Winterthur's Chinese Parlor

Of the many images that I have filed away in my head, two images in particular have made the greatest impressions on me: those of the Chinese Parlor at Winterthur. Specifically, detail photos of the Chinese Parlor's magnificent Chinese paper mingling with damask furnishings.

Found for Henry Francis du Pont by Nancy McClelland, the parlor's superb Chinese paper needs no decorative assistance, but when photographed partnered with that yellow damask, camelback sofa, seen above, or those vivacious green damask curtains, below, the paper appears to brim with color and vibrancy.  And to the series I can now add a third image, which I recently found in American Elegance: Classic and Contemporary Menus from Celebrated Hosts and Hostesses: a table set for an imagined "Before the Theater" dinner, which was conceived by Mario Buatta.  Placed in the Chinese Parlor with a green damask sofa and chair providing seating, the setting seems to blur the line between decoration and reality.  It's as if this elegant dinner is but one of the paper's myriad scenes, playing out as Chinese figures merrily go about their business in the background.

By the way, if you're wondering why some photos show yellow damask while others capture green versions, it has to do with the seasons.  The room's curtains and slipcovers are changed out seasonally, with some seasons ushering in yellow damask or silk taffeta, while other seasons are heralded by the color green.

Image #1: House & Garden, October 2002, Simon Watson photographer; #2: House & Garden's Complete Guide to Interior Decoration, 1960; #3: American Elegance.

The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum

Spring usually heralds a slew of design-related events and decorators showhouses, and there is one upcoming event in which I think many of you will be most interested.  The 16th annual Charleston Art & Antiques Forum will take place in, yes, Charleston from March 13-17.  The event is one of this country's premier fine and decorative arts forums, always boasting a stellar line-up of art experts and historians.  This year's event is no exception.

With its theme of "A Grand Tour: Trade Winds of Influence", the forum will explore how the grand tour of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries influenced the decorative arts of both Europe and America.  Dame Rosalind Savill, Director Emeritus of the Wallace Collection in London, will be this year's keynote speaker, and her lecture is titled, "Twenty Years with French Decorative Arts".  (This lecture should be especially interesting to those Francophiles.)  Other speakers include experts from such august organizations as Winterthur, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts.  The bonus to the event is that J. Thomas Savage, Director of Museum Affairs at Winterthur, will be hosting and moderating the forum.  Those of you who know Tom- and I know that's quite a few of you- are familiar with his charm and ebullience, both of which guarantee an interesting time!

Rosalind Savill

J. Thomas Savage


While all of the lectures look intriguing, there are three in particular that I think many of you will find inviting. Fiona Heyward of Oxford, England will speak on "Life at Haseley Court and Its Gardens: The Legacy of Nancy Lancaster".  Heyward is certainly qualified to lecture on Haseley Court considering that she and her husband are the current owners of this magnificent house, once the home of the great designer, Nancy Lancaster.  For some time, Fiona and her family lived across the courtyard from Lancaster, who spent her final years residing in the Coach House of Haseley Court.

Fiona Heyward

The dignified looking Haseley Court

The Chess topiary garden at Haseley Court. According to Fiona, it was planted in 1850 and transformed into its present design at the turn of last century.


Fiona kindly answered a few of my questions about life and gardening at Haseley Court, both of which I can only assume are magical.  Fiona has fond memories of Lancaster, who, according to the homeowner, never interfered nor criticized any changes made to the house or gardens under the new owners. (Fiona noted that much of Lancaster's work on the house's interiors had already been dismantled by previous owners, with the Chapel Room and Tobacco Room remaining intact.)  The gardens, it seems, are just as beloved to Fiona as they were to Lancaster.  Although the garden's layout remains the same, Fiona has tweaked plantings just a bit.  And in what can only be described as music to a gardener's ears, Lancaster's gardening advice to Fiona still guides her today: a garden needs both formal and informal plantings and should not look too immaculate!

There were other interesting tidbits that I gleaned from Fiona, but I don't want give away her entire talk.  I think that Fiona's lecture will be one not to miss!

And the other two lectures not to miss?  Architect Ralph Harvard, whose work is seen often in both magazines and on design blogs, will present a talk on the architectonic furniture of the Eastern Shore of Virginia.  I'm including a few photos of this furniture, below, to give you a sense of what this furniture looks like.  During the 18th century, furniture of this region was often made by the same joiners who worked on paneling and such for local houses, hence the same type of architectural details were also used on chests, cabinets, and bookpresses.  I think that the geometric patterns on this furniture gives it a robustness that seems fitting for today's interiors:

Eastern Shore blanket chest with X and "quadrant" panels

Eastern Shore blanket chest with X panels

Eastern Shore corner cupboard showing a complementary color combination of orange and blue.

Then there is Count Stefano Aluffi-Pentini, who will be speaking about on Italian palaces like Palazzo Colonna, seen below.  Is that image stunning or what?  So you see, you'll learn about English great houses and gardens, French decorative arts, Italian palaces, Southern furniture, and more.  I can't imagine a more interesting forum!

Count Stefano Aluffi-Pentini, photographed in his library.

Palazzo Colonna in Rome.


For more information on this event, or to purchase tickets, please visit the Charleston Art & Antiques Forum website.  I hope to be able to tear myself away from work to attend, so perhaps I'll see you there.


All images used with permission of The Charleston Art & Antiques Forum.

Let's Chic It Up for the 1950s

Hands down one of the best conferences that I've ever attended was last year's Chic It Up! conference at Winterthur. Absolutely fascinating and well worth the trip up North. In fact, it was at last year's event (it focused on 1940s design) that I heard Pauline Metcalf speak about Syrie Maugham. It was after listening to her lecture that I knew her book on Maugham was going to be a winner...and it was.

This year's event, scheduled for Friday, November 12, will look at 1950s design. Speakers include Thomas Jayne (whose new book The Finest Rooms in America was just released), Donald Albrecht (he is an absolutely terrific speaker who will speak about Cecil Beaton and 1950s set design), and other decorative arts historians. And what could be better than to visit Winterthur as well?

If meetings didn't keep me in Atlanta, I would attend in a heartbeat. Poor me. Anyway, if you live in the area or plan to be close-by, I encourage you to make plans to attend. You will not be disappointed!

For more information, click here.

Chinese Scenic Paper

As of late, some of the most popular handpainted wallpapers seem to be those bird, flower, and tree prints by de Gournay (see above) and Gracie. Certainly they are lovely, easy to live with, and quite elegant too. And if someone wanted to make a donation of this paper to my home, I would not refuse. However, what I wish to see more of is the colorful, exuberant scenic Chinese paper that once adorned some of America's finest homes.



Of course Winterthur's Chinese Parlor is one of the most famous rooms in America. The Chinese paper was painted between 1775 and 1800 is known as "Pastimes and Leisure Scenes of Chinese Life" because it depicts scenes of Chinese people strolling through gardens and studying. Henry Francis Du Pont obtained the paper from designer Nancy McClelland in 1928. Because the paper panels were 12 feet long, Du Pont had to create a room tall enough to accommodate the paper's length.


A detail of the Chinese Parlor's paper.


Henry Davis Sleeper purchased this scenic paper in the early 20th century for his summer home Beauport. In what is called The China Trade Room, the paper depicts both the rice and the porcelain trades. The paper dates back to late 18th century when it was originally imported from China by the Philadelphia banker Robert Morris, although Morris never used the panels. The paper remained crated until it was discovered in the early 1900s.


Even Billy Baldwin had an appreciation for this paper in this 1950s era room that he designed.

What I've also noticed is that gloriously unrestrained architectural details and valances seem to go hand in hand with this colorful Chinese paper. There is often fretwork molding, pagoda pediments over doorways and windows, and scrolled pelmets that decorate these Chinese themed rooms. Unfortunately, papering an entire room in scenic wallpaper can be rather expensive, and some people might be apprehensive about having that much color and pattern on one's walls. However, what about framing a panel or two to hang on the walls? At the very least, I might be tempted to copy some of those wonderful valances for my windows.


(Image at top courtesy of de Gournay. Chinese Parlor photo #1 from Winterthur's flickr photostream; Chinese Parlor photo #2 from HOUSE AND GARDEN'S NEW COMPLETE GUIDE TO INTERIOR DECORATION: FIFTH EDITION). Beauport photo from their website. Billy Baldwin photo from House & Garden's Complete Guide to Interior Decoration.)

Frederic March and Henry Sleeper

High on my list of places that I wish to visit is Beauport, the Gloucester, Massachusetts house of Henry Davis Sleeper. Built by Sleeper in the early twentieth century, Beauport was decorated in myriad historical styles and furnished with an array of objects, both of which attest to Sleeper's flair for decorating (he was one of this country's earliest professional decorators) and his passion for collecting.  Even if you're not overly familiar with Beauport, you have likely seen photos of two of its more famous rooms: the China Trade Room and the Octagon Room.

This post, however, isn't really about Beauport, but rather Sleeper's work as an interior designer.  Sleeper's clients included Isabella Stewart Gardner and Henry Francis du Pont, who enlisted Sleeper's guidance in decorating both his Long Island house, Chestertown, and his more famous residence, Winterthur.  But what I find to be curious was the fact that this New England decorator also worked for Hollywood actors, including Joan Crawford and Frederic March (pictured above.)

I recently discovered photos of March's Sleeper-designed Beverly Hills house in a 1936 issue of House Beautiful.  According to my research, Sleeper decorated the house in 1934, the same year in which he (Sleeper) died.  (I don't know if he died before or after completion of the March house.)  The House Beautiful article shows three photos of the home's exterior, which was described as French Provincial with whitewashed brick walls and blue doors, but just a scant three photos of the home's interior, namely, the dining room and a playroom.

The dining room, which you can see below, was furbished with a hunting-and-fishing-motif Zuber paper and "woodwork and damask curtains a soft azure blue-green."  Don't you wish that we could see that dining room in color?  The playroom is charming, though a bit unusual, in that it "reproduces a kitchen in an old Normandy house- fine copper and brass on the hearth, brown toile curtains, yellow quilting on the chairs and sofa."  Though not pictured in the article, the living room was described as having been decorated "after an 18th Century salon, with laurel green paneled walls, lots of books, a piano in one corner, secretary in another, 18th Century furniture in deep yellow brocade and a dark brown chintz on the couch."

According to the Beauport website, Sleeper described his early design focus as "Norman and English Country Houses- 17th and 18th century American Interiors."  Later, however, that focus shifted slightly to "English and French Interiors- 17th and 18th century American Paneling."  Sleeper was obviously well-versed in a range of historical styles, and I think that range is quite evident in the March house. 

An interesting footnote to this story is that March's house, which was designed by architect Wallace Neff in 1934, had several subsequent prominent owners, including Shirley and Flobelle Burden (the parents of Carter Burden, who grew up in this house,) Wallis Annenberg, and Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston.  Pitt supposedly removed some of the home's original paneling, which really doesn't surprise me at all.

The two photos above show the March dining room.

The old Norman kitchen-inspired playroom.

That Reminds Me...

After spending last week in bed with the flu, I am finally beginning to feel like a human again.  Well, sort of.  But the thought of having to string multiple sentences together gives me a headache, so I'm not really going to attempt to do much writing for this post.  However, I can still connect photos with one another, so bear with me as I try to make sense of this semi-stream of consciousness blog post.

I was recently doing some research when I came across the photo at the top of this post.  The bed that you see once belonged to the fashionable 18th-century British actor, David Garrick, and his wife.  The Garricks were at the forefront of 18th-century fashion, and they, like so many other wealthy Europeans of the day, took a shining to chintz, using the fabric for bed hangings and a cover on their beautiful Thomas Chippendale-designed bed.  Chippendale crafted not only a bed for the Garricks, but also a set of wardrobes, a small bookcase, and a corner cabinet, all of which were painted with Chinoiserie motifs.  This set of Chippendale furniture, which is now part of the collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum (where this photograph was taken,) has to be one of the most charming sets of painted furniture that I have ever seen.  You can see just a hint of the furniture in the left-hand side of the photo.

But going back to that chintz. The Tree of Life chintz on the Garrick bed, which is a reproduction of the bed's original chintz, was a popular chintz pattern in the 18th century.  This might be the reason why Henry Francis du Pont chose a similar Tree of Life chintz cover for one of the beds at Winterthur, which I photographed during my visit there a few years ago.

And another fashionable man, Hubert de Givenchy, chose the same Tree of Life print for his guest bedroom at his French manor, Le Jonchet. I'm pretty certain that the fabric is by Braquenié.  And yes, I've shown this photo on my blog in the past, but it bears repeating.

And from France, we travel to California, where the same Braquenié fabric was used in a room of what I believe is Dawnridge. The corresponding rock-outcropping print, also by Braquenié, I think, was used on the walls of the adjoining room.  You can tell that the model can hardly contain herself, such is the chicness of her surroundings.  I can't say that I blame her.

But it isn't only this Tree of Life chintz that has inspired designers through the years. It's the Chippendale painted furniture that captivates some (myself included.) Here, decorative painter John Sutcliffe painted a mirror to mimic the Garrick's set of bedroom furniture.

And now, after that burst of energy, I'm going back to bed.