Three books

"Well, at least nowadays I don't buy too many," I said. The Celt, born tactful, forbore from commenting or even glancing at the growing pile of books by my chair - my old professor is retired and culling her library - as I unwrapped two parcels I'd just collected from the mailroom. I really don't buy too many books, though I suppose that depends on what the definition is of too many books.

Of late, I have found it difficult to buy interior design books - I'm willing and have the means, yet despite the flurry of publishing in the last month or so, I find so little of interest on the bookshelves. I know that, as I've aged, I have become very critical about the content of a book and consequently am loath, as I once was not, to buy examples of vanity publishing or compendia of this, that and the other, whether allegedly curated or not. I wish I could dismiss the impression of an ever-and-increasingly-revolving cycle of nonentity, but seemingly cannot.  Maybe, as you might well infer, I feel I really have seen it all.

One book I have wanted for a while now, and the first to be unwrapped, is The English Country House: From the Archives of Country Life. It is a big and heavy book, filled with the most beautiful houses photographed, with nary a vignette (but plenty of close-ups of details, certainly), all sixty-two of them, since Country Life began in the 1980s to publish photographs in color. These photographs have the rare quality of being as attractive and as texturally rich as were the black-and-white photographs of the previous decades. There are plenty of full, explanatory captions and, tipped-in, six essays by the likes of Marcus Binney, Tim Knox, John Martin Robinson, Geoffrey Tyack and Jeremy Tyack. Too heavy, without benefit of a lectern, to read in bed, but a joy to leaf through early in the morning, coffee in hand and brain on resurrect, this book is example from Rizzoli on how to produce, publish and persuade.

Had I not already owned Manhattan Style; Sister: The Life of Legendary American Interior Decorator Mrs Henry Parish III; Parish Hadley: Sixty Years of American Design; Albert Hadley: The Story of America's Preeminent Interior Designer; Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration; The Inspiration of the Past: Country House Taste in the Twentieth Century or Colefax and Fowler: The Best in English Interior Decoration, I might have found Sister Parish: American Style more interesting than I did. Please don't misunderstand: I am definitely glad I bought the book which is well-produced and designed by someone who knows, perhaps too well, the discipline of the grid. A few times I wished some photographs had been larger, and I really felt I had learned nothing new - a negative comment made by Mrs Parish about Mrs Onassis, notwithstanding.

Have I really seen it all? I wonder.

My magazine subscriptions have dwindled to two: The World of Interiors and the New Yorker; one taken since 1983 and the second given to us as a Christmas gift when we came here eighteen years ago. We read them both, still, after all these years. It is not that I let the other subscriptions lapse - one, as I mentioned a while back, I cancelled because I found I had unwittingly or, rather, unwillingly, agreed to a constant renewal service, and the second I cancelled for the same reasons. In the second case I learned during a phone conversation in the entanglement the 1-800 menu that my subscription had just been renewed until 2014. With neither magazine is a constant renewal service, and I use that word "service" advisedly, worth my while. I look into both, and others, in the bookstore but having learned to resist such blandishments as go for classic with easy, unfussy details or go for graphic from window to walls or, my favorite so far, go for big gestures and make it fun I put them back on the shelf.

I was curious about the third book, but waited to order it until I'd had a chance to leaf through it in the bookstore. I have an older book about Oliver Messel which is interesting enough but left a lot to be desired. I was curious - and was pleasantly surprised to find that Oliver Messel in the Theatre of Design could be a good addition to our library. I confess that in the past I have found Messel's style more than a tad twee, too redolent of the high-pitched precious accents of the British elocution schools. I must say his much-lauded tropical architecture baffles me - at least, the lauding baffles me. However, not wishing to appear negative about a book I'm actually glad to own and look forward to reading more of, I shall explain where my irritation lies.

One of the pleasing things about book design to me, indeed one of the most desirable, is where the layout does not detract from the contents. Such, alas, is not the case with the Messel book. It is with the layout, the graphic design, that my irritation lies - by the time I got to the Contents double-page spread and the Foreword page I was grousing about the page layout and the typography, muttering to the Celt, "look at this, look at this!"

How, you might be asking, did I not spot this at the bookstore. Actually I did spot it but, in my desire to have the book, I suspended my disbelief. I am not returning the book, because the contents are good enough to transcend the irritations of the layout, and give me a better understanding of who Messel was, and what his achievement was.


The image of Sister Parish: American Style from here though the book was bought at Amazon.com.
The image of The English Country House: From the Archives of Country Life from Amazon.com whence the book.
The image of Oliver Messel: In the Theatre of Design from here. My copy came from Amazon.com.

Mick Jagger

... it is said, once bought a bed from the man who made the above photograph of Oliver Messel. Angus McBean was his name and he considered himself a "bodger of genius" this besides his main claim to fame - his theatrical and frequently surreal photographs he made from the 1930s through the 1960s. However, that is another post, perhaps for later in the week.

Now, that phrase "bodger of genius" came as a surprise to me as I'd always thought bodger meant as Wiktionary defines it, one who works in a rough and ready, slipshod manner. I was right, but it has another perhaps older definition; a woodworker in the traditional style characterized by the use of hand tools. Bodging, for those who are more particular about their definitions, is the traditional craft of creating chair legs and stretchers.

Anyway, in the 1960s Angus McBean, photographer extraordinaire, bought himself a house; a 14th century moated manor that had been stripped of all its interior woodwork, paneling, and decorative trim. All the fireplaces, too, were gone, as were the doors, leaving a barn-like space 100 feet long by 26 feet wide.

The rooms he created in this vast space you can see in the following photographs. When McBean bought the house, ancient and historic buildings were still being destroyed and whole rooms were available cheaply - paneling, staircases and fireplaces came on the market almost as cheap as firewood - and what wasn't original he made - he bodged it together from oak, older than the Victorian material he eschewed as being merely stained to look old.

It has all the charm of the ancient, this house, all of the theatre of his photography, and none of the soul-sapping correctness that often came with period reproduction. It is pastiche. Pastiche has become such a dismissive term, often meaning parody, and it is a pity for it can mean the creation of a fantasy, a summoning of times past, an entertaining capriccio, or simply an uplifting setting for lives lived with elan.

The components of McBean's pastiche are Tudor paneling, Directoire and Second Empire furniture, Jacobean oak, wallcovering derived from walls in a Florentine palazzo, Roman stone, Cole's wallpaper, Spode and Liverpool china, a sense of the past, the needs of today and a love of theater.

This four-poster bed – looking authentic enough to lead one dealer to wonder why it had never been on the market – was in fact cobbled together from spare pieces of Jacobean oak. The previous bed, a prototype for this one, was sold to Mick Jagger. The bedside tables are two halves of a cupboard and the lamp bases are from a decrepit 16th century frame.

Far from being just a "bodger," McBean was clearly an artist, some might say a genius, and he certainly had an eye – another fascinating nugget: it was he who picked Audrey Hepburn out of an audition line-up to be a model for advertising cold cream.

Photo of Oliver Messel by Angus McBean from Oliver Messel, A Biography by Charles Castle, Thames and Hudson 1986.

Photos of Angus Bean's house by Angus Bean from World of Interiors, June 1983.

Text of post based on essay by Diana Winsor from World of Interiors, June 1983.

Oligarch trash ...

... is the kind of remark that, however inconsequentially meant or softly spoken, encroaches so intrusively into those moments when one is collecting oneself, reading a menu, looking at the decor, could totally ruin the appreciation of a pre-lunch Manhattan. It's uncanny how remarks, galvanizing as they are, arrive precisely at the moment when one is either taking a sip or swallowing, presenting a body, as the mind wheels, with a quandary - to snort, gasp or expel liquid from all available orifices, ears included it seems. That I did none of these was a blessing as I too was gazing at the newly-arrived and just remarked-upon company at the table in front of us - a perfectly respectable, well-dress group quietly asking for another table.

However, there we sat, recovering from the remark and the drenching we'd had walking across Columbus Circle from the hotel to Jean Georges, and steaming in both senses of the word. A horizontal driving rain had beset the city that morning, clearing away the snow and keeping most sensible folks from the streets. Not us, thus. I had demanded a taxi and was smartly told to pull myself together for it was only a drop of rain and we could share an umbrella (only a Brit could characterize such a downpour as a drop of rain), we set off for the lunch we'd booked weeks before.

I must tell you that the experience of Jean Georges, the food, the staff, the decor, was a real treat. The food was superb: fois gras brulee accompanied by pineapple and meyer lemon jam, succeeded by slowly-cooked cod atop black beans aromatized with sake, cilantro and ginger. I cannot tell you what my other half ate as my brain and taste buds were totally occupied elsewhere. Apparently I offered to share but I have no memory of it. Perhaps the novelty of that has driven it from my mind. Instead of dessert I chose a Pedro Ximenez sherry, warmly black as old lacquer, viscous and oozing the essence of raisin. I've drunk this sherry before as an accompaniment to plum pudding - a combination hard to beat. The Celt had lemony things for dessert which brought on a bout of purring. Chocolates and quarter-sized macaroons came with the coffee and made-in-house marshmallows cut into perfect cubes at the table, accompanied the check, sweetening the deal.

My Christmas present, below, found in Barney's is a real addition to the library. Oddly enough, over the years I have not seen much of Messel's work and the book is proving to be an eye-opener. Of course, I've known of him, who he is related to and all that, but had been underwhelmed by what I had seen. That is changing as I go through this book. I'm not sure at this moment if I find his work effete or as camp as a row of tents. That is probably not my final judgement.

We found another book at a different store, this time a novel illustrated by Rex Whistler, and were very tempted until we saw the price. My other half checked on Amazon from his iPhone as we stood there in front of the book display and found many versions of the same at nearly one thirtieth the price.

Caveat emptor, indeed.