Monday, April 5, 2010

Hang your knickers on the line

Saturday morning it was, the clock had just struck the half hour when from the other side of the living room came the refrain What's the time? Half past nine, hang your knickers on the line. If a policeman comes along, take them off and put them on. There is not much to say in reply to the rhyme known to every British child and from whom that word knickers will always raise a titter.

Not really anything to do with decorating you might think, but hearing the rhyme made me think again of the kind of ballooning shades, immensely popular in the 1980s, resembling tart's knickers. That tarts ever wore such voluminous undergarments is debatable and unrecorded in any history of tartdom I have ever read but, nonetheless, they have lent their nomenclature to a kind of window dressing. Some can be seen in the de la Renta living room.


I was going to write about one of the more fascinating aspects of 1980s decoration - the democratization of an aristocratic style of curtaining and drapery, a trickle down (to use a term popular at the time) or rather a torrent of expensive stuffs down the economic scale. It occurred to me, too, that I might discuss the books written by English ladies showing how to contrive dainty trappings for windows large and small. Also, I would have liked to have talked about the affectation of spuriously aging chintz by dipping in baths of strong tea (no sugar or milk, thank you) or liquid plant food, but it will not happen, because today, (I wrote this yesterday, Sunday), we went to a big Greek Easter celebration - lamb, goat and pork spit-roasting, the bishop blessing the assembly, kids being loved all over the place, never-ending pouring of wine, music, and food, food, food, and more food - so after the most generously hospitable event I've been to in a long time, I'm a little in my cups, thoroughly tired out, have heartburn up to my earlobes, and am far too happy to discuss any curtains I may have lost, loved or hated.

Instead, I would like to show you photos of a place I wish I could have seen, rooms that had such an effect on me when I first saw them in 1984 - I found them utterly beautiful. These rooms belonged to Mr Gep Durenburger, an antiques dealer, whose home was in San Juan Capistrano, California. I look through them again nearly thirty years later and still they are a source of wonder to me. The rooms speak for themselves.

Photos by Tim Street-Porter for an article written by Mr Durenburger, from The World of Interiors, September 1984.




11 comments:

  1. Hmmm, another road to... but these are beautiful - stately and cottage-y in that study.
    I'd love to know the architect and date of construction.

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  2. The quality of light is staggeringly beautiful. So glad you had a filled to the gills Easter. I think it is just what you needed.

    p.s. I have said it before in different terms, I am a fabric whore. Given my affection for the the de la Renta living room, perhaps in one of my former lives (if I so believed) I must have been an actual one! I, hope at least, I had been a courtesan. Happy Spring, Blue.

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  3. whether you are in cups or knickers or pontificating or waxing poetic about tart's knickers, your voice and aesthetic are always a pleasure. Carry on Blue. pgt

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  4. le style et la matier - the date is 1928, I think, but I don't know who the architect was.

    home before dark - I can understand the power of the de la Renta interiors. Goffered velvet is a particular favorite of mine but so is plain, heavily woven linen. Silk does not excite me except when it is shot as the Brits say or when it is velvet. There is great pleasure in walking around a to-the-trade showroom looking at the variety and the creativity of modern textile designers. I grew up surrounded by cotton weaving mills and occasionally nowadays a scent will remind me of the smell of newly woven cotton from my youth.

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  5. P.S. home before dark - I think I'm too much of a calvinist to really appreciate the richness of the de la Renta interiors.

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  6. Little Augury, thank you. That was very kind and affirming.

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  7. I'm still not convinced that you're not in the next room rifling through my clip files, so alike are the rooms we've held onto!!

    The Durenberger rooms just knocked me out when they were published. Still do. Exactly the way I want mine to look (had I the talent, and had I not sold the gothic windows I bought a few years ago.

    And beautifully written.

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  8. Down East Dilettante, the eerie step in the night, the creak unexplained, the door just closed - that's all me. And, thank you for the compliment. As we southerners say 'ppreciate it!

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  9. What a beautiful house -and even more beautifully photographed. Lamb for easter here as well, I'm STILL full!

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  10. Stefan, thank you. I googled the house and it is much different now. I have to admit that for someone who eats mostly vegan food I totally enjoyed the two lamb chops I couldn't let pass by.

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  11. I would still be interested if you did a post on any form of curtain drapery, especially if it had anything to do with whores knickers.

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