Tag: stuart blakley

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Architecture

Lavender’s Blue + Frankfurt

Many Mansions

John Goodall, Country Life’s Architectural Editor, presented a talk on castle architecture, the second in the European Commission series of lectures curated by Dr Roderick O’Donnell and hosted by Cultural Attaché Jeremy O’Sullivan at Europe House, Smith Square, London. The series marks the European Year of Cultural Heritage. “The elevations of châteaux are often one third roof,” John commented. “The French were obsessed with roofs.” Pictured are houses, not castles, in Germany, not France. Nevertheless, John’s comments could still be applied. Their roofs have more slopes than Klosters, more gables than a Lucy Maud Montgomery novel. Monsieur Mansard would approve.

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Architecture Hotels Restaurants

Town Hall Hotel + Typing Room Restaurant Bethnal Green London

Indefinite Article

Goodness. Two far east trips in one season. We’ll be in Ichinomiya by spring at this rate. Nuala was well worth the trip for midweek frolics. Hopes are riding high for Saturday lunch in Typing Room. We’re liking the name already, even minus its definite article, spending half our lives typing up storms. We’re here to snatch the three course (plus snack) set lunch menu. It’s fashionably short: two options per course. Fortunately it caters well for pescatarians:

We’re very partial to Michelin style madness and had been reliably informed to expect multisensory sensations. Cow bells ding-a-ling? No; just lively piped music towards the close of the afternoon. Surely foam at the very least? Our sense of anticipation rises. One of our carnivorous companions chooses the venison. Will it vaporise upon arrival with said guest merely left to inhale the gamey scent as if the doe was gracefully passing by on a moor? Before being shot dead? Not quite: it arrives solidly three dimensional, delicately seared, with the closest nod to starry styling being its geometric presentation (an oblong cut next to a cabbage roll). Belcanto’s fag ash butter pushed boundaries; Typing Room’s marmite butter is easier to love.

The snack is really an oversized amuse bouche, crispy and colourful, balancing on a rolled linen napkin. The crab is pure seefood. See it. Eat it. Delish. The brill is brill (sorry, couldn’t resist). Honestly, it’s as light and wholesome as our writing (we weren’t once described as “architecture’s answer to Hello! magazine” for nothing). Sheep’s yoghurt was but now isn’t on the menu. Pity. We could eat sheep’s yoghurt till the cows come home. But a colourful cacophony (pudding arrives to the beat of that lively music) of sweet meets savoury is worth writing home about. Under the aegis of Jason Atherton – City Social (his goat’s cheese fritters with honeyed white truffle oil are particularly memorable) being one of his many other forays – is Executive Chef Lee Westcott who formerly worked for Tom Aikens.

The restaurant is naturally lit by large sash windows on two sides. A central chimney breast divides it into two spaces. We’re in the larger space, overlooking the kitchen with its eight rolled-sleeve-white-shirted-navy-aproned-mostly-bearded staff. Walls are painted an inky charcoal grey. Seats look Scandinavian and must be comfortable because, afterwards, well, we don’t remember if they were or not, and you always remember uncomfortable chairs, don’t you?

Typing Room is in the same building as the five star Town Hall Hotel (lack of definite article clearly being a theme). It’s a sturdy Portland stone monument to municipality designed by Percy Robinson and Alban Jones in the final year of the Edwardian era. It was added to 30 years later in a similarly robust manner. Rare Architecture completed the recent conversion adding a daring metallic intervention. Or “abstracted veil” in the words of architect Nathalie Rozencwajg. The interiors are furnished to reflect all these eras: neoclassical antiques; vintage mid century pieces; and contemporary sculptures. Eclectic and eccentric: a doll’s house cupboard here; a dentist’s chair there. And – holy cow – a big yellow fish. Taxi!

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Art Country Houses Design Developers Luxury People

Lavender’s Blue + The Irish Times + The Gloss

Russian Unorthodox

Lavender’s Blue. A Vision | A Residence | A Blog. Our Gesamtkunstwerk. A decade of collecting and arranging. Irish country house attic style. So where better to celebrate in print than The Irish Times? Better again, The Gloss supplement. An A3 splash in Ireland’s glossiest A1 publication. Style Editor Aislinn Coffey gets it: “Your project and home was such a breath of fresh air, I adore it!” Virtuosic studies in light and shadow. Nothing’s really ever black and white (unless like us you’re under contract for the technicolour snaps). All things considered really, Lavender’s Blue is worthy of a retrospective at the Grand Palais. Clearly, we were an oversight by the National Gallery’s Monochrome exhibition gallerist.

Why the name Lavender’s Blue? Apart from being good with colour and enjoying the paradoxical phrase (surely lavender is purple to the masses?), there are geographical reasons for the naming of the vision that became a house that became a collection of essays that became a lifestyle that became an obsession that became a romance. This part of Battersea, back in its rural Surrey days, was awash with lavender fields. Nearby Lavender Hill and Lavender Sweep pay testimony to its perfumed history. Sweet. Oh and the Marillion song is pretty nifty too.

Step inside, and the rooms could be anywhere (or at least anywhere pretty decent); there are no visual references to its location in southwest London. Unless you count an 18th century threaded collage of Kew Palace. The street facing windows are opaque while the rear of the house reveals itself only onto a private cobbled trellised courtyard overlooked by absolutely nobody. A little piece of secret London. There are subtle hints of the Ireland of yore: a diorama of the long demolished Antrim Castle in the hallway; a framed envelope from the Earl of Kilmorey in the drawing room. But really it’s an international collection: no antiques stall or flea market or second hand shop or vintage pop-up was safe from plundering for the last 10 years. Amsterdam, Belfast, Bilbao, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Lisbon, Paris, Paris again, Rotterdam and of course Savannah.

The naïve mirrored mini portico is one of several purchases from Savannah. We visited the Deep South’s finest after devouring Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The events in John Berendt’s book happened yonks ago but Savannah is still oh so magical. Meeting antiques dealer Charlie Brown, he gave us fragments of a chandelier from Jim William’s home, Mercer House. Jim was the central protagonist. The chandelier was smashed to myriad pieces when he shot his lover dead. We’ve slotted the crystal pieces into a standard lamp. Perfection.

The tiny mirror framed with horns is also from Savannah. The tinted photograph of General Lee came from an antiques arcade. It’s faded so his features can only be seen from certain angles like a shimmering ghost. “The family were glad to rid of it!” the dealer proclaimed. “He’s a bad omen!” Despite being swathed in bubble wrap, the picture split down the middle in our suitcase, hopefully dispelling any malignant spirits in the process. En route to Savannah we simply had to stop off in Atlanta for “Funday Sunday”. Margaret Mitchell’s flat where she wrote Gone with the Wind was a must-see. It’s also a late 19th century building – roughly the same size as Lavender’s Blue.

It may all look a little shambolic but there’s method (occasionally) and sanity (mostly) in the madness. Chicness amongst the shabbiness. Collections within collections include 18th century wax silhouettes hung in a group in a dark corner of the drawing room. “Darker again!” we ordered our ever patient decorator. And so he added another layer – or was it four or five? – of purple paint to the drawing room walls. At night, and even during the day, the walls merge into the charcoal grey ceiling. Antlers cast mysterious shadows by night. A tiny internal window over the recessed bookcase yields yet more mysterious lighting.

The bedroom is all about pattern. More is more. So very Sister Parish. Sanderson wallpaper covers the walls and ceiling while a Christian Lacroix shirt has found new life stretched across two square canvases. Nothing is coordinated – matching is just too bourgeois. Ok, the blue and white theme of the kitchen is pretty controlled but that’s all. And we’ve got to live up to our Delftware. It’s an eclectic collection, a layered timeless look, nothing too contrived or designed. The collection is complete, right down to the Argentine spoon embellished with Evita’s face and the majolica vase next to the piano. We’re resting on our laurels in the courtyard. Ah, the courtyard. So very Lanning Roper. Scene of lively summer lunches (Selfridges catering) and even livelier autumn soirées (more Selfridges catering). So very Loulou de la Falaise. Mostly with Annabel P, Lavender’s Blue intern amanuensis, on overtime. It’s getting greener and greener and greener. Grey Gardens watch this space. Sorry neighbours.

So what do the literati and glitterati have to say? Their quotes benefit from a touch of upper class case dramatic effect and a dash of well placed irony. “The place has great panache,” says Rupert Thomas, Editor of The World of Interiors. His predecessor Min Hogg, now Editor-at-Large, thinks it’s “lovely”. “Your rooms are a triumph,” believes architectural historian Dr Roderick O’Donnell. “They’re brilliantly decorated.” Artist and country house doyenne Amanda Brooke agrees, “What a triumph your understated flat is.” Jacqueline Duncan, Principal of Inchbald School of Design, thinks it’s “Bohemian”. Reverend Andy Rider, Rector of Christ Church Spitalfields, calls it “Baronial”. Astrid Bray, MD of Hyde Park Residence, loves it: “Wow! Quite a place.”

“LOVE it!” breathes model Simon Duke, simply and succinctly. Loving is a theme. “LOVE it!” repeats neighbour Emma Waterfall, MD of Cascade Communications. “Especially the William Morris inspiration in the bedroom. Fab.” Ok. “LOVE the purple!” raves interior designer to the stars Gabhan O’Keeffe. Still focusing on the drawing room, Nicky Haslam, man about town and interior decorator, is a fan: “That room is EVERYTHING I love!” Lady Lucy French, girl about town and theatre director exclaims, “I LOVE your interior design! Stunning!” The final words must go to conservation architect extraordinaire John O’Connell. “Very brave, very Russian, very YOU!”

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People Restaurants

Nuala Restaurant + Bar Old Street London

Celtic Revivification

Shillelaghs at hand for the wee dander to Old Street for school night shenanigans. Dry January doesn’t apply to Irish launches. “It’s Ginuary,” muses amusing muse Annabel P. Time for a cèilidh. Nuala is Niall Davidson’s microcosm of Irish craic next to Derwent London’s White Collar Factory. The talented part Northern Irish part Scottish chef cut his teeth at St John Bread + Wine and the Chiltern Firehouse: Nuala is his first restaurant. The motif is a redhaired colleen – presumably the enigmatic Nuala?

There’s all the rage all day all night all week naggins and nosh to be had; a high five to the best of Irish – and British – bistronomy. The kitchen is run by Colin McSherry, a Fat Duck and Dinner alumnus. When you’re finished the scampi fried quail’s eggs, Jerusalem artichoke crackers and pear cream with grated orange and mushroom or clams in pistachio beurre blanc cooked on a brick lined wood fire in the middle of the 75 cover restaurant, you can stretch the night in the underground bar.

Once you’ve refuelled on Irish whiskey punch or downed a kick-ass Manhattan Serve (10 year iold single malt, Armagnac, Palo Cortado, squash seed oil, honey) in one of the timber panelled snugs, live music will entice even the most shrinking of violets to join in the Hibernian hooley and dance like dervishes till dawn. Tonight’s musical highlight is Conor Scott singing Zombie. Oh, and for those midnight munchies there’s always Tayto crisps.

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Fashion Luxury People

Argentine Open Polo Championship Palermo Buenos Aires + La Dolfina

Campeonato Argentino Albierto de Polo 2017

The Campeonato Argentino Abierto de Polo (Argentine Open Polo Championship) is to polo what the World Series is to baseball. Quite simply it’s the single most important international polo event on the planet. Cue the jetset. Held every year since 1893 at the historic Campo Argentino de Polo of Palermo, popularly referred to as the Cathedral of Polo, the Open Championship welcomes some of the world’s greatest equestrian athletes.

Today it’s 33 degrees Celsius and being an exclusive midweek match (a recent intervention), family and friends only. And us. Not only is this event important to the sporting community, it’s one of the hottest social tickets in Buenos Aires. Later, the fashionable restaurants of Palermo will be thronged. The British Telegraph calls the Argentine Open “polo’s pinnacle”. Ezekiel Parablas, himself a champion polo player and proud Porteño, is our English speaking guide. So who’s playing? La Dolfina against La Albertina. Get ready for the thunderous thud of hooves.

“This polo tournament is the most competitive in the world. Not in Argentina, the world! There are 10 teams in the tournament. Competitive polo playing follows spring season round the world. That way you can practise the whole year. It’s all very sociable!”

“The perfect team handicap is 40. An individual player’s handicap ranges from zero to 10 with 10 being the best. There are players at the highest level in Argentina, England and the US but nowhere else. Polo is the hobby of ‘patróns’ who fund the sport. The money is in breeding, training and selling the horses. All you receive when you win a match is a handshake – from the Queen if you’re lucky!”

“This match is at a really really high level. So you’ve got four versus four players and one sub on either team. There are two yellow jacketed referees on horses. There will be around 160 horses between the two teams. That’s 20 horses per player. The horses are all pure Argentinian pedigree. The field has to be perfect. After each goal teams switch sides of the field.”

“There are five to eight ‘periods’ per match. A period lasts six and a half minutes of real playing time. It’s a very dangerous sport! The horses are travelling at 60 to 70 kilometres per hour. Polo is very physical, like ice hockey. The British Royals play for charity – they’re not professionals. When passing the ball to Prince Charles we’re very kind and you have to say ‘Please sir’. This match will start soon. We do everything late! Everything in Buenos Aires starts late!”

“Polo horses have very pronounced tendons in their legs. They’re like the best girls: beautiful faces and big asses! Most of the horses playing are clones. Look at the scoreboard – the horse’s head beside any horse’s name means they’re cloned. All four of La Dolfina’s horses playing now are clones! Dolfina B04 C Clon 4; Dolfina Polemica; Irenita Acertada; and Vasca Harrods.”

“A polo field is the size of six football pitches. An underlay of sand keeps the grass bouncy. There’s only one match per day on the field. The match continues when players have to change horses, unless they’re hurt.  Look how they pass the ball so perfectly. The speed is always amazing!”

At the half time interval TV screens broadcast a six year old, an Adolfo Cambiaso in the making. “The fun part of polo is having fun,” he declares. The final score? La Dolfina 22: La Albertina 6.

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Luxury People Restaurants

i Latina Restaurant Buenos Aires + Lavender’s Blue

Aga Something to Say | Been Latin | Columbian Marching Orders | Cuban Resolution | Caribbean Crews | Chefs Specials | You Can Get the Staff These Days

“Take lots of photos! We love a photo shoot!”

Tasting menus and addresses only released upon booking are the whole rage in Buenos Aires. In the UK, wine lists start with white and end with red. The opposite is true in Argentina. A locked gate keeps the hoi polloi at bay at i Latina, a “Cocina Latino Americana” restaurant. i Latina is open for dinner from Wednesday to Saturday and brunch on Sunday. The tasting menu costs 1,600 Argentine pesos; wine pairing, 900; a margarita 180; and sparking water is 120. That’s 2,800 pesos without tip, or just over £120. Not cheap, but for one of South America’s top restaurants, not budget busting either. “A glass of Laborum 2016. Let’s do it on the house!”

“This building is 200 years old.”

It turns out we’ve saved the best till last. i Latina will prove to be Buenos Aires‘ finest restaurant. And it’s not like the competition ain’t hot. i Latina is in Villa Crespo, a neighbourhood fast becoming a dining destination. It opened in 2012 and kick started those two Buenos Aires’ signature trends: small plates and closed door policy. Once the white pillared gate is unlocked, the evening begins. Walk along a chessboard path, walk past white painted cast iron furniture, walk under a candlelit birdcage, walk through the open glazed door.

“The owners have adopted a stray cat they found nearby.”

A psychedelic parrot painted on the bathroom wall looks like it escaped from the birdcage. Colour doesn’t end there. We’ll eat off blue spoons and mustard plates; watercress leaves (yes, green), carrots (yes, orange), horse radishes (definitely red) with purple and yellow petals decorating the courses to come. “This is typical of Mexico – spicy and sweet.” It’s a family affair. Laura Macías designed the interior; her brother Santiago is Head Chef; and third sibling Camilo manages front of house.

“Coconut is used so much in Columbian and Ecuadorian food.”

“The creamy coffee is hand picked grain by grain.”

Somewhere and somehow between pudding and coffee we end up in the kitchen. The chefs line up, striking poses, full of the joys; a grand finale, we’re half expecting some high kicks. “Where’s the pastry chef?” they frantically chorus and a pretty girl appears from nowhere with knowhow to join in the fun. If this is hospitality Patagonia style, a super supper club (Puerto Cerrado), we’re converts.

“Go to Columbia!”

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Architecture Art

Pasaje Defensa San Telmo + Casa Pardo San Telmo Buenos Aires

We Cry, We Laugh, We Seek, We Shop

“Do you like Chopin?” goes the old joke. “Only in San Telmo,” we sardonically reply. Nobody does shabby chic better than the Porteños – except the Anglo Irish. But they’re another story altogether. Dundering in looks better in the dusty heat, deep in the United Provinces of the Silver River.

Entering Pasaja Defensa surely must be the closest contemporary experience to visiting an Ancient Roman villa. Originally built for the Ezeiza family in 1880, it’s arranged around a cloistered courtyard supported by the slimmest of columns, four poster bed girthed really, sprouting vegetative capitals.

During the 1930s recession, the building housed 32 families. Nowadays it’s the home of antique dealers, artists and craftsmen. And a forlorn grey cat.

Across the street from Pasaja Defensa is Casa Pardo. A counterpart as sweet as any in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Wachet Auf. If the former is all open aria atria; the latter is a high octave top glazed gallery and a long one at that. Dating from 1745, Casa Pardo was and is a cultural salon. Scion Monica Pardo reminisces,

“Anyone would believe that the ‘gatherings’ were meetings that were held only in the colonial era, but in the 20th century in the House of Pardo, these meetings were held where many collectors, museum directors and historians had coffee and chatted.  Many years ago, when I was very young, I was visiting my grandfather at his Sarmiento Street store and I heard an animated debate between the Unitarians and Federalists.”

We buy, we laugh, we see, we drop. And later, much later, we dance.

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Architects Architecture Luxury People

The Kavanagh Building + Corina Kavanagh Buenos Aires

Concrete Idea

It’s as close to Brutalism as Art Deco can get. Argentine Irish developer Corina Kavanagh’s eponymous skyscraper, once the tallest in Latin America, boasts no frills monumentality. Designed in 1934 by local architects Ernesto Lagos, Luis María de la Torre and Gregorio Sánchez, The Kavanagh Building was also once the world’s highest reinforced concrete structure. Ms Kavanagh lived in a luxurious apartment occupying the entire 14th floor. A transparent mosaic of jacaranda flowers in full bloom softens the hard line architecture on a hot spring day.

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Architecture Art People

Teatro Colón Buenos Aires + Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka

Linger for a Moment

Ana María Martínez, Puerto Rico’s finest vocal export, is known for her dramatic performances. A few years ago, opera lovers at Glyndebourne were treated to rather more drama than they anticipated. The soprano, who was playing the lead role in Antonín Dvorak’s opera Rusalka, was nearing the end of the first act when, with abandon, she pulled away from her prince, fell off the stage, and landed in the orchestra pit.

Fortunately no ambulances were required at Ana María’s performance in Teatro Colón. One of the world’s great opera houses, up there with Milan’s La Scala, Teatro Colón is an island of culture, filling an entire urban block of Buenos Aires. Viamonte Street to the north | Tucumán Street to the south | Cerrito Street to the east | Libertad Street to the west. It overlooks 9 de Julio Avenue but doesn’t manage to dominate it. Nothing would. One of the theatre’s vast pedimented elevations may face onto 9 de Julio Avenue but it’s the world’s widest road, spanning 16 lanes.

While its cornerstone was laid in 1890, the 3,500 capacity Teatro Colón is the product of a suitably eclectic array of architects, taking 18 years to complete. The original architect Francesco Tamburini was succeeded when he died by his partner Victor Meano. Mr Meano in turn was succeeded when he died by Belgian architect Jules Dormal. The theatre was extended in the 1960s by architect Mario Roberto Álvarez. Tiers of boxed seats are arranged in a horseshoe under a painted dome. And then there’s that 48 metre high stage.

It’s pretty spectacular.

Kiri Te Kanawa and Renée Fleming; Anna Pavlova and Rudolf Nureyev; the Berlin Phil and the New York Phil: Richard Strauss and Camille Saint-Saëns; all the great and the good have sung, danced, played and been played at Teatro Colón.

Dmitry Golovnia is Rusalka’s suitably tall and dashing Prince. A full figured crimson hooded María Luján Mirabelli is Jezibaba, giving it her all. The mezzosoprano is a regular performer at Teatro Colón. Ante Jerkunica is a bald skeletal Vodnik. The theatre has its own costume and scenery departments. Tonight, a penchant for the visually avant garde accompanies Julian Kuerti’s musical direction. Ana María gives a heartrending rendition of Song to the Moon, the opera’s keynote aria. “Moon in the dark heavens, your light shines far. You roam over the whole world gazing into human dwellings.”

The final curtain. Ante runs on stage to take the first bow. Ana María flamboyantly curtsies to the floor, managing to stay on the stage. The audience is ecstatic. An even bigger roar from the audience erupts for Dmitry. Bravo! Encore!

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Architecture Design Luxury Restaurants Town Houses

Four Seasons Hotel Buenos Aires + La Mansión + Elena Restaurant

Perennials | Alias Graceful

Harrods closed in 1999. Praise be then for that other stalwart of longstanding luxury still standing, the standing tall Four Seasons. This being exclusive Recoleta, a Beaux Arts mansion of seven hotel suites around a black and white Carrara marble staircase is plonked in the grounds. If Gatsby had a townhouse… It has its own romantic story attached, one with a happy ending. Dashing heir to a ranching fortune Félix de Álzaga Unzué built La Mansión in 1920 as a wedding splash for his smashing bride Elena Peña. It recently got a £40 million makeover led by Argentine architect Francisco López Bustos. These days? Serendipitous suzerainty in sunglasses. Indoors. Sexy has a new.

Buenos Aires reaches out across the Atlantic yet the endless Pampas encircling the city reinforce the feeling of an enraptured self involvement. The city clings to the edge of the land, looking towards Europe rather than America. French architecture dominates (or certainly did in the past); Italian cuisine reigns supreme; and there are plenty of Spanish speaking locals claiming Anglo Argentinian heritage, whether of English or Celtic descent. In the 18th century, Argentina was the non English speaking country to attract the highest number of Irish immigrants. Many would become eminent in the navy, arts and medicine. In some ways Argentina is more progressive than its European counterparts: unlike Spain, it banned bull fighting as early as 1822.

Buenos Aires translates as “good air”. It could just as easily stand for “the good life” to be enjoyed in winter, spring, summer and autumn. Restaurants, cafés and bars – and this hotel for sure – are alive and kicking, vibrating with the rise and fall cadence of polyglot chatter and laughter, well into the wee small hours. A dark tango erupts across this ambassadorial enclave under the dense shade of blazing jacaranda trees. A clock strikes 12. Midnight in the garden of good and upheaval.

Earlier in the day, away from the searing heat, mingling with mestizos, there was lunch in Elena. Yep, the Four Seasons restaurant carries her name. Between the crazy new block with its broken pediments (like an adopted lovechild of Philip Johnson and Quinlan Terry) and La Mansión is the surprisingly macho Pampas ranch style restaurant. It’s scalped out of the escarpment of the sloping site, lit by a dome which pops its transparent head up into the garden next to the swimming pool. The old and the new, the subterranean and above ground meld and depart; the mellow and the bonkers (condom shaped lights and door handles formed of chains in the loos anyone?) blur and collide.

Over lunch, a tangy aromatic Doña Paula Malbec 2017 on ice was just so cooling. The temperature rose back up when a sizzling cheese soufflé arrived from the kitchen. Mariscada was next. That’s: trout, octopus, shrimp, catch of the day (make that white salmon) and sautéed squid. A seabed of goodness; southern pemmican. Finally, mousse de chocolate amazónico 70 percent and proper Argentinian bean coffee. All four were so very this season.

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Architecture People

Recoleta Cemetery Buenos Aires + Eva Perón + Liliana Crociati

To Die For

Buenos Aires is sometimes compared to Paris, a touch tenuously at times, but together they’ve had a similarly lucky escape. Le Corbusier planned to bulldoze both cities to create modernist utopias. Thankfully, his plans ended up in the dustbin. Instead of the French connection, we’d like to compare Buenos Aires to Savannah. Wait – there are plenty of things in common, honest. Well, ok, four. Firstly, splendid isolation of the geographical kind. One is encircled by Pampas; the other, swamps. Secondly, they’re both laid out like chessboards, streets intersecting at right angles to define square blocks between them. Thirdly, they both have a Pink House. Only Buenos Aires’ is called Casa Rosado. Fourthly, cemeteries top the tourist trail. Recoleta in BA, Bonaventure in SA. Cities of the dead. Theme parks of morbidity. Celebratory sepulchres. Legends written in stone. Recoleta Cemetery, like Buenos Aires, sprawls rather than soars: a linear visual feast of marble mausolea. A labyrinthic architectural encyclopaedia of ways to be buried. A necropolis within the metropolis. Drop dead gorgeous.

Once the orchard of the adjoining startlingly white Basílica Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the land was designated the city’s first public cemetery in 1822. Two women cry out from the immortalised myriad: one so famous she has a musical named after her; the other, a more intimate tale to tell. The understated yet much sought after tomb of Evita (Eva Perón née Duarte), mother of the nation. And that of the beloved daughter of Porteños, Liliana Crociati. She died in an avalanche on her honeymoon in Austria in 1970. Her parents reconstructed her bedroom in an art nouveau gothic grave. A bronze statue of Liliana in her wedding dress, with her beloved pet dog by her side, guards the entrance. Nostalgia as an art form. Evita’s darling poodle was called Canela. So brief a dream.

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Luxury Restaurants

Buenos Aires + Milión

Where the L?

“I will return and I will be millions,” Evita promised. Easy tigress. Milión will do. Cryptic love. What a darling house. Such extravagance of void. A triple height gallery like the inside of a wedding cake. A death defying stairwell. The hôtel particulier cum restaurant cum tapas bar cum cocktail salon cum art gallery cum atelier cum music venue cum courtyard garden cum residence for the last 10 years of an enigmatic black cat Emilio. He’s a complete doll. Before Emilio for seven years there was Emilia. Here come basil daiquiris. Every hour is happy. Nobody is chichi. Everyone is chic. Great chi. Cheek to cheek. Tick tock. Cat-walk-o-clock. Milión de gracias!

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People

Evita Museum + Buenos Aires

The Newest Argentina

She’s the original icon, in every sense. It’s fitting that Museo Evita is in a gorgeous 1920s mansion that once housed her social foundation. An architectural requiem. Nostalgia in marble. Hypnotic melancholic melodrama, food to the spirit: that’s what we’re after and that’s what we get. Plus deep fried empanadas in the classy courtyard restaurant for the body reboot. You can’t overdress on the Orient Express and the same goes for a football pitch. At least in Eva Perón’s boots books. There’s a fabulous photo on display of the national heroine kicking a soccer ball – wearing killer heels. She wore haute couture and Caron perfume. Just seven years into her public life, Evita was dead, aged 33.

Later, it’s comfort eating in Perón Perón, Palermo Hollywood. On the hour every hour (ok, not quite, this is Argentina, so 20 past if you’re lucky) there’s a blast of foot stamping heart pounding table thumping rabble rousing regimental Justicalist music. “Perón! Perón!” A shrine to Evita forms the fulcrum of the restaurant. Menu puns are aplenty. Salads are “Light Perónism”. Main courses are dedicated to “True Comrades of Life”. Puddings are labelled “Where there is a need, there is a right”. And the menu ends “A cup of java for the President”. The oligarch filled spoon lanterned Fervor brasserie feels a million miles away.

“I confess that I have an ambition, one single, great personal ambition: I would like the name of ‘Evita’ to figure somewhere in the history of my country.” Mission accomplished. A vibrant painting of the most recent president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, hanging over the restaurant tables, is a reminder that Perónism lives on. But there’s only one Evita.

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Architects Hotels Luxury Town Houses

Algodon Mansion Hotel Buenos Aires + Gerhard Heusch

High Flyers Adored 

Thankfully the money’s kept rolling in (and out) so it’s another suitcase in another bedroom. Stretching a rainbow tour of beauty. The art of the possible.

Rest assured, not any old bedroom. Suite dreams in Buenos Aires’ finest hotel. Upscale Recoleta here we come. More than just a little touch of star quality. Don’t cry for us Argentina.

The American writer Waldo Frank evoked the spirit of the city in 1931, “Houses are a chaos and a confusion; Spanish, Creole, Gothic, Baroque, Plateresque, Moorish, Neoclassical, Georgian, Victorian, French of all epochs …” An architectural montage. A thousand stars.

Over 40 years later, local writer Eduardo Crawley would record, “Buenos Aires playacts at being a city that really belongs in the northern hemisphere, and although it somehow drifted to the Southern Atlantic, it’s still attached to its parental body of Europe by an imaginary umbilical cord.” Oh what a circus!

Algodon Mansion fuses French flair with Latin passion and German precision. More Le Grand Trianon than Le Petit Trianon. A luxurious and directional venture, this 1912 landmark has been reimagined by leading German born architect Los Angeles based Gerhard Heusch.

Original grandeur is complemented by a wealth of materials and interventions: walnut parquet; marble tiles; silk wall coverings; taffeta curtains; gold leaf ceilings; alabaster bar. And a waterfall cascading down four watery storeys to the lobby.

A bottle of private collection wine from Algodon’s very own 130 hectare vineyard sits on our writing table. Doesn’t every hotel have a vineyard? Layers of honeycomb are the new canapés.

Time to relax in the rooftop swimming pool, admiring the incidental brutalism of the surrounding skyline. Far below, a brass band marches along Erythrina lined Bougainville filled Guido. La belle époque is back.

Categories
Architecture

Colónia del Sacramento Uruguay + The Doors

Bungalow Bliss

Colónia del Sacramento, where there’s a dog for every door.

Categories
Architecture Restaurants

Colónia del Sacramento Uruguay + Charco Bistró

The Orient Success | River of Silver and Gold

The only way to banish winter blues is to swap seasons. Somewhere in the world it’s spring. In a climate changing equator crossing hemisphere jumping move, hello to the Oriental Republic of Uruguay! Seasonal adjustment order is lunching on roasted pumpkin ravioli and lemon thyme while the waves of the Río de la Plata lap all around. Charco Bistró literally balances on the edge of the world’s widest estuary. The restaurant and hotel date back 300 years says the waiter. Old, yes, but not the oldest buildings on the sycamore lined palm shaded cobbled streets of the town: Colónia del Sacramento was founded by Portuguese settlers in the late 17th century. Gloriously faded grandeur abounds. The only blues here are the cerulean tones of an endless sky.

 

Categories
Architecture Country Houses

Marble Hill House + Marble Hill Beach Dunfanaghy Donegal

Untitled Entitled Titled

Never filler; always killer (lines).

Categories
Architecture Country Houses People

Lady Colin Campbell + Castle Goring West Sussex

You Might As Well Live

“Yawnsville, dahling, yawnsville!” Known – among many things – for her catchphrases, Lady Colin Campbell is never ever dull. And she doesn’t tolerate dullness in others. Certainly not in her castle in Sussex, at any rate. “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity,” Dorothy Parker once said. Lady C would give Mrs P a run for her money in the quips department. “Oh do put that on the internet!” winks Her Ladyship. Not an early riser, at least not today, she appears makeup free, her high cheekbones unadorned. Traces of confetti on the driveway suggest it’s been a busy weekend.

“I’m me whatever – I’m not playing for the gallery. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and, as you can see, I’m not dead yet!” Lady C gleefully describes her various fundraising activities as “whoring for Goring”. A stint on one celebrity TV programme famously helped pay for the castle’s dome preservation. “My friend Carla, not being English, thinks outside the box and suggested covering the dome with a layer of cling film and carpet protector.” Very Parkeresque: “Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.” Although when confronted with a 10 metre python in one episode she did exclaim, “I’m not prepared to jeopardise my life for the entertainment industry!”

“Goring Castle was built by the Shelley family for the poet Shelley,” she explains. “It was sold by his wife Mary who, you know, wrote Frankenstein. I saw the potential immediately and I thought it would be possible if I got my Jamaican workers – which I did. I knew what they were capable of – I am Jamaican!” Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in Italy aged 29. The building is a less compact English version of Northern Ireland’s Castle Ward. Dracu Gothic to the north; Greco Palladian to the south. Either the architect John Biagio-Rebecca or the client had adventurously diverse taste. Or maybe bipolar. “It self evidently hedges its bets with no attempt at unity!” remarks Lady C. As Dotty observed, “Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.”

“Let’s whizz round the outside,” enthuses the châtelaine. “The gothic front looks more like the original Arundel Castle than Arundel Castle itself. The horseshoe staircase on the classical front was bought by the former owners, the Somersets, on a trip to Italy. It cost £30,000. That’s £8 million today. Beyond belief! They could’ve just done it up much cheaper! Above the stairs is the beautiful Shelley coat of arms made of Coade stone.”

Alas, Dorothy Parker’s aphorism resonated with the found state of the castle: “The only dependable law of life – everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.” Nothing that a few million quid wouldn’t fix, though. “I bought the castle three and a half years ago and after the first year moved in. Mid restoration! The east wing collapsed into the wall. I took down the outside bread oven. Hideous beyond belief! There have been times when I wished I could stop,” Lady C recalls, “and there have been times when there has been too much for me to do. It has been frenzied at times – there are neverending demands, neverending things to do, and lots of problems. But I have always enjoyed it.” She benefits from Dotty’s “keen eye and magnetic memory”.

“It’s worth the trouble. It’s a magnificent building. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s laden with history.”

The castle with its obligatory west wing is a sprawling 1,450 square metres. That’s the size of 16 three bedroom houses. An elegant sitting room framed by Doric columns opens onto the terrace under the external staircase. Above, three interconnecting staterooms span the length of the piano mobile. “Its architect understood light and the light here is just fantastic,” Lady C observes. On cue, late morning sunlight gilds the curve of the oval staircase hall. A family staircase leads up to top floor private apartments for Lady C and her two sons. Hopefully there’s plenty of storage for Her Ladyship’s five tiaras and couture wardrobe. She affirms, “Just because I happen to have come from a privileged background doesn’t mean I’m not human, even though many people may think I’m not!”

Two springer spaniels, Totty and Nicky, follow their owner around the place. “It’s very different when you’ve inherited furniture. Interior designers want to cover everything with the same fabric. So American. I went to school in New York but I’m not a New Yorker! We have a licence for people to get married here. Very pretty, but of course, the weather…” Her mobile rings. Instead of Dorothy Parker’s “What fresh hell is this?” she answers, “Hi honee. Hi, where are you? We’ll get there, my son!” Dima is busy on a computer on the top floor. That’s several storeys and hallways and lobbies and corridors away.

Lady C reflects: “Well I would say that there are times in life when you realise that if you put in the graft you get the reward. Effort requires effort.” It’s the end of Lady Colin Campbell’s bold and brilliant, wild and whacky, fast and furious tour. “Appreciation, my dear,” her eyebrows arching, “is a wonderful thing.” What would Dotty do? “Tomorrow’s gone – we’ll have tonight!” And there’s more from the original New Yorker, “Oh, life is a glorious cycle | A medley of extemporanea.” We step out of the recessed gothic porch into the rest of our lives.

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Restaurants

The Salt Room Afternoon Tea Brighton East Sussex + The Duchess of Bedford

Chips off the Old Block 

Henry James: “Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not – some people of course never do – the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime.”

Many silvery moons ago we stayed in the Grand Hotel and were pleasantly surprised by this piece of Mayfair-on-Sea. The hotel’s GB1 seafood restaurant is quite simply the Scott’s of Mayfair Brighton. It even has a stadium shaped bar piled high with oysters encircled by diners perched on stools. A delicious morsel of Edwardian Brighton reinvented for the New Elizabethan age. Another prized stretch of coastal real estate, overlooking the tangled silhouette of the darkly skeletal West Pier, has been snatched up by The Salt Room.

This restaurant has gone all Duchess of Bedford. You guessed. It’s started serving afternoon tea (£24.95). The ultimate meal sandwiched between meals hasn’t been so popular since Princess Catherine of Braganza rocked up with a bonanza of tea in her dowry. The interior might be contemporary but the veranda has a natural turn of two centuries ago feel to it. Will it be full of piscatorial pleasures like the Cosentino party’s oysters with gold leafed carb free caviar? Or the black cod canapés at the Aqua Kyoto shindig?

We know our quirky afternoon tea interiors – think Sanderson and sketch – and quirky afternoon tea treats – think Marriott Park Lane’s beetroot finger sandwiches and Marriott County Hall’s cheesy savoury scones – but in this relatively restrained space there are a few new nutritional novelties even to us. Candy floss is a first! And sure enough, Executive Chef Dave Mothersill’s menu is aptly peppered with piscatorial pleasures. Even the wine list includes a Salt + Shell section: organic wines produced on coastal vineyards from Sicily to South Africa:

“Wines influenced by the sea have a real freshness and purity,” explains Dave, “making them the perfect partner to our local seafood. The soils are packed with fossilised seashells which, when you combine with the salty influence of the sea, helps to create wines of real character. All these wines are coastal with the exception of Gavi di Gavi which is planted on an old limestone seabed. We squeezed it on our list because we love it!” Gotcha. Pier pressure continues with crab rarebit, smoked mackerel paté and, oh good, chocolate pebbles. Even the strawberry jam with the scones is laced with vanilla. Maybe an oblique reference to ice cream? Synchronised idiosyncrasy delivers chive butter crumpet, pumpkin fritter with carrot tartare and a glazed mini doughnut

Abruptly, after overindulging on Jing tea, our rose tinted glasses are lifted, and it all becomes black and white to us. The black bathroom with The White Company accessories. Of course. Monochromatic madness. The Salt and Pepper Room. Aha! We’re in a metaphorical chip shop. What could be more Brighton? Our chips are down. Let’s hope it’s not too many ghostly moons till we return to this innocent pastime.

Categories
Architecture Art People

Trevor Newton + Dartmouth House Mayfair London

The First September

The new year really starts each autumn. As the first golden leaves fall, where is it possible to see The Wallace Collection, Sir John Soane’s Museum and a swathe of Parisian hôtels particuliers in one room? In the Long Drawing Room of Marchmain Dartmouth House, on the same street where Oscar Wilde once resided in Mayfair, but only if you’re on the exclusive invitation list to the EV (Evening View). This house beautiful is not open to the public. Interior Impressions, a major exhibition of drawings by Trevor Newton is presented and curated by Anne Varick Lauder. It’s the first monographic exhibition of the accomplished artist in eight years.

New York born London based Dr Lauder, who has held curatorial positions in the J Paul Getty Museum, the Louvre and the National Portrait Gallery, announces, “We are delighted to be in the Long Drawing Room for the Private View of new drawings by the English topographical artist Trevor Newton. All 60 new works are of grand or highly individual British and European interiors from Versailles to The Ritz, to the Charleston of the Bloomsbury Group and the intimate Georgian houses of Spitalfields. It is therefore appropriate that this invitation only exhibition should take place in one of the finest private interiors in Britain.” She adds, “Interiors within interiors!” A 21st century – and for real – Charles Ryder.

Trevor studied History of Art at Cambridge, later becoming the first full time teacher of the subject at Eton. A present of The Observer’s Book of Architecture for his eighth birthday spurred a lifelong interest in buildings and their interiors. Rather than pursuing modish photorealism, he sets out to capture impressions of a place, often adding whimsical details imagined or transposed from other sources. His atmospheric renderings experiment with the interplay of light and reflection. Dense layers of mixed media – body colour, pen and ink, wash, watercolour and wax resist crayon – evoke a captivating sense of the aesthetic and nostalgic. His framing portrays a theatrical awareness of view: how the onlooker visually enters the room. There’s an enigmatic absence of people yet signs of habitation: a glass here; a magazine there. Trevor says, “My drawings are attempts to convey the emotions generated by art and architecture.” Emotional revisits. Anne considers, “It’s like he redecorates on page.”

Fellow alumnus Stephen Fry recalls, “While many of his contemporaries at Cambridge were Footlighting or rowing, Trevor seemed to spend much of his time drawing and painting. His specialities then were lavish invitations for May Week parties, illustrated menus for Club and Society dinners, posters and programmes for plays and concerts, along with a highly individual line in architectural fantasy drawn for its own sake and for the amusement of his friends. He managed to combine the frivolous and the baroque in a curious and most engaging manner: Osbert Lancaster meets Tiepolo. Trevor is still drawing and painting as passionately as ever and though the content of his work may be more serious, in style and execution it still has all the youthful energy and verve which characterised it over 30 years ago.”

Dartmouth House is something of a hôtel particulier itself. A château-worthy marble staircase and 18th century French panelling in the reception rooms add to the cunning deceit that just beyond the Louis Quinze style courtyard surely lies the Champs-Élysées. The Franglais appearance isn’t coincidental. In 1890 architect William Allright of Turner Lord knocked together two Georgian townhouses for his client, Edward Baring (of the collapsible bank fame) later Lord Revelstoke, to create a setting for his collection of French furniture and objets d’art. Ornament is prime. Dartmouth House is now the HQ of the English Speaking Union. Except for tonight. When it’s utterly-utterly Great Art Central.

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Hotels Luxury Restaurants

Hôtel Plaza Athénée Paris + La Cour Jardin

Up and About in Paris and London 

We fill the lacuna

Lunch where? Paris. C’est le weekend. We’re Ivy’d out midweek although the Soho and Tower Bridge Brasseries’ zucchini fritti and truffle arancini are highly addictive. We’ve been wild about the Century Club’s wild mushroom burger. Hôtel Plaza Athénée Paris. Bows and bows of balconies along Avenue Montaigne. Next door to Christian Dior’s original couture house. The dress code for La Cour Jardin – the hôtel’s exclusive courtyard restaurant – is “elegant”. Ah bien. It’s cheek to high cheekbone with models. Martinets or marionettes? Ask Webb’s Road London resident runway veteran Simon Duke. Poppy red parasols like oversized cocktail umbrellas keep the wrinkles at bay. Virginia creeper clambering up the stone walls, smart trellis chairs among olive trees and acres of linen tablecloth… really the whole place simply oozes Parisian sophistication. The century old courtyard has been pimped and pruned to perfection by designer Bruno Moinard, displaying a talent for resonant juxtaposition. So this season.

We live off our acuity and salutary reminders.

More mirrors than Versailles; more columns than the Coliseum; more pizzazz than Versace: this is the new luxury. Friday Street. Field of freedom. Earned ease. En plein air. A galaxy of culinary stars has aligned to make this restaurant happen. We’re star struck. Le grand fromage himself Alain Ducasse hooked up with Lawrence Aboucaya, owner of legendary Parisian vegetarian restaurant Pousse-Pousse, to concoct a homage to high energy menu. Under the watchful eye of Head Chef Mathieu Emeraud, the menu is fashionably divided into The Garden, The Classics, The Sea and The Shoreline, The Land and The Farm, The Herbs Garden and The Desserts. Just in case you miss the celebrity connection, there’s Alain Ducasse’s own brand Champagne and the menu cover features an 18th century botanical watercolour from his personal collection.

We spend our years as a tale that is told.

Sicilian olive oil accompanies randomly zoomorphic bread rolls, hatching out of folded linen baskets like long beaked ducklings. Artichoke and lemon risotto (€36.00) possesses all the freshness of The Garden. Tomato and pepper amuse bouche matches the red awnings. So does the John Dory, dusted with tomato and fennel (€58.00). Wide brimmed plates generously frame the food. Strawberry and almond (€22.00) come with madeleine on the side. And as an encore, orange and something petit fours. Chef Pâtissier Exécutif Angelo Musa’s efforts might expand waists by a few millimetres, but everyone’s so worth it. The proof is in the pudding. Delish! Us! Service is seamless. Doors magically open, The New York Times deftly appears: minimum fuss, maximum attention. Rooms range from €990 (single) to €28,000 (party time).

Wonders unto many, we are magnified and tainted by elegiac projection, poignancy and beauty.

The sommelier arrives to explain the wine we aren’t ordering. Côte de Nuits 2000 (Richebourg) and Côte de Beaune 1999 (Corton Les Renardes). Both vins rouge, both Domaine Leroy, both €5,800. The wines are: “A perfect balance of acidity, alcohol, tonic and flavour. They have a controlled, perfect constitution.” We go for the more modestly priced €12 Saint Galmier Badoit Finement Pétillante 1778 (naturally carbonated water, to you). Good for catwalk silhouettes. An early autumnal breeze gently ripples through the courtyard. C’est la vie. La Cour Jardin: such seductiveness; an air kiss; make it a French kiss; a momentary embrace; a dalliance to the music of time. Dynamic magnetised moments. Life’s marginalia. Mise en Seine.

We are not your nebulous want.

Dinner in London? What gives? Let’s do The Arts Club again. Hold the front page! Newspapers: today’s headlines; tomorrow’s cat litter. Business and pleasure handsomely combine at a private dinner with former Cabinet Minister and Chief Whip the Right Honourable Andrew Mitchell MP in the very non plebish Ante Room. Sharing plates can be terribly irksome but it does mean enjoying three puddings or at least dipping spoons in three puddings. Tout suite. Ever dedicated to a story arc, the wine is French de rigueur. Vermentino 2015 (Domaine des Yeuses, Vin de Pays d’Oc) and Légende de Lafite 2015 (Baron de Rothschild, Bordeaux). La vie en rosé. Not so good for catwalk silhouettes. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

As for the menu? Starters: green bean and artichoke salad; Caesar salad; prawn cocktail; Applewood smoked salmon with honey mustard dressing. Main special: grilled seabass, marinated aubergine and tomato. Sides: creamed spinach; gratin dauphinois; glazed carrots Puddings: baked cheesecake with cassis sauce and berries; banana sticky toffee pudding; strawberry tart.

We are the chosen ones.

Categories
Architecture

Deal Town Kent + The Black Douglas Coffee House

East Coast Cooler

It’s the last weekend of summer. As the train meanders past the chalky White Cliffs of Dover we come over all Vera Lynn. Altogether now: “There’ll be love and laughter; and peace ever after…” Although it’s hard not to dream of the cliffs as topography’s answer to Fanny Cradock’s powdered cheekbones. Past Priory (no, that one, although smuggling is involved), our sun kissed naval base looms into view. Maybe not quite looms. Deal isn’t big. Nor raw. Deal meal. Puns (mostly) over, we’re here for the domestic architecture.

A tale of two towns. Kind of. A higgledly piggedly jumble of centuries old topsy turvy Georgian or Georgian faced townhouses squeezed between the esplanade and High Street contrasts with voluptuous Edwardian villas strung out along the coast. Of course that’s a gross oversimplification but wherever there’s pudding to be egged there’s Lavender’s Blue. Britain’s only brutalist pier doesn’t fit our narrative. Nor do the Brightonesque Regency houses. Nor does the tulip shaped Tudor castle. Ours is a binary filtered storyline of sepia saturated prose.

Close of play is more like end of day as a cricket match on the pebbly beach unfolds unabated through an unforgiving sunset. It is, though, a spectacularly balmy evening. We stroll past The Black Douglas Coffee House. Named after a tyrannical 14th century Scottish ruler, the surname is more closely associated with his descendant Bosie. It’s owned by Dalziel Douglas. Her partner is closing shop. “Come for breakfast tomorrow and Lady Douglas will give you the full history! She’s the great great niece of Bosie.” Oscar Wilde called the Douglas family a “mad, bad line”. The aptly black painted shopfront is in a quintessentially Deal block. Four buildings – four window levels – four eaves heights – four colours. All perceptibly lopsided, living in fear of the perpendicular, clinging to each other like tipsy aged fishwives.

We dive into the orb speckled alleyways behind Beach Street. No minimum distances between dwellings; no wonder everybody knows everybody. Tiny windows peep above pavements and a dusting of Dutch gables graces the slit of artists’ sky above. Christmas House; The Paragon; Steadfast; Tally Ho. Some have planchette plundered passageways; others, secret hidden rooms. Collectively, a smugglers’ paradise of the past. And if you didn’t benefit from ill gotten gains back then, there was still plenty of booty to be had. A poster on a wall announces:

“Wreck sale on the quayside of this port at 10 o’clock in the forenoon on the 24th day of April 1796. Part of the cargoes of ships that have recently come to grief in these parts. Consisting of: 56 Bales of Wool | 124 Deer Skins | 37 Cases of Flour | 9 Casks of White Lead | 287 Oak Handspikes | 21 Barrels of Tar | 341 Pieces of Cloth | 67 Articles of Pewter | 23 Barrels of Potash | 154 Pieces of Firtimber | 1 Open Boat | 16 Hatchets | 20 Casks of Cudbear | 112 Cases of English China | 45 Pipes of Linseed Oil | 209 Spills of Cotton Yarn.”

A poster on a bow window advertises the clandestine sounding Dining Club. Temptations listed include potato and mushroom terrine followed by roast mullet and pea fritter. Leaving the twisted grid of ghostly cross lanes behind, we head south. Between the two halves of the town we promenade past an antiques shop named 1815 in a building that looks 1915. The mesmeric shop window displays chandeliers, piers and a stuffed seagull. The art of the deal.

Beyond, the Edwardian villas are unabashedly self important, acutely aware they can be viewed from all angles unlike their narrow northern neighbours. Widows’ and Juliet balconies galore. There are terraces and balconies and verandahs and terraces on balconies on verandahs. One especially memorable house is crowned with a gloriously top heavy coven of witch’s hat roofs. Their inhabitants aren’t self important: they even say hello on the street. Goodness, this really isn’t London-on-Sea. Shame that discovering The Black Douglas was on our last night. But it’s not a deal breaker. We’ve an excuse to descend on Deal again. Not that one’s required. Last pun (for now). It’s a deal.

Categories
Architecture Restaurants

Clifton Bristol + The Doors

Saturday Lunch

So many Ivys, so little time.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses

Colebrooke Park Fermanagh + Golgotha Dining Room

Stag Party

Categories
Country Houses Hotels Luxury

Finnstown Castle Hotel Lucan Kildare + Lord Lucan

Hey Good Lucan

Heir today, gone tomorrow. Around 3,000 Irish country houses have “done a Lord Lucan” (the not so lucky 7th Earl) and disappeared over the last century. Finnstown House in his erstwhile squiredom ain’t one of them. It opened as a hotel in 1987 and for the last decade has been run by Jim Mansfield. The Dublin businessman has a penchant for antiques; there are plenty of period rooms to fill. No Victorian dining room is complete without a taxidermy hostess mirror.

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Luxury People Restaurants

Tate Britain London + Rex Whistler Restaurant Jazz Lunch

The Riding on the Wall

Tate Britain is the quieter relative of the extended family. Tate Modern has Herzog + de Meuron’s sexy ziggurat with its brilliant incidental installation (Watch Rich People In Their Apartments). Tate Britain has James Stirling’s paean to contextual irony. Lost on most, the less said the better. Thankfully, the Rex Whistler Restaurant is located in the basement of the original sturdily neoclassical gallery. Or is it? Entrances at varying degrees above ordnance data dictate an enjoyable disorientation. Lower ground floor? Garden level? Sub piano nobile?

Rex. The name conjures up a dilettantish dandyish raffish character. Definitely a Bright Young Thing. Julia Flyte’s American beau in Brideshead Revisited. Rex Bart Beaumont, chum of Charles Howard Bury, last owner of Belvedere House in Mullingar. Known to all and sundry as “Sexy Rexy”. The pair enjoyed jaunts to Tibet accompanied by a pet bear. No aggressive normalcy there, then.

Paintings are best seen from a seat. The Garrick Club gets that with its dining room wallpapered by in Zoffany. Before Carl Laubin (who completed a capriccio of Castle Howard estate buildings in 1996) and even before Felix Kelly (who painted the Garden Hall murals at Castle Howard in 1988) there was Rex Whistler. His 1937 murals can be admired traipsing through the National Trust dining room of Plas Newydd on the Isle of Anglesey but how much more relaxing to soak in his 1927 murals at the Tate lounging over lunch. At least that was the plan.

Gloriously out of sync with the modernist spirit of the age (more country house than Bauhaus), The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats is a whimsical adventure chronicling a party in search of epicurean delights. Follies and fortresses, temples and turrets… it’s an escapist setting, an ageless fantasy, Chinese wallpaper without the paper. Trompe l’œil gargoyle headed grotesques support the pedimented entrance doorcase. Half moon windows are treated as grottos. All the more remarkable given that Rex undertook this feat as a 23 year old Slade student. Tragically just 17 years later, the artist was killed on his first day of action in World War II. Rex Whistler’s legacy continues to inspire and enthral. His portraits of Lady Caroline Paget and her brother, later 7th Marquess of Anglesey, both recently sold for twice their estimates.

Lunch is served in the leafy garden along the Thames Embankment. Fresco to alfresco. A moveable feast. Fête champêtre. The meal is bookended by bubbly. Isn’t all hydration good for you? That’s a fair enough excuse for flutes of Coates + Seely Brut (£11.50). “Complex citrus infused fizz from one of the UK’s most impressive estates,” reassures the wine list. Hampshire’s finest fizz followed by Hampshire’s finest fish. Arriba! L’Abrunet 2015 (£27.00), “Made from organic white Grenache grapes grown in Catalonia,” adds to the bibulous nature of this indulgent Saturday afternoon. In honour of the founder of the gallery (Henry Tate was a sugar merchant) it would be rude not to have pudding. And it does result in a three course deal (£35.95). “Moderation is overrated,” agree the couple at the next table. The food’s wonderful – aptly British with a nod to the Continent. No buyers’ remorse.

The jazz ensemble strikes up. Maybe Tate Britain isn’t so quiet, after all.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses

Lavender’s Blue + Castle ffrench Galway

Fortissimo

Anglicisation from Gaelic is to blame in some instances (The Argory is a case in point) but quite a few Irish country houses have intriguing names. Jockey Hall and Shandy Hall (the latter in Dripsey) sound fun. Whiskey Hall sounds like too much fun. Bachelors Lodge and Hymenstown are presumably miles apart. Mount Anne or Mount Stewart anyone? The mildly unnerving Flood Hall, Fort Etna, Spiddal Hall and The Reeks. Is Sherlockstown worth investigating? Zoomorphic zaniness: Fox Hall, Lizard Manor, Lyons, Mount Panther and Roebuck Hall. Elphin – Castle? Place names too. Bungalo begs the question: is it full of single storey residences?

Lots of houses without so much as a battlement are called castles: Beltrim Castle, Castle Coole, Castle Grove, Castle Leslie. Castle ffrench joins this list although there are ruins of a tower house on the estate. The double consonant lower case doesn’t disguise the fact the name originated somewhat unsurprisingly in France. The ffrench family were part of a Norman landing in County Wexford in 1169. In time, they became one of the 14 Tribes of Galway. Their single consonant upper class case cousins owned French Park in County Roscommon.

Castle ffrench is a star of Maurice Craig’s seminal work Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size. He notes its plan is virtually identical to Bonnettstown’s in County Kilkenny, despite the 90 mile 40 year gap. A notable feature of both pretty Big Houses is the pair of staircases side by side, like slightly asymmetric Siamese twins. A thin wall between the pair once segregated the classes’ ascent and descent (for richer, for poorer). One is dressed in plasterwork; the other bare. Landings pressed against the four bay rear elevation provide interesting mid storey variations in window positions. Both stairwells are lit by tall fanlight topped windows identical on the outside – only the family one has internal panelling.

The front elevation is more conventional, the grouped middle three bays of a five bay composition gently projecting. Urns and finials sprouting from a solid parapet dot the horizon. A three storey over basement (hidden to the front | semi exposed to the sides | for all to see to the rear) limestone block, this house is the epitome of Irish Georgian style. It even has an archetypal fanlight set in the entablatured triglyphed pilastered fluted rosetted doorcase. Conservation architect John O’Connell calls the building “very accomplished” and recognises the influence of the architect Richard Castle. A niche in the entrance hall is marginally unaligned with the ceiling plasterwork above. A signal that the house is the work of a builder with a pattern book or two at his disposal? Or simply plastered on a Friday afternoon?

Castle ffrench rises above an unruffled patchwork quilt, a landscape of interlocking greens, quieter than Pimlico Tube Station on a Friday evening (are Pimlocals like Peter York too posh to push onto public transport?). So silent. Rural aural aura. Within the vale beyond The Pale. A mile long drive and 40 acres keep the populace at bay. Augustine days of yore aren’t so distant… Indoors, there’s a hooley! The plasterwork, at any rate. The stuccodores’ genius charges towards zenithsphere in the entrance hall and landing (of the family staircase). Neoclassicism and rococo blend and blur in mesmerising jigs and reels of fables and foliage ribboned round Irish harps and ffrench French horns. Wreathes and sheaves and sickles, the whole shebang.

Lady Fifi ffrench (stutteringly fitting phonetics or what?) and her husband John were the last of the original family to reside at Castle ffrench. Sheila and Bill Bagliani, the current owners, have sensitively restored this knockout property, subtly preserving its patina of age. Bertie the Labrador and Sally the Westie run amok through the grounds. Sheila, a talented artist, has a top floor studio to kill for. No really. All stairs lead to a second floor central corridor spanning the full width of the house. This corridor might not have the ornate plasterwork of the spaces below but it’s very much defined by a series of blind and open arches like abstract vaulting. A forerunner to Sir John Soane’s streamlined style. At one end, a door opens into a softly lit corner room with views to die for. There are flowers and canvases and a ghost – a previous owner refuses to leave and who could blame her? – in the attic.

Categories
Art Design Fashion Luxury

Masterpiece Art Fair London Preview 2017 + Iván Navarro

Defining Moments

Everyone is here, every age is represented, from now to antiquity. The Oxford Dictionary needs to update its current definition of masterpiece: “a work of outstanding artistry, skill or workmanship”. Add an upper case M and it becomes, “150 galleries exhibiting works of outstanding artistry, skill and workmanship”. Or more succinctly, “a microcosm of London, New York and Maastricht society”. Tonight the red carpet’s rolled out for an augmented vernissage.

While now it’s all about Perrier-Jouët Belle Époque, there’ll be a familiar conundrum in the forthcoming days. The Ivy Chelsea Brasserie, Le Caprice, The Mount Street Deli or Scott’s Seafood and Champagne Bar? Potted brown shrimps on crispy slivers of toast at Scott’s will inevitably win most days. Feet dangling from stools below the neverending silver bar, there is nowhere better to satisfy a craving for crustacea. What about The Ivy’s HLT (halloumi, lettuce and tomato)? It’s a wrap.

Burberry is this year’s official preview partner with an exhibition The Cape Reimagined. Collector’s pieces on show are inspired by the work of Henry Moore. It’s a wrap. Cross category | low delineation | wearable sculptures | augmented visibility. Expect to see a feathery flurry of Chelsea ladies donning couture capes this autumn.

Masterpiece Presents sadly isn’t the goody bag but excitingly is an annual entrance installation project. The inaugural immersive by top Chilean artist Iván Navarro was commissioned by newcomer Paul Kasmin Gallery. Fluorescence. Incandescence. Quintessence. Definitive newness. An instantly recognisable piece from the past is displayed at Agnews of St James’s Place: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s haunting image of Proserpina, the Roman goddess, enjoying a pomegranate. Proserpina’s luscious auburn hair contrasts with the flawless pale skin of her augmented visage. A definite icon. Year on year hitting the zeitgeist while celebrating the past, Masterpiece 2017 could be defined as an “augmented vision”. It’s a wrap.

Categories
Architects Architecture Country Houses People

Hidden Ireland + Clonalis Roscommon

The Portrait of a Lady and Gentleman and Artists as Young Men

Dia dhaoibh ar maidin. There really aren’t many left. A study of the 39 (what an odd number, why not 40?) country houses featured in the book Irish Houses and Castles with its strangely coloured plates, published in 1974, reveals just 13 remain in the hands of the same families. So which ones have been so lucky? Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath | Bantry House, County Cork | Beaulieu, County Louth | Birr Castle, County Offaly | Dunsany Castle, County Meath | Glin Castle, County Limerick | Kilshannig, County Cork | Lismore Castle, County Waterford | Lough Cutra Castle, County Galway | Mount Ievers, County Cork | Leixlip Castle, County Dublin | Slane Castle, County Meath | Tullynally Castle, County Westmeath. Like Hen’s teeth.

Not so much “Where are they now?” as “What are they now?” They’re not all sob stories. Some have never looked better. Sir David Davies has brought a new lease of life to Abbey Leix. Crazy but true. The London launch of a book by William Laffan celebrating the estate’s rebirth was held with great pomp and happenstance at Lindy Guinness’s Holland Park villa mansion. Nancy Mitford’s cousin Clementine Beit’s old house Russborough looks in pretty good nick, even if restoration comes at the price of paintings disappearing. And nobody’s blaming terrorists this time… John O’Connell has worked his magic at Fota Island, the first residential restoration of the Irish Heritage Trust. And there are high hopes that the Hughes brothers, the new owners of Westport House, despite contending, conflicting lights, will preserve one of the last Richard Castle designed houses for the nation. It’s hard to keep up with Bellamont Forest: it’s seriously serially for sale. Luttrellstown Castle might be corporately owned but Eileen Plunket’s ballroom would still give Nancy Lancaster’s Yella Room a run for its money. Christie’s recently told us Stackallen, which appears in later versions of the book, has been “enriched” since it was bought by the billionaire Naughtons in 1993.

Although Clonalis in County Roscommon doesn’t feature in Desmond Guinness and William Ryan’s book, it has been associated with the same family for millennia rather than centuries. Clonalis is the ancestral home of the O’Conors, Kings of Connacht and erstwhile High Kings of Ireland. The most ancient royal family in Europe, no less. Just to be sure, their ancient limestone inauguration stone dating from 75 AD stands proud outside their front door. While the O’Conors’ possession of the land can be traced back over 1,500 years, the house is relatively recent. No surprise they call Clonalis the ‘New House’. In the very grand scheme of things it’s practically modern. Construction was completed in 1878, the year its English architect Frederick Pepys Cockerell (yes, a descendant of the Clapham diarist and a friend of the O’Conor clients) died aged 45. Like most Victorian practitioners he was versatile, swapping and entering epochal stylistic dalliances with ease. Eclecticism ran in Fred’s blood: his grandfather Samuel Pepys Cockerell did design the batty and bonkers Indocolonial Sezincote in the Cotswolds. A rummage through the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography one evening in the O+C Club reveals the architect’s Irish connection: he married Mary Mulock of King’s County (Offaly). “A genial, charming, and handsome man, knowledgeable in literature and the arts, his premature death was widely regretted,” records author David Watkins.

Tráthnóna maith daoibh. Fred’s 1 South Audley Street, 1870, the Embassy of Qatar for donkey’s years, is an eclectic Queen Anne-ish Mayfair house with just about every ornament imaginable thrown at its burnt red brick and terracotta façade. Arabesques, brackets, corbels, friezes, masks, niches, putti… he really did plunder the architectural glossary… augmenting the deeps and shallows of the metropolis. If, as architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi pontificates, the communicating part of architecture is its ornamental surface, then the Embassy is shouting!

His country houses show more restraint. Predating Clonalis by a few years, his first Irish one was the neo Elizabethan Blessingbourne in County Fermanagh. Clonalis is loosely Italianate. Terribly civilised; a structure raised with an architectural competence, spare and chaste. Happens to be the first concrete house in Ireland, too. A few years earlier he’d a practice run in concrete construction at Down Hall in Essex. A strong presence amongst the gathering shades of the witching hour, a national light keeping watch. Every house has a symbolic function, full of premises, conclusions, emotions. Clonalis rests at the far end of the decorative spectrum from 1 South Audley Street. Venturing a Venturesque metaphor: it talks smoothly with a lilt. Symmetrically grouped plate glass windows, horizontal banding and vertical delineation are about all that relieve its grey exterior. An undemonstrative beauty. Rising out of the slate roof are high gabled dormers, balustraded parapets and tall chimney stacks. The central chimneys are linked by arches – whose identity lie somewhere between function, festivity and topography – creating a two dimensional Vanbrughian temple of smoke. Clonalis isn’t totally dissimilar albeit on a grander scale to another late 19th century Irish champion, Bel-Air in County Wicklow. Especially the three storey entrance towers (campaniles, really) attached to both buildings.

Pyers and Marguerite O’Conor Nash accept paying guests (heir b+b?) under the auspices of Hidden Ireland. Furnishings read like a chapter from Miller’s Guide to Antiques: Boulle | Limoges | Mason | Meissen | Minton | Sheraton. If painting and art measure the refinement of sensibility, as Isabel Archer believes in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, we’re in good company. Who needs money when you know your Monet from their Manet? Ding dong dinner gong. Variations of Valkyries veer toward Valhalla. Suavity bound by gravity. A patrician set of gilt framed ancestral portraits, provenance in oil, punctuate the oxblood walls of the dining room. Plus one (romantic dinner). Plus three (communal dining). Plus fours (we’re in the country). Plus size (decent portions). “Farm to fork,” announces our hostess. A whale of a time. Tableau vivant. Our visceral fear of dining on an axis is allayed by a table setting off centre. Phew. Triggers to the soul, spirit arising, the evening soon dissolves into an impossibly sublime conversation of hope and gloss in the library, while at arm’s length, Catherine wheels of a pyrotechnic display implode and disintegrate like embers in the fire. Beyond the tall windows, a flood of summer light had long waned, and the heavy cloak of dusk, to quote Henry James, “lay thick and rich upon the scene”.

“Yes, that’s the bore of comfort,” complains Lord Warburton in The Portrait of a Lady, “We only know when we’re uncomfortable.” We’re happy to embrace boredom in that case. Like the other three guest bedrooms, ours is light and airy thanks to a cream carpet, summery colour scheme and deep penetrations of natural light. Touches of 19th century grandeur (a marble chimneypiece reassures us this was definitely never a servants’ wing) blend with 21st century luxury. Our bedroom would meet with Lord Warburton’s chagrin: carefully curated completely accomplished comfort. Actually, the niches for turf set into the marble fireplaces of the dining and drawing rooms suggest the O’Conors always had one eye on grandeur, the other on comfort. “Blessingbourne has similar fireplaces,” shares Marguerite. “This season is opulence and comfort,” Kris Manalo, Heal’s Upholstery Buyer, informs us at a party in 19 Greek Street, Soho. Clonalis is bang on trend, then. “And £140 Fornasetti candles to depocket premium customers.” They do smell lovely. We’re digressing.

Donough Cahill, Executive Director of the Irish Georgian Society, reminded the London Chapter of the recent fire at the 18th century villa Vernon Mount in Cork City. “’A study in curves’ is how the Knight of Glin described this classic gem,” lamented Donough. “A great loss. The community are heartbroken and we too are heartbroken.” It’s a reflection on the rarity and fragility of Irish country houses and makes the flourishing survival of Clonalis all the more remarkable. A former billiard room is now a museum of letters and papers from family archives, one of the best collections in private ownership in Ireland. Correspondence from the likes of William Gladstone, Samuel Johnson and Anthony Trollope is displayed in mahogany bookcases next to the harp of Turlough Carolan, a renowned 17th century blind musician. Oh, and a pedigree of 25 generations of The House of O’Conor Don hangs on the wall, starting with Turlough Mor O’Conor, High King of Ireland, who died in 1150. One ancestor brought a certain captive named Patrick to Ireland. And the rest, as they say, is history. Our patron saint. A Catholic chapel is discreetly located to the rear of the house. “There are only three such private chapels in Ireland,” remarks Marguerite. “The other two are at the Carrolls’ house in Dundalk and Derrynane, Daniel O’Connell’s house . Tread carefully. Thin places. “There is really too much to say.” Henry James again. Tráthnóna maith daoibh.

Categories
Architecture Country Houses People

The Earls of Rosse + Birr Castle Parsonstown Offaly

Offaly Grand

It’s funny how many Irish terraced houses are painted jolly colours (their quoins often highlighted in even brighter hues) while country houses are usually grey. Even though Birr Castle is cheek by jowl with William Street, it’s no exception, being faced in ashlar. The building appears hewn out of an escarpment like architectural topography. Perhaps that’s what happens when built form has weathered 350 years. There is more stone on display in Birr than most Irish towns, particularly on the houses lining Oxmantown Mall.

It’s a Georgian garrison town,” suggests Marguerite O’Conor Nash, châtelaine of Clonalis in County Roscommon. “Birr is really a planned town, a bit like Castlepollard in County Westmeath or Westport in County Mayo.” The Hillsborough of the south. “Birr is a very good town indeed,” offers conservation architect John O’Connell. Why is it not better known? Where are the coachloads of architectural aficionados? The answer lies in a comment uttered by the late Ivy Cavendish-Bentinck, 7th Duchess of Portland. She complained on a visit to Birr, “It’s not on the direct line to any other place!”

Lost in the heart of Ireland, Birr nonetheless has royal connections. Anne Parsons, 6th Countess of Rosse and mother of the current Earl was also the mother of the royal photographer Tony Armstrong-Jones (half brothers) and consequently mother-in-law of Princess Margaret. Her London home in Holland Park is now the Linley Sambourne Museum. A coffee table book about set designer Oliver Messel is in the library of Birr Castle. On the coffee table. He too was a relative – Anne’s brother.

There was decorating drama when Princess Margaret and the newly titled Lord Snowdon honeymooned in the castle. The 6th Countess enthusiastically wallpapered a bedroom for their arrival. Unfortunately she chose a room above the boiler. Imagine HRH’s surprise to be woken in the dead of night by sheets of wallpaper sliding down the walls before collapsing over the four poster. “Tony…!”

Lord Rosse, the 7th Earl, may have turned 80 last year but his standards, unlike the wallpaper, haven’t slipped. Dining at Birr Castle is still a formal affair. Lord R sits at the bay window end of the long table opposite Lady R. Female VIPs sit either side of the Earl; male VIPs, either side of the Countess. Overseen by Damian the Butler, Lady Rosse is served first, then female VIPs, then male VIPs, then whoever’s stuck in the middle and finally, a hungry Lord Rosse. Presumably guests brush up on Debrett’s.

The dark room of the pioneering photographer Mary Rosse, 3rd Countess, was only discovered in the castle in 1983. Hidden in a maze of corridors and tunnels with three metre thick walls in places, it’s not that surprising the world’s oldest dark room in existence lay untouched for 100 years. Across the parkland, beyond the star shaped moat cum haha, stands the world’s largest telescope (or at least it was for a century) built by her astrologer husband. Birr Castle is full of record breakers (Ireland’s oldest cookbook; Ireland’s tallest treehouse; the British Isles’ tallest tree before it came a cropper) and it’s not even Guinness owned!