View allAll Photos Tagged potential_client.
Snake charming is the practice of pretending to hypnotize a snake by playing an instrument called pungi or bansuri. I ran into this gentleman while out walking in Varanasi - recognizing me as a potential client he quickly pulled out his case and showed me his snakes but I was on my way to meet a friend so declined his offer to hold the snakes. Even if I wasn't on my way somewhere I would have passed on the snake handling! Saw him again the next day on he banks of the Ganges and took this shot. Despite his repeated attempts I said thanks but no thanks to holding the snakes!
As a freelancer I can relate to this image, the struggle to make living using antiquated equipment, the long hours and stressful delays.
I made the image in taxi on the way back from a meeting with a potential client on the banks of the Cairo Nile, we were stuck in the mother of all traffic jams, the driver was tired and stressed, I was, for once content as I had eaten fish and concluded what I thought was a successful meeting. Now I look back, the real success was this image, which is one of my favourites.
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February is a time for love, romance, murder, MadPea, and a little dance around The Lonely Hearts Club!
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The Lonely Hearts Club is an exclusive hunt for MadPea Premium Group only. It is free to play and hunters will receive 9 exclusive quality prizes and a MadPea Achievement upon successfully completing the quest.
Not a Premium Member yet? Join here: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Mad%20City/73/99/33
Excerpt from www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ph/bgrd/backgroundfile-2...:
Former Bank of Montreal Building, 309 Cherry Street
The property at 309 Cherry Street contains two buildings: the first is a two-storey, detached bank building on a squared plan with basement, flat roof, and sandstone parapet. The chamfered main entrance at its northwest corner addresses the Cherry and Villiers intersection in a manner typical of bank buildings from this era.
The building was constructed of buff Indiana Limestone, sandstone, and buff brick in 1920 to the Classical Revival designs of the architecture firm Darling & Pearson; it has additional iron, copper, and wood detailing.
All four of the building's elevations are visible from the public realm. The principal elevations (north and west) flanking Villiers and Cherry streets are symmetrical in design and flank the corner entrance. Both are faced in limestone ashlar masonry set in courses of alternating widths. They are organized into two bays, where each bay has a pair of centered and vertically arranged windows: a flat-headed window opening with shouldered architrave surround and stone sill, and, at the raised basement level, a plain, flat-headed window opening with metal grill. The chamfered corner entrance is emphasized by a sandstone staircase up to the Greek Order portico of the raised front porch that features traditional Doric elements of classical design and is quintessentially representative of the Classical Revival style. A triangular pediment sits atop the entablature, which is supported by two outer, engaged square piers and two inner Doric columns with the standard capitals and fluted shafts. The pediment has copper flashing along its upper edges
and a lone anthemion-style acroterion at its apex (two more anthemia were placed at each lower point of the pediment, but these have since been lost). The tympanum is left plain. Underneath the cornice there are mutules with guttae, and the cornice line breaks beyond the portico and runs across the length of both the north and west elevations; the copper flashing continues atop this extended cornice as well. Alternating triglyphs and metopes pattern the frieze, while guttae beneath the triglyphs break into the otherwise plain architrave. Like the cornice, the bottom line of the frieze extends outside the entablature to create a stringcourse along the north and west elevations. The main door opening has a stone architrave surround and cornice. Tying together the main entrance and the entablature, the frieze design in the entablature is repeated on a larger scale in wood carving over the door: two triglyphs and a metope with a clock inset. A pair of rectangular, vertical sidelights with iron grilles in a geometric pattern flank the door; smaller versions are inset to the door panels. The metal door handles, likely brass, are a simple and elegant curving design.
The three bays of the east elevation are comprised of buff brick set in an English Garden Wall bond. It originally had three segmental arch windows with stone sills and irregularly placed basement windows. Building permit elevations from 1980 illustrate how one of these windows has undergone several layers of alterations, from initial infill, a large rectangular opening, to its present small metal door and stairwell with landing; the basement windows have also been repositioned several times. A simple, rectangular chimney stack devoid of ornamentation projects from the southeast corner.
The south elevation has the same brick and bond as the east, but the façade is plain and without windows or decoration. Overall, the building retains a high degree of integrity in both its form and exterior decorative details, such that the original 1920 Darling & Pearson design is quite legible.
The Second Classical Revival (also referred to as Neo-Classical Revival, or Beaux-Arts Classicism) in Toronto was popular at the turn of the century, from around 1890 to 1930. The return to classical forms was influenced by the respected Ecole des Beaux-Arts in France, which taught and championed the classical principles to a generation of architects, and the seminal event of the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago that became an international advertising platform for classically styled buildings, which featured heavily at the site. Post offices, libraries, and banks were typologies to which this style was frequently applied. Their façades typically emphasized a main, central entrance, while those who followed the Greek influence had plain surfaces with less adornment (in contrast to the Roman influence that favoured more layers of ornamentation).
However, the architrave does bear evidence of removed signage from previous occupants. Shell Canada Ltd. is listed as the property owner; they submitted a permit for alterations to build a basement entrance and a platform at the east elevation entrance. It was likely at this time (or even earlier) that the original window glazing, mullions, and transoms were replaced.
The design elements of classical architecture projected certain stereotypes within the minds of the public that banking institutions in particular wanted to associate with their business, such as endurance, integrity, and even wealth. Banks designed in the Classical Revival styles appeared like 'Temples of Finance' with their Greek or Roman orders, or even emulated strongboxes through the stone material of their exteriors and compact, balanced layouts. These features encouraged trust from potential clients and subtly communicated that this was a secure and reliable place to invest one's finances.
Studio Giftig a été fondé début 2007 par Kaspar van Leek et Niels van Swaemen. Le tout à travers la diversité et la spécialisation, entre autres, en illustrations et murales.
En plus de l'académie d'art et de leur expérience en tant que designers dans le monde graphique, tous deux ont un parcours et des années d'expérience dans le domaine de l'illustration et du graffiti.
Début 2007, il a été décidé d'en faire un travail sérieux et c'est ainsi que Studio Giftig a été créé.
En peu de temps, Studio Giftig a pu réaliser de nombreux projets tant pour les entreprises que pour les particuliers.
La diversité et la spécialisation dans, entre autres, l'illustration, la peinture murale, le graffiti et le travail sur toile offrent de nombreuses opportunités aux clients potentiels.
Studio Giftig was founded in early 2007 by Kaspar van Leek and Niels van Swaemen. All through diversity and specialization, among others, in illustrations and murals.
In addition to the art academy and their experience as designers in the graphic world, both have a background and years of experience in the field of illustration and graffiti.
At the beginning of 2007, it was decided to make a serious job out of it and that's how Studio Giftig was created.
In a short time, Studio Giftig has been able to carry out many projects for both companies and individuals.
The diversity and specialization in, among others, illustration, mural painting, graffiti and canvas work offers many opportunities for potential clients.
1928 duPont Model G (first example produced) DCP 5 passenger by coachmaker Merrimac (of Merrimac Mass.) with it's very stylish, expensive and very inefficient Woodlites headlights, when looking cool was more important than seeing in the dark.
The Model G was offered in eight different body styles and was priced starting at $4,300, rising to around $7,000, at a time when the new Model A Ford could be had for $385. All of the Model G bodies were hand built using white ash frames covered with aluminum panels. The new Modell G featured Continental's new 8-cylinder engine, producing an impressive 125 horsepower. Produced and marketed to the Super Rich to whom cost was irrelevant.
The Merrimac Body Company was established by Stanley Judkins, son of John Judkin's of the J.B. Judkins Company who were famous for their bodying of Lincolns and Packard's, among others. Both were located in Merrimac, Massachusetts, along with around 40 other custom coachbuilders. This Mecca location attracted the most influential and prominent buyers from around the world who would come to see the new designs and creations.
The unique Crystal Tete de Coc (Head of the Rooster) mascot by Lalique glass of Paris, compliments the equally rare and rarefied duPont on this magnificent Dual Cowl Phaeton.
By 1930, with the Great Depression in full swing, the list of potential clients dwindled. The competition for the luxury car segment was at a pinnacle and Paul duPont decided to suspend production until the economy was more stable. Sadly, the duPont marque never resumed automobile production.
COMMENTS & INVITATIONS with AWARD BANNERS will be DELETED!
Que nous le sachions ou non, la photographie commerciale est partout autour de nous, façonnant notre perception des produits et des services.
Les Spotlight Awards , organisés par Production Paradise, sont une vitrine pour les photographes commerciaux talentueux qui utilisent leurs compétences pour concrétiser les visions des marques et des agences de publicité.
Depuis maintenant sept ans, ils sont jugés par un panel de plus de 60 juges composé exclusivement d'experts du secteur et de clients potentiels !
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Whether we know it or not, commercial photography is all around us, shaping how we view products and services.
The Spotlight Awards, organized by Production Paradise, is a showcase for talented commercial photographers who use their skills to carry out the visions of brands and advertising agencies.
Now in its seventh year, it's judged by a panel of more than 60 judges composed exclusively of industry experts and potential clients !
credit : AI, Image Developing & creating – Sy Goldstein.
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What good is a stay-at-home order if it's not spurring you to comb through the archives?
This two-frame pano is from October of 2013, almost 7 years ago. I had a potential client interested in my photos from the Portland Japanese Garden, so I dusted off some old files and got to work.
Thanks for checking it out!
This is not a real image. This is not even a scene you could ever see in your life simply because of the direction I am looking. This is a work of digital art I was asked to create for a potential client. I took this as a great challenge to expand my photoshop skills. The image of the lake and mountain are one shot. The Milky Way is actually a 7 shot panorama from Arizona on the floor of Monument Valley. With some careful selections, masking and
transforming I was able to get a nice arch over Mount Hood. The light on the right side is part of the milky way shot and I warmed up the light on the fog to give it a more realistic feeling... I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Ugh - I've been sick since New Years so I have not gotten the New Year off to the rip roaring start that I had been hoping for.... Not back at 100% yet but am headed in the right direction.
I needed a straightforward self portrait to use on the About Page on my web site. Didn't want to use any with me holding a knife. I don't want to scare away potential clients!!!!
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve updated. Some say Flickr is dying a slow death due to competition, outdated design and lack of social interaction. Whatever. I’m still here, and I love you. Is anyone else using FB, 500px, Instagram, Tumblr, G+ or another site more often than here? I'm on all of them, but Flickr gives me the best response and access to potential clients.
Spent a week out near Death Valley. The plan was to be there in the middle of summer so I didn’t have to compete for the same photo with others. The trade-off with going to the desert in the summer is that there is seldom every any good clouds or sunsets. So using the high ISO capabilities of my new camera, I went out to the moon landing site Trona Pinnacles at 10pm and did a series of 30 second photos with only a quarter moon illuminating the foreground.
I’ll have plenty more to share. All week. More on my FB Fan page
Hope you are all doing splendidly.
This is a scan of a slide taken of print made from a 6x6 original; made for a gallery show I had back in the mid-late 90s. Galleries kept slides of your artwork on file to show potential clients. (Do they still? I kinda doubt it, given that people now live on smart phones ... making them, or getting them made, was always a PITA)
Originally I thought the show in question was one I had at OK Harris ... now I'm not so sure. Could've been Cooper Gallery in Jersey City, too. If anybody who was there remembers, drop me a line, or a comment.
Second Life Fashion Feed
Applications open for the first time since 2016
We looking for 15 bloggers to add to our syndication service. We keep our numbers low for several reasons.
1. We advertise through external sources and through popular social media forms. We use our bloggers to reach potential clients for different brands. Our sponsors pay us to target their markets and use our bloggers and their sites as a source for marketing.
2. We want our bloggers to get as much exposure as possible. We do our best to make sure our site is seen and your blogs are clicked on. Our responsibility is to get your blogs more exposure. It’s easier to do that when we can control the number of feeds coming through our service.
3. Brands know they can trust bloggers who are members of the It List. We make sure our bloggers are active and that they are producing quality content. We care how bloggers represent brands.
We have strict rules and we expect the best from our members. Please read the information on our website.
If you run a woman's or a man's fashion blog and you believe yourself a true Second Life fashionista please apply!
Our members Seen in this ad:
CEREZA CHAN - VIRTUAL BARBIE DOLL
WICCA MERLIN - FASHIONADDICTED
I suppose many people reach a point in their life where they suddenly stop and think and say, "Enough!" I think I'm there. It comes with a realisation you've become something you don't want to be or are going in a direction you don't like. I've loved Flickr but I think it has become too much of my life, making me less sociable, more outspoken at times, more dislikeable to some. So I think I'm going to try and turn a new page, leave this thing for a bit, and do something I've wanted to do for half a lifetime. I'm going to go quiet, and perhaps have another go at writing a book. No more penguin costumes. No more silly little stories and anecdotes. And turn my focus back a bit onto some things that are more important in life.
I had a plot for a book years ago. It involved Osama Bin Laden. He had vowed to destroy America. But he never achieved it from Afghanistan. Having had a career of working in shipping and forwarding I had worked out a story line to smuggle Osama Bin Laden into the USA. Once there a secret network would establish a base for him in caves in the mountains around Zion National Park in Utah, an area I had developed great fondness for on many vacations to the South West of the USA. Osama knew he would never have the military means to defeat the Americans but after 9/11 he devised a strategy to corrupt the fragile fabric of American society turning American against American, rich against poor, black against white, Christian against Muslim, "Haves" against "Have nots", Right wing against Left Wing by poisoning relationships in every sector of the population. Society would break down. There would be multi fronted civil war. American would kill American. And in my mind's book it happened with murderous open civil hostility throughout all of America. And it only stopped at the 11th hour when it slowly dawned on them what they were doing to each other and who had actually caused the initial antagonism. So I was horrified when Osama Bin Laden was killed in May 2011. My plot had just been wiped out and I had only reached Page 5.
So what plot now? I have been trying to think up an equivalent, credible situation ever since. Only one half decent idea had come to mind:
I pictured myself, as I am now, someone who wanted to write a story. But I had no idea what the plot could be. So I decided to set myself up in business as a private detective purely as a means of discovering stories. Potential clients would invite me into a situation to investigate discreetly what was going on: to establish the truth. After all everyone has a story behind them and I was quite sure that something intriguing and interesting might come along: perhaps a Pandora's Box I could open. So I advertised my services online. I had absolutely no background, experience or qualifications to call myself a 'detective' but who needs qualifications these days? You can be anything! I only had to wait a couple of days before my phone rang. It was a man. "It's about my wife," he started. And at that moment my life changed forever.
today i made a new flickr so i can easily show potential clients a higher quality example of my work (and to keep myself organized!).
i also did laundry. yay me.
Front page of a Flyer I designed for CDH's education principal to send out to potential clients showcasing the work that has been done by the firm.
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
“Business, Mister?”
A respectable blazer and skirt (or matching skirt suit) such as this can be a key part of one's wardrobe in the escort business. These outfits look respectable, and will guarantee entry for a single woman into even the most conservative of hotels. But worn without a blouse (and with a couple of buttons left undone), a business suit also conveys exactly the right ‘come hither’ message to potential clients. They know exactly what kind of business one is really engaged in!
This has been a hectic week for me, and so I apologise for the relative lack of updates! Over the weekend, my husband and I are staying with Lord Belcher, up at his vast estate in Buckinghamshire. There is a big party planned for tonight, and a number of my Sodality Sisters will be attending - including Lady Tabitha Billings, Lady Fiona Carson, Lady Daphne Craig-Talbot, Lady Clara Edgeworth, Lady Alice Grainger and Lady Octavia Wellington. Sir Harry Rakefield has been organizing the invitations to senior politicians, business leaders, bankers, bishops and high-ranking members of the armed forces. These are men who are prepared to pay outlandish sums of money to attend a house party that allows them to mingle with the aristocratic Sisters of the Sodality of Pleasure!
I think we are all going to have fun!
Lots more to come soon! Kisses to all my fabulous friends and fans!!
Xxxxx
Lady Rebecca Georgina Arabella Lyndon
Duchess of Basingstoke
Marchioness of Houslow
View On White ~ View the entire set of Winterscapes
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After I had an appointment with - potential - clients it became a habit of mine to spend the rest of the morning, or afternoon, photographing landscapes or scenery on my way home. Like this afternoon I drove to the province of Drenthe (North-East Netherlands) and wanted to photograph some classic white winterscapes while I met these guys along the way. From a distance they looked like Trojans guarding their territory. While I became closer they seemed to enjoy me standing next to them while photographing the landscape with this small unpaved road crossing the entire landscape, at least as far as I could see. Actually, they were the friendliest calm and most beautiful horses that I've met.
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P.s. still busy catching up with all of you. Will be there soon! To those 475 new contacts - 24 pages pending! - I'd like to say hi and thank you for viewing my work and adding me as your contact. I really appreciate it, and I will review each of you in the forthcoming days. Just don't think I haven't added you back because of ignorance. Also, I can't guarantee that I'm adding you reciprocally. I already have my hands full with my current contact-list. Nevertheless, thank you for your patience.
Explore #38 on 2009-12-16
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
This was the demo side loader unit Manco sent around for potential clients to test out their equipment. I don’t know exactly how many service providers had a go at the Manco, but on my side of Sydney I saw it trialled by Manly Council. Along with this picture and a few others, I did capture video of this truck in action (seen on YouTube), but the lifter wasn’t being used optimally due to the driver being new to side loaders. URM also had this truck in their possession for a little while, during which I got behind the wheel of it in the yard and emptied a few bins. I hope I’ll get to operate one in Sydney again! The lifter is quick and responsive and it can grab any wheelie bin size without adjustment. Considering this design is successful in New Zealand where it originates, there’s no reason it can’t do well in Oz too, because I reckon this truck has the potential to go as good as MJEs and SPAKs.
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
Maybe it did kill them.
Police lights flickered off the towering slums like a cheap rave. The boys in blue were putting on a real dog and pony show. Some of the top brass were milling about and barking orders to the rookies. My potential client had already been tagged and bagged. Evidence was being filed away. The body wasn’t even cold and the law was patting themselves on the back. Would it kill em to solve the case too? Their joy was short lived. You’d think a face like this would perk em up a bit. They don’t call me the baby face for nothing. My questions are met with grumbles until my partner Binx rolls in. A couple well placed meows and a leg rub here and there and their cold hearts are melted. I learn the grizzly details as they rub his tummy.
Madam Vivian Blackwood. One of the biggest fish in the pond. An eccentric philanthropist, some consider her the godmother of fashion. She had her mitts in all sorts of charity projects around the city. Had a soft spot for animals. Some of the younger shields were mumbling about a botched robbery but what kinda two bit robber leaves behind half a million in pearls? The only clues, an empty bag of pet treats and my business card. My prints were all over it but thanks to the corpo trash running this slum the police had enough surveillance to know while the Madam was meeting her maker I was leaving my apartment. I light a single cigarette, give a moment of silence to the departed. People will demand justice in the coming days but fight over every credit in her estate. “Come on Binx” I slip into the darkness, let’s see if we can’t find some answers for this saint.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBBmF0DAZ1Q
(I hope ya'll enjoy)
I think it is super important to show this to potential clients/new photographers so they understand the safety of the baby is top priority!
Street vendor trying to convince her potential client about the marvels of her product. It is incredible the increase that there are of people who make a living this way in the city. A sample more of the socially convulsed that this Buenos Aires this time. Obelisco. Buenos Aires city. Argentina.
My Latest Vancouver shot:
It started from a request from a potential client and then took on a life of its own. This is a high res, multi framed long exposure panorama image. So nice to finally have all the tankers that were parked in the inlet all summer and obstructing my view finally gone!
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.
Today however, we have travelled twenty-five miles west of London into Berkshire to the picturesque town of Ascot, where the Ascot Racecourse is. The town, built up along meandering roads, is made up mostly of large red brick mansions nestled discreetly amidst well established manicured gardens behind trimmed hedges and closed gates. It is here that Lettice has come to meet a prospective new client: Mrs. Evelyn Hawarden, wife of fabric manufacturer Joseph Hawarden. Hawarden Fabrics have been embraced by the British public since first appearing on the market in 1919, for their quality and affordability, and have proved especially popular amidst the working classes who want colour and something better than what they have had in the post-war boom of optimism, including Lettice’s maid, Edith, who made her friend Hilda a new dance frock using some Hawarden Fabrics russet art silk*. This has raised the Hawarden’s expectations and Mr. Hawarden has recently acquired ‘The Briars’, a red brick Georgian mansion in Ascot that is more suitable for he and his wife’s new social standing.
Against her usual practices, Lettice has foregone the initial meeting she would have had at Cavendish Mews after Mrs. Hawarden explained that she was simply too busy with her new house to come down to Mayfair, and implored Lettice to consider coming up to Ascot for the day. As she rides the train through the rolling green countryside of Berkshire, Lettice cannot help but wonder whether her agreement to Mrs. Hawarden’s demands is against her better judgement. Since the publication of the interiors she completed for her friends and fellow members of her Embassy Club coterie, Dickie and Margot Channon, in the magazine, Country Life**, Lettice’s expertise as an interior designer has suddenly been in great demand after Henry Tipping*** described her as having a “tasteful Modern Classical Revival Style”. She has already had to decline several hopeful clients whose wishes for new interiors do not appeal to her own sense of design. Yet here she is, travelling to see a woman who has shown to be somewhat bombastic at her insistence that Lettice visit her, rather than the other way around, at a house that she knows nothing about beyond the fact that it is a recent acquisition of Mr. Hawarden. As she distractedly turns the page of “Whose Body?”**** in her lap, having only taken in half of Dorothy L. Sayers words as she contemplates her journey, Lettice feels an unease in her stomach.
As requested, when the steam of the train carrying Lettice and a great number of people attending the Ascot Races from London to Ascot railway station cleared, there stood Mrs. Hawarden’s chauffer, dressed in a smart grey uniform and cap, ready to take her to ‘The Briars’. As the Worsley drove up the long and slightly rutted driveway boarded by clipped yew hedges, she prepared for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised when the car pulled into a wide carriage turning circle before a rather lovely two-storey red brick Georgian mansion with two white painted sash windows either side of a porticoed front door and five matching windows spread evenly across the façade of the upper floor. Assisted to alight by the chauffer, Lettice notes looking up at the façade before her that whilst the house is nowhere near as large or as fine as her own palatial Georgian childhood home of Glynes*****, it does have graceful and elegant country charm which makes her feel more at ease with what may lie within its walls.
Striding across the crunching white gravel driveway with the footsteps of the daughter of a Viscount to the front door, it is opened by a maid dressed in her black moire afternoon uniform accessorised with an ornamental lace apron, cuffs and matching cap. Whilst she may look the part, Lettice notes critically that the maid only takes her pea green travelling coat, leaving her holding her matching green stub ended parasol as she shows her into the drawing room, where Lettice is told by the maid that she is expected.
Entering the room Lettice is greeted by a fug of greyish blue cigarette smoke that hangs like a pall in the atmosphere. Beneath a round table in the middle of the room, a small whorl of reddish brown fur in a plaited basket bares its teeth and growls.
“Yat-See! Don’t growl at the guest! My dear Miss Chetwynd!” enthusiastically exclaims a female voice with a thick Mancunian accent Lettice recognises as Mrs. Hawarden’s. “Here you are at last!”
Rising from her place nestled into a very comfortable white upholstered sofa, Mrs Evelyn Hawarden appears to be in her mid thirties, and therefore much younger than her voice portrayed when she telephoned Lettice’s flat. With red hennaed hair set about her rounded face in soft Marcel waves****** she looks quite pert and pretty. Although dressed in a similar style to her mother, Lady Sadie, in a tweed calf length skirt, a flounced white silk blouse and a silk cardigan – the classic uniform of a relaxed country lady – Mrs. Hawarden cannot disguise her more aspiring middle-class origins, for she wears a little too much powder on her nose and sports a pair of round rouge marks on her cheeks that Lady Sadie would never entertain on her own face. Mrs. Hawarden’s hair is perhaps a little too obviously coloured, and she wears four strands of creamy white pearls about her neck, rather than the customary two worn informally. Even as she stands, she tugs awkwardly at her skirt, implying that this is not what she is used to wearing. Nevertheless, she has a pleasant smile and the sparkle in her brown eyes is a jolly one.
“How do you do, Mrs. Hawarden.” Lettice replies.
“Please pardon my pet Pekingese, Yat-See, for growling.” The hostess indicates to the bristling bundle of fur with wary black currant eyes. “He’s rather protective of his Mummy, don’t you know.” Mrs. Hawarden’s painted face falls when she notices Lettice still clutching her parasol. She glances between it and Lettice’s face. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Miss Chetwynd!” she exclaims apologetically. “Please just put your things down there.” She indicates with an open hand to the corner of a second cream sofa opposite the one she has been sitting on. “Barbara is new to being a maid. The house didn’t come with staff I’m afraid, and being new to the area ourselves, well, I think we’re seen as a rather unknown quantity, so getting help hasn’t been all that easy.”
“Oh it’s quite alright,” Lettice assures her hostess, gingerly lowering her parasol as Yat-See starts to growl again from his basket, and leans it against the soft edge of the sofa and deposits her handbag onto its seat. “I know how hard it can be to find good servants. I’m only grateful that I live in a flat and have requirements only for one maid.”
“Oh yes, I spoke to her the first time I telephoned you at Cavendish Mews. She seemed very efficient and was quick to get my details so that you could return my telephone call.”
“Thankfully Edith is a very capable maid, although I think you may have mistaken her efficiency for haste. Sadly, she has no love of the telephone and thinks it quite an unnatural contraption.” Lettice chuckles indulgently.
“What a load of rot!” blusters a burbling male Mancunian voice from behind a wall of newspaper, the utterance accompanied by clouds and curlicues of white cigarette smoke.
Yat-See immediately starts to bark in answer to the voice.
“Yat-see!” scolds Mrs. Hawarden. “Hush, or I’ll get Barbara to come and take you to the kitchen, which is where naughty boys go!”
Silently Lettice wishes her hostess would do just that. The dog seems to understand that he is being scolded and falls silent, but he continues to watch Lettice with his dark and suspicious eyes. Taking her gaze away from the pampered Pekingese and looking to the sofa behind her hostess, Lettice is suddenly made aware that she and Mrs. Hawarden are not the only two people in the room. The newspaper lowers to reveal a middle aged man, probably a little bit older than his wife, in a smart London suit, with slick black hair and a handsome mature face.
“Miss Chetwynd, may I present my husband, Mr. Joseph Hawarden, proprietor of Hawarden’s Fabrics.” Mrs. Hawarden says proudly, clasping her hands together.
“I say, how do you do, Miss Chetwynd!” Mr. Hawarden says, not getting up from his seat, but reaching forward and extending his hand to his guest. “Jolly glad to have you here. Evelyn’s done nothing but talk about your skills and what she wants you to do here, for the last few weeks. She was most impressed with your interiors in ‘Country Life’.” he adds, glancing across to the inlaid round top of the table between the two sofas upon which sit a collection of newspapers, magazines and periodicals, including the copy of ‘Country Life’ featuring the interiors for ‘Chi an Treth’.
Lettice extends her own hand and allows it to be shaken in a rather heavy and businesslike fashion by the industrialist. “How do you do, Mr. Hawarden. I’m delighted to be here,” She glances at Mrs. Hawarden. “Although I wasn’t expecting you to be here for this meeting.”
“Oh, Joseph just happens to be home this afternoon, Miss Chetwynd.” laughs Mrs. Hawarden a little awkwardly. “It isn’t by design. I’ll be the one making the decisions.”
“Yes,” agrees Mr. Hawarden, leaning forward and snatching a dainty teacup decorated with blue roses from the table and taking a rather large gulp from it, the cup’s rim disappearing beneath his finely manicured thick black moustache. “This interiors business is more Evelyn’s department than mine. My fabrics are fashion, not furniture fabrics.” He chortles good-naturedly. “But since I’ll be the one footing the bills, you should give me an estimate of your costs.”
“Oh,” Lettice begins a little nervously. “I shouldn’t think we’ll be discussing that today, Mr. Hawarden.”
“What?” he scoffs. “No costs today?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Lettice assures him. “Today is really, just about consultation. I would usually have conducted it at my premises in Mayfair,” She momentarily looks at Mrs. Hawarden again before returning to the industrialist. “However, your wife was insistent that she didn’t have the time to come down. Today is about discussing what Mrs. Hawarden hopes to do with the interiors of ‘The Briars’.”
“I see,” Mr. Hawarden replies, tapping his nose knowingly with his right hand, still clutching the smoking end of his cigarette. “You’re a smart businesswoman, Miss Chetwynd. Best lull Evelyn into a sense of security, so then you can unleash the bills on me, eh?”
“Oh no…” stammers Lettice. “I don’t mean… I mean it would…”
The man bursts out laughing, his fulsome guffaws intermixing with the slightly more timid and higher pitched giggle of his wife.
“Don’t listen to Joseph, Miss Chetwynd,” Mrs. Hawarden assures her guest. “He’s just trying to be funny, within his limited ability of being a boring businessman.” She rolls her eyes at her husband, who smiles back sheepishly at her before putting up the paper again. “He doesn’t mean what he says, Miss Chetwynd.” Indicating to the sofa again she continues, “Please have a seat, won’t you.” She walks up to the table. “Barbara may not know what to do with an umbrella, Miss Chetwynd, but she does make a fine cup of tea. When Johnston went to pick you up from the railway station, I had her brew us up a pot. May I interest you?” She picks up third, as of yet unused, china teacup and a pretty sleek silver Art Deco teapot. “Or would you prefer coffee?”
“Oh no, tea will be most satisfactory,” Lettice replies as she sinks into the comfortable enveloping upholstery of the sofa next to her handbag. “Thank you, Mrs. Hawarden.”
As Mrs. Hawarden fixes her tea, Lettice tries to ignore the hostile stare of Yat-See and glances around the well lit drawing room flooded with light from one of the ground floor windows she had spied upon her arrival. Tastefully appointed, the room features what looks like original Eighteenth Century hand painted wallpaper, which whilst dulled somewhat from many decades of warm wood fires, and perhaps more recently cigarette smoke – she glances at Mr. Hawarden as he sits, absorbed in his newspaper once more, his cigarette smouldering between his right index and middle finger poking around the edge of the newsprint – it still shows off lovely rich hues. Some of the furnishings are possibly original to the room too, such as a small demilune table to the left of the fireplace and the inlaid round table between the two sofas, but the room has been overlaid with other styles over time. The cream damask sofas are obviously pre-war, but perhaps not much more than a decade old. Paintings of different eras and styles hang on the walls in an easy comfort of familiarity. The objects scattered about the surfaces of the room suggest an eclectic, yet restrained hand: silver candlesticks, tall vases, decorative bowls, Meissen figurines and two pretty ‘cottage orneé’ pastille burners******* on the mantle.
Lettice gratefully accepts the cup of tea proffered by her hostess. “So, you were saying that you are newcomers to Ascot, Mrs. Hawarden?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Hawarden replies, subconsciously reaching up to her strands of pearls and worrying them at the mention of them being newly arrived. “My husband and I are from Manchester originally, as I’m sure you can tell from our accents.” Lettice politely sips her tea and doesn’t remark upon either of their thick accents which are so different to those born in the south of England. “We only recently acquired ‘The Briars’ so that my husband can be closer to his new fabric factory in Croydon and to his London office, and I have been craving the space and fresh air of the south.” The woman opens a small silver cigarette case on the table, offers one to Lettice, who politely declines with s small shake of her head, and then takes out a thin cigarette for herself and lights it. Walking across the carpet she tosses the spent match into the grate as she leans against the fireplace.
“Indeed.” muses Lettice as she watches Mrs. Hawarden take a long drag on her cigarette before blowing out a plume of bluish grey acrid smoke into the air between she and Lettice.
Yat-See suddenly picks himself out of his basket, making Lettice flinch and her cup rattle in its saucer as she fears he is about to attack her legs. Yet he pads across the Chinese rug and sits in front of his mistress protectively keeping guard to protect her from the stranger in the drawing room.
“And this place was up for sale, and I fell in love with it instantly, didn’t I Joseph?”
“Indeed, you did, Evelyn.” agrees her husband without looking up from his newspaper.
“So, we bought it: lock, stock and barrel.”
“Then the furnishings aren’t yours, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice asks, gesturing to their surrounds as she places her teacup on the small Georgian pedestal table at her right.
“No. Oh no!” Mrs, Hawarden replies, evidently wishing to distance herself from the elegant, yet comfortably lived in country house style. “Not at all Miss Chetwynd! That’s why I couldn’t come down to Mayfair to meet you like you had originally suggested. We’re only freshly moved in, and I’m still trying to find my feet here. I haven’t even had time to unpack my photos from our Manchester house yet.”
“Yet you already know that you want to redecorate, Mrs. Hawarden,” Lettice queries. “Even though you are only newly minted here?”
“Goodness yes, Miss Chetwynd!” exclaims the hostess, blowing out another cloud of smoke as she speaks. She bends down and strokes her dog on the head, his black eyes closing in pleasure ar her touch. With a slight groan she stretches back into an upright position. “These,” she gesticulates with a languid hand around her. “Are the interiors of a dead woman.”
“A dead woman?” Lettice queries again in concern.
“Yes. You see we bought ‘The Briars’ from the descendants of the last occupier. Alice… Alice… Oh, what was her name, Joseph? Moynahan?”
“Mainwaring, Evelyn my dear.” Mr. Hawarden looks up from his paper to his wife. “Alice Mainwaring.”
“Yes!” Mrs. Hawarden claps her hands, sending a tumble of ashes cascading through the air where they land in Yat-See’s red dioxide coat and on the dark slate hearth surrounding the fireplace. “That’s it! Alice Mainwaring. Her widowed aunt or some such lived here alone and died a few years ago, and she didn’t want to hold onto the place.”
“Humph!” mutters Mr. Hawarden. “More like she couldn’t afford to hold onto the place, owing to these bloody awful rates of Income Tax******** the Government dare to charge us all now. Mind you, she put a good face on it, I’ll say that.”
Yat-See starts barking again.
“Yat-See!” scolds Mrs. Hawarden again. “She didn’t even want the old family paintings.”
“I doubt she could afford to keep them, Evelyn my dear, even if she’d wanted to.” Her husband counters. “I would have offered her less for the place if she’d taken them.”
“Anyway, whatever the circumstances, I felt the house could do with a little,” Mrs. Hawarden weaves her hand dramatically through the air as if holding a magic wand. “Sprucing up********.”
“Sprucing up?” Lettice queries again, looking uncertainly at Mrs. Hawarden.
“Yes!” Mrs. Hawarden says with a sigh, sending two plumes of smoke rushing from her nostrils. “Brighten it up a bit and make it a bit more,” She pauses whilst she thinks of the right word she is seeking. “Modern.”
“And you are expecting furnishings from Manchester, Mrs. Hawarden?” Lettice asks.
“Good lord no!” the hostess exclaims. “The furniture from our Audenshaw house is even worse than these bits of sticks. Yat-See, our clothes, my photos and a few bits and bobs are about all we wanted to bring from there. Isn’t that right, Joseph?”
“Quite, my dear Evelyn. Quite.”
“No.” She smiles with smug pleasure. “We’ve left that life behind, and now we plan to make a new start here.”
“You do know,” Lettice remarks tentatively. “That some people would be quite happy, if acquiring a country house and its contents in its entirety, to leave it all in situ.”
“Ahh.” Mrs. Hawarden says with a wagging bejewelled finger and a knowing smile at Lettice. “But Joseph and I aren’t just anyone. That’s why as soon as I saw your article, I knew I wanted your expertise to help me bring life back into this poor old house.” She slaps the mantlepiece with the palm of her hand. “I read in Country Life that the rooms of the Channon’s house were a bit dark, so you lightened it.”
“Well, yes,” Lettice agrees hesitantly. “I did, but the house really was rather damp being built by the sea, and awfully neglected after having stood empty for many years. This house appears to be in much better condition and is far cosier than ‘Chi an Treth’ was, Mrs. Hawarden.”
“And,” Mrs. Hawarden continues, appearing not to have heard Lettice’s protestations. “I also read that some of the statues you used to furnish the house came from the Portland Gallery in Mayfair.”
“They did, Mrs. Hawarden, but I…”
“And I just love the modernity of some of the art in there. I’m currently in the process of acquiring some nice new modern artworks from several London galleries, although not The Portland, to hang in place of some of these rather drab daubs.” she indicates to the classical oil painting of a landscape hanging above the fireplace behind her.
Lettice glances sadly at the small, rather pretty late Nineteenth Century oil painting of a mother and daughter gathering flowers just to the right of the fireplace, silently apologising to the possible former owner of the house.
“Actually, Evelyn my dear, I think you’ll find, I’m acquiring them.” remarks Mr. Hawarden rather definitely.
“Don’t be bore, dear Joseph.” Mrs. Hawarden retorts kindly. “Yes, it’s true, you may be putting up the money for them, but we both know that of the two of us, I’m the one with the real artistic vision.”
“If you say so, Evelyn.” Mr. Hawarden returns to his paper.
Lettice looks sadly around her at the well appointed and comfortable room. In her mind, she can’t see anything wrong with it, other than perhaps the hostile presence of Yat-See, and sadly he cannot be papered over. The room’s décor has grown with the house, mellowed and softened into a comfortable semi-formal Edwardian country house interior over the decades since its original construction, not entirely dissimilar to that of her brother Leslie’s new home with his wife in the Dower House at Glynes, only not quite so old, it having been built in the 1850s. A queasiness begins to roil about in the pit of her stomach. Yat-See seems to pick up on it and quietly growls at Lettice again, until he receives a small nudge on the bottom by the dainty toe of Mrs. Hawarden’s brown leather shoe.
“You do know that my style is Modern Classical Revival, don’t you, Mrs, Hawarden?” Lettice explains politely. “I do not believe in flinging everything out and replacing it with something new.”
“Yes of course I know, Miss Chetwynd.” Mrs, Hawarden smiles. “I’m not suggesting we ‘fling it all out’ as you say. I’d be happy if you felt it worth repurposing a few sticks of furniture. I believe you did repaint a demilune table, not unlike this one,” She reaches behind her and pats the surface of the table Lettice had noticed before. “For Mrs. Channon. You could do the same here, if you like. I’m happy to be led by you, Miss Chetwynd.”
“Well,” Lettice says. “Really, I should be the one who is led by you, Mrs. Hawarden. Perhaps you could suggest to me what you were thinking and we’ll… work from there. Shall we?” She takes a small sip of her tea. “What do you envisage, Mrs. Hawarden?”
The woman looks around her, humming and hawing as she screws up her mouth in concentration.
“Well, for a start, if I’m going to have new paintings hanging in here, I’ll need new wallpaper. How old do you think this paper is, Miss Chetwynd?”
“I would say it is probably Eighteenth Century.” Lettice says with concern. “You do realise that it’s probably hand painted. My parents have similar at our home in Wilt…”
“Well there you go!” interrupts Mrs. Hawarden. “That explains why it’s so dull and dreary! No: new paper for new paintings. Definitely!” the Pekingese starts barking animatedly. “See, even my beloved little boy agrees, don’t you darling?” She blows him a kiss. “Maybe something geometric?” She looks questioningly at Lettice who simply smiles up politely at her from her place on the sofa but says nothing. She casts her eyes around the room. “And of course these dreadful settees will have to go!”
Lettice quietly cringes at the use of the word ‘settee’, giving away Mr. Hawarden’s aspiring middle-class origins**********.
“Pity Evelyn my dear,” her husband pipes up. “I quite like these. They really are rather nice and comfy.” He starts bouncing up and down slightly in his seat, making the springs inside the sofa protest quietly beneath the white damask upholstery which makes Yat-See start quietly growling again.
“No! I want something more streamlined,” Mrs, Hawarden insists. “Rather like Mrs. Channon’s settees I think.”
A discreet knock on the drawing room door interrupts Mrs. Hawarden’s thoughts and makes Yat-See yap loudly as he scurries over to the door.
“Yes.” she calls out imperiously.
Barbara, the maid who had opened the door to Lettice upon her arrival and shown her into the drawing room opens the door and steps in, almost stepping on the dog, who barks savagely at the poor domestic.
“Yat-See! Hush darling! Yes Barbara?”
“Begging your pardon, mum, but lunch is ready.” The maid bobs a curtsey. “You said I ought to tell you when it was ready, and Cook is serving up now.”
“Yes, yes,” mutters Mrs. Hawarden dismissively with a final puff of smoke, dropping her cigarette butt into the grate next to the spent match. “Thank you, Barbara.”
The maid bobs another curtsey and turns to go.
“Oh Barbara!” Mrs. Hawarden calls after her gaily.
“Yes, mum?” the maid asks.
“Barbara, next time we are receiving guests and they are carrying an umbrella,” Mrs. Hawarden adeptly snatches up Lettice’s green umbrella from the floor and holds it out to her maid in a smooth movement. “Make sure you put it in the receptacle that it was designed to be inserted into.”
“Mum?” the maid asks queryingly, reaching tentatively out and accepting the umbrella.
“Put it in the hallstand, Barbara, with the other umbrellas.”
“Oh, yes mum!” Barbara apologises and bobs another curtsey, first at her mistress and then at Lettice, before quickly withdrawing.
Lettice silently cringes slightly again at witnessing the public beration of the poor, inexperienced maid, however mild it was.
“Well!” gasps Mrs. Hawarden, snatching up her beloved dog from the floor with a swoop. “Shall we go through then, Miss Chetwynd? I’m sure after your trip up from London, you must be starving.”
“Oh, yes.” Lettice lies brightly, depositing the teacup and saucer back onto the small Georgian occasional pedestal table and standing up. She eyes the dog warily as he hangs from his owner’s left arm.
“Good! Good!” her hostess replies, clapping her hands with delight. “That’s just as well. I’ve asked Cook to prepare a lovely lamb roast. You love titbits from the table, don’t you Yat-See?” She rubs her dog’s forehead lovingly before she winds her right arm through Lettice’s left. “Please, let me show you the way. Just wait until you see the dining room! It’s yellow!” She cringes. “Positively gruesome! I shall be very keen to hear your thoughts around what we can do about that.”
Mrs. Hawarden gently, yet at the same time forcefully, guides Lettice to the door from whence the maid came.
“Are you coming my dear?” Mrs, Hawarden calls to her husband over her shoulder.
“Yes, of course Evelyn!” Mr. Hawarden deposits the newspaper on the sofa cushions and extinguishes his cigarette in the ashtray on the table and follows the figure of his wife and Lettice arm-in-arm. “I shouldn’t wish to miss one of Cook’s wonderful roasts!”
As Lettice is guided down the hallway by her hostess, she senses what feels like a boulder in the very pit of her stomach. For the first time ever, she has a potential client with whom she is completely at odds with aesthetically, and she isn’t quite sure how she is going to explain her difference in opinions to the insistent Mrs. Hawarden diplomatically.
*The first successful artificial silks were developed in the 1890s of cellulose fibre and marketed as art silk or viscose, a trade name for a specific manufacturer. In 1924, the name of the fibre was officially changed in the U.S. to rayon, although the term viscose continued to be used in Europe.
**Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
***Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.
****Whose Body? is a 1923 mystery novel by English crime writer and poet Dorothy L. Sayers. It was her debut novel, and the book in which she introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey.
*****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 and his wife Arabella.
******Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women's hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut. For those women who had longer hair, it was common to tie the hair at the nape of the neck and pin it above the ear with a stylish hair pin or flower. One famous wearer was American entertainer, Josephine Baker.
*******The Industrial Revolution in England caused a migration of people into the big cities in search of better wages and better working conditions. For the working class often this resulted in overcrowding in their housing conditions. There was poor sanitation and smells could be appalling. Pastille burners, sometimes called ‘cottage orneés’ were a way of combating these odours by burning pastilles of aromatic substances, which emitted sweet scented perfume into the room. They were made of porcelain or silver for the upper classes and by the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, pottery burners were bought by the middle and lower classes. They were modelled as cottages with a removable thatched roof, tollhouses, dovecotes decorated with flowers and by the 1830s the cottages had open windows so they became night lights as well. By 1840 designs for pastille burners included Chinese temples, Swiss cottages and turreted castles, all of which appealed to the Victorian taste. Pastille burners remained popular for all classes until 1870 when improvements to sanitary conditions were made.
*******In order to repay the expenditures made by the British during the Great War, like had been occurring since the Napoleonic Wars, the government increased Income Tax. The standard rate of income tax, which was six per cent in 1914, stood at thirty per cent in 1918. As a result of this, income tax rates amongst the wealthy were maintained at a high level, far in excess of those charged in the years before the war, making the management of estates very difficult if they were not productive, and many properties with stately homes left the ownership of their original families for the first time in generations, sold more often to wealthy industrialists or in the post-war era, wealthy Americans wishing for their own slice of British aristocratic history.
*********The verb spruce up means “to make neat or smart in appearance,” and it first appeared in English around the end of the 1500s.
**********Before, and even after the Second World War, a great deal could be attained about a person’s social origins by what language and terminology they used in class-conscious Britain by the use of ‘”U and non-U English” as popularised by upper class English author, Nancy Mitford when she published a glossary of terms in an article “The English Aristocracy” published by Stephen Spender in his magazine “encounter” in 1954. There are many examples in her glossary, amongst which are the word “sofa” which is a U (upper class) word, versus “settee” or “couch” which are a non-U (aspiring middle-class) words. Whilst quite outdated today, it gives an insight into how easily someone could betray their humbler origins by something as simple as a single word.
This comfortable country house drawing room interior may appear like something out of a historical stately country house, or a copy of ‘Country Life’, but it is in fact part of my 1:12 miniatures collection and includes items from my childhood, as well as those I have collected as an adult.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The Georgian style fireplace I have had since I was a teenager and is made from moulded plaster. The peacock fire screen and gilt fire tools I bought at the same time as the fireplace. Standing on the mantlepiece of the fireplace are two miniature diecast lead Meissen figurines: the Lady with the Canary and the Gentleman with the Butterfly, manufactured by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. They have been hand painted by me. Next to them on the mantlepiece are two silver candlesticks from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. Also on the mantlepiece are two pottery cottage orneé pastille burners which have been hand made, painted and gilded by Welsh miniature ceramist Rachel Williams who has her own studio, V&R Miniatures, in Powys. The dainty gilded clock is also made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland.
The two tall vases of flowers on the demilune tables flanking the fireplace are made by Falcon Miniatures, who are renown for the realism and detail in their miniatures.
The bowl decorated with fruit on the table on the left hand side of the fireplace was hand decorated by British artisan Rachael Maundy. The one on the right is a hand painted artisan miniature fluted bowl.
The two white damask sofas were supplied by Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom. The round table, an artisan miniature with a marquetry inlaid top, also came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop, as did the small pedestal table next to the right hand sofa.
Lettice’s green handbag is also a hand-made artisan piece of soft green leather, made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures. Her furled umbrella is a 1:12 artisan piece made of hand painted wood, metal and satin.
The silver Art Deco tea and coffee pots and square tray on the round table were made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland. The blue rose tea set came from a miniatures stockist on E-Bay. The Elite Styles magazine from 1923 sitting on the table was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States. The 1:12 miniature copies of ‘The Times’, ‘The Mirror’ and the ‘Daily Express’, are made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The copy of ‘Country Life’ sitting on the table was made by me to scale using the cover of a real 1923 edition of ‘Country Life’. The vase of red roses in the foreground was made by Falcon Miniatures.
All the paintings around ‘The Briars’ drawing room in their gilded frames are 1:12 artisan pieces acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop and the wallpaper is an authentic copy of hand-painted Georgian wallpaper from the 1770s.
Another fun #Macromonday challenge! For this #chips challenge I decided not to challenge myself by going "outside the box" and instead take this as an assignment from a potential client. Make someone want some chips and salsa......anyone hungry?? HMM!
Nothing like early morning flights to meetings with potential clients! Also anyone else just REALLY love Breakfast? And like breakfast foods?? My day hasn't truly started until I do my morning rituals (Reflecting, stretching, skincare, oral care) and a cup of my fav Vanilla Matcha latte and a buttery croissant? Is it just me?? Tell me I'm not alone!
Enjoy the fit pics!!
Hair: Hairbase: Platinum "Tracey" + flexi ponytail and bangs from "Punklist" Chanel
Eyeshadow: SU Nezzera nude eyeshadow (regular liner) + Dotty's Secret "inner corner highlight" (as per usual)
Lashes: Mai Bilavio "Angelic" faux mink lashes
Lipstick: Ives "Aya" lipgloss
Nails: Luer
Accessories
Sunglasses: Haus of Arnaud "Honeycomb" sunglasses in black
Earrings: Revienne "Alshari" earrings
Handbag: Haus of Arnaud "4A purse" in Olive
Wardrobe
Top: Ison "Makena" in black (worn with Nerido push up deformer for Legacy body)
Skirt: Eliavah "dragonsilk" skirt in black
fishnets: Maze
Heels: Salvadori "Baker" platform pump in Black
An older image that I spent a little time reworking today for a potential client who was interested in this image for a canvas print. I'm excited I'll be visiting PDX a couple of times this summer!
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.
Returned from her Friday to Monday down at Dickie and Margot’s Cornwall country house, ‘Chi an Treth’, and all the excitement that ensued there, Lettice has settled back into her usual London routine of shopping, receiving and visiting friends and seeing potential clients. It’s a Wednesday, and an unusually quiet one, so Lettice is taking advantage of the gap between engagements and has just sat down in her comfortable white upholstered tub chair to continue reading her latest Georgette Heyer* romance novel when the doorbell to the flat rings noisily, shattering the relative quiet of the flat’s interior.
“I’m not expecting any clients,” she muses as she listens as Edith, her maid, walks across the entrance hall to answer the door. “I wonder who it can be.”
A few moments later the mystery is revealed when Edith walks in proudly announcing, “Miss Bowes-Lyon**, Miss.”
“Elizabeth, darling!” Lettice gasps in delight, casting her book aside. Standing up she embraces her friend who is dressed in a romantic pale pink chiffon moiré dress with a fashionable drop waist and draped in a thick fox fur stole. Elizabeth’s light scent of lily of the valley envelops her. “I didn’t know you were up at Bruton Street***. Please.” She indicates to the tub chair opposite her, which Elizabeth sinks into with a sigh as she places aside her matching pink parasol, and allows the fox fur to slink from her shoulders, snaking across the back of the chair.
“I’m up from Scotland just for a few days to have a fitting for Her Royal Highness’**** wedding and run a few errands before going back.”
“Oh of course!” Lettice gasps. “The wedding! I’d forgotten you were a bridesmaid.”
“Has Gerald finished your outfit for the ceremony yet?” Elizabeth asks as she withdraws a hatpin from her straw cloche decorated with silk roses and feathers and deposits the hat on the stool beside her.
“I do wish you’d let Edith take those, Elizabeth darling.” Lettice indicates to the parasol and hat.
“Oh I can’t stay for too long.” Eliabeth assures her hostess. “The fitting awaits.” She smiles sweetly, giving a brief view of her slightly crooked teeth.
“Well I hope you can stay long enough for a cup of tea,” replies Lettice. “And a biscuit or two. Yes, Gerald’s almost finished my gown. It’s oyster coloured satin, and very plain, with a drop waist and pearl buttons down the back. In fact, the only real decoration it will have will be the lace collar.”
“Sounds wonderful.” acknowledges Elizabeth. “When I get married, I only want a simple wedding dress. I saw the photos of Margot’s wedding dress in Vogue. Gerald must have clients pounding at his door now.”
“Yes,” Lettice remarks. “I said it would be the making of him, and so far, I’ve been proven correct. I’m so happy for him. Goodness knows he could do with some luck after all the hard work he has put in to setting up his business. Now, thinking of frock fittings and weddings, how does Her Royal Highness’ gown look.”
Elizabeth taps her nose in a knowing way, replying, “I’m sorry darling, but I’m not allowed to say.” She smiles apologetically.
“Oh! Of course! How foolish of me! I was forgetting that it’s a secret. Yours too, I should imagine?” Elizabeth nods discreetly. “Never mind. I’ll be happy enough to be surprised on the big day.”
“Have you settled on a hat yet?”
“Ahh, now there I really am in a quandary.” Lettice remarks.
Edith appears and walks across the threshold of the drawing room from the flat’s dining room carrying Lettice’s silvery tray from Asprey’s****** on which sits her Art Deco tea service with cups for two and a small plate of rather delicious looking biscuits. She carefully places the items on the black japanned coffee table between the two friends before dropping a bob curtsey and retreating through the green baize door on the far side of the dining room.
“Quandary?” Elizabeth asks. “I thought you were getting Madame Gwendolyn to make you a hat.”
“Yes. I mean, I know Madame Gwendolyn has made me some wonderful hats in the past.” She pauses.
“I sense a but,”
“But I wasn’t happy with what she made me for Royal Ascot*******. I think it looked dowdy and old fashioned.”
“Oh, I thought it looked lovely.”
“Thank you, Elizabeth darling, bless you.” She reaches out a hand and squeezes Elizabeth’s elegant, yet rather cold hand. “But ‘The Times’ agrees with me in their critique of the fashions last year, and it wasn’t exactly the roaring success I’d hoped for, or paid for, for that matter.” Lettice takes up the pot and pours hot tea into Elizabeth’s cup, passing it to her friend, before filling her own. “So, I’m going to see Gwendolyn next week, but I must confess I’ve seen hats I’d prefer to wear in Selfridges’ windows along the way.”
“Selfridges? You can’t be serious Lettice!” Elizabeth puts a hand to her throat and clasps the collar length string of pearls she wears. “Wear a shop girl’s hat to a royal wedding?”
“Well why not? No-one would know, except perhaps you and I. Besides, not all of Mr. Selfridges hats are shop girl material. He has some beautiful models, directly from Paris, and exclusive to his store. They are a fraction of the price, and are every bit as fashionable and well made as anything Madame Gwendolyn can produce.”
“It sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind, Lettice.” Elizabeth picks up a pink macaron off the plate and pops it delicately into her little round mouth, her eyes closing with delight as it starts melting on her tongue.
“Divine aren’t they?” Lettice asks. “My last client, Miss Ward put me onto the most fabulous little baker in Pilmico.”
“She’s the moving picture star, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Anyway, I haven’t dismissed Madame Gewndolyn – yet. However, I have misgivings.”
“Well, I have misgivings too.” Elizabeth adds, her eyelashes trembling with a sudden concern as fear clouds her beautiful blue eyes. “I actually came to see you yesterday, but Edith told me you were still away.”
“Oh yes, I’d gone down with Gerald to stay at Dickie and Margot’s new house in Cornwall.” She pauses and ponders for a moment. “But you didn’t leave a calling card, and Edith didn’t tell me you’d called.”
“Oh, don’t be cross with her. I asked her not to say anything as I was still in town for a few days and knew I’d catch you between engagements. So, what’s the house like? You’re going to decorate a few of the rooms, aren’t you?”
“It’s quite lovely – larger than either Gerald or I expected – about ten bedrooms, and yes I am, but pooh to all of that right now. What misgivings? You can’t be having misgivings about being the Princess’ bridesmaid now, surely? Not after all the fittings and rehearsals and such.”
“Oh no, it isn’t that. No, I’m very happy to be her bridesmaid. No, it’s Bertie******** who concerns me.”
“Oh!” Lettice picks up a chocolate macaron from the plate and pops it onto her saucer where it nestles against the rounded bottom of the cup. “Of course he’ll be there.”
“He seems undaunted by my last refusal. Queen Mary visited Mummy just before Christmas.”
“Did she take any of the Glamis china collection*********?”
“Thankfully no, but Mummy told me that the Queen is quite convinced that I’m the only woman who will make Bertie happy, and that he’s refusing to consider any other marriage proposals.”
“And you think he may propose again?”
“Well, it is his sister’s wedding after all.”
“But surely he knows that you’re actively being courted by his equerry! What’s his name?”
“James. James Stewart.”
“That’s it! Well, surely His Royal Highness must know you’ve been seen with James.”
Elizabeth sighs, her elegantly plucked eyebrows arching high. “Apparently he thinks he can win me over.”
“More likely wear you down.” Lettice remarks disparagingly, taking a slip of her own tea.
“They equate to much the same thing.”
“Well?”
“Well what, Lettice darling?”
“Well, do you love him? His Royal Highness that is,” she clarifies. “Not James.”
“Oh, I do like him!” Elizabeth sighs, lowering her teacup into her lap, her shoulders rising and then slumping again as she looks away shyly, a blush filling her creamy cheeks. “He’s dashing, and sweet. I don’t even mind his stutter, which I find quite endearing.”
“Now it’s my turn to sense a but, Elizabeth. Come on! Spit it out.”
“Well, you know my misgivings about public life. I have my own definite thoughts and ideas. To never be allowed to express them again, to not be able to think or speak freely or act as I feel I really ought to,” Elizabeth sighs again. “Well, its intolerable really.”
“Yes, I can understand that. I think Mamma would be happier if I didn’t express my opinions or ideas, never mind act as I see fit. You are coming to the Hunt Ball, aren’t you?”
“Yes of course, Lettice darling. I’ll even dance with Jonty Hastings to save your feet from too much butchery.”
“Thank you. Well, the Prince isn’t really a significant royal. I mean he’s only the Duke of York, not the Prince of Wales, so he’ll never be the King.”
“King George was once the Duke of York, Lettice.”
“Times were different then, Elizabeth. Once the Prince of Wales settles down,”
“If he ever settles down. He shows no signs of it, Lettice, cavorting with other men’s wives. He’s shameless the way he flouts them.”
“Yes, I’ve seen him with Mrs. Dudley Ward********** at the Embassy Club on more than a few occasions at His Highness’ table. Well, he’ll have to settle down, eventually. And once he does, and has children, why you and the Prince would be even further from the line of succession.”
“Oh I don’t know.” Elizabeth toys with the pearl clip earring at her right lobe anxiously.
“Anyway, if you’re sweet on James, why are you even considering the Prince?”
“James is talking about going to America. He’s being wooed by an oil company over there, who pays more than the Royal Household does. Could you really see me living in America?” She scrunches up her nose. “I’d stay in Scotland forever with all my cousins and never leave if I could.”
“No, I couldn’t. Canada perhaps, but not America. They’re so… so…”
“American?” Elizabeth proffers.
“American!” agrees Lettice with a chuckle. “Well, it’s up to you. Just because he’s the Prince, doesn’t mean you have to say yes, Elizabeth. If you have misgivings, just refuse him.” She pauses for a moment and sips her tea again before continuing, “Although refusing a marriage proposal from a prince, however minor, isn’t quite as flippant as refusing a hat from Madame Gwendolyn.”
“Oh I don’t know,” Elizabeth chuckles, picking up another macaron. “Madame Gwendolyn can be quite fierce from what I know of her, not to mention she’s Lady Sadie’s milliner too. Refusing Madame would be tantamount to committing mutiny, wouldn’t it?”
*Georgette Heyer was an English novelist and short-story writer, in both the regency romance and detective fiction genres. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel, ‘The Black Moth’.
**Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon as she was known in 1922 went on to become Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions from 1936 to 1952 as the wife of King George VI. Whilst still Duke of York, Prince Albert initially proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, being "afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to"
***Number 17. Bruton Street was the London residence of the Earl of Strathmore and Kingholme (Elizabeth’s father), and was where she resided when in the capital prior to her marriage.
*****Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood (1897 – 1965), was the only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary. She was the sister of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. She married Viscount Lascelles on the 28th of February 1922 in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. The bride was only 24 years old, whilst the groom was 39. There is much conjecture that the marriage was an unhappy one, but their children dispute this and say it was a very happy marriage based upon mutual respect. The wedding was filmed by Pathé News and was the first royal wedding to be featured in fashion magazines, including Vogue.
******Founded in 1781 as a silk printing business by William Asprey, Asprey soon became a luxury emporium. In 1847 the business moved to their present premises at 167 Bond Street, where they advertised 'articles of exclusive design and high quality, whether for personal adornment or personal accompaniment and to endow with richness and beauty the table and homes of people of refinement and discernment’. In 1862 Asprey received a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria. They received a second Royal Warrant from the Future Edward VII in 1889. Asprey has a tradition of producing jewellery inspired by the blooms found in English gardens and Woodland Flora. Over the decades jewelled interpretations of flowers have evolved to include Daisy, Woodland and sunflower collections. They have their own special cut of diamond and produce leather goods, silver and gold pieces, trophies and leatherbound books, both old and new. They also produce accessories for playing polo. In 1997, Asprey produced the Heart of the Ocean necklace worn in the motion picture blockbuster, ‘Titanic’.
*******Royal Ascot Week is the major social calendar event held in June every year at Ascot Racecourse in Berkshire. It was founded in 1711 by Queen Anne and is attended every year by the reigning British monarch and members of the Royal Family. The event is grand and showy, with men in grey morning dress and silk toppers and ladies in their best summer frocks and most elaborate hats.
********Prince Albert, Duke of York, known by the diminutive “Bertie” to the family and close friends, was the second son of George V. Not only did Bertie propose to Elizabeth in 1921, but also in March 1922 after she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Albert’s sister, Princess Mary to Viscount Lascelles. Elizabeth refused him a second time, yet undaunted Bertie pursued the girl who had stolen his heart. Finally, in January 1923 she agreed to marry him in spite of her misgivings about royal life.
*********Queen Mary, wife of King George V was an avid collector of bibelots (small decorative ornaments) and decorative arts. She was also responsible for being the first member of the Royal Family to ever do an inventory of the Royal Collections, finding many items had been “borrowed” by the great families of England over the centuries to decorate their own homes. During her husband’s reign, she recovered a vast majority of these pilfered items, returning them to the Royal Collections. For this reason, she was feared when she came to visit, along with her voracious acquisition of other people’s bibelots. She was known to remark on something pretty and then expect that it would be gifted to her as the wife of the sovereign.
**********Winifred May, Marquesa de Casa Maury (née Birkin) (1894 – 1983), universally known by her first married name as Freda Dudley Ward, was an English socialite best known for being a married paramour of the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VIII, between 1918 and 1929. Known by him by the diminutive “Freddie”, she was supplanted in the Prince’s affections by Lady Thelma Furness, who in turn was supplanted by Mrs. Simpson.
This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures including items from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The cream straw cloche hat sitting on the Chippendale stool is decorated with pink roses has single stands of ostrich feathers adorning it. The latter have been hand curled. The maker for this hat is unknown, but it is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable.
The furled umbrella is a 1:12 artisan piece made of pink satin and lace with a tiny pink bow. It has a hooked metal handle.
You can just see draped across the chair on the right, Elizabeth’s fox fur stole. It is, in actuality, a mink tail attached to one of my vintage fur tippets. It is just the right size to be a thick fur stole that could have been worn by the future Queen Elizabeth, who loved furs.
Lettice’s tea set is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era. The strawberry and chocolate macarons are also artisan miniatures from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. He has a dizzying array of realistic looking food and meals which is always growing, and all are made entirely or put together by hand. The green tinted glass comport on the coffee table , spun from real glass, is also from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
The black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.
In front of the telephone sit two paperback novels from the late 1910s created by miniature British 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. 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 these books miniature artisan pieces. 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.
The Vogue magazine from 1922 sitting on the lower tray of the black japanned occasional table was made by hand by Petite Gite Miniatures in the United States.
The vase of yellow lilies and roses on the Art Deco occasional table is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium, whilst the taller vase of flowers to the right of the photo was made by Falcon Miniatures, who are renown for the realism and detail in their miniatures.
Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The black japanned wooden chair is a Chippendale design and has been upholstered with modern and stylish Art Deco fabric. The mirror backed back japanned china cabinet is Chippendale too. On its glass shelves sit pieces of miniature Limoges porcelain including jugs, teacups and saucers, many of which I have had since I was a child.
To the left of the Chippendale chair stands a blanc de chine Chinese porcelain vase, and next to it, a Chinese screen. The Chinese folding screen I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.
The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug. 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.
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.
Today however, we have followed Lettice southwest from her home, across St James’ Park to Hans Crescent in Belgravia, where the smart Edwardian four storey red brick and mock Tudor London home of the de Virre family stands. Two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. Lettice is visiting the home of the bride, which is a hive of activity in the lead up to the forthcoming nuptials.
Unusually, Lettice is ushered into the hall of the townhouse by a new maid rather than the de Virre’s butler, Mr. Geraldton. The maid is nervous and seems unsure of herself as she takes Lettice’s name and leads her up to the first floor to the gold drawing room where Lettice is informed the bride-to-be and her mother are.
“Miss Lettice Chetwynd, ma’am,” the maid mutters quickly before retreating back through the door and disappearing down the hallway.
“Lettice!” Margot gasps in delight, looking up from the cup of tea she holds in her lap.
“Oh Lettice!” Lady de Virre sighs. “Thank goodness! I might finally be able to speak to someone who has some sense.”
“What ever do you mean Lady de Virre?” Lettice asks, standing before her friend and her mother.
“I mean,” Lady de Virre suddenly falters as she sees Lettice clasping her green parasol with a black leather handle in her glove clad hand. “Oh. You aren’t stopping?” Her disappointment is palpable.
“Oh no, Lady de Virre! I mean, yes, Lady de Virre!” Lettice assures her hostess. “I came to see Margot, and of course you, although I can’t stay for too long. I have a potential client coming for afternoon tea.”
“Oh! That sounds exciting,” Margot enthuses. “Who?”
“Then if you are staying for tea: I assume you will stay for tea?” Lettice nods in assent to Lady de Virre’s question. “Why are you still holding your parasol?”
“Oh, the maid who answered the door didn’t take it, but really its…”
“Oh! That stupid, stupid girl!” mutters the older woman. “Can she never do anything right?” She picks herself up, out of the walnut salon chair she is comfortably sitting in and charges past Lettice to the door of the drawing room.
“Here Lettice, come sit by me,” Margot pats the gold brocade fabric next to her on the comfortable settee. “I could do with your support,” She giggles conspiratorially. “And your distraction.”
“Pegeen! Pegeen!” Lady de Virre calls shrilly down the hallway.
“Mummy, must you do that? You’re going to give me a headache,” Margot puts her cup on the low table before her and rubs her temples with her fingers. “Not that she hasn’t already.” she whispers to Lettice. “Mummy is really boring me to tears today. Who would ever have thought anyone could suck the joy and delight of organising a wedding? Lists of this, lists of that. Who will get offended sitting next to whom? And don’t get me started on my wedding dress.”
“I thought Gerald was designing it.”
“He is, but Mummy is trying to convince me that Lucile is a better choice.”
“Oh no, Margot. How dreadfully dull!”
Lady de Virre stalks back across the room, snatching Lettice’s parasol from where she has placed it leaning against the settee beside her and resumes her seat.
“Rather.” Margot replies to Lettice’s remark whilst glancing at her mother’s bristling figure.
A moment later the same nervous, mousy maid who let Lettice in appears through the door.
“You called, ma’am?”
“Pegeen, would you kindly take this,” Lady de Virre thrusts Lettice’s parasol towards the maid, the pointy end aimed dangerously at the young girl’s chest rather like a rifle in the titled lady’s hand. “And put it in the receptacle for which it was intended.”
“Ma’am?” The Irish maid looks alarmed, and glances awkwardly at Margot and Lettice installed comfortably on either end of the settee.
“She means, put it in the umbrella stand in the hallway, Pegeen.” Margot elucidates.
“Well why didn’t she say so?” Pegeen mutters as she grasps the offending end of the parasol which her mistress then releases from her steely grasp.
“And bring a third cup for Miss Chetwynd!” Lady de Virre bristles irritably.
The room falls silent until Pegeen closes the door behind her and her footsteps recede down the hallway.
“Oh it really is too tiresome!” huffs Margot’s mother.
“What is, Lady de Virre?” asks Lettice.
“Trying to find good staff in London. They all seem to be Irish halfwits these days, or girls who don’t know their place. I blame the war you know. Girls working in factories! Who would ever have thought?” Lettice and Margot glance at one another and try not to laugh. “Do you have the same problem, Lettice?”
“No, Lady de Virre.” Lettice smirks. “I have a very capable maid, and a charwoman, both of whom suit me very nicely.”
“Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” the older woman mutters sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
“I do have the card for the domestics agency in St James’ that I used to find my maid, if you’d like Lady de Virre.”
“Ah! You see Margot. Just as I was saying! Here is a girl who speaks sense and isn’t a flibbertigibbet like you.”
“Oh Mummy!”
“Ah, where is Mr. Geraldton, Lady de Virre?”
“He’s gone to Bournemouth.” Margot explains.
“His mother is quite unwell,” Lady de Virre chimes in. “Poor man! Now, perhaps you can talk some sense into my daughter, Lettice. I’m trying to get her to choose a wedding breakfast menu,” She picks up a sheath of papers from the small round tired table to her left and waves them in irritation at Margot. “Try as I might, she just won’t do it!”
“It’s not that I won’t, Mummy. I just want some time to look at them and think.” Margot looks at Lettice and rolls her eyes.
“Well we don’t have time Marguerite! The Savoy is always popular, as is Claridges.”
In the distance, a doorbell rings shrilly from somewhere below.
“Actually, Lady de Virre, that’s why I came here.”
“You’re going to throw a wedding breakfast for Marguerite and Richard?”
“Well, not exactly.” Lettice explains. “I actually came to see in Margot and Dickie would be interested in having a celebratory pre-wedding cocktail party at my flat. Would you Margot?”
“Oh really Lettice? Darling! You are a brick!” Margot enthuses. She embraces her friend and smiles broadly. “Of course we would!”
“Excellent, then I’ll,”
“S’cuse me ma’am,” Pegeen nudges open the door of the drawing room with the heel of her shoe, struggling under the weight of an enormous carboard box.
“Pegeen,” Lady de Virre gasps. “I thought I told you to bring a cup for Miss Chetwynd.”
“Can’t ma’am,” the maid replies. “Not when I’ve got this enormous box in ma hands.” She lowers it with a groan onto a vacant footstool where it lands with a thud. “Lord it ain’t half heavy ma’am.”
Lady de Virre crumples her nose in distaste as she peers at the box. “Well, what is it?”
“Don’t know ma’am. It’s for Miss de Virre.”
“Oh! It must be another wedding gift!” the older woman exclaims with an excited clap of her hands, her frustrations forgotten.
“I do hope it isn’t more linen. New parcels of it arrive every day! Gifts from unimaginative relatives!”
“It’s mighty heavy if it is linen, miss,”
“Ah! Another teacup, Pegeen!” Lady de Virre says commandingly. “Or have you already forgotten?”
“No ma’am,” Pegeen replies, looking curiously at the box. “I was just waitin’ for Miss de Virre to open her gift.”
“Out girl! And fetch a teacup for Miss Chetwynd! Now!”
The maid jumps at her mistress’ raised voice and retreats, closing the door behind her. Lettice and Margot cannot help themselves as they try to stifle giggles of mirth.
“You should be more appreciative of people’s generosity, Marguerite!” Lady de Virre wags a finger admonishingly at her daughter. “When you have your own household to manage, you’ll be grateful for every last stich of that linen.”
“Do you know, Lettice, we even received a mounted stag’s head as a gift from one of my Scottish cousins?” Margot laughs.
“No!” Lettice giggles.
“Yes! Goodness knows where we shall put it!”
“I could think of somewhere.” Lettice tries to control her peals of laughter.
“So could I!”
The pair tumble into fits of giggling.
“Oh, did you receive my gift Margo darling?” Lettice asks when she has finally composed herself enough to ask.
“Yes darling, I did, and I love it!”
“See Marguerite! I told you that you need to reply to all these cards that are mounting up!” Her mother waves her hand towards the top of the secretaire behind her, the surface of which is covered in wedding and congratulations cards.
“Oh good!” Lettice smiles.
“And we received your parent’s gift too, thank you Lettice.” Lady de Virre adds. “Marguerite will write a thank you card to them soon. Won’t you Marguerite?”
“Yes Mummy, I will! Such a beautifully modern tea set,” Margot says with a smile. “I never knew your parents knew my taste so intimately.” She winks conspiratorially at Lettice.
“Who is this gift from?” Lady de Virre asks.
Taking out a beautiful card of a young bride looking angelically at a cake, Margot scans the message inside. “Lady Ponting, whoever she is.”
“She’s the Marquess’ widowed younger sister.” Lady de Virre remarks knowingly. “You’ll need to brush up on your new family history before the wedding!”
“Yes Mummy! I know!” Margot acknowledges her mother’s sharp remark. Turning to her friend she continues, “Now that I’m marrying into the upper echelons of the aristocracy, Mummy has become a walking,” She sighs. “And talking, Debrett’s*.”
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Lady de Virre asks her daughter, looking at the box on the footstool with eyes glistening with excitement.
Margot removes the twine from around the box and opens it, a froth of white tissue paper spilling forth in soft whispers. Within the box she withdraws a delicate white china gravy boat decorated with roses with a gilt rim. Her mother reaches across the table with her bejewelled hand and seizes the piece from her. Turning it over she nods with approval.
“Hhhmm. Royal Doulton. An excellent choice.” she remarks.
“Come on Margot darling!” Lettice interrupts purposefully. “Let’s talk about your pre-wedding cocktail party before I have to go. Who would you like to invite? Gerald of course because he’s making your wedding dress.” She glances up at Lady de Virre to see whether she has heard and acknowledged her remark. “Celia, Peter, Leslie,”
At that moment, Pegeen returns with a teacup for Lettice. “Cor!” she says, eyeing the Royal Doulton china nestled amongst the cushions of white tissue paper. “If I’d known that box was full of china, I wouldn’t of bothered bringin’ another cup!”
*Debrett's is a British publisher and authority on etiquette and behaviour, founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The company takes its name from its founder, John Debrett.
Although perhaps a little cluttered and somewhat old fashioned by 1920s standards, the de Virre’s Edwardian style drawing room is very elegant and would have been typical of such a room in an established upper-class household during the inter-war period. The upper classes, whether titled or not, tended to enjoy their opulent and lavish interiors. Only the brave or modern thinker would have swept away the accumulation of antiques over the generations for the clean lined, stripped back Art Deco interiors fashionable in the new houses, flats and hotels being built around Britain and the world. This upper-class domestic scene is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:
The gold satin upholstered settee and the Hepplewhite chair with the lemon satin upholstery were made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Bespaq. The coffee table in the foreground is made by the high-end miniature furniture maker, Creal.
On the coffee table stands a silver serving tray on which are a silver coffee and tea set, a porcelain sugar bowl and milk jug and a glass bowl featuring a selection of biscuits. The galleried silver serving tray is engraved and was made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The tea and coffee pot are also made by them. The glass bowl of biscuits was made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, who specialise in 1:12 size foods and glassware with amazing realism and attention to detail. The porcelain tea set, which has two matching cups and saucers, one on the coffee table and one on the two tier Regency table, were part of a job lot of over one hundred pieces of 1:12 chinaware I bought from a seller on E-Bay. The pieces are remarkably dainty and the patterns on them are so pretty. In front of the tea set stands a wedding card of an Edwardian bride looking at a wedding cake. It is a 1:12 size replica of a real Edwardian wedding card and was made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
Behind the settee stands a walnut grand piano covered in family photographs and bibelots. The piano I have had since I was around eleven years old. Like a real piano, its lid does prop open on an angle. It has a matching piano stool. The de Virre’s family photos are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from various suppliers, but all are metal. The three prong candelabra behind the photograph frames is an artisan piece of sterling silver made in Berlin and is actually only 3 centimetres in height and 3 centimetres in width. The vase of red roses on the piano is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.
The Georgian revival bureau to the left of the picture comes from Town Hall Miniatures. Made to very high standards, each drawer opens and closes. It is covered in Edwardian wedding cards made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. On the writing surface of the bureau sit some papers also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures, and a miniature ink bottle and pen made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottle is made from a tiny faceted crystal bead and features a sterling silver bottom and lid. The pen is also sterling silver and features a tiny pearl in its end.
The floral arrangement in the farthest corner of the room is made by hand by Falcon Miniatures in America who specialise in high end miniatures. The vase of orange roses on the tall Bespaq stand to the right of the photo is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.
The paintings around the wall are all made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States, except the small gilt painting of a sailing boat in the upper left-hand corner of the photo. It was made by Marie Makes Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The Royal Doulton style dinner set featuring roses in the carboard box came from a miniature dollhouse specialist on E-Bay.
The miniature Persian rug in the foreground of the photo was made by hand by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney, whilst the one in the back beneath the piano was hand woven by Pike, Pike and Company in the United Kingdom.
The gold flocked Edwardian wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
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.
Today however, we have followed Lettice southwest from her home, across St James’ Park to Hans Crescent in Belgravia, where the smart Edwardian four storey red brick and mock Tudor London home of the de Virre family stands. Two of Lettice’s Embassy Club coterie of bright young things are getting married: Dickie Channon, eldest surviving son of the Marquess of Taunton, and Margot de Virre, only daughter of Lord Charles and Lady Lucie de Virre. Lettice is visiting the home of the bride, which is a hive of activity in the lead up to the forthcoming nuptials.
Lettice has just been spending time with Margot and her mother in the house’s gold drawing room and is just leaving to return home to Cavendish Mews to meet a potential client. As she walks brusquely down the hall, past Lord de Virre’s study, her louis heels click loudly against the parquetry floor.
“Margot! Margot, is that you?” Lord de Virre’s voice calls out through the partially open door.
Lettice stops, turns and pops her head into the study. Decorated with dark mahogany furniture, gold embossed wallpaper, thick Persian rugs and trophies and souvenirs of Lord de Virre’s travels, it is a masculine room which exudes comfort and cosiness. The room is dominated by a great mahogany rolltop desk, at which Lord de Virre sits hunched over. The scratch of a pen against paper can be heard, and a thin silver trail of exotic smelling smoke arises from the silver ashtray sitting to his right.
“No Lord de Virre,” Lettice answers his call. “It’s only me.”
“Ah!” Lord de Virre turns around in his seat, beaming at his young guest. “Lettice! We don’t see you nearly enough these days!”
“London calls,” she replies gaily.
“Yes, with all its delicious temptations for the young.” He picks up a small glass of port and sips it, and it is then that Lettice notices the finely faceted decanter of deep golden liquid on the desk’s surface. “Have you been visiting the bride-to-be?”
“I have Lord de Virre.”
“Good girl! She needs some distraction from her mother and her endless lists of wedding to-dos.”
“Is that why you’re hiding in here, Lord de Virre?”
The older man colours at Lettice’s suggestion. “Oh, I’m no good with table settings, wedding dresses and that sort of thing,” he blusters, fiddling with the writing paper on the desk in front of him. “Anyway, I’ve just been scribbling down a few words whilst I think of them for my father-of-the-bride speech.”
Lettice blushes too, not wishing to cause embarrassment to a man whom she likes very much. Charles de Virre, unlike her own father, has been anything but distant, and always showed interest in anything she spoke about when she came to visit or stay with de Virres, even as a silly little girl or teenager before the war. As a businessman, rather than a gentleman like her father, Lord de Virre always encouraged Lettice’s desire to follow her dream of becoming an interior designer, and his support and sound business advice has been welcome since the inception of her enterprise.
“You know,” Lettice remarks to try and dispel the unease she has created as she slips through the door and into the male preserve. “I always found this room fascinating: intimidating but fascinating nonetheless.”
“Yes, well,” Lord de Virre replies, picking up his cigarette and drawing on it before blowing out a plume of greyish white smoke. “The secrets of industry are always interesting to a young entrepreneur ahead of her time.”
“That’s very kind of you to say, Lord de Virre.” Lettice colours at the compliment. She walks over to Lord de Virre. “Margot and I used to sneak in here sometimes whilst you were away during the war.”
“Did you now?” He cocks an eyebrow at his slender young companion as she sidles up to his big desk. “I didn’t know that. Cheeky girls. I hope that Lucie never caught you in here.”
“No.” Lettice smiles. “She never did. We were careful. Margot always said that she had a sense of you in this room. She said if she could catch a whiff of your eau de cologne, or your cigarettes,” She glances at the half smoked cigarette in his hand. “Then you were alright. You might be in danger, but you would be alright.” She titters in an embarrassed fashion. “It sounds so silly hearing myself say that, but I guess it was Margot’s and my game, or mantra perhaps as the war went on and we grew up.”
“Well,” Lord de Virre replies softly, touched by Lettice’s confession. “It must have worked, because here I am.”
“Yes,” Lettice chuckles. “Here you are.”
“Well, it was either yours and Margot’s mantra, or Lucie’s photo.” He indicates to a photo of his wife in a brass frame on the desktop next to one of Margot as a baby.
“It’s a very pretty photo of her,” Lettice observes.
“Yes, Lucie had it taken in 1916. I carried it inside my coat in the pocket next to my heart for the remaining two years of the war. She swears that’s what brought me home.”
“Well, it was one thing or the other. The main thing is, Lord de Virre, you did make it home.”
“But many others didn’t.” the older man speaks the unspoken ending to her sentence. “Yes. I dare say that Lucie wouldn’t have been so happy with her prospective son-in-law had Margot come home with the news in 1914 when young Harry was still heir apparent.”
“Would you have minded, Lord de Virre?”
“Me? Good heavens no!” He takes another sip of his port, and indicates to the bottle, the invitation to imbibe declined politely by Lettice with a gentle shake of her head. “Margot could have loved him before he was the heir apparent, and he was destined to a life of impecuniosity and obscurity.”
“Margot said that she would have married him even if he was titleless, penniless and you disapproved.”
“Did she? Well! Bully for her! Good to know she has some of my fighting spirit that Lucie hasn’t managed to tame.” He smiles to himself as he runs his fingers over the frame of his daughter as a baby. “No, I have enough money from my business arrangements to have kept Margot in stockings and fans for a good many years. I think I can comfortably extend that largess to support them both. Just between you and I, Lettice, I suspect that is why the Marquess is so keen on the match of his heir with the daughter of a man in trade with a bought title.”
“Surely, surely you aren’t suggesting the Marquess?” Lettice’s question trails off.
“Unlike your father, perhaps under the wise influence of his eldest son, the Marquess hasn’t modernised, and unlike me, he didn’t have a good war. No, I’m afraid to say that he may be property rich, but,” He huffs awkwardly. “It appears that that’s where it ends.”
“But he’s giving Margot and Dickie a house in Cornwall!”
“And who do you think is bankrolling the renovations to have it electrified, connected to the Penzance telephone exchange, plumbed for goodness sake?”
“Oh, I had no idea!” Lettice rests her hand on the edge of the desk to steady herself at the news.
“Well,” Lord de Virre points the glowing end of his cigarette at Lettice. “Just don’t you say anything.” He taps the side of his nose knowingly. “At least Lucie is happy. She can’t do enough to please young Dickie. She finally gets her wish.”
“Margot’s happiness.” Lettice smiles
“Well yes, that too,” Lord de Virre remarks. “But first and foremost a real title in the family.” He chuckles cheekily to himself.
“Oh Lord de Virre!” Lettice scoffs. “You are awful!”
“Now, thinking of business, Lettice, I’m glad you’re here. I’d like to discuss a little bit of business with you.”
“With me, Lord de Virre?” she asks in surprise.
“Yes Lettice.” he replies matter-of-factly. “You are a successful young businesswoman, are you not?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d go quite that far,” Lettice blushes again at the compliment. “Yet.”
“Nonsense! You’ve been listening to your parents too much, my girl! Now, I believe that once the honeymoon is over, the newlyweds are planning to invite you down to their new seaside residence in Penzance to show it off. When my darling daughter asks you to redecorate a few of the principal rooms,”
“That’s very presumptuous of you, Lord de Virre!”
“Not at all, Lettice. I know she will for a fact.”
“And how do you know?”
“Because I am the one who planted the seed in her mind.” He laughs good naturedly. “The house is really quite beautiful, but it’s not been lived in and neglected for far too long. The old retainers who caretake the place do as good a job as they are able, but it needs some modernisation and updating beyond electricity, a telephone and plumbed bathrooms. So, when she suggests that you do some redecoration for her, stand your ground and tell her that you won’t do it as a friendly favour. You’re a businesswoman Lettice, so she must pay.”
“But you just said that Dickie hasn’t a bean! How are they to pay?”
“Calm yourself, child,” Lord de Virre waves his hands in front of Lettice, trying to dampen her concerns. “Whatever she wants, whatever it costs, she can have. You just send your bills to me. Alright?”
“Really Lord de Virre?”
“Yes, Lettice. And just think what a feather that will be for your business hat. First the Duchess of Whitby, and then the daughter-in-law of the Marquess of Taunton!”
“Well, that would be something.” Lettice muses at the thought, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth upwards.
“Then we have an arrangement, Miss Chetwynd?” Lord de Virre extends his hand towards Lettice.
“I think we do, Lord de Virre.” Lettice takes his hand, and they shake in businesslike style to seal the arrangement.
Dark and masculine, this tiny corner of Lord de Virre’s study is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:
The mahogany rolltop desk is a miniature that I have had since I was about eleven years old. The top does roll up and down, and the pigeon holes and writing area of the desk move forward, just like a real rolltop desk. I bought the desk along with a lot of other 1:12 miniatures from a High Street speciality dollhouse shop in England. The receipt with a few handwritten amendments is actually the scroll with the pinked edge in the far right pigeon hole of the desk! Much of the printing has faded, but as you an see the handwritten amendments can still be seen in black ink.
Lord de Virre’s family photos are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each.
On the desk are some 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottles, stamps, a blotter, a roller and letter rack, 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 stamp is made of brass. The silver letter rack which contains some 1:12 size correspondence, also made by the Little Green Workshop. The silver pen with a pearl end and the letter opener with a cloisonné handle are also made by the Little Green Workshop. All the piles of correspondence, bills and documents atop the desk were made meticulously by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
Also made by the Little Green Workshop is the silver ashtray. Made from a metal piece used for jewellery making, it features faceted crystals inserted into it. It has ‘ash’ moulded inside it so it looks remarkably real. A single cigarette with a red burning tip rests against its lip. This is the smallest of my 1:12 miniature collection. The cigarette is a tiny five millimetres long and just one millimetre wide! Made of paper, I have to be so careful that it doesn’t get lost when I use it! Also on the desk is a box of Swan Vesta matches, which is a 1:12 miniature hand made by Jonesy’s Miniatures in England. Swan Vestas matches are manufactured under the House of Swan brand, which is also responsible for making other smoking accessories such as cigarette papers, flints and filter tips. The matches are manufactured by Swedish Match in Sweden using local, sustainably grown aspen. The Swan brand began in 1883 when the Collard and Kendall match company in Bootle on Merseyside near Liverpool introduced 'Swan wax matches'. These were superseded by later versions including 'Swan White Pine Vestas' from the Diamond Match Company. These were formed of a wooden splint soaked in wax. They were finally christened 'Swan Vestas' in 1906 when Diamond merged with Bryant and May and the company enthusiastically promoted the Swan brand. By the 1930s 'Swan Vestas' had become 'Britain's best-selling match'.
The bottle of port in its faceted glass bottle and the tiny port glass are both actually made of plastic and come from a miniature suppliers in Shanghai.
Atop the desk stands a photo in a frame. Like the other two photographs in the pictre, it too is a real photo, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames is also from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and is made of are metal with glass. The Edwardian mahogany clock next to the frame is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England. Next to it you can just see the base of an urn. The urn is only two and a half centimetres high and is an antique miniature and has been hand turned and polished. It has an African ebony body and a bubinga wood top and base. Next to the urn, on the right-hand side of the rolltop desk’s top stand three ledgers from Shepherd’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
In the background you can catch tantalising glimpses of other things in Lord de Virre’s study including a Regency painting of a horse in a gold frame from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering, and a hand painted ginger jar from Thailand which stands on a Bespaq plant stand. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.
The Persian rug you can just glimpse in te bottom right-hand corer of the photo was hand woven by Pike, Pike and Company in the United Kingdom.
The gold flocked Edwardian wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
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.
Today Lettice is sitting in her drawing room reading a book over a cup of tea from her Royal Doulton tea set, when an urgent pressing of the electric doorbell to the flat interrupts her mid paragraph, just as Miss Diana Beauleigh in rescued by Jack Carstares, an English nobleman turned highwayman. She looks up perplexed. She has no clients with appointments today. The electric buzz of the doorbell rings through the flat again. Her face drains of all colour as she suddenly wonders whether she has forgotten she has a client or potential client visiting today. Ever since it was announced publicly that she was decorating Dickie and Margot’s Penzance property, interest in her design services have increased. She jumps up from the comfort of her tub chair where she has been curled up with her book and scurries over to her desk where she flips through her leather diary.
The bell buzzes urgently again.
“I’m coming, alright. I’m coming.” mutters Lettice’s maid, Edith, irritably as she makes her way through the service entrance from the flat’s kitchen to the front door. “Keep your hair on*.”
Disgruntled, Edith opens the door to Lettice’s old childhood chum and Wiltshire neighbour, Gerald Bruton. Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy who has tried to gain some independence from his penurious family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street.
“Edith! Oh beautiful Edith! Isn’t it a glorious day?” Gerald chortles jovially as he bursts through Lettice’s front door beaming from ear to ear, clutching a beribboned box, a bunch of pink roses and a bottle of champagne. “Is Lettice home?”
“Mr. Bruton!” Edith gasps in shock as he wraps his already full arms around her shoulders and starts spinning her around the entrance hall of the flat. “Oh Mr. Bruton, do stop!”
“Gerald!” Lettice cries, appearing at the door that leads from the hallway into the drawing room. A bemused smile graces her lips as she watches the rather ungainly and awkward waltz between her best friend and her maid. “Unhand my maid this minute, you… you…” She can’t quite find the word she wants as she tries not to laugh and embarrass Edith, but finally settles on one which is most inept. “You brute.” Placing her arms akimbo as she leans against the doorframe she asks, “What on earth?”
“Oh darling Lettuce Leaf!” Gerald exclaims, dropping Edith, much to her relief, and waltzing up to his friend. “These are for you!” He thrusts the pink roses into her arms, followed by the beautifully gift wrapped box.
“Roses? Chocolates?” Lettice queries, looking down at the stylish blue tapestry covered box in her hands, too surprised by Gerald’s behaviour and expensive gifts to rebuke her friend for using her loathed childhood nickname.
“From Harrods my darling, just for you!” He spins back to the maid, who stiffens in fear of being swept up by him in a waltz again. “Oh Edith, bring a wine cooler!” He hoists the champagne bottle enthusiastically in the air. “We must have champagne!”
“Deutz and Geldermann?” Lettice questions again, noting the label on the bottle held aloft in her friend’s right hand. “Gerald you can’t afford that! What’s gotten into you?”
“Oh can’t I, darling? You just wait until you hear my news.”
Gerald goes to take a turn at spinning Lettice, but she shies away so that he can’t grasp her.
“Can you please put these in some water, Edith,” Lettice says to her startled maid in a very businesslike fashion as she hands the beautiful pink roses, obviously from Monsieur Blanchet’s Regent Street Flower Box, over to her. She turns back and smiles cheekily at Gerald. “Before Mr. Bruton crushes them in his reverie.”
“Yes Miss,” Edith replies sighing with relief at her mistress’ calm voice and reasonable request after Gerald’s unsettling behaviour, taking the flowers. “And the champagne, Miss?”
“Yes,” Lettice smirks. “Best take it off Mr. Bruton before he smashes it over his own head, or worse yet on my parquetry floor, for his own Quixote reason**.”
Gerald blushes red as he sheepishly hands the bottle of champagne to Edith, suddenly realising how erratic and peculiar his performance must appear to the two women before him.
“And bring a plate for the chocolates, Edith.” Lettice continues as she turns on her heel, clutching the beribboned box closely to her chest. “Now come along Gerald and tell me why you have chosen to interrupt me at a very exciting point in ‘The Black Moth.’***.”
Lettice and Gerald walk through the door into the drawing room where Lettice resumes her seat and Gerald sits in the tub chair opposite her.
“You gave me quite a start you know, Gerald.”
“Did I, darling?”
“I thought for a moment that I’d misjudged my days and that I had a client booked to visit.”
“You don’t do you?” Gerald raises his delicate hands with its long fingers to his mouth.
“Fortunately not.” Lettice sighs with widening eyes. “For if I had and you burst through the door waltzing and carrying on the way you did with poor Edith, they probably would have fled in a panic, thinking this a madhouse!”
“Oh don’t poor Edith me,” Gerald scoffs with a sweep of his hands. “Cinderella needs to be swept off to the ball by a handsome prince every now and then.”
“Well, kindly find another Cinderella and leave Edith alone. Poor little mouse didn’t know what you were about.” She looks over at her friend draped dramatically across her tub chair opposite her. “Not that I know what you’re about today.” She shakes her head and her eyes narrow. “Waltzing with my maid! Have you been drinking, Gerald?”
“Not yet,” He breathes excitedly with a wry smile as he swings his legs off the arm of the chair and swivels down, giving Lettice and intense stare. “But I’m hoping to with you. Once we finish my bottle of Deutz and Geldermann, I was hoping you might have a bottle or two of De Rochegré left over from the party that we could drink. I feel like getting rather tight****! Shall we?”
“Now there’s no call for that, darling,” Lettice counters cautiously. “Unless of course I know the reason for it.”
“Must I have a reason to get tight with my oldest and best friend in the whole wide world?”
“Now, now! Don’t play coy with me, darling. You’re obviously fit to bursting to tell me! What news do you have to share? What is all this about Gerald? Harrods chocolates! Deutz and Geldermann champagne! How can you suddenly afford these luxuries when just last week you were using my electricity to embroider the bodice of an evening frock for Mrs. Hatchett, rather than run up your own electricity bill?”
“Well, it is true that I’ve bankrupted myself and will need to come and eat my meals here for the next fortnight if I am to avoid starvation until I get my next pitifully inadequate monthly allowance. However, all that might be about to change, because of these!” Gerald withdraws three thick black card folios that have remained hidden beneath his left arm, handing them to Lettice with a flourish.
Lettice takes them and opens them on her lap. Inside each she finds a glossy black and white photograph from Margot and Dickie’s wedding, taken by Bassano Photographers*****. Two are studio portraits, one featuring Margot with her four country cousin bridesmaids and the other of her in profile, showing off her beautifully beaded lace bandeau****** and bridal veil. The last shows Dickie and Margot flanked by the Marquess and Marchioness of Taunton on the steps of St Marks, North Audley Street*******.
“Oh!” Lettice exclaims in delight. “Wedding photos! How did you get these so soon?” She runs her fine fingers along the edge of their gilt black card folios. “Oh,” she frowns. “Doesn’t the Marchioness look dour!”
“Oh pooh the Marchioness!” Gerald spits, flapping his hand at her image in black and white, dressed in her old-fashioned Edwardian picture hat and conservative dress, looking like a cross Queen Mary.
“I thought that was my line,” Lettice giggles, remembering saying it at the wedding breakfast the previous fortnight.
“What do you think of Margot?”
“Oh well, she looks positively radiant!” Lettice enthuses. “Just as a bride should look.”
Gerald frowns. “And gown in the photos?”
“Well you know I love Margot’s wedding gown, Gerald, darling.”
“Yes, but do you think it looks good in the photos?”
Lettice studies the photos at length, and it is only then that Gerald sees the mischievous smirk on her lips.
“Oh you!” he hisses at her, slapping her bare arm playfully as Lettice breaks into a peal of girlish laughter.
“It looks wonderful, Gerald.” Lettice assures him. “Even the bridesmaid’s dresses don’t look too frightful, not that you made them, but yes, Margot’s dress look divine, darling!”
Just as she speaks, Edith walks into the room with a silver tray, on which she carries the champagne in a wine cooler, two champagne flutes and a plate for the chocolates.
“Thank you, Edith.” Lettice acknowledges her maid as she places the items from the tray onto the black japanned table between them. “And the flowers?”
“Just coming, Miss.” Edith bobs a curtsey and retreats to the kitchen.
“So, are these the photos that are going to appear in Vogue then, Gerald?” Lettice asks her friend excitedly.
“And in the society pages of the papers too!” Gerald enthuses in return.
“Oh hoorah! I told you that this would be the making of you, Gerald darling!”
Gerald withdraws the champagne from the silver cooler and pops the cork before pouring sparkling golden liquid first into Lettice’s glass and then his own as Lettice busily starts unpacking a few of the chocolates onto the plate Edith provided, sneakily popping a hazelnut praline into her mouth before Gerald can slap her fingers away.
“Share, Lettuce Leaf!” Gerald scolds.
“I thought these were for me,” Lettice says with a mouth full of chocolate. “And don’t call me that Gerald, you know I don’t like it.”
“And I don’t like it when you don’t share!” Gerald snatches a strawberry cream and pops it quickly between his lips, smiling broadly at Lettice. “You’ve always been terribly spoilt, coming from the wealthiest family in the county and you never liked sharing your toys.”
“Rotter!” Lettice laughs. “I shared them with you.”
“Begrudgingly.”
“Well, yes.” She snatches up a Turkish delight daintily between her fingers before popping it in her mouth.
“Now who’s the rotter?” Gerald gasps dramatically in mock horror. “Gobbling up my favourite variety of chocolate.”
“Knowing Harrods, there will be another one in the box.” she replies with a self satisfied smile.
Gerald pounces upon the box and peels back the tissue paper, his eyes busily darting about the selection left inside before discovering a second Turkish delight which he quickly scoffs.
Edith returns with the roses neatly arranged in a glass vase and places it on the low table between the two smirking friends with mouths full.
“Oh Edith?” Lettice manages to say between chewing the rosewater sweet centre of the chocolate.
“Yes Miss?” Edith replies.
“Do we have any De Rochegré champagne left from Dickie and Margot’s party?”
“We have about three left, Miss.”
“Good!” Lettice replies. “Can you pull out two.” She looks over playfully at Gerald, squaring her shoulders. “Gerald and I are going to get rather tight!”
“Yes Miss.” Edith replies in bewilderment before bobbing a curtsey and departing again, retreating to the relative safety and normalcy of the kitchen.
Lettice picks up her champagne flute, and Gerald his.
“Well darling,” Lettice holds her glass aloft. “With photos like this showing off your work, here is to the imminent success of the House of Bruton!”
“I’ll drink to that!” Gerald sighs, clinking his glass with hers. “Cheers!”
*Meaning to keep calm and be patient, the earliest occurrence of the phrase “to keep your hair on” is recorded in The Entr’acte magazine in London in 1873, which mentioned that at the Winchester, a London music hall, an artist named Ted Callingham sang “Roving Joe” and “Keep Your Hair On”, two very laughable comic songs. A year later in 1874, it was being used commonly amongst the working classes. It is generally said that the phrase is based on the image of pulling one’s hair out in exasperation, anger or frustration, however some connect it to an earlier phrase from the Eighteenth Century “pulling off one’s wig” which refers to irascible and aged gentlemen, “when mad with passion,” have been known not only to curse and swear, but to tear their wigs from their heads, and to trample them under their feet, or to throw them into the fire.
**Quixote reason comes from Miguel de Cervantes novel of Don Quixote and means an impractical or idealistic reason for something.
***The Black Moth is a novel written by famous English novelist and short-story writer, Georgette Heyer. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. She wrote in both the regency romance and detective fiction genres, The Black Moth being the former, for which she is perhaps best known.
****To get tight is an old fashioned term used to describe getting drunk.
*****Bassano Ltd. Royal Photographers was created by photographer Alexander (Alessandro) Bassano in 1850. Originally located in Regent Street Piccadilly, by 1921 the studio had moved to Dover Street Mayfair. As the name suggests, Bassano was the choice for society photography portraits in London after Alexander photographed Queen Victoria and members of the Royal Family from the 1870s. The studio’s photograph of Lord Kitchener formed the basis for the Great War recruiting poster “Your Country Needs You!”
******A bandeau is a narrow band worn round the head to hold the hair in position which was at its height of popularity in the 1920s.
*******St. Mark’s Church Mayfair, is a Grade I listed building, in the heart of London's Mayfair district, on North Audley Street. St Mark's was built between 1825 and 1828 as a response to the shortage of churches in the area. The population in Mayfair had grown with the demand for town houses by the aristocracy and the wealthy, as they moved in from the country. The building was constructed in the Greek revival style to the designs of John Peter Gandy. In 1878 the architect Arthur Blomfield made significant changes to the church, adding a timber roof, and introducing Gothic style features. The thirty-four feet (ten metre) façade, together with the elegant porch, is known as one of the finest in London. Being in Mayfair, it was a popular place for the weddings of aristocratic families. It was deconsecrated in 1974, and today it is used as a mixed use venue.
This 1920s upper-class domestic scene is different to what you may think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The three photos, which I have put into the black card folios of my own making, are all real wedding photos from the 1920s, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.
The two filled champagne flutes were made by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom. The Deutz and Geldermann champagne bottle is also an artisan miniature and made of glass with a miniature copy of a real Deutz and Geldermann label and some real foil wrapped around its neck. It was also made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The silver wine cooler it stands in is made by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland, who are well known for the quality and detail applied to their pieces. The chocolates in the foreground have been made in England by hand from clay by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. Each chocolate is only one to one and half millimetres in diameter and around one millimetre in height! And yes, two of the chocolates are wrapped up in foil! The box of chocolates itself, which has chocolates affixed inside comes from Mary Jane’s Dollhouse Emporium in the United Kingdom. The pink roses were hand made by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.
Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The Art Deco tub chairs are of black japanned wood and have removable cushions, just like their life sized examples. To the left of the fireplace is a Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair of black japanned wood which has been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the legs and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven.
The fireplace is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace which is flanked by brass accessories including an ash brush with real bristles.
On the left hand side of the mantle is an Art Deco metal clock hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken.
In the middle of the mantle is a miniature artisan hand painted Art Deco statue on a “marble” plinth. Made by Warwick Miniatures in England, it is a 1:12 copy of the “Theban Dancer” sculpture created by Claire-Jeanne-Roberte Colinet in 1925.
The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug, and 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.
Robert Treboux at his French restaurant Le Veau d'Or in Midtown Manhattan. I had the chance to meet and photograph Robert and his restaurant for the restaurant website Eater a few years back. Robert passed in 2012 and his daughter took over the restaurant for the next few years.
A potential client just emailed me about making this photo as a print, so I'm going to add it to www.DanielKrieger.com your #1 NFT website.
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.
However today we are not in Lettice’s flat, rather we have followed her south from London into Sussex to the home of Lettice’s newest potential client, Mrs. Hatchett.
As requested, when the steam of the train carrying Lettice from London to Rotherfield and Mark Cross cleared, there stood Mrs. Hatchett’s chauffer, dressed in a smart black uniform. As the Worsley turned into the gates above which the name of the house was emblazoned in wrought iron curlicues, she prepared for the worst, but was pleasantly surprised to find that ‘The Gables’ was in fact a rather lovely Arts and Crafts country house with prominent gabling, from which it obviously took its name, sitting amidst a sympathetic and charming informal English garden.
Now sitting in Mrs. Hatchett’s old fashioned and overstuffed drawing room awaiting tea with her hostess, Lettice tries very hard not to pass judgement on her as she looks about her at all the heavy Victorian furnishings and clutter.
“I did warn you, Miss Chetwynd,” Mrs. Hatchett begins, her apologetic tones bursting the silence only broken by the soft tick of the French barrel clock on the mantlepiece. “It is a bit of a mausoleum.”
Lettice has already counted five vases and just as many photograph frames that needlessly clutter the stylish Georgian style mantle. “No, no,” she interjects diplomatically with a defensive wave of her hands. “Victoriana can be quite charming Mrs. Hatchett. I know the Mater and Pater have plenty of it in our family home.”
“You are kind Miss Chetwynd, but I would imagine that your family home is much grander than ‘The Gables’ and therefore far more able to manage Victorian furnishings elegantly. Please let us not pretend that it is anything more than clutter here.” Mrs. Hatchett looks about her in dismay.
“Well…” Lettice begins, shifting awkwardly on the red velvet button back upholstered armchair.
“I didn’t invite you here today to approve of what you see, Miss Chetwynd,” Mrs. Hatchett interrupts her guest. “But rather for you to reimagine what it could be, if you stripped all this old fashioned tatt out.”
A stifled gasp and a sniff interrupt her as a parlour maid appears at the door with a silver tray laden with tea things and a selection of biscuits.
“Oh! Thank you, Augusta. You may put the tea things here.” Mrs. Hatchett indicates to the oval table between the two women.
“My mistress barely five minutes in her grave,” the maid mutters.
“Thank you, Augusta!” Mrs. Hatchett snaps. “Miss Chetwynd doesn’t care to hear your opinion about the drawing room furnishings.”
Berated, the parlour maid silently sets out the tea things and retreats, but just as she reaches the door she says defiantly, “It’s not ‘tatt’, Madam!” And leaves.
“I’m so sorry Miss Chetwynd, like almost everything in this house, Augusta is the former Mrs. Hatchett’s legacy.” Picking up a photo in an ornate frame on the pedestal table next to her, she continues in a wistful voice, “It wasn’t what I imagined.”
“What wasn’t, Mrs. Hatchett?”
“My marriage.” She hands the portrait of herself and her handsome husband to Lettice. “You don’t imagine when you marry a dashing man in uniform,”
“He was a captain, wasn’t he?” Lettice looks at the stylish wartime couple in the wedding portrait.
“Yes, Charlie was a captain in the air force. He was handsome and smart, and so self-possessed in his stance that he radiated confidence.”
“And you…”
“I was a pretty chorus girl in ‘Chu Chin Chow’*, and he swept me off my feet. We were married after a whirlwind romance.” She smiles. “Well, it was wartime, wasn’t it? There was no time for a lengthy pre-war courtship. And then his leave was over, and I found myself married and rather than living in exciting London like I was used to, I found myself buried here in the country and living under my mother-in-law’s roof with Charlie flying over into France.”
“I see.” Lettice replies.
“Oh, I’m sure you don’t, Miss Chetwynd. You see, I didn’t realise until after the war, what a mummy’s boy I’d married. Handsome, yes, Charlie is handsome, but as soon as the uniform came off, he lost all his self-possession and went straight back to being under his domineering mother’s thumb and following her wishes. We stayed living here rather than have a home of our own, and he just let her undermine me and overrule me as his wife. I was nothing here. She never approved of the ‘chorus girl’. What would I know? No, the respectable Victorian widow knew how to hire and manage staff, plan meals and parties for her son, and was strict about ‘not redecorating’. I couldn’t change anything in the room we were given, which I’m sure was a guest bedroom. I’m surprised I was even allowed to hang my clothes in the wardrobe. Nasty old trout she was: so anxious to fling me out like yesterday’s newspaper!”
“So that’s why you want to throw all this,” Lettice waves her hands about her. “Out.”
“It’s not just that Miss Chetwynd, although I must confess I’d be happy to erase every last trace of my mother-in-law from this earth. Look, I know you don’t need me as one of your clients when you have duchesses and other titled ladies wanting you to decorate for them. I know that to you, like everyone in your class, that I am just a brash social climber with too much money: the chorus girl who found herself a rich banker. I don’t have the right pedigree, have the right manners or the right clothes. I try too hard to fit in, and the harder I try the more obvious I become.” She reaches out and grasps Lettice’s hand tightly. “But I need you, Miss Chetwynd. Not to try and ape the houses of peers with your taste, but to help support me to support my husband, and the only way I can do that, is to shine out from the tarnished shadow of his mother. Now that she is dead, Charlie has some of that confidence I fell in love with back and is finally embarking on doing something that he wants to do.”
“And what is that?”
“He wants to enter politics. When the war ended, the government announced that the men would come home to ‘homes fit for heroes’, but here we are, two years on since the armistice and there are men who fought for the empire, living in a disused prison in Worcestershire**. Can you imagine how they feel? The intention of the government is there, but where is the will? Charlie wants to represent these men, and that’s why I need you to decorate this house. I want to be able to entertain here to further Charlie’s political intentions, and I can’t do it when it looks like this. Contrary to my dead mother-in-law’s opinion, although I’m sure she knew better, I have confidence. I can entertain the influential and shine brilliantly as a hostess, but in order for me to do that, I need a house that represents Charlie and me.” She looks down at the tea table. “Oh damn that woman!”
“Who?” Lettice queries. “The former Mrs. Hatchett?”
“No, that wretched Augusta, although it may just as well be my scheming mother-in-law commanding from her grave! She has intentionally forgotten the teaspoons in order to show me up in front of you and make you think I’m an uncivilised chorus girl!” She pushes the servant’s bell by the fireplace. “Well, the sooner she is replaced, the better! Oh blast! I forgot the bell in here is out of service awaiting the repair man. I’ll be back in a moment, Miss Chetwynd.” Mrs. Hatchett scuttles away, her receding heels clicking on the polished wooden floor of the corridor outside.
Lettice sits back uncomfortably in her chair and feels terribly guilty. A few minutes later, Mrs Hatchett returns with the missing teaspoons. She puts them down and smiles with satisfaction.
“Mrs Hatchett,” Lettice says, looking squarely at her hostess. “I owe you an apology.”
“Me, Miss Chetwynd? Goodness! What could you possibly need to apologise to me for?”
“For my snobbery, Mrs. Hatchett.”
Mrs. Hatchett waits for Lettice to continue.
“You’re right Mrs. Hatchett. We all read or heard the story about the ‘chorus girl who married the pilot who owned a bank’. None of us bothered… wanted, to know you. We all sit in judgement and laugh as you try with us and fail. So, don’t! Forget society and embrace politics. I really admire what you and your husband are trying to achieve now that I know about it. You may not be the kind of client my family, or even my friends want me to have, but I’m not always one to stick with social conventions. I’ll decorate your home for you, if you would like me to.”
“Yes, Miss Chetwynd,” Mrs. Hatchett smiles gratefully. “I would like you to, very much!”
*‘Chu Chin Chow’ is a musical comedy written, produced and directed by Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, based on the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. It was the most popular show in London’s West End during the Great War. It premiered at His Majesty’s Theatre in London on the 3rd of August 1916 and ran for 2,238 performances, a record number that stood for nearly forty years!
** After the Great War, the plan was for house building programs for returned soldiers, dubbed ‘homes fit for heroes’. However, in 1921 European economic crisis saw the withdrawal of these programs. In Britain families were housed in many disused spaces available including a defunct prison in Worcestershire, with a single cell allotted per family!
This overstuffed and cluttered Victorian drawing room would have looked very old fashioned by 1920, and certainly to a young and modern flapper such as Lettice, or even a middle-aged woman like Mrs. Hatchett. This upper-middle-class domestic scene is different to what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, some of which come from my own childhood.
Fun things to look for in this tableaux include:
The family photos on the mantlepiece and Mrs. Hatchett’s wedding photo on the pedestal table at the right of the picture are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are from various suppliers, but all are metal. The one on the pedestal table and the matching one on the far left of the fireplace I have had since I acquired them from a specialist dolls’ house supplier when I was a teenager.
The marble French barrel clock on the mantlepiece is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England. Made of resin with a marble effect, it has had the gilding picked out by hand and contains a beautifully detailed face beneath a miniature glass cover.
The vase of flowers on the left-hand side of the fireplace is made beautifully by hand to extraordinary and realistic standards by Falcon Miniatures in England. This vase contains red roses, bearded blue Dutch irises and white lilies.
The walnut sideboard on the right-hand side of the fireplace is made by Babette’s Miniatures, who have been making miniature dolls’ furnishings since the late eighteenth century. The sideboard features ornate carvings, finials and a mirrored back. On it stand three miniature grading jugs, a hand painted fruit bowl that I also bought as a teenager and two cranberry glass vases that have been hand blown and made from real glass by Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. Beautifully Handmade miniatures also made the cranberry glass comport in the foreground and the tea set and plate of biscuits set out for Lettice and Mrs. Hatchett. On the sideboard’s upper shelf stands a bust of Queen Victoria made of pewter by Warwick Miniatures in Ireland which has been hand painted by me. The horse trophy on the mantlepiece at the back is also a Warwick Miniatures 1:12 miniature made of pewter.
The Art Nouveau jardiniere and the squat vase next to the wedding photo on the pedestal table were supplied by Karen Ladybug Miniatures in England.
The Victorian red velvet button back suite of gentleman’s and lady’s armchairs, settee, central pedestal table and occasional tables I bought from a high street dolls’ house supplier when I was twelve. Sets like this are still made in their millions today for doll houses around the world, but I have noticed that the quality in detail and finishing has diminished over the ensuing years.
The miniature Persian rug on the floor is made by hand by Mackay and Gerrish in Sydney.
The two Georgian silhouettes of the gentleman and the lady are 1:12 artisan pieces made by Lady Mile Miniatures in England. The other two paintings of horses are also 1:12 artisan pieces made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States. The wallpaper is William Morris’ ‘Compton’ pattern, featuring stylised Art Nouveau poppies. William Morris papers and fabrics were popular in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period before the Great War.
The wooden Georgian fire surround is made by Town Hall Miniatures, supplied through Melody Jane Dolls’ House Suppliers in England.
Studio Giftig a été fondé début 2007 par Kaspar van Leek et Niels van Swaemen. Le tout à travers la diversité et la spécialisation, entre autres, en illustrations et murales.
En plus de l'académie d'art et de leur expérience en tant que designers dans le monde graphique, tous deux ont un parcours et des années d'expérience dans le domaine de l'illustration et du graffiti.
Début 2007, il a été décidé d'en faire un travail sérieux et c'est ainsi que Studio Giftig a été créé.
En peu de temps, Studio Giftig a pu réaliser de nombreux projets tant pour les entreprises que pour les particuliers.
La diversité et la spécialisation dans, entre autres, l'illustration, la peinture murale, le graffiti et le travail sur toile offrent de nombreuses opportunités aux clients potentiels.
Studio Giftig was founded in early 2007 by Kaspar van Leek and Niels van Swaemen. All through diversity and specialization, among others, in illustrations and murals.
In addition to the art academy and their experience as designers in the graphic world, both have a background and years of experience in the field of illustration and graffiti.
At the beginning of 2007, it was decided to make a serious job out of it and that's how Studio Giftig was created.
In a short time, Studio Giftig has been able to carry out many projects for both companies and individuals.
The diversity and specialization in, among others, illustration, mural painting, graffiti and canvas work offers many opportunities for potential clients.
Trrying to add some more skills to my repetoire to offer to potential clients. I sourced an aquarium and brought out the fruit and vegetables. Three speedlights were used to catch the action of this tomato dive. Not only is the timing tricky but trying to get just the right angle on the fruit makes for a lot of exposures. Before I knew it several hours had passed!. If you like my photography please visit our website at www.fulcrumimaging.com or find us on Instagram @fulcrumimaging. Toronto Food and Drink Photography by Fulcrum Imaging Studio. Copyright 2015
These are the type of images I show potential clients. If you can fall in love with a room like this, I can surely build it! It's so much easier to create small scale rooms first, before investing in all the materials. Students take note! What do you do when you don't have a portfolio but no one wants to hire you until they see some of your work? Sure you can intern somewhere, but that could take years....
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
Warszawa, Poland
Commercial profile for a local business. Often, I am asked to photograph businesses in the same style that I work the street so that a portfolio of images can be built to showcase a business by showcasing the human element and connect their business to potential clients.
Links to all of my work. Instagram. Website. Behance. linktr.ee/ewitsoe
in my grandfather's house. and one of my favorite mugs. i've been working recently on a blog that could also act as a portfolio of sorts, so that potential clients can get a taste of what i'm capable of regarding portraits as i launch this new side-business thang. so, here it is:
i have a few new england leftovers on this first post that i decided needed to be out in the world, instead of hiding in lightroom.
also, this is my first contribution to coffee cup friday. hope it doesn't disappoint.
a few pix from the winter market - got a potential client from this weekend, which could end up being on going, if she is happy with the work i did on the weekend....
Not for the squeamish, I know. But this shot has a story ...
I'm up in Elkhart, walking up to a potential clients door when I see this 4-5 inch long praying mantis on it. Very cool. I enter the lobby and ask to see this potential. As the clock ticked away while I was waiting, I decided I had to get my camera. So I went out to my car, came back and started taking shots.
The "potential" stiffed me! He decided he wasn't "going to be available today" ... that's what the receptionist said. The business environment can be rather rude these days. I guess it isn't quite as rude as the insect world. This mantis had an appetite that needed to be satisfied. What the shot doesn't show is the little guy is still moving. I think it said ... "HELP Meeeeee!"
No meeting, but I came away with a pretty cool shot.