Thursday, April 17, 2014

A fine room

It occurred to me this weekend as I looked again at The Finest Rooms by America's Great Decorators as I tidied away piles of books littering the place (a sisyphean task, if ever there was one) that I have my favorite rooms and that to me they are very fine rooms indeed. None perhaps with the grandeur of those illustrated in The Finest Rooms but all with four things in common: space, simplicity, suitability, and atmosphere.

As I look around me now it seems again I'm still surrounded by books. On the coffee table, the weekends essential reading in order of stacking: Les réussites de la décoration française 1950 - 1960; Maureen Footer's brilliant George Stacey and the Creation of American Chic; an Italian easy-reader mystery La casa sulla scogliera; Mary Gilliatt's A House in the Country: the Second Home from Cottages to Castles; David Hicks's Living with Design; Mario Praz's Interior Decoration; and Brian J McCarthy's beautiful Luminous Interiors. As to the side tables .... well, I had probably better stop right there and return to my actual theme which is a new and not infrequent series about rooms I consider to be particularly fine. 

I have written about some of these rooms before and feel it will do no harm to give them another look. The rooms by Kalef Alaton, for example, still figure large in my mind as some of the finest of 20th-century decorating, as also do rooms by Antony Childs, Arthur Smith and Roderick Cameron. Rooms in palaces or rooms overflowing with preciousness probably won't get a mention but I could change my mind given I've just remembered a room in a Japanese palace filled with preciousness of a different kind.


The first in the series, then, are two photographs I found on Tumblr. A greenhouse, a pavilion, a bedroom, a retreat – it's all of these but to me, romantic that I am, it's the finest bedroom in the world. I can imagine nothing finer than to be in this room – presupposing a hundred acres of privacy surround it – when fireflies flicker and starlight gleams; when birds sing and sun rises; when snow falls or rain pours; when the northern lights stream, or nights, most magical of all, when the Milky Way shines across the sky.  The screams of massacred animals, the shrill of insects and the slither of snakes? Meh. As I say, I'm a romantic.


12 comments:

  1. Blue, even though I don't have a romantic bone in my body, I would love a room like that. It would be my heaven. I love your blog title. Did I miss wherefore it comes from?

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  2. donna baker, thank you.

    The title of the blog is a quotation from A.E Houseman's A Shropshire Lad.

    Into my heart an air that kills
    From yon far country blows:
    What are those blue remembered hills,
    What spires, what farms are those?
    This is the land of lost content,
    I see it shining plain.
    The happy highways where I went
    And cannot come again.

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    1. I have been meaning to ask you and always forget. That is a beautiful quotation. I am tucking it away somewhere I won't lose it.

      There is a beautiful David Austin rose by the name of a Shropshire Lad. It's a climber I think. Now I can connect all the dots. As to the room it is beautiful but I am such a scaredy cat I would probably be up all night wondering who was in the bushes!.

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    2. lindaraxa, thank you and apologies for a late reply. I thought I had replied. I wonder too, given the new gun laws here if I'd dare sleep out there. I'd like, in my fantasy world, to think I'd be a big brave boy!

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  3. How beautifully written! The view from the room is certainly stunning and I'd be very pleased indeed to spend an evening or three there.

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  4. Chronica Domus, thank you! That was a very kind comment.

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  5. Whilst it is a beautiful room, it wouldn't work for me, using your criterion of suitability. I am a very light sleeper and I need all the help I can get, including black out lining on my bedroom curtains!

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    1. columnist, thank you, and apologies for a late reply. I thought I had replied. I sleep with a light sleeper who can be disturbed by the light of an iPad on night setting. I, on the other hand, once asleep, sleep deeply if dream riddled.

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  6. I'd like to read in it when it rains.

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    1. Laurent, I'm sorry for not replying – I seem to have missed a few people's comments all the while trying to do better. My apologies.

      I would love to be in that space during rain – the sound of rain is one of the most soothing.

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  7. I agree with Laurent about this space being a beautiful rainy day library. Given Georgia's new people can't have enough guns law, I'd be a little scared of the idiots who are all gun and no brains.Then there's the problem of being in prism of glass in the Georgia heat!

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  8. home before dark, thank you – and thank you for your comment jolting me into realizing I had not replied to three people before you.

    As to the new gun laws, I cannot understand how anyone could bring in such a law after Sandy Hook Elementary School. How quickly and how tragically we forget.

    As to the heat - shade trees and a dehumidifier would probably work. Possibly!

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