian baptistry. Some observers have examined the tub's shape and size—four curved lobes, each with steps that could also serve as seats—and believed it to be a communal hot tub, a sort of hammam, where the occupants could submerge
themselves in steaming water. It seems far more likely that the bath and adjoining bedroom and dressing room were the domain of Flora Sebastian (other bedrooms are located around the ground-floor patio). Perhaps the unusual tub and the mirrored double doors surrounding it are merely her husband's essay in Hollywood-meets-North-Africa extravagance, created for the American heiress who made it all possible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Upstairs, on the roof, is another master suite, </span><span style="font-size: small;">presumably George's, overlooking the Bay
of Hammamet. Paved with black marble, it is comprised of a large dressing room (its mirror-clad wardrobes and three-panel cheval glass are still in situ); a small bath; a bedroom with a six-door low mirrored cabinet stretching from one wall to another;
and the previously mentioned lattice-walled space, used either as a breakfast room or a reading room.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A black-marble staircase leads to the rooftop master suite.</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">A groin vault crowns the rooftop bedroom; the marble-framed arch on the right leads to a small bath and the latticework room beyond, while the arch to the left opens to a mirrored dressing room. Just visible, in the lower right-hand corner, is the room's fireplace.</span></i></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;">The fireplace in the second-floor bedroom; note the carved marble frame of the door to the bath.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>The uncrowned king of Hammamet, George Sebastian,
dressed in a djellaba, circa 1940.</i></span></div>
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<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: small;">In the ground-floor master suite, the furniture—here
an upholstered stool, presumably by Jean-Michel Frank, and dressing table—was sheathed in pale parchment set off by a colorful striped runner. The door frame, like much of the woodwork and wrought iron used in Dar Sebastian, is painted black.</span>
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<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>One of Dar Sebastian's bedrooms, as seen today. Image from <a href="http://tunisia.com./">Tunisia.com.</a></i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i>The extraordinary sunken marble tub in the ground-floor suite of Dar Sebastian; the bidet and sink are concealed behind the mirrored doors. The tub's shape interprets that of a sixth-century
Paleo-Christian mosaic baptistry that is one of the treasures of the <a href="http://www.museedebardo-tunisie.tn/test/presentation.php">Bardo National Museum in Tunis.</a></i></span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i>The marble-tiled swimming pool that occupies one wing of
the house is bordered by arcades, distinguished by horseshoe arches supported by squat marble arches. Image by David Massey from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/MAISONS-HAMMAMET-Ashraf-Massey-Azzouz/dp/9973755006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323362519&sr=1-1">"Maisons de Hammamet" (Dar Ashraf Editions, 1988).</a></i></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i> </i></span>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><i>A closeup of the poolside dining table, made of black marble
after the Ananas design by Jean-Michel Frank. The legs are fashioned of individual
segments of marble. Standing on the table is a glass-and-wrought-iron candelabra.</i></span>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The Sebastians spent their marriage in glamorous transit, flitting between New York City, Wheeling, Paris, London, and Hammamet, with jaunts
to Italy, Tahiti, Austria, China, and points beyond. The union, however, did not last, ending in divorce after Flora returned to
the United States in the fall of 1936. The following year, in Paris, she took her third matrimonial
plunge, marrying another younger foreigner, the fancifully named Eric Cipriani Dunstan,
a British film critic and journalist known as the Golden Voice of Radio; Mrs Dunstan died in 1939, leaving her widower quite comfortably provided for. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">George Sebastian,
on the other hand, soldiered on at Dar Sebastian. The globetrotting Roumanian was the undisputed leader of Tunisia's seasonal array of American and European socialites and expats, a louche, pleasure-seeking crowd that Maggie Davis, in her 2001 novel <i>Rommel's Gold,</i> described as a
"collection of international oddities settled down on the African shore to
do some rather elaborate sinning." Davis's acid portrait of a fictional Roumanian artist cum grand seigneur named Sebastian Ghrika (obviously modeled on George Sebastian) is chilling. Not only did he "spend his time sucking up to the Germans" during the Nazi occupation of Tunisia, one character, clearly based on Sebastian's neighbor Jean Henson, offers this scathing assessment of the master of Dar Sebastian:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>"[Ghrika] knew damned well what he was doing, he was only
spending [his wife] Essie's money like water, that was all. Fortunately
the old fart had taste. Except toward the last, when he was living in
one room with all those nasty little boys. They used to pee in the
courtyard fountain instead of using the john. Made the whole house
stink."</i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i></i></span></blockquote>
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<tr style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Dar Sebastian's kitchen, where the Sebastians' cook, Sadok, and chef, François Rysavy, reigned. The doors and cabinets are painted white
and decorated with nail heads in Tunisian fashion. The metal sconces are original to the house, as are the stove and refrigerator. Image from <a href="http://tunisia.com./">Tunisia.com.</a></i>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Documents suggest Sebastian's wartime life was quite a bit less collaborationist, however. Though Dar Sebastian was requisitioned during Nazi Germany's Africa campaign, and General Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, spent a few nights there, Sebastian had already absented the premises. He reportedly fled to Monterey, California, in 1939, upon the declaration of war, and did not return to Hammamet until 1946. Presumably some damage was done, because after
the war, Sebastian "struggl[ed] to restore his villa to
its avant-guerre perfection," according to an article published in 1947 in <i>Town & Country.</i> At some point he was joined by Porter Woodruff, who died of cancer in October 1959 at the house and in whose lush gardens he was buried.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Three years later Sebastian sold the house of his dreams to
the Tunisian government, which appointed him an adviser on historic restorations and turned Dar Sebastian into a cultural center. He died in Washington, D.C., on 9 March 1974, at age 77, the victim of kidney cancer. His will specified that his ashes be scattered at Dar Sebastian, as they duly were.</span></div>An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-10355057126303855442011-12-06T20:02:00.001-05:002011-12-06T20:07:51.992-05:00Well Said: Daisy Fellowes<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj32RYuJDFsx2sLdWG-tRkwMPfwPHepn8J5MUhyphenhyphen0lwCmi2S_Y2mvO_DhE2_lLq3QvknunqgXtVCFf0ipB6fSBkg1KrSzd7l1Nf1U2l979XyikeUnC3gA64a-YFzSddUmsPYnMnZ6_CD1Ks/s1600/mw71735.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj32RYuJDFsx2sLdWG-tRkwMPfwPHepn8J5MUhyphenhyphen0lwCmi2S_Y2mvO_DhE2_lLq3QvknunqgXtVCFf0ipB6fSBkg1KrSzd7l1Nf1U2l979XyikeUnC3gA64a-YFzSddUmsPYnMnZ6_CD1Ks/s400/mw71735.jpg" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Daisy Fellowes in a 1930s photograph by Cecil Beaton.</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"Either a thing is a disappointment or it is not."</b></span><br />
<br />
So said Franco-American fashion icon and novelist Marguerite "Daisy" Fellowes (1890—1962), daughter of the 3rd Duc Decazes and Glücksberg, a granddaughter of Singer sewing-machine magnate Isaac Singer, muse to fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and mistress of many.An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-39845284376066003372011-11-30T11:53:00.001-05:002011-11-30T12:00:48.262-05:00Well Said: Lesley Blanch<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"The placing of a desk, or a bed, or the choice of a chintz may prove more revealing [of a person] than a documented study."</b></span><br />
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So observed British writer <a href="http://www.lesleyblanch.com/">Lesley Blanch</a> (1904-2007) in <i>Pavilions of the Heart: The Four Walls of Love</i> (Putnam, 1974).An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111886388324003324.post-66555447583690060462011-11-28T10:03:00.001-05:002011-11-28T10:06:38.900-05:00Well Said: Nancy Mitford<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSBkUowX00x6PbsrZpuJpXlkli2qto8uClxpzQttNBIXTcLa7aAOvgbt1tTMzvoNXAFGKPZkbA4txBvpb5gYUyIFxIA4EtgYVkz9UpssqbLiqQSyhRN0JK63VM3wIgxAEfqXZJK1R4exk/s1600/nancy%252Bmitford%252B1935%252Bbassano.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSBkUowX00x6PbsrZpuJpXlkli2qto8uClxpzQttNBIXTcLa7aAOvgbt1tTMzvoNXAFGKPZkbA4txBvpb5gYUyIFxIA4EtgYVkz9UpssqbLiqQSyhRN0JK63VM3wIgxAEfqXZJK1R4exk/s1600/nancy%252Bmitford%252B1935%252Bbassano.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Hon. Nancy Freeman-Mitford, 1935, in a photograph by Bassano.</i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"Good clothes are a matter of health."</b></span><br />
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<br />
So said Nancy Mitford (1904—1973), British author and Christian Dior devotée.An Aesthete's Lamenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09620941811191294750noreply@blogger.com10