Lavender's Blue: Wherever there's design there's Lavender's Blue

Collections May Vary

Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport at the ready, it’s the third edition of Treasure House Fair at Royal Hospital Chelsea London. Edmond Joy’s 1709 construction is a surprising component of the Sculpture Walk directed by Harvey Horswell and curated by Dr Melissa Gustin, both from National Museums Liverpool. Brought to the show by Thomas Coulborn and Sons, it is a child’s wardrobe masquerading as a Dutch style doll’s house. It meets the accepted definition of sculpture as a work of art in three dimensions while also being a functional object and one of architectural interest. This magical wardrobe with its bewitching façade deserves to be lionised. Little did Edmond Joy know three centuries ago that he would be creating the ultimate collector’s item with his Kew Palace in miniature.

There are first editions at Shapero Rare Books such as Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1934) and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1845). And there are newly signed editions at Potterton Books: Blenheim 300 Years of Life in a Palace (2024). Blenheim Palace is the most visited of all of Britain’s stately homes. Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, renowned interior designer and author is on standby with her Sharpie pen. She grew up at Blenheim: it is now lived in by her brother Charles, 12th Duke of Marlborough. “I was always the one who was interested in art and architecture and the history of buildings,” Henrietta relates. “That, coupled with working with my father on the restoration because of my career in interior design meant I’ve more interest and knowledge of the house than perhaps other members of the family.”

Galerie Marc Maison is a canine art collector’s paradise. Two life size sculpture groups guard the entrance to the room. In 1893 banker Jacques Stern commissioned Auguste-Nicholas Caïn to replicate his hunting dogs in dark green patina bronze for outside his Château de Fitz-James in Oise. The room is dominated by Augustine Ricard’s monumental oil painting Après la Chasse dated 1885. She was one of the few female artists to exhibit her work in the fashionable Parisian salons. A dozen dogs are pictured resting in their kennel. “We are located in Rue des Rosiers, St Ouen sur Seine. Everyone comes to Les Puces in Clignoncourt!” declares Daisy Maison.

“Huon Mallalieu has an incredible depth of knowledge as an art and antiques historian,” is how Country Life Interiors Editor Giles Kime introduces one of the magazine’s long term contributors. Huon begins, “The 50s were rather important because there was a change of American tax law which encouraged people to buy art to hang on their walls during their lifetime but was tax exempt after their death if they donated it to a museum. This meant they were looking for new markets and so were dealers. And that was how the Impressionist market actually began on a major world stage.”

He continues, “I mention that because people are worried markets are collapsing. The art market has a circularity about it. One thinks that in 1962 Lord Leighton’s most famous work Flaming June was sold for £62 and it’s now worth millions. It had been out of fashion for 50 years. This happens regularly and there is no need to panic. One must remember that what was cutting edge for one generation is old hat for the next generation and old master for the one after that. Things go round and round. What people want now is completely different compared to the 70s and 80s. And that’s no bad thing. Markets dry up; contemporary artists become less contemporary. And once they are being resold on the secondary market their original dealers can no longer control them by waiting lists and the like. At that moment prices may well drop and if you want to that’s the moment to start buying them.”

Huon recalls the brown furniture market in the 80s, “It was focused on the Fulham Road and Kings Road but also Bond Street in a very big way. Again, it was partly driven by American fashion of the 20s which had been all for the grandest of 18th century furniture and that continued. There were big collectors in Britain as well and when their collections came through in the 80s and 90s that was the peak – and the end of it too. After that people thought brown furniture was far too grand. They wanted simple mid 20th century stuff – the generational shift occurred.”

Writer and Executive Director of the Design Leadership Network Michael Diaz-Griffith comments, “I think if we look at the market for high style traditional English material, the US was offset just a bit from the UK. If you think of some of the great sales of the 70s like the Mentmore sale, the great houses were being decanted of this wonderful material and it was often Americans who were scooping it up and taking it back to Fifth Avenue. So there remained a great deal of excitement about that high style really through the 80s and into the 90s. The baby boomers of the early 2000s became very excited about contemporary art and in the US at least that was the driver of collecting and tastemaking really until the millennials – the generation that I am trying to be a cheerleader for – began to come of age and exhibit a different type of taste.” Exhibitor Philip Mould’s room features both old masters and modern British artworks.

“The pendulum swings back and forth always,” New Yorker Michael believes. “The pendulum is swinging back in the direction of antiques, of historic decorative arts, and that is a very good thing indeed. You are searching for your own taste, what is comfortable, enjoying history and what it has to offer but also being at home in the world as it is today.” Fresh from Marrakesh, interior decorator Henrietta von Stockhausen reckons, “Christopher Gibbs and Robert Kime started this type of decorating. They managed to go much deeper into that story of a home and the most important thing is comfort. They were very bravely mixing styles and the stuff owners had collected.”

Henrietta recollects, “Christopher mixed some incredibly important things with some really not important things but everything was beautiful and told a story. I think that juxtaposition created great energy and developed a much less precious way of decorating which is really very much where we are now I believe. My clients now are much braver at telling their story, much braver at choosing things that they want. It’s not about show anymore – it’s about actually enjoying your pieces and looking at them. Sometimes you have this beautiful antique piece which along with another 100 beautiful pieces feels like you’re in a museum. But if you place it opposite some incredible contemporary piece it really begins to sing and creates this energy and this is what is required these days.

Firmdale Hotels have a collection of top spots in London and New York. What better way is there to celebrate their 40th anniversary than launching this year’s Brasserie at Treasure House? It’s also the 25th anniversary of their Charlotte Street Hotel in Fitzrovia. Smart menu main course choices include asparagus and artichoke salad with toasted almonds and pan seared seabass with lobster bisque. Puddings vary from baked chocolate cake to strawberries and rhubarb with shortbread and ice cream. Next door, Ostra Regal Gold Oysters in the Oyster Bar are fresh from Clew Bay in County Mayo and full of joyful surprise.

Treasure House Fair 2025 has plenty of heroic moments, some of epic grandeur, and an immaculateness of purpose.

The Gunton Arms Thorpe Market + West Runton Beach Norfolk

Why Bee Aye Ate Al

It’s so exclusive there’s a two month waiting list for a weekend meal and a six month wait for a bedroom. There’s a no vehicle policy – a green path crosses 400 hectares of rolling parkland to the front porch (the car park is hidden behind a copse). It has one of the finest private collections of contemporary art in Britain. The ground floor rooms are decorated by England’s best known restaurant designer. The owner is married to an American supermodel. Welcome to The Gunton Arms. Cheers!

The story starts in 1982 when property developer Kit Martin, businessman Charles Harbord-Hamond and art dealer Ivor Braka purchased the Gunton Park Estate and restored the buildings and land. The main house, Charles’s family home, was carved into several properties. Kit’s father Sir Leslie Martin ran the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge along with Sir Colin St John “Sandy” Wilson in the Modernist mid 20th century.

The Gunton Arms, a long low two storey building faced with grey stone and decorated with fretwork gables, was originally Steward’s Farm, a shooting lodge attached to Gunton Hall. In 2011, Ivor launched The Gunton Arms, a pub with 16 bedrooms, in the Victorian building and the rest is history. Or at least a new chapter of history.

Jonathan Meades writes in The Plagiarist in the Kitchen (2017), “Nothing needs reinterpreting. Nothing needs a ‘twist’. The wheel has already been invented. The best a cook can do is improve on what’s there – that usually means stripping out redundant ingredients. It means going back to the very foundations, of starting from zero in order to reach a point that has been reached many times before.” The menu at this pub takes a leaf out of Jonathan’s book. There may be dishes like Portwood asparagus and feta salad with shallot dressing on the menu but traditional pub grub like cod fishfingers with chips and mushy peas also makes an appearance.

Knightsbridge based Ivor explains, “I’m closely involved but not every day. Luckily I took the advice of Mark Hix, former Head Chef of Le Caprice, J Sheekey and The Ivy among others. Mark effectively gave me his Head Chef Stuart Tattersall and Simone, Stuart’s partner, to take on my first pub. They’d wanted to start their own pub in the country but decided under Mark’s encouragement to join me.” Steaks are cooked on an open fire. St Véran burgundy tops the wine list.

Who better to do an impromptu tour of the pub artwork than the owner himself? His story. “What is common to all of the pieces is that they are made by people who have a passionate commitment to what they create. They are not for decoration only to just be easy on the eye; they are to stimulate, to provoke thought and to evoke emotion.” The list of artists reads like a guide to 20th and 21st century art from figuration to abstraction: Frank Auerbach, David Bailey, Tom of Finland, Lucian Freud, Gilbert and George, Damien Hirst.

But Ivor doesn’t neglect local and historic connections either: “At high level over the wood panelling in the entrance hall there are photographs relating to the history of Gunton, Gunton Hall and especially the Suffield family and its connection with the Royal Family and Lillie Langtry, the actress and mistress of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Langtry was the most celebrated beauty of her day. Whilst the Prince of Wales was staying at Gunton Hall she stayed at the shooting lodge to be close to him.” The current Prince of Wales frequents the pub. History repeating itself. “To one side of the front door is a work by Hans Peter Feldmann, an artist who specialises in adding the unexpected to old paintings he has found in antique shops. Here, he has given a formally posed 19th century lady a black eye, a clear reference to domestic violence. It’s a picture that’s comic but with obvious serious intent.” History, updated.

The Elk Room is the main bar and restaurant. Ivor says, “This room is dominated by the massive fossilised skull of a Giant Irish Elk, the largest deer that ever lived. It was found in a peat bog in Ireland and is over 10,000 years old. I bought it at an auction in Ireland and it was formerly in Adare Manor, a Gothic house designed by Pugin for the Earl of Dunraven.” Like several major Irish country houses, such as Carton in County Kildare, Adare Manor in County Limerick is now a five star hotel resort.

“In the corner of the room are a series of lithographs depicting alcoholic women and their children by Paula Rego. Born in Portugal but working all her life in England, Rego is regarded as one of Britain’s most distinguished artists. Her work has a dark humour and complexity of purpose redolent of the tragicomic vision of Goya or Cervantes. These lithographs are the result of a request from a wine producer to design memorable labels for their product. Rego responded by letting her imagination run riot with this series focusing on lonely women with babies desperately turning to drink.” The company never did use them. Too memorable.

The Elk Room flows into The Emin Room. “Addiction is again a running theme in this interior: the addiction to love and emotional need which comes over strongly in Tracey Emin’s three neon works Trust Me, I Said Don’t Practice On Me, and Everything for Love,” Ivor relates. “All these works directly convey a need for sincerity, for total emotional commitment and a huge fear of the possibility of the lack of it. The neons are executed in the artist’s elegantly distinctive forward sloping handwriting. To me, Tracey Emin, with her total dedication to her work and her directness, is one of the most impressive artists working today.” Martin Brudnizki designed the downstairs rooms; Robert Kime, the upstairs.

Racy humour is all around. Falling Leaves by Jonathan Yeo, famous for his red portrait of Charles III, is actually a collage of cutouts from porn magazines. Ivor jokes it’s “clitorati”. As a male appendage counterpart, a metal doorknob drops the K. There’s a chromatically vivid image by British photographer Miles Aldridge of the Buffalo New York born supermodel Kristen McMenamy. She rose to success in the 1990s with her ethereal alternate beauty. Kristen is a Donatella Versace favourite and friend of Linda Evangelista.

Yet there’s also serious commentary. He finishes, “Kitaj constantly involves his Jewishness in his art and this small portrait derives from a famous photograph of Hitler’s admirer and Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Kitaj is deliberately implicating the English upper classes with antisemitism and an admiration for the German fascist regime.” History must not repeat itself.

“I will defend the fashion world to the end because I know it personally,” opines Kristen, who is Ivor’s wife. “From the outside it might look like a vanity project of marketing and capitalism. But from the inside it’s a lot of great people. I don’t think I was specially phenomenal looking – because I wasn’t. I had to work a little bit harder than the others. You look at some girls and they’re just so incredibly beautiful. But some of those beautiful girls don’t last because they don’t have something, that magic. I would say with the top girls you gotta have something more than just the way you look.”

The following morning, a stroll along the windswept West Runton Beach, which as the crow flies is about as close to Amsterdam as London, waves splashing “barely suggestive of the violence of the deep” (James Baldwin, Another Country, 1963), is like being immersed in an Edward Seago watercolour. Now that’s another artist whose work should be hung at The Gunton Arms. Just saying.

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