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Gästezimmer aus dem Haus Moser (Wien, 1901) | Guestroom from house Moser
MAK – Museum für angewandte Kunst | Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna
Koloman Moser (1868 - 1918) was an Austrian painter, graphic artist and artistic craftsman. He was a foremost member of the Vienna Secession, an art movement closely related to Art Nouveau that was formed in 1897, and a co-founder of Wiener Werkstätte, a production community of visual artists and artisans, which was established in 1903 and is regarded as a pioneer of modern design.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koloman_Moser
On the streets of Catania.
Camera: Canon QL19
Film: New Lomochrome Purple 400
See more at my LomoHome: bit.ly/ADGlomo
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
It is evening and Lettice is sitting at her Hepplewhite desk next to the fire in her drawing room. Her desk is covered with reference books, paper and pencils. Whilst she works away, her old childhood chum, Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy who has tried to gain some independence from his family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street, is draped languidly across one of her Art Deco tub arm chairs with a half drunk glass of champagne in one hand and a half finished frock in floral silk de chiné lying across his lap. Not uncommonly the two keep each other company as they work. For Lettice, it is companionable time spend with her dear friend, and for Gerald, whose finances are somewhat straitened, it saves him money using Lettice’s electricity and dining, quite literally, on her largesse.
Gerald hears the silence coming from Lettice’s desk and he looks over. His friend sits with her left elbow pressing onto the desk’s surface, her head in her left hand whilst she toys with a green pencil in her right hand. “Are you struggling Lettuce Leaf?” Gerald asks in concern.
“Don’t call me that Gerald!” Lettice snaps at her friend. “You know I don’t like it.”
“You didn’t mind it when we were four.”
“But we are not four any more Gerald.” She gives him a doubtful look.
“Well, now that I successfully have your attention. Is this Margot and Dickie’s designs you’re working on?”
“Trying to.” Lettice sighs, flinging down her pencil and sagging back defeatedly into her chair.
“Trying is obviously the word for it.” Gerald observes.
“Oh, be a darling and pass my glass of champagne, will you Gerald?” Lettice asks, reaching out to him.
“What?” Gerald asks. “When I have Anne Woods’ newest frock nicely spread across my lap?”
Lettice returns his questions with a roll of her eyes. “It’s not that hard to reach over and fetch my glass. You don’t even have to get up.”
Gerald reaches over the black japanned coffee table, past his sewing box and grabs Lettice’s glass, making the attempt look, and sound with a well placed groan, harder than it actually is. “It’s not that hard to walk around and grab it yourself, either.”
“And it isn’t that hard to sew in your own Soho bachelor flat.” Lettice responds with a cheeky grin, taking the glass from her friend.
“Ahhh touché my dear,” Gerald replies, raising his glass to hers, the flutes clinking together. “Lady Sadie is right, my acerbic tongue is rubbing off on you nicely.”
“Thinking of my mother,” Lettice remarks offhandedly. “What on earth did you say to her at the Hunt Ball? She was so struck by it that she refuses to talk about it.”
Gerald blushes, remembering the altercation he had with Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, at the ball. In a slightly inebriated state he told her that neither she nor Lettice had any sway over Selwyn Spencely’s choice of a wife, any more than Selwyn did himself, explaining that it was his mother, the Duchess of Mumford, Lady Zinnia, who would choose a wife for him. “I don’t remember, darling,” he replies awkwardly, covering his tracks as best as he can. “I was rather tight* on your father’s champagne.”
“Well, it might be a little while before you are welcome back at Glynes**.”
“Oh well darling, I shall miss your father’s largesse,” Gerald sighs. “Which is all the more reason why I should take advantage of your generosity.” He waves his hands around him indicating to his comfortable surrounds.
Lettice smiles at her friend and says, “You should, darling.” She reaches out and pats his hand conciliatorily. “You’re good company for me”
“Even if Lady Sadie says otherwise?”
“Especially if Mater says something to the contrary!” To steer the subject away from a less pleasant path she adds, “How is the lovely Miss Anne Woods frock going anyway?”
“Quite nicely thank you.” He holds up the lifeless pale pink flowery dress with bell sleeves and pleats. “I think that the boat neckline will suit her broader shoulders much better than a boxy square one, which will only accentuate it.”
“Very wise, Gerald.” Lettice agrees, scrutinising the shape of the fabric and trying to image the young lady in in. “You are making a wonderful couturier by not letting women make mistakes with their clothes, even if they think they know better.”
“Thank you, darling. But this conversation isn’t about me. It’s about you.” Gerald demurs. “Now whatever is wrong with Margot and Dickie’s designs?”
“Well, you know how Margot wants to replace all the furnishings in ‘Chi an Treth’, because she thinks they are dark and too old-fashioned?”
“Yes.”
“Well I…”
“Let me guess. You don’t want to just get rid of all that furniture, do you?”
“Ah how well you know me, dear Gerald!” Lettice’s shoulders rise, as if being freed of a great weight. “I think it would be a shame, especially when the lovely Miss Rosevear is to hang in pride of place in the drawing room.”
“If, she hangs there.” Gerald corrects his friend.
“Do we know what Dickie has done with her?”
“I believe that under advisement from Dickie’s father, she has been sent to Bonhams***. No doubt the Marquess imagines that Bonhams will fetch the best price for her.”
“So, all the more reason to hold onto some of the history of the house if she doesn’t return.” Lettice says with desperation strangling her usually clear tones.
The pair fall silent for a shot while, both lost in their own thoughts, with only the crackle of the fire and the ticking of the clock on the mantle to break the quiet.
“When we drove back to London after the ball, didn’t I see you had a book on Regency furnishings that you took from your father’s library?”
“Why yes. I have it here.” She pulls it out from a stack of reference books stacked on a Chippendale black japanned footstool adjunct to her desk.
“Pass it over.” Gerald commands, putting his glass of champagne aside and holding his hands out.
Lettice hands him the large brown leather volume with a tooled cover and spine. “I did consult it, but didn’t find it to be of much inspiration. Lots of dark, rich greens, blues, reds and gold. Not at all what Margot wants.”
“No eau-de-nil sofas then?” chuckles Gerald as he begins flipping through the pages.
“I told you, Gerald, I looked through it, but didn’t find any inspiration.”
“Ahh, but that’s because we are looking for different things, darling.”
“Whatever do you mean, Gerald?” Lettice begins, but is silenced by her friend raising his hand and wagging a finger admonishingly at her, so she slumps back in her seat and finishes what is left of the champagne in her glass.
Gerald sits with the book open in his lap on top of the frock he is sewing and flips leisurely through it, carefully turning each page and scanning it with the narrowed eyes of a scholar who knows exactly what he is looking for, and with the patience that looking for hidden treasure requires.
“Aha!” he cries finally, his eyes wide with excitement as a broad smile graces his face. “I have it!”
“What have you, Gerald?”
He looks up at her. “Do you remember when we sat on the beach of the cove on the Saturday we spent in Cornwall with Dickie and Margot?”
“Yes of course I do, Gerald.”
“And do you remember what I said to you?”
“You always have a lot to say to me, Gerald.” Lettice replies with a cheeky smirk playing on her lips.
“Alright, yes, I know.” her friend concedes. “To remind you what I’m talking about, I said that you should consider painting murals as part of your interior designs. Do you remember me telling you that, darling?”
“Vaguely.” Lettice admits. “But I don’t know if I’m in favour of that. You aren’t suggesting that I paint Miss Rosevear on Margot and Dickie’s wall, surely? What does that have to do with that book on Regency furnishings?”
“Nothing, Lettice darling, and I’m not suggesting anything of the sort.” He stares at her intensely. “I appreciate that you might not feel your artistic talents worthy of painting a mural, even if I think your talent would be well applied at the Slade School of Art****. But this will be a suitable compromise.”
“Compromise, what on earth do you mean?”
“Come and look.” Gerald commands his friend, beckoning her over. She rises from her Hepplewhite chair before her desk and steps over to Gerald, who wraps an arm comfortingly around her waist. “See here.” He points to a fantastically ornate sideboard with in-built dumb waiters at either end topped with candelabras. The front is covered with a long two tone green striped fabric covering the shelves behind, and it is to this that he indicates.
“You want me to paint fabric?” Lettice asks, screwing her nose up.
“You really can be frightfully dense sometimes, darling.” Gerald chuckles, pulling her more closely to him. “Look again. That isn’t fabric. It’s wood, painted to look like fabric.”
“A trompe-l'œil*****, you mean?”
“I do. Now, I’m not suggesting you paint a trompe-l'œil, but what I am suggesting is that you do something like this.” He points to a games table on the page beneath. “Those panels are painted by hand to appear like marquetry. You could take some of the old furniture that Margot wants banished and repurpose it in your new, lighter interior design by painting them white, or eau-de-nil if Margot so insists, and decorate them with new designs. That way…”
“That way I am keeping the furniture, and Margot will still be happy!” Lettice claps her hands excitedly. Moving slightly away from him she bends down and places her hands on his cheeks and kisses him. “Gerald you are a genius!”
Blushing as much for the unexpected kiss as the compliment, Gerald replies, “I know, darling.”
He hands back the book to Lettice, who carries it back to the desk and places it open on its surface to the left-hand side. She takes up her red pencil and begins to draw sinewy lines on the blank page before her. Gerald releases a satisfied sigh trough his nose, and with the air suitably humming with inspiration and industry from Lettice as her hand moves across the page, her pencils making soft scratching noises against the paper, Gerald picks up his needle and returns to sewing his frock for his broad shouldered client.
*’Tight’ is an old fashioned upper-class term for drunk.
**Glynes is the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie.
***Established in 1793, Bonhams is a privately owned international auction house and one of the world's oldest and largest auctioneers of fine art and antiques. It was formed by the merger in November 2001 of Bonhams and Brooks and Phillips Son and Neale.
****Established by lawyers and philanthropist Felix Slade in 1868, Slade School of Fine Art is the art school of University College London and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the United Kingdom’s top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as a department of University College London's Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Two of its most important periods were immediately before, and immediately after, the turn of the twentieth century. It had such students as Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer.
*****Trompe-l'œil is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions when in fact it is not there at all. Forced perspective is a comparable illusion in architecture.
For anyone who follows my photostream, you will know that I collect and photograph 1:12 size miniatures, so although it may not necessarily look like it, but this cluttered desk is actually covered in 1:12 size artisan miniatures and the desk itself is too. All are from my collection of miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Lettice’s Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair are beautifully and artfully made by J.B.M. miniatures. Both the bureau and chair are made of black japanned wood which have been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the arms of the chair and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven.
The Regency era cabinet maker’s book on Lettice’s desk is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside one of the books he has made. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into this volume, it contains twelve double sided pages of illustrations and it measures thirty-three millimetres in height twenty millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just one of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!
On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame. The latter comes from Doreen Jenkins’ Small Wonders Miniatures in England, whilst the other two come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House, also in England. The photos themselves are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
The pencils come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House. They are one millimetre wide and two centimetres long.
Also on the desk, are some 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottles, a roller, a blotter and a letter opener, all made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles are made from tiny faceted crystal beads and have sterling silver bottoms and lids. The ink blotter is sterling silver too and has a blotter made of real black felt, cut meticulously to size to fit snugly inside the frame.
The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.