Chickendale, light-filled, gentlemanly rooms, and being combed out

"I've told you about Miss Louise, haven't I?" asked my old prof over lunch. "Not yet," I replied, "but I'd love to hear about her."

"There isn't much to say other than she was a Southern lady of stately aspect – a decorator ... a marvelous decorator, who knew her furniture ...  no Chickendale for her, it was all good stuff ... at Rich's when Rich's was something in Atlanta. Did I ever explain what the five pieces of Southern furniture are?"

"Yes," I said, "but I've forgotten. Tell me again." "We're off!" thought I and settled into my Manhattan – it wasn't really a bourbon on the rocks kind of day: a bit grey, a bit dull, a bit overcast – and that was me, not the weather.

"Well..." she said, "I talk too much ... do you have time?"

"We're here for the afternoon, if we like – remember, they know us."

"Well. the five pieces of Southern furniture are the slab or the huntboard; the cellarette ... oh, those Baptists loved their cellarettes ... hid a multitude of sins, of course ... the sugar chest; the lazy susan and the biscuit board. I should perhaps say that they are the five pieces of furniture that were once considered Southern, and Miss Louise certainly knew what they were. She sold enough of them, and the real thing, too."

"Ah, yes, Miss Louise. What's so memorable about her?"

"She was a good decorator, a real lady who could laugh at herself. Stopped for speeding ... windows wide open, it was summer ... she told the tale that when the policeman came to her car, she patted her bosom as only a Southern lady could, crying 'a bee, officer, a bee. Can you help me?' He left very quickly – no ticket – and she sped on. But, it wasn't the way she lived, necessarily, that made her famous... more the way she went."

"Went?"

"Died. She died under the hairdryer at Rich's salon and ... well the phrase is – and if it's not on her gravestone, it should be – permed at Rich's and combed out at Patterson's [funeral home]."

I admired it then, and I love it still, the Virginia countryside home of Antony Childs. Two years ago I wrote about Childs' Georgetown house:

"There are what used to be called 'important antiques' dotted around, but in this room and the rest of the house a good balance between display and hospitality has been achieved. It's unlikely anyone entering the front door got the feeling they first should have checked their personal liability insurance.

"The most pleasing thing about these charming rooms is that they were created over twenty years ago yet are as fresh and classic as they were then. Nothing has dated – well, maybe the skirted dining table a little, though I must say I've always been partial to a good skirted table. The grand dining room curtains are pretty restrained in comparison to many a drapery from the same time, and would not look out of place today. Other windows in the house, judging by photos of the living room and bedroom, are simply furnished with Roman shades, that most classic of window covering. The wooden furniture is grand but not repellant in its pomposity and the upholstery is sane and welcome. I could go on about the contents of these rooms but they are visible in the photos. Unusual for the time there is no name-dropping provenance for any of the furniture.

"I didn't know this man, but I like his light-filled, gentlemanly rooms. These are spaces to be alone it, kiss a lover or two, listen to Roy Orbison, read (the phrase curl up with a good book comes to mind, but I shall eschew it), trip a light fantastic, play with a Game Boy, wax poetical, opine on how the world's gone mad today, good's bad today, black's white today, and day's night today when most guys today ... "

Though I wrote then about other rooms with other furniture, the qualities I admired in Georgetown I found and still find in the Virginia hunt country house: light-filled; gentlemanly; restrained; pleasing; fresh; classic and simple.

There isn't anything that does not continue to delight my eye – from Sanderson's Willow Minor bathroom wallpaper, a 17th-century Dutch ebony frame above Dana Westring's trompe l'oeil finely-painted chimney board, William IV leather-covered armchairs, Régence chair, 18th-century four-poster bed and French desk at its foot – there are none of the five pieces of Southern furniture. Perhaps, more important than any individual piece of furniture or decoration, is the sense of airy, sunlit space. As far as I can see there are only two concessions to "spirit of place" as it was often expressed in the 80s and 90s, the homages to imagined histories – the horn trophies on the dining room walls and the twig chair beneath the bathroom window. For the rest, it is an evocation of the real spirit of place – peace, quiet, comfort and hospitality of a weekend in the country.

Antony Childs, who died of AIDS in June 1994 at the age of 57, one year after the article was published – the last one about him – called the house, in comparison to what he did for his clients, "undressed." 

The Five Pieces of Southern Furniture

A Huntboard or slab as it is also known is, according to Merriam-Webster.com, similar to a sideboard but frequently simpler, smaller and taller. Allegedly used at hunt breakfasts.

A Cellarette is a small, portable wine storage chest, frequently made of mahogany, but without a water-proof lining that could hold ice. From Pinterest.

A Sugar Chest is a piece of furniture in the late 18th-century and the early 19th-century. Used to store large quantities of sugar for longer periods of time. From Pinterest.

A Lazy Susan is a revolving platform set into the top of a "self-waiting" table. From here.

A Biscuit Board is tautologous to say it's a board on which biscuits are prepared. From here, the most explanatory example I could find on the web. 

Patterson's Funeral Home designed by Philip Shutze circa 1928

When we first came to Atlanta twenty years ago the Spring Hill Mortuary, as it is also known, was covered in ivy and looked like a house on a hill. Since, as you see, it has been stripped of greenery and repainted white.


Photographs of Patterson's and its chapel by Timothy Hursley from American Classicist: The Architecture of Philip Trammell Shutze, Elizabeth Meredith Dowling, Rizzoli, 1989.

Photographs of Antony Childs' house by William Waldren from and article by Amy Fine Collins in HG House and Garden, July 1993.

To what end?

Recently, I was asked to recommend interior design books for a beginner's library. I rattled off a list of the names we all have on the tips of our tongues – Elsie de Wolfe, Syrie Maugham, Frances Elkins, Nancy Lancaster, Sister Parish, Jean-Michel Frank, Billy Baldwin, John Fowler, David Hicks, Albert Hadley and Mark Hampton. Eventually I wandered off, texting the bartender for another manhattan as I did so, and it occurred to me as I headed to the bar that, though a good list of names, I'd missed the point. Someone else that evening in our library during one of our cocktail parties had remarked how lucky I was to own all these books. Two manhattans in, the point I'd missed, whatever it was, eluded me momentarily – until my mind snagged on that word "lucky".

Indeed, but to what end? thought I, surprising myself with the force of it. I own each of the books on my quick list (and many more such monographs) and, irritated as I am to find it so, it took someone else's perfectly normal question to set me wondering why I actually do own and want to own so many books. To what end, precisely? Or, to be precise, what happens to them if, in the end, I no longer need them? How does one dismantle a lifetime's collection of books? Is it just so much paper that few, if anyone, would want?

I've mentioned before how the new president of a local for-profit university decided the modern student no longer needed books as "everything necessary is available online." He closed the library, deaccessioned everything, and at the time it seemed self-evident that it was to my benefit to have, at least, the books I'd ordered for the school library come into mine. After all, I was still teaching, would do so for the foreseeable future and I could use them for the blog. When, a few years later, I retire, that seemed yet another opportunity – I could spend golden years reading them all – visions of velvet smoking jacket-clad days spent in a paneled library, books piling (neatly) all over the place, creaking shelves reaching to the ceiling, the scents of leather and pot-pouri, the literary equivalent of new car smell, suffusing the room, all played in my head.

And, alas, it was almost to be, this bastion against the increasing tide of philistinism.

Despite illusion and delusion I continue to buy interior design books – though in fewer number than previously. Conversely, I delve into my shelves and stacks far more than ever I did for, perhaps not so surprisingly, they prove to be more satisfactory than what is available in stores.

If there is anything missing from my collection of books it is a coherent history of 20th-century and 21st-century decorating and design. A history of residential decoration could be cobbled together from the books I own, but if anyone were interested in design rather than decoration he would have slim pickings. Interior decoration, still a massive if shrunken industry, is but a tiny part of the national market – contract or commercial design taking the largest segment.

Thus, if I were asked again to suggest a beginner's library for an aspiring student of interior design I would recommend first reading Becoming an Interior Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design by Christine Piotrowski – an expensive and rather dry introduction to the business of design and the difference between decoration and design. Beyond that, I'd suggest books about architecture and historical styles – the golden oldie by Sir Bannister Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. For furniture styles and the history thereof, I suggest John Moreley's The History of Furniture: Twenty-Five Centuries of Style and Design in the Western Tradition, and because its just fascinating, Geoffrey Beard's Upholsterers & Interior Furnishings in England, 1530 -1840.

For my neighbour who asked me for recommendations I would amend my original list to include both Morley's and Beard's books with the further addition of The Inspiration of the Past and The Search for a Style by John Cornforth to provide historical context for all the practitioners, both of yesterday and today, of traditional design.

Regarding residential design the following photograph will show you where my tastes lie and I can heartily recommend each of the books shown.

The photographs by Richard Felber of John Richardson's library/writing room are from the last issue of HG published in July 1993. I still miss House and Garden – besides The World of Interiors, still the best interiors magazine there was. It was replaced by Domino, of all things.

I kept that last issue for years but where it now is I've no idea. My friend Will Merril mailed me his copy for the article about John Richardson's library and to my joy I found also the last published article about one my circles-within-circles decorators, Antony Childs. More about him next time.