Outreach Program

A woven fabric used in the London flat of Pauline de Rothschild. Private collection.

Does anybody out there have any idea what company manufactured this pretty stuff, as the U set calls fabric or material?* And if it is still produced?

Woven with chinoiserie motifs such as lanterns and chrysanthemum-like blooms, it was used to drape the canopy bed in Pauline de Rothschild's London flat, in the early 1970s. She apparently brought the fabric to this much admired project, not her interior decorator John Fowler. Its original source remains, thus far, unknown.

Per the baroness's idiosyncratic directive, the graphic black-and-silver fabric, which has a subtle moiré pattern worked into the background, was used on the reverse. She preferred that side's more subtle, silver-and-black colorway (see below).

Rothschild preferred the paler reverse of the fabric. Private collection.

* When Princess Margaret's husband, Lord Snowdon, born a commoner, told her how much he hated the material used for the dress she was wearing, the royal snapped, witheringly, "We call it 'stuff'."

Q & A: Hanut Singh

Jewelry designer Hanut Singh, at home in New Delhi, India.

One’s heritage can often be one’s destiny. Soldiers beget soldiers, lawyers follow in parents' footsteps, and actors, artists, and writers often have similarly creative offspring. In the case of Hanut Singh, however, taking up the family trade was not an option.

His paternal great-grandfather, Major General Sir Jagatjit Singh, Maharajah of Kapurthala—he lived in a circa-1900 replica of Versailles—lost his princely powers in 1947, along with his fellow subcontinental sovereigns, following the implementation of the Indian Independence Act. As a result the New Delhi-based Singh has no crown, but that doesn’t mean he can’t design one. Inspired by the Aluwalia dynasty’s famous collection of antique and modern jewels, which includes fascinating adornments commissioned from Cartier in the 1920s and ‘30s by one of Singh’s grandmothers, the ebullient entrepreneur spends his days creating gem-studded rings, bracelets, and other personal ornaments donned by women such as Padma Lakshmi and Beyoncé.

Singh, who is 38, decided eight years ago that jewelry was his calling and walked away from a career as a well-known fashion writer and magazine editor. “I write quickly and I write well, but it never fueled my creative passions,” the alumnus of New York City's Hunter College explains. “It was just a job-job.” Recently, in a telephone interview from his home, Singh talked to me about his heritage, his designs, and why he considers "bling" to be a dirty word.

Necklace with a ruby and diamond scimitar pendant. The prices for the jewels shown in this post are available upon request. To see more of Singh's designs, go to the designer's website, hanutsingh.com.

Q: Among India’s princely families, the royal family of Kapurthala seems to have been especially passionate about jewels and commissioned hundreds of amazing pieces. One of your great-grandfather's wives, a Spanish dancer, owned an incredible Art Deco emerald necklace studded with diamonds once worn by one of her husband's elephants; it sold at Christie's London in 2007. And one of the that maharajah's turban clips made by Cartier had more than 3,000 diamonds and pearls.

A: We have always had beautiful jewels—not just giant ceremonial pieces, but everyday things commissioned in the ‘20s and ‘30s by my father’s parents, Sita Devi and Karam of Kapurthala, who were big clients of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. And my great-grandfather, the maharajah, was very fond of Boucheron and Cartier too. My mother and sister always talk about what they’re going to wear for the day or to a party. Jewelry has always been a very vibrant topic around the house.

Cat's-eye ring with pavé diamonds.

Q: Do you design jewels for family members?

A: I have a very glamorous sister and mother and many cousins, so I make things for them too. My astrologer told me I needed to wear diamonds, so I designed some organic rings and a bracelet for myself. 

Maharajkumari Sita Devi of Kapurthala, Singh's maternal grandmother, in a silken gown and masses of diamonds, in the 1930s. Image courtesy of Hanut Singh.

Q: Your grandmother Princess Karam of Kapurthala was an international sensation in the ‘20s and ‘30s—photographed by Cecil Beaton, dressed by Mainbocher, and bejeweled by Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. Dubbed a “secular goddess” by Vogue and one of the world’s best-dressed women by Look, she must have been an enormous influence on your career.

A: My grandmother wouldn’t have dreamed of getting dressed without jewels, even if she merely planned to stay at home. She had incredible sugar-loaf diamond rings, lovely pearls, beautiful diamond bracelets, and amazing sapphires. Cartier made her an Indian-modern suite and wonderful tutti-frutti brooches. It was a great visual education, to see works by the masters worn by the woman they had been designed for.

Another portrait of Singh's paternal grandmother, Sita Devi (1915—2002), who was a daughter of the Raja of Kahipur. She married Maharajkumar Karimjit Singh of Kapurthala in 1928, when she was 13. The couple had two sons, one born in 1944, the other in 1947. Image courtesy of Hanut Singh.

Q: What was your grandmother like?

A: She was a total spark but also the most compassionate person I’ve met or encountered in my life. And hugely flattering. She would meet someone and right away would say, “Oh, young man, you are so handsome! You must be an actor!” Of course he probably wasn’t, but she cast that kind of spell. She was well read and traveled all over the world and could talk about history and literature, as well as more glamorous things. One of her best friends was Barbara Hutton, who became my father’s godmother. She took jewels very seriously too.

Earrings of abalone and diamonds.

Q: How did you get started in this field?

A: I wasn’t trained in jewelry design at all. For some years I was an editor of a fashion magazine, running the offices, writing articles. But it never fueled my creative passions. So about eight years ago I borrowed money from my family and decided to create a collection of jewels, made from abalone and pearls. God was good to me, because it sold out entirely, and I was able to repay the loan. That first show opened up lots of avenues.

Earrings of mother of pearl, rubies, and diamonds.

Q: Your family's collection of jewels has obviously been an inspiration in your work.

A: Traditionally most of the jewelry was actually worn by men, meaning the big ceremonial pieces, like my great-grandfather's huge emerald-and-diamond turban ornament and massive ropes of pearls. Last year I inherited a fantastic Golconda-diamond ring that is mentioned in a book about Cartier. In early 20th century, the maharajahs started going to Paris and ordering jewels for themselves and their wives. My grandfather Karam would take loose stones to his appointments at Cartier—emeralds, rubies, Kashmir sapphires, Golconda diamonds—and the designers would flip out. My grandmother told me that Monsieur Cartier was flabbergasted. The patronage of the maharajahs was the reason French jewelry firms, especially Cartier, began producing Indian-inspired designs for the Western market, like the tutti-frutti pieces inspired by old Indian jewels that mixed a multitude of colored stones together.

Ruby ring with pavé diamonds.

Q: One of my favorite aspects of your designs is the colors, especially how you combine delicately shaded gems with darker, more rugged ones. What stones do you find inspiring right now?

A: I’m super-excited by chalcedony, a milky blue semiprecious stone that was a favorite of the Duchess of Windsor; she had an incredible chalcedony necklace and matching earrings made for her in the ‘30s by Suzanne Belperron. I love the color and like combining it with black-diamond beads and mandarin sapphires, which are orange. Carved rubies, which is a Moghul technique of literally carving patterns into the surface of the stone, is another favorite of mine. I just finished a very simple hexagonal carved-ruby pendant, stark and architectural, that weighs 180 carats.

Earrings of quartz, prehnite, and diamonds.

Principessa earrings of morganite and diamonds.

Q: Several of your recent works incorporate morganite, which I’d never heard of and am now crazy about.

A: I love morganite! It is a stone that reminds me of colored diamonds from the 17^th century, which often have a pinky-amber cast like cognac.

A ring of rock crystal with rubies and diamonds, from Singh's latest collection.

Q: In your new collection, however, color is confined largely to accents.

A: My new collection is based around rock crystal. I found some beautiful old stones and have been turning them into sculptural rings and pendants decorated with rubies filed into rectangles.

Rubies carved with images of the god Ganesh highlight a pair of earrings accented with diamonds and black enamel.

Q: The style of the new collection is bold but not overwhelming. Even your bigger pieces tend have a delicate appearance.

A: The jewelry world has gone so bling, which is a word I hate. Lots of people want jewels that are showy and flashy, with large stones, which isn’t my style at all. My work has always been delicate; I don’t know why. It’s just my aesthetic bent. Perhaps it's because I think delicate pieces are easier to wear, more versatile. I want to make things that are slightly Indian in feeling but that feel like today, or an amalgamation of what’s happening now with taste of the 1930s, the period when so many of my grandmother’s jewels were made.

Goth-style earrings with carved black-onyx skulls, diamonds, pearls, and quartz.

Q: There’s an edginess, though, in some of your works, like the onyx-and-diamond skull earrings.

A: I can’t be super-crazy avant-garde, though, because nobody will buy the pieces. At the end of the day people don’t want to wear experimental things. Most of my pieces don’t scream. You have to look at them up close, and then the interest kick in. Which is nice, because I’m not good at selling myself. I’m sort of bashful and let the jewels do the talking.


To see more of Hanut Singh's work and for contact information, go the designer's website, hanutsingh.com.

Well Said: Gladys Duchess of Marlborough

Gladys Deacon, later Duchess of Marlborough, in a portrait by Paul-César Helleu.

"If you want to do something, don’t tell other people about it, just do it. Other people will always find a reason to try and prevent you."

So said Gladys Duchess of Marlborough (1881—1977), American heiress, intellectual, adventuress, and celebrated beauty.

SOURCE: Hugo Vickers, "An Eccentric Duchess," New York Social Diary, 23 February 2011.

Well Said: Gina Lollobrigida

 

"What is the use of being beautiful, if you have to buy your own emeralds?"

So said actress Gina Lollobrigida (born 1927), after being complimented by Moroccan diplomat Taibi Benhima at a dinner party in New York City in 1965.

SOURCE: Gladys Wilson, The Duchess Pini di San Miniato, Memoirs of a Canadian Duchess (Montréal: P.D.S.M. Editor, 1986), page 110.

Well Said: Pablo Picasso

Artist Pablo Picasso in his studio. Image from World Art.

"There are chemists who spend their whole lives trying to find out what's in a lump of sugar. I want to know one thing: What is color?"

So said Pablo Picasso (1881—1973), in a conversation with German writer Ernst Jünger in the 1940s.

SOURCE: Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here (Penguin, 1989), page 110

The Eyes Have It

British artist Colin Gill's 1928 depictions of the bright blue eyes of Gladys Duchess of Marlborough (née Gladys Deacon) stare down from the North Portico of her former country house, Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The Marlborough seat is hosting an exhibition about the duchess through 25 March 2011. Image courtesy of Blenheim Palace.

History is a curious thing. Scandals become footnotes, emotional bruises fade, and people that once commanded international headlines recede into anonymity. Such an individual was the American beauty Gladys Marie Deacon (1881—1977). But through 25 March 2011, visitors to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, where she briefly but memorably reigned as Duchess of Marlborough in the 1920s and 1930s, have an opportunity to step back in time and catch a fleeting glimpse of a lady the Anglo-American Member of Parliament Chips Channon called “the world’s most beautiful woman, the toast of Paris, the love of Proust, the belle amie of Anatole France.”

The Long Library at Blenheim, site of the exhibition "Gladys Deacon: An Eccentric Duchess."

Curated by the bestselling British biographer Hugo Vickers and arranged from end to end of Blenheim’s ravishing Long Library, “Gladys Deacon: An Eccentric Duchess” is an intimate exhibition of photographs, art, and fascinating ephemera, among them a lock of golden hair, a Jacob Epstein bust, suitcases, and Gladys’s personal photograph albums. Last night was the show’s gala opening, and Mr Vickers will be giving a lecture about Gladys and her rackety life at Blenheim on 2 March. To purchase tickets online, go to Blenheim Palace's website.

Gladys Deacon, her beauty celebrated, in a photograph by Lafayette. Courtesy of Hugo Vickers.

 

“It’s quite an emotional story, and my involvement with it is emotional as well,” Vickers told me in a telephone interview on Sunday. “When I was 16 years old, if somebody had asked me who I would have most liked to meet, it would not have been Winston Churchill but Gladys Deacon, the fascinating woman who married his cousin.” Vickers befriended the Duchess of Marlborough when he was 23 and spent two years visiting the aged aristocrat, then in her 90s and confined to a psychiatric hospital, feeble rather than insane. The more than 60 interviews that resulted ended up as the foundation of Vickers’s first book, Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough; it was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1979, two years after its subject’s death.
 

Gladys Deacon, age 27, as painted in 1908 by Giovanni Boldini. The painting is in a private collection.

In her heyday Gladys Deacon (the name was pronounced GLAY-duz) was an A-list personality, as renowned for her unsettling beauty—especially those great, staring, crystal-blue eyes—as for her impressive intellect. Writers, musicians, and politicians were in her thrall, as were several dukes and princes. The German kaiser’s eldest son fell head over heels for her though his father put an end to that infatuation; the dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou compared her beauty to that of an archangel. The self-absorbed Gladys adored being adored, though she seems to have loved no one. Art scholar Bernard Berenson, who met Gladys when she was 17, bitterly wrote of his disappointment in what he perceived as her capriciousness. "I decided to stop seeing Gladys Deacon when I convinced myself that in human relationships she offered nothing but an offensive arbitrariness, pursuing people in a flattering and ensnaring fashion, only so as to be able to break it off with them noisily when the fancy struck her."

Gladys Deacon, daughter of Florence Baldwin and Edward Parker Deacon, as a young girl. Courtesy of Hugo Vickers.

Berenson's wife, Mary, recorded her mixed impressions of the intriguing American, then 20 and taking Italy by storm. “The event of this month has been the reappearance of the radiant Gladys Deacon, so beautiful, so brilliant with her soft elixir ways, her hard clear youthful logic, her gaminerie, her lively imagination, her moods, her daring. It would take volumes to describe her and I don’t feel up to it. … Beautiful, cruel, selfish, untrained. What will become of her?”

"Gladys Deacon," a 1917 bust by Jacob Epstein. It is in the collection of The Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

What became of the fascinating Miss Deacon is the stuff of “Gladys Deacon: An Eccentric Duchess,” which Vickers says should really be called “Gladys Deacon: The Lost Years.” (It includes the lady's numerous scrapbooks, which have never been seen before and are in Vickers's possession.) At the age of 40, on 25 June 1921, she married her lover Charles Spencer-Churchill, ninth duke of Marlborough, following the end of his marriage to her close friend the American railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. (A morose and irritable man, the duke was perversely called Sunny, a nickname derived from his courtesy title, Earl of Sunderland.) The newlyweds soon realized the union was a mistake—Sunny's only passionate relationship was with Blenheim, to whose survival he was devoted at all costs. Still the duke honored her presence in his life. A pair of long-necked lead sphinxes, cast in Gladys’s image in 1930 by W. Ward Willis, grace the grounds of the palace.

A detail of one of Gladys Marlborough's eyes, as painted on the ceiling of the North Portico of Blenheim by British artist Colin Gill. Image courtesy of Blenheim Palace.

Two years earlier artist Colin Gill (1892—1940) painted gigantic evocations of her famous blue eyes on the ceiling of the portico; the brown ones accompanying them, in some sort of inside joke, are suspected to be Consuelo's but could just as well have been the duke's. Leaks and weather largely destroyed those surreal orbs and the flashing gilded rays surrounding them, but thanks to the present duke, Gladys’s step-grandson, Gill’s distinctive work was restored to its original glory a few years ago.

Gladys Deacon and Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough on their wedding day, 25 June 1921. The ceremony took place at the Paris home of her artist cousin Eugene Higgins and was described by one of the guests, Linda (Mrs. Cole) Porter as "the most incredibly vulgar performance I have ever witnessed." Others witnessing the nuptials were the interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe and several crowned heads, including a maharajah.

In Gladys Marlborough, the blueblooded world of Edith Wharton intersected with modern tabloid tawdriness. Her parents’ tempestuous marriage ended when her father, Edward Parker Deacon, murdered her mother’s French lover and then went insane. Obsessed with her Greek-statue good looks, Gladys, at age 22, had an enterprising surgeon inject melted wax into the bridge of her nose in an effort to create a perfectly straight line from forehead to nostrils. The freakish procedure worked for a while; eventually, however, the wax migrated, settling in her cheeks and along her jawline, somewhat altering a beauty recorded by Rodin, Degas, Boldini, Epstein, and other leading artists. Her enormous aquamarine eyes, however, remained intact, as did that inquisitive mind.

Gladys Marie Deacon, in a passport photograph taken in 1918.

Unfortunately the duke didn’t appreciate his wife's mental acumen or her increasingly odd behavior. Nor did he happily accept her many Blenheim spaniels, which left their mark, literally, in the state rooms of his ancestral seat. Ultimately a union that began in mutual if misjudged admiration turned to implacable hatred. “Watch Sunny—he hates her guts—great sport!” Winston Churchill's son, Randolph, chortled on a visit to Blenheim in the early 1930s, as Gladys prepared to enter the room. “She left Blenheim under pretty gruesome circumstances,” Vickers says. When Gladys refused to find other accommodations as her marriage disintegrated, the duke abandoned her and ordered Blenheim's gas and electricity cut off. When she took refuge at their London mansion, he did the same thing. (Friends smuggled in a portable stove so she could cook.) Those actions didn’t dislodge the recalcitrant duchess either, so he had her evicted. Divorce proceedings followed; unfortunately the duke died in 1934 before the legal papers could be finalized. And with that, Gladys Marlborough, Europe's golden girl, vanished into the English countryside—growing older, more reclusive, even adopting an alias to avoid detection. Eventually, in the 1960s, she was committed to an institution. Gladys apparently didn't put up much of a fight as she was removed from the cottage she called home. As the elderly duchess told Vickers on one of his visits, “Sometimes something happens that is so awful that it cuts you off and after that you don’t care.”

Gladys Duchess of Marlborough, died in 1977 at the age of 96. And now, at least through the end of next month, she’s back home.

The Duchess of Marlborough, snapping a self-portrait, in 1928. Image courtesy of Hugo Vickers.