God knows they need some taste

In his autobiography, Billy Baldwin tells of the occasion when, before lunch with the Spencer family, he sat next to Amelia Nettleship, the not-quite-yet step-grandmother of the-not-quite yet Princess of Wales, and the author of a seemingly unending series of bodice-rippers. Never having read one of her novels, I remember her more as a gaudily beruffled and brocaded television personality wheeled in front of the camera whenever an opinion was required to further deepen the class divide.

Mr Baldwin relates his conversation with this lady, the writer of this book of etiquette - here quoted in part.

"You are what?" she said.

"I am a decorator."

"Well," she said, "I've just come from your California, and I hope to God you're not a decorator from California, are you?"

I said "I have done some work there."

"Well, you'd better go back again," she said. "God knows they need some taste. Another thing you might do while you are at it is to tell the airlines to have a little manners. When I travel on this side of the Atlantic I've been accustomed to having at least two full seats because I am not a young lady and I get tired and it is very necessary for me to stretch out. So, naturally, out of politeness and courtesy, I am given at least two seats and sometimes three. To my great disgust, the last time I came back from your country, on your airlines they wouldn't let me have two seats, and I wanted three."

Arthur Smith, Baldwin's associate, and the decorator of the rooms below, was with him on the visit to the Spencers and clearly had a better time of it for he sat next to "an absolutely charming, very pretty girl called Lady Diana, who was full of charm, full of wit, and full of humor."

One of the reasons why I like looking backwards is I can see so much of what I miss in modern decorating - color. The modern pallid palette, a range of bloodless tones that began to have currency in the late 1980s still holds sway and though this is an opportunity to rail against the way color is not taught in design schools, at least judging by what I see in the magazines, I shall resist that temptation.

Recently I renewed my department's subscription to Architectural Digest - for home I subscribe to Elle Decor and The World of Interiors. I hesitated about renewing Architectural Digest but I can use it as a teaching aid about celebrity, marketing, and aspiration. What strikes me about both Architectural Digest and Elle Decor is, in the editorial sections at least, how boringly lacking in color they are.

Elle Decor is a magazine with which I've had a difficult relationship over the years - I find the editorial emphasis on bedraggled and rather wan interiors increasingly disappointing - and am probably not renewing the subscription. When I think that I have kept up a subscription to The World of Interiors since 1983 it is clear that the magazine has far more to offer me than any other on the market. It may be invidious to compare other magazines to The World of Interiors, because the writing, photography, printing, paper – what insiders call its "production values" – are so high, and it remains consistently inventive. But the fact remains, these magazines are all competing, for both my dollars and my attention, so comparison is inevitable.

Photos by Peter Vitale, accompanying two short paragraphs of text written by Elaine Green for Architectural Digest, October 1983.

Amaranthine

This week I want to deal with what I see as timeless interiors, and if this involves some of the forgotten decorators from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, then all the better. The interior shown below is by one such - Ruben de Saavedra - from the 1980s.

Whilst selecting these photos it occcurred to me that one of the many changes over the last 3o years – besides the fade to a neutral palette – is that, generally speaking, when color is used today it is much cooler in tone than that of the 1970s and the 1980s. Reds, oranges, yellows and greens, the potency of which seems to blare off the page, were commonplace. Not for those decorators the smirk of disengaged white or beige - they had fun with color.

Ruben de Saavedra's interior has endured with little to date it: the Edward Fields rug, perhaps, the wallcovering in the bedroom and the large lights in the lowish ceiling are of their time. It could be argued that lighting as a profession really began in the 1960s and 1970s, both decades when drama – thus dramatic lighting – prevailed in interior design. Uplights and downlights were pretty familiar by the 1980s and track spotlighting was ubiquitous especially in homes where there was significant furniture or important art - investment as aesthetic - significant and important being routine, if lax, hyperbole used by magazine editors and art advisors of the period.

So what is it that stops an interior from being passé? It cannot be an intrinsic quality but rather a matter of perception, of training and of preference. It may be the answer lies in the roots of the word classic for Mr de Saavedra's design is a classic, if not downright classy. With that word classy you're getting to the root of the matter in one of two senses: the first, meaning adhering to established standards and principles and the other belonging to the highest rank or class.

A further question: how does one tell now which rooms will stand the test of time - and there's enough puffery in books and magazines suggesting it is possible - or does true classic design only reveal itself with the passage of time?

As with many an inanimate object the magazine, Architectural Digest, has winked temporarily out of existence. When it returns I shall post correct attributions for photographer, writer, issue and date.

Color

Occasionally I remark how it seems to me there are not many modern decorators who know how to use color and in many ways it is the pot calling the kettle black.

Our flat is pretty low-key in color and tone. The bedroom is gray - gray suede upholstered wall behind the bed, gray silk curtains and Farrow and Ball Cornforth White on the other walls - with an accent or two of orange. What I name an accent is a large, orange-lacquered six-drawer chest that stands opposite the dressed-in-gray-and-white bed, and under a silver-framed Hermès scarf in shades of orange. The only other color in the room comes from two gray-green celadon lamps, an ancient gray-green linen velvet armchair, and two pillows made from slices of kimonos - one, blues and greens, that prefers my side of the bed and the other, oranges and purples, his. The gray/celadon combination is mine and the orange/purple is his and after the compromise all couples have to reach for their place to be personal and loved, all is ours. Purely and unequivocally ours.

The living room is really an exercise in tints and tones that wander between uninflected whites, blancs de chine, creams, beiges, lavenders, stones, silvers, blues and purples. There's woodiness, the off-black of old japanning, the crew-cut warmth of dark mohair, soft graphite-flecked paper, mushroomy hard-nosed lacquer, dusty ormolu, green-edged glass, the swank of crystal, and a small flaunt of orange silk velvet.

Two days ago what must be the last hyacinths were brought home and quickly opened into the most glorious of pinks, a color as intense and transitory as the scent filling the room. The kind of beauty that is heartbreaking.

This resplendent room behind its equally triumphant facade is something I'd forgotten but when I turned the page after reading an essay about the Folies Bergère the force of it hit me. I wonder now how I forgot this room, this masterpiece of brilliant color. When first I saw it seventeen years ago I think I might have been intimidated and probably thought I couldn't have lived in it. Now, I really rather think I could. I have grown more accepting of my role of recessive background to a loving partner whose personality could quite clearly be expressed in such an interior as this. It's pretty much as he tried to leave the house this morning though the removal of a madras-of-many-colors bow tie toned it down a notch or two - just.

Photos by Tim Street-Porter from an article written in 1993 for The World of Interiors by Ann Barr about Michael Davis and Andrew Logan's Bermondsey house

Wimped out?

What happened to color in interior design? The reason I'm asking is that yesterday I saw a magazine cover showing a room with white upholstery relieved, as far as I could tell, with a dab or two of dark brown. I wasn't interested enough even to open the magazine to see if the whole house was like that, and kept on walking, mulling over what I had just seen.

I understand the latest fad, the Belgian thing, the natural linens, worm-eaten woods, faded carpets, hand-loomed stuffs, crumbling lacquer, hand-formed brick, smoke-smudged chimney pieces, lamps giving off puddles of dimness, the single, perfect Asian ceramic, a browned-off portrait or two. I get it, I really do, but I find it dour, ashen and joyless.

So what happened to color? When did what happened, happen? Did we just wimp out or, I wonder, did the knowledge of how to use color die with that lost generation? That they and their predecessors reveled in color is obvious; that the remnant of that generation, Mario Buatta, Albert Hadley, et al, uses color superbly is equally obvious and, unfortunately, too reminiscent of times gone by. It makes me curious if, in the present generation and I'm not talking about monochromatic schemes with the occasional accent in a complementary color, there are those who could bring such a complex infusion of color to decoration.

I'm glad I found these photos of the beautifully colored rooms Mr Harrison Cultra created in a Federal house, Wildercliff, on the banks of the Hudson River. I remembered them from long ago but had forgotten how extraordinary comfortable and welcoming they seemed to me then. They're joyfully colorful, traditional rooms befitting a Federal House updated for modern living by a decorator who totally knew what was appropriate - no slavish historical recreation here. The owners of Wildercliff had seen the inside Mr Cultra's own house and wanted something just like it. I wanted something like it and I remember how, ten years before I came to live in America, this house, this summer breeze from the Hudson River Valley, epitomized everything I loved about this country - but that is another conversation.

Imagine the conversation between these rooms and their setting when Fall first ignites and also how this decorative scheme could carry the promise of Spring through the winter months. Who could not love being in this house, snow swirling, wind howling off the river, candles lit and fires burning or, on the first warm days after winter, opening the doors and windows to catch the breeze and smell the budding green?

I wonder if they still exist, these rooms? Twenty-seven years is a long time in the life of a well-beloved interior and naturally I'm curious about what happened to them. Their designer, Harrison Cultra, one of the best of his generation, died of AIDS, aged forty-two, eight months after this interior was published.


Photos by Jaime Ardiles-Arce from Architectural Digest, January 1983.

Crepuscular

On a cold, wet day when twilight arrived at dawn, in our library the grey light has leeched the warmth from the cream-painted woodwork and the off-white curtains, and the blue upholstery fades softly into the shadows. In the deepest shade, that of the bookshelves, gilt book titles gleam bringing to mind how, when the world was lit by fire, our ancestors varnished and gilded leather wall panels, flashed the cornices, architraves and door cases with pellucid color and coruscating gold, dangled silvered mirrors and sparkling crystal from ceilings and walls, all to catch the light and restore it to the room.

Now we use electricity and our rooms are much brighter than previous times but how many of us design rooms in such a way that surfaces, objects and textiles collaborate with light? We shade lamps, glaze walls, burnish metals and woods, hang huge expanses of mirror, polish floors, yet I wonder how many understand the reciprocal relationship between luminosity and luster. Photography and the need for clear portraits of rooms has done away with atmosphere and much is lost. The past is indeed another country, they did things differently there.

I began with the photo above of a room designed by yesterday's designer, David Mlinaric - a living room in London. When I chose that photo my train of thought was different to the one expressed above; more about how discretely contemporary the room is, has neither the inconsequence of minimalism nor the modish use of early or mid-century modern, and is vivacious and serene at the same time.

So, in a way, my theme is light and warmth, for here is a room that would not be drained of life even on the darkest of days - the colour is a light yellow that sits well with the glowing orange of the curtains and the friendly warmth of wood and silk. One could sit in this amiable room, awaiting friends, contemplating the evening ahead, with a glass of vin chaud in hand, comfortable and relaxed.

Vin Chaud

1 bottle robust red wine

4 cinnamon sticks

1 x 5" curl orange zest

1/3 cup sugar

1 star anise

5 whole cloves

1/3 cup cognac

Put all into pan and heat but do not let it boil and simmer for a few minutes. Simmering is when a bubble two rises to the surface but there is no turbulence on the surface.

Photo by Derry Moore, copyright Conde Nast Publications, from Mlinaric on Decorating by Mirabel Cecil and David Mlinaric, 2008.

Recipe from Nigella Lawson's Nigella Christmas, Hyperion, 2009.

Phrase "when the world was lit by fire" suggested by William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire, Little, Brown & Co., 1992.

A favorite ...

... the latest in a series.

I got to thinking about what type of rooms I would consider winter rooms and though this clearly is in a place, Provence, that most of us would consider a summer destination, it would be marvelous lit by burning logs and candles whilst the mistral, the regional wind of Provence, was howling outside.

Normally I would consider books essential to a winter room and though there is what looks like small bookcase by the fireplace, it is not a book-room as such. This is a room not for solitude and contemplation but for conversation and games maybe before the gros souper that ends with thirteen desserts, eaten before midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Les treize desserts de Noël, thirteen desserts representing Christ and the Apostles, are set out on Christmas Eve and remain three days in the dining room.

I had intended not to mention Christmas again but .... !

Designer, Chester Jones. Photos, Fritz von der Schulenberg, from World of Interiors, October 2005.

1969

I have been trawling through an old set of bound magazines - page after page of traditional, sometimes ostentatious, decoration and then I came across this and it was like a breath of fresh air. It is as modern today as it was back in 1969.

The architect and designer, Richard Himmel, made the white interior look inviting - hard to do when the grounds outside the windows are under snow. It is difficult to see in these photos because of the split between the two images, but the lower aperture has the TV and the upper one the the fire grate -  a reversal of what is usually seen today and certainly wasn't normal back then. On the right of the fireplace the logs are held not in a basket as one might expect but in another fire grate. 

Look at the way the red is carried through the room, and look too at the arrangement of painting, prints, sconce (art?) and lamp above the rococo chest. I love this room.