Darling Nicky

How easy it is to forget about preparing a blog post when you're reading Nicky Haslam's new memoir Redeeming Features. Forget delving into my design archives and actually researching something scholarly. I've only been interested in reading about things that are a bit more prurient.

I had anxiously awaited my copy because I knew it would be provocative. Actually, I ordered both Redeeming Features and The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, but I passed the Queen Mum along to my mum because I wanted to read the book with the naughty bits first. In the first three chapters alone, Haslam has gained more, um, experience than most garner in a lifetime and has spent the weekend with Tallulah Bankhead- all this by the time he was a young teenager. Hmmm....

So, while I continue to read about who did what with whom and where, I leave you with a few photos of Haslam's work from his previous tome Sheer Opulence.


The salon in a New Orleans home designed by Haslam. The design of the magnolias on both the wallpaper and armchair fabric was taken from a hunting schloss. Haslam lacquered corrugated paper and hung it beneath the room's chair rail.


The entrance hall in a London mansion apartment. Haslam says that he got the idea to drape the stairwell in white fabric from Christian Dior's Paris home.


A London dining room. The wallpaper is actually "cheap" textured paper that Haslam had silvered and hand painted.


Haslam installed the overscaled columns and pillars in this London dining room. What I find most interesting is the chinoiserie panel that can be seen in the mirror. It was inspired by the Chinese Palace at Oranienbaum (more on that this week) and was made of silver mica paper made to look like beadwork.


The study in Haslam's former London apartment. The wallpaper was painted by George Oakes, the famed decorative artist who worked with John Fowler. Can you imagine anything more comfortable than curling up in this room and reading a book? Perhaps a book like "Redeeming Features"?

(All photos with the exception of the image at top from Sheer Opulence)