Blog | Cristopher Worthland Interiors

A Venetian Vision

Posted April 22, 2015. Filed in Eclectic Tradition, Interior Illustrations, Palazzi, Venetian Style

The last remaining vestige of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Venetian vision for the music room at her Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts, palazzo-style mansion is this oil painting by Martin Mower painted in the late 1890’s. Destroyed at the turn-of-the-20th-century, Mower’s romantic paean to Gardner’s Venetian decorative tradition paints a dreamlike world where 18t-century carved gilt chairs casually float against a rich background of silks and brocades. Despite the room’s fine Renaissance carvings and interior architecture Ms. Gardner conceived of rooms that are at once opulent and accessible. Furniture is informally arranged for conversation and comfort, centered on the room’s baronial hooded chimneypiece, at left, and further enhanced by a dose of exotic eclecticism weaving through her collections, textiles and objet d’art. A lyrical and timeless beauty pervades Ms. Gardner’s music room, which we can perhaps attribute to Martin Mower’s insightful and sensitive interpretation of the chatelain’s vision of Venice.

You can visit the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum at 152 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts.

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Prince Charles’ Trematon Castle For Lease

Posted April 21, 2015. Filed in English Country House Style, English Country Houses, Uncategorized

In case you are wondering, I haven’t entered into the arena of real estate nor do I have any agenda from which I may benefit by promoting the sale of one of Prince Charles’ properties, in this case Trematon Castle. No, not in the least, any more so than would The World of Interiors, which featured the home’s collected English country-style rooms in their March, 2015, issue. Since Trematon appeared on its pages it seems the world suddenly recognizes its unexpected confluence of Regency and medieval architectural styles.

Trematon is not actually a castle at all but a castellated Regency villa replete with a Norman motte and a baronial gatehouse, set high within the derelict core of what was once Tremeton Castle. Its fortified walls remain standing and surrounding the villa, opening up to views of the Cornish coastline. Most recently landscape gardeners Isabel and Julian Bannerman (previous owners of Hanham Court in Gloucestershire) of I & J Bannerman have held the leasehold, which is now up for a twenty-year lease, for a mere £850,000. Sound at all tempting? Stay tuned, and have a look around!

The entry hall was photographed by Christopher Simon Sykes for The World of Interiors, featuring a painted Gothick table based on a c1723 design by Stopshire architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.

The cheerful drawing room extends along one end of the house, its sofas dressed in summery slipcovers with a sea life pattern of shells and coral against a blue-gray ground the color of the walls. Flanking a Regency mantel are a pair of polychrome carved wood Gothic church models converted to lamps.Personal bibelots and collections, casually arranged and rearranged, communicate the inhabitant’s predilections and caprices. A home for living, not for show, is evidenced by a Diet Coke can setting upon a stack of magazines on the upholstered bench.

The picture of English country house-style: faded grandeur and demure elegance, what the British refer to as “shabby gentility”.

The dining room also serves as the drawing office and is cleared away when the couple entertain.

The sunny kitchen opens to views across the water to Davenport. A picture hanging above the built-in bookshelf is a 1960’s scheme by David Vicary for Mark Birley’s Mayfair office.

The Bannerman’s brought the kitchen furniture with them from their previous home Hanham Court, outside Bath (its gardens open to the public), as you can see from the photo below.

The kitchen at Hanham Court, Gloucestershire.

The Gothic bookcase in the small library also came from Hanham Court (below), copied from one made for an Irish house by John Nash. The large oxidized copper sphere is actually an architectural finial from Sir Christopher Wren’s Torn Tower at Oxford, taken down by a stonemason during restoration work in the 1960’s.

The library at Hanham Court, featuring the Gothic bookcase to the left of the Gothic fireplace mantel.

Another view of the library at Trematon dressed for summer.

This photo was taken by Knight Frank realtors for listing the house, referred to now as the morning room.

The glass house, a covered garden terrace, is filled with daturas, pelargoniums and scented plants beneath an orbit of gazing balls.

The same terrace as it appears now, as photographed for listing.

The gents loo on the ground floor includes a baby’s high chair and contoured relief maps of local Dartmoor.

The couple brought with them their Gothic four-poster from Hanham Court, painting from white to yellow.

The Gothic four-poster as it appeared at Hanham Court.

In a guest room the Bannerman’s placed a four-poster that had originally resided in their son’s room at Hanham Court, minus bed hangings at all four corners.

The Bannerman’s son’s William Morris wallpapered bedroom featuring the four-poster with all of its bed hangings, creating a cozy alcove within the large room.

The photo of this guest room was taken by Isabel and posted to her Instagram page.

Isabel designed the double herbaceous border at the castellated wall along the front of the house in the first photo. In the next photos is the gatehouse and motte (a mound girdled by a ditch) adjacent to the house.

A view of the Norman gatehouse and views over the Plymouth sounds. Photo via Frank Knight.

In the shadow of the keep is an outdoor pool, built in the 19th Century to commemorate an 1812 visit by George IV, then Prince Regent. Photo via Frank Knight.

The poolhouse reflects British Colonial taste popular during Great Britain’s colonization of India. Photo via Frank-Knight.

If this tour of Trematon has left you wanting more be certain to visit the delightful Bible of British Taste blog for more photos of this remarkable property, photographed by friend and frequent guest of Trematon. You can also visit their previous home, Hanham Court, as they were bidding it farewell at The Bible of British Taste blog post A Farewell to Hanham Court.

Photography for the March, 2015, issue of The World of Interiors by Christopher Simon Sykes. Listing photos from Frank-Knight realty.

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Château Fourcas-Hosten: A Return to Glory

Posted April 16, 2015. Filed in Chateaux, Coorengel & Calvagrac, Directoire Style, French Country Houses, Louis XVI-Style

Château Fourcas-Hosten is a dream of a wine estate with a fairy-tale ending. Located in the Listrac appellation in the Médoc region of Bordeaux, it was conceived by Jean-Baptiste Hosten, a lawyer, in the 18th-century, its 116 acres planted with grapevines for as far as the eye could see. It was eventually ceded to the Saint Affrique family by Hosten’s son, creating the brand Château Fourcas Hosten, bringing with it international renown. But centuries of neglect had diminished the chateau’s one-time magnificence, much of its interior decorative elements destroyed or missing. Enter two Prince Charmings, brothers Laurent and Renaud Momméja, both members of the Hermés luxury brand dynasty. In 2006 the brothers Momméja purchased the wine estate and brought in French interior designers Michael Coorengel and Jean-Pierre Calvagrac of Coorengel & Calvagrac to return it to a better version of its former glory. Elle Decor published the château’s refreshed interiors in 2013 but I discovered new photos of its room in the German edition of Architectural Digest and thought it would be interesting to revisit this remarkable property.

In this particular southwestern region of France such an estate is referred to as a chartreuse, typically a large stone house with a gently sloping tile roof accompanied by a large plot of land. In the case of Château Fourcas-Hosten the estate more closely resembles a villa, or a pavillon de plaisance, than a château. Other than for the second level above the entrance, all the main rooms exist en infilade. The first photo was taken from inside the entrance hall looking back toward the motor court and the 12th-century Romanesque church beyond.

Jean-Pierre Calvagrac and Michael Coorengel standing on one side of the entrance’s curved double staircase. The simplicity of the facade defies the height of grandeur contained within.

Lacking any interesting architectural or decorative decor of interest the designer’s recreated almost every detail from scratch. In the Louis XVI-style entrance hall, above, black and white tiles were laid in a traditional checkerboard pattern, and the brilliant color of the doors were painted in a custom color based on an 18th-century hue.

Looking toward the other end of the entrance hall and terrace beyond is a pair of 18th-century Louis XVI-style obelisks – introducing scale, contrast and drama – beneath a trompe l’oeil coffered dome ceiling. Two framed Hermés scarves designed by Josef Albers hang above matching stone consoles.

The designer’s retained much of the château’s original layout, where along the front of the house an elegant enfilade of rooms spans in either direction off the entrance hall.

The magical and prettily appointed dining room would have delighted Marie Antoinette with its garden-theme decor. The Maison Jansen Louis XVI-style dining chairs were made for the socialite Daisy Fellowes, reupholstered in the same Hermés leather used for the iconic Kelly bag. The blush color of the walls in the adjacent hall were matched to the dining room’s floor tiles.

Exotic 18th-century painted chinoiserie framed panels featuring playful monkeys line the walls of the dining room, their exuberance mellowed by the delicate tendrils patterned on the silk curtains.

This view of the dining room includes a Louis XVI fireplace and a neoclassical over-mantel mirror, and one clue that we are viewing this room in the 21st-century: a modern white faceted vase holding foliage on the dining table.

Unusual by today’s standards, the sunny yellow guest room is directly off the dining room, in keeping with the château’s original layout and features custom painted boiserie in an archival hue.

Directly off the yellow guest room is the vivid turquoise guest room, owing to the fact that what seems shockingly modern today was actually just the kind of brilliant color originally used at Versailles, now faded by time.

Another view of the turquoise guest room’s Louis XVI-style custom paneling inset with segmented arched mirrors and period furniture.

For the music room Coorengel and Calvagrac installed neo-classical trompe l’oeil boiserie and marble tiles in complimentary colors.

Above the c1800’s sofa with its original damask upholstery hangs a painting of Louis XV as a child.

By contrast the salon is a cool study in gray, showcasing a suite of Georges Jacob chairs and a settee upholstered in a Lelievre velvet

The smoky atmosphere of the salon is further enhanced by an exotic tapestry from the 18th-century depicting a port scene. This later photograph reveals the gray upholstery void of any hint of blue.

The library, as photographed for Elle Decor in 2013, is painted in an archival green called Canopee by Zuber. The Directoire sofa is dressed in its original velvet, and the table and chandelier are 19th-century.

A later view of the library features two bergerés covered in Hermés’ tradmark color leather, and a view of the salon beyond.

This romantically rustic kitchen vignette includes an 18th-century table and a 19th-century Dutch chandelier.

The intimate breakfast room epitomizes French luxe, calme et volupté with an elegant yet comfortable arrangement for dining, conversation, and relaxing. The sofa is by Georges Jacob, and the daybed, chairs and medallions are 18th-century.

A later view of the breakfast room relates a decidedly Marie Antoinette air with the addition of painted Louis XVI chair, bust and fresh flowers from the garden.

The wine-tasting room appears straight out of a painting by Vemeer with its 18th-century stone walls and 19th-century black-and-white checkerboard floor tiles. A 17th-century Dutch painting hangs above a Régence settee covered in its original needlepoint upholstery.

Named the Polanaise Room for its lit a polanaise, family portraits of Marie Leszczynska, the Polish wife of Louis XV, line the walls.

A fauteuil by Jansen is siddled up to a copper tub by Herbeau.

A portrait of Marie-Joseph of Saxony, the daughter-in-law of Louis XV, hangs above a Louis XVI daybed in another guest room.

Another guest room features Directoire period furniture and decor.

A 19th-century painted wrought iron washbasin is a grand statement in the cerulean tiled hammam.

Elle Decor, April 2013; photos by William Waldron

German AD, November 2014; photos by Stephan Julliard

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Mediterranean Blues

Posted April 8, 2015. Filed in Cy Twombly, Italian Villas, Mediterranean Style, Neoclassical, Nicola del Roscio, Uncategorized

The villa of Nicola del Roscio in the ancient fishing village of Gaeta, in the Lazio region of Italy, is quite possibly one of the most enchanting Italian villas I’ve laid my eyes on. My favorite – one I greatly admire and look to for endless inspiration – is the late Cy Twombly’s palazzo apartment in Rome (you can read why I savor it’s sublime beauty in my very first post The Art of the Room Inaugural Post). My mutual attraction is of no coincidence given these two men were companions for over forty years, del Roscio acting as Twombly’s assistant, archivist, and current director of the Cy Twombly Foundation following Twombly’s death in 2011. A recent and insightful article into their relationship in The New York Times Magazine, featuring an interview with del Roscio, prompted me to pull out my 2004 issue of The World of Interiors featuring his villa,, and sharing a few additional photos you may have not seen before.

Nicola del Roscio purchased his villa in Gaeta, north of Naples, in 1979 – returning to the place of his childhood, where he spent summers with his family – along with his companion, Cy Twombly, in tow. Nicola settled on an 18th-century house built on the site of an 11th-century tower with six acres, which he planted with his beloved collection of 142 species of palms from all over the world. Perched high on a hill overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, Mediterranean light and salted sea air permeates his rooms with a lingering memory of Virgil’s Aeneid. For several years Twombly decamped in a nearby hotel or with friends until deciding to buy a house and renting a studio in the early 1990’s. Although his rooms have appeared on many blogrolls I cannot resist adding them to my own in the next follow-up post.

I am forever enamored by rooms that bring out their creators inner life. Such rooms – free of pace-setting trends, do-it-yourself tips or decorator tricks – reveals the soul of place and the personal vision and aspirations of its inhabitant. In the case of del Roscio’s villa its rooms reflect both his own journey and that of his companion in friendship and business, Cy Twombly. For it was here the artist conceived his Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons) series from 1993-95, and in the process putting the long forgotten fishing village of Gaeta back on the cultural map. Had we never been told, it would be easy to assume these rooms belonged to Cy Twombly – his creative vision, style and taste indelible.

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Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons) series (1993-95).

From the sea to the villa, a tapestry of Mediterranean blue weaves through its rooms, from a painting by Twombly in the style of Picasso (top photo) and the azure blue painted bands framing the smaller salone‘s 18th-century Baroque-style carved wooden door frames, to the silvery blue tracery of 18th-century Neoclassical-style frescoes in the grand salone with its matching painted Italian chairs, to the 18th-century Neapolitan majolica tiles in the kitchen and bathroom. Another sign Twombly was present is found in an array of Neoclassical furniture placed nonchalantly here and there, floating and moving. Interspersed throughout are more humble pieces – provincial tables and chairs – along with personal collections that inspire and delight.

I love the energy of such rooms, seemingly in a flux of creative change … never fully finished … never compromised … letting in the light … open to hope and possibility, to freedom. As Marella Caracciolo succinctly declared in the article she wrote for The World of Interiors, “A permanent sense of ‘work in progress’ disrupts the rarefied elegance of the architecture.” How true of these rooms, where the Classical meets up with the provincial and Twombly’s experimental aesthetic still holds sway over arrangements of furniture and prosaic collections.

Del Roscio photographed by Simon Watson for T Magazine in the small sitting room, with a painting of the Brazilian wilderness, circa 1830, hanging above.

A rarely used sitting room in the main house, where the furniture is covered in muslin sheets and an antique mirror keeps cold air from entering through the fireplace; the entryway of the house where Del Roscio now stays when he is in Gaeta, with a chair by Arne Jacobsen, 18th-century Neapolitan floor tiles and a poster for a Twombly show at Gagosian Gallery from 2008, framed with a vintage Del Roscio find.(T Magazine; photos by Simon Watson).

The grand sitting room of the main house that dates from A.D. 1000, with 18th-century frescoes thought to be by the artist Sebastiano Conca, a sofa from Andy Warhol’s home in Paris and terra-cotta tiles on the floor, handmade in a nearby village. (T Magazine; photo by Simon Watson).

On a table in the grand sitting room, mementos including a poster for a Twombly exhibition in St. Petersburg, a Ross Bleckner painting, red coral and a leaf from the Seychelles, and a portrait of Del Roscio as a child by the artist Pasquale Di Fabio. (T Magazine; photo by Simon Watson).

A Donald Baecheler painting overlooks the guest room’s 1790’s French bed and provincial table.

The guest room as it appears today (T Magazine; photo by Simon Watson)

A clown painting by American artist Ford Beckman, supported by a 19th-century Italian table, sits between a pair of Russian Empire chairs in the guest room.

A lighthearted hand informs a mix of humble antiques in the barrel-vaulted dining room, including a 19th-century Neapolitan dining table with English Arts & Crafts chairs paired with early Eighties Italian paintings inspired by mountain scenes.

Today Twombly’s homage to Picasso hangs on a wall in the dining room.

Del Roscio’s bedroom features an 18th-century acorn-topped iron four-poster from Sicily and an abstract by Twombly dated 1988.

An orange tree outside the cottage house that stores Twombly’s archives (T Magazine; photo by Simon Watson)

Photography by Simon Upton for the June, 2004, issue of The World of Interiors and by Simon Watson for The New York Times Magazine, March 26, 2015.

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A Southampton Cottage, Now and Then

Posted April 1, 2015. Filed in Chinoiserie, Continental, Cottages, Happy Preppy Chic, Ronald Grimaldi

Two visions – same house – now and then. You may likely recognize the woman welcoming us at her home. She is fashion designer Lorry Newhouse, and her Southampton cottage was featured in the April issue of Elle Decor. The second photo reveals a bit more of the same entrance, long before the front door and surround were painted a vibrant lavender blue. It was photographed a long while back, in 1998, for a feature in House Beautiful. The cottage then belonged to designer Ronald Grimaldi, heir to Rose Cumming textiles and furniture. Ten years ago Newhouse purchased Grimaldi’s cottage as a weekend retreat, retaining much of the home’s existing decorative elements, such as the French chinoiserie wallpaper, and even some furniture that came with the house. But over time Newhouse wanted to put her own decorative stamp on its rooms and decided to tone down the elegance factor and lighten things up with the aid of decorator Rain Philips. In the process the rooms and their contents have turned from a mix of Continental influence reminiscent of the 1920’s to rooms akin to Sister Parish’s colorfully happy retreat in Maine.

NOW

What Grimaldi had referred to as the entry hall is now called the sitting room chez Newhouse. Walls, floors and ceiling were painted in varying shades of yellow and all of the previous silvery-green trim has gone white. Magenta taffeta curtains and lively floral chintz lend a garden room atmosphere that is far more simplified and certainly more feminine that its previous incarnation, below. The only item of notice that remains is Grimaldi’s showstopping chaise longue at the window.

THEN

The air of a Russian country house welcomed guests in Ronald Grimaldi’s entrance hall, where an eclectic mix of styles and periods are arranged in a fashion reminiscent of fine homes past. This certainly must have been a surprise to encounter given the cottage’s humble shingle-sided facade. While neither version of this space really speaks to my own decorative sensibilities I appreciate elements of each and more than likely would eliminate a great deal of both. In other words, I’m not of the Happy Preppy Chic set nor of living in the past for the sake of the past. As with Newhouse, I would have kept the honeyed-leather chaise, along with the gnarled table. I absolutely would not have painted the gloriously rich chestnut floors with what I can only assume is deck paint.

NOW

In this view of the main living room it appears very little has changed. Newhouse kept the elegant and whimsical French chinoiserie wallpaper and Victorian era fireplace mantel original to the house. The cottage had once been part of a larger estate designed by Stanford White and Charles McKim known as The Orchard, the cottage known as the garçonnière, or bachelor’s cottage.

NOW

From this photo featuring another view of the living room you will notice a marked difference from photos taken at the time of Ronald Grimaldi. The room now appears almost white, which leaves me to believe that House Beautiful and/or the photographer, Robert Starkoff, took creative license when publishing the living room to reflect that decade’s earlier taste for bohemian tea-stained rooms invoking the passage of time. Simple lines from mid-century French armchairs designed by Jules Leleu and Jean Prouvé and a 1950’s cocktail table contradict the exotic exuberance of the painting and delicate tracery of the botancial wallpaper.

THEN

The living room appears as though it could have been decorated many decades earlier by Rose Cumming herself. Through the lens of Ronald Grimaldi a restrained palette of bronzes and browns further invokes a Russian country house, accented with Franco-Italian decoration. Free-spirited eclecticism brings together an 18th-century gilt scone, a vintage Baroque sofa, a 1940’s mirrored table, and leopard-print silk velvet-covered stools. Highly unexpected in a house so humble I rather delight at this room as theater. It has all the trappings of a room made for Bright Young Things, circa 1920’s. I can almost hear Cole Porter playing in the background, and over in the corner is Stephen Tennant, posing with his coterie of fashionable parvenus.

THEN

This view of Grimaldi’s living room reveals his talent at unifying elegance, comfort and a more casual way of living. The inherent rusticity of the room somehow does not contradict the more sumptuous appointments, such as the pagoda-inspired pelmets, through his achievement of complimentary scale and proportion. His grand gestures are simply exclamation points in a room furnished with an easy mix of inherited and acquired furniture, covered in Rose Cumming damasks and taffeta.

NOW

Painted floors continue throughout Newhouse’s new vision for the cottage and, here, in the dining room the walls have been painted a vibrant Lily Lavender by Benjamin Moore. A Merimekko fabric enlivens the dining table and white painted Chippendale-style chairs freshen the space. Bright, spirited, happy and easy.

THEN

This view of Grimaldi’s dining room also takes in the entrance hall/sitting room beyond and features the Chippendale-style chairs before they were painted.

NOW

The pale yellow checkerboard pattern of the floors continues into the kitchen, which was not photographed for the Grimaldi feature. Newhouse had the entire room remodeled, with walls and ceiling covered in a wallpaper by Thibault, as Rose Cummings might have. The dining table and chairs were painted in the style of folk artist Peter Hunt.

NOW

Also not featured in House Beautiful in 1998 was this room, the suroom, a veritable knock-off of Sister Parish circa late 1960’s.

NOW

The guest room was the only room in the house Newhouse left in tact, covered top to bottom in a blue-and-white floral Rose Cumming wallpaper and coordinating fabric for windows and chair.

NOW

The master bath was also left virtually unchanged, retaining its Rose Cumming wallpaper, as you can see in the following photos.

THEN

A pen-and-ink version of the living room’s botanical design was installed in Grimaldi’s bedroom, lending a more casual and Continental air. The gilded valance over his bed was salvaged from the back of his company’s furniture truck and made into a cornice.

THEN

Proof his master bath has changed little … and the late Mr. Grimaldi posing in his dressing gown.

NOW

The original poolhouse remains much as it did, though not photographed earlier, and now serves as Newhouse’s studio.

NOW

The exterior and gardens featuring a bench from English Country Antiques in Bridgehampton.

THEN

The Frederick Law Olmstead gardens of the former estate’ circular entrance featured a Renaissance basin.

House Beautiful, August 1998. Photography by Robert Starkoff. Photos for Elle Decor by Simon Upton

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Dreams Are Made of This

Posted March 30, 2015. Filed in Palazzi, Piero Castellini Baldiserra, Winter Garden Rooms

Once upon a time wealthy fabric merchants built for themselves a palazzo in then rural 15th-century Milan, where within its gardens Leonardo da Vinci strolled to recharge while working on “The Last Supper” in nearby Santa Maria delle Grazie. Belonging to the court of the Sforzas, the Atellani’s built their palazzo near the noble family seat, Sforza Castle, heralding the projection of Milan’s social life within the palazzo’s walls during the Renaissance. It was here, at Palazzo Atellani, that epicurean banquets and midnight dances in candlelit rooms and in the gardens provided the atmosphere for elegant women meeting honored cavaliers, senators, arms men, and architects of the dukedom. But not for long, as the Sforza dukedome collapsed in 1499 along with their wealth, their palazzo falling into disrepair as the centuries progressed.

Fast forward, 1920: the great grand-uncle of the present owner, who resides on the ground floor with his brothers and sisters, saved the palazzo from further deterioration by purchasing it. Architect and designer Piero Castellini Baldiserra relayed to House Beautiful how “Even as a child in the 1950’s I remember fields of cultivated land just outside the house” – difficult to imagine in the Milan of today.

Piero’s grandfather, the architect Piero Portaluppi, restored and expanded the palazzo in his own free-spirited way beginning in 1920. If his name rings familiar it should: he designed Villa Necchi, its restrained modern glamour made famous once again in the 2009 movie I Am Love.

Piero Castellini Baldissera-Milan-Richard Powers

Photo by Richard Powers

The magic begins once you leave behind the bustling city streets and enter the ordered decay of the central courtyard, where ancient wisteria frames a tableau of stone carvings, columns and capitals. Throughout the palazzo’s gardens and within its rooms the present owner, Piero Castellini, has curated an expansive collection of Greek and Roman antiquities and a curious assortment of objects.

Utterly breathtaking and fantastical, the oft photographed, published, Googled, and “Pinned” room at Palazzo Atellani is the entrance hall, which the current Piero aptly calls the winter garden. Its trompe l’oeil walls depicting a series of botanical studies were painted in the 1920’s by a pupil of Portaluppi . Set within successive grids to imitate framing, verdant foliage reaches upward toward a faux tented ceiling rendered in the same diluted teal, a “sea” of mosaic “waves” below. Filled with stacks of Castellini’s ancient books, pictures and frames (some empty), and an assortment of curiosities, I am seduced by the mysteries contained within and want to explore its secrets further.

The bronze greyhound once belonged to Maria Callas; Piero Portaluppi designed the mosaic floors.; the Piedmont Carrara marble bust is 18th-century.

Photo by Richard Powers

A more recent photo taken by Richard Powers reveals a chest displaying Castellini’s collection of busts standing in for a bench piled with books. Through the doors to the left is the sitting room, to the right the dining room.

Photo by Richard Powers

The latest reincarnation of the winter garden, as featured in the February issue of Italian AD, features a much simplified and lighter aesthetic with fewer collections and provincial painted furniture. While this room would be beautiful empty, I much prefer the mysterious allure of its previous incarnation.

A door bears four original drawings from the book Antiquités étrusques, grecques et romaines tirées du cabinet de M. Hamilton from 1766.

Photo by Richard Powers

The salon featured butter yellow walls and striped silk curtains in Tivol from Lelievre and a rich pairing of furnishings when first published by House Beautiful in 2004, including a Louis XII stool as coffee table, a Louis XVI armchair from Piedmont covered in vintage needlepoint, and a custom sofa covered in a deep goffered velvet.

Still later, the sitting room retained its Italian noble grandeur and interesting mix of styles and periods, as photographed by Richard Powers in the above two images.

Piero Castellini and his son, Nicolo, in the sitting room as they appeared in the 2009 film “I Am Love”. Photo by Piermarco Menini.

Piero Castellini Baldissera-Milan-Italian AD-Feb 2015-Photo by Olimpia Castellini Baldissera

As recently photographed by Piero’s daughter Olympia, the sitting room has been stripped of color and richly layered textiles in favor of a neutral scheme and little pattern. Modern art now hangs where traditional portraiture once did and tabletops overflow not with silver picture frames and antique porcelain but with oggetti curiosi. Instead of a laboratory of color this room has become a laboratory of artifacts as inspiration.

Another view of the sitting room reveals a vignette in the Surrealist vein.

Piero Castellini Baldissera-Milan-HB-Simon Watson

An alcove off the sitting room features a bookcase-lined library to house Castellini’s extensive collection of ancient books. When this photo was featured in House Beautiful in 2004 the barrel vault ceiling was adorned with trompe l’oeil coffering in the Italian vernacular.

A later photo by Richard Powers reveals little has changed, save for a more modern sofa in place of the antique Italian arm chair.

Piero Castellini Baldissera-Milan-Italian AD-Feb 2015-Olimpia Castellini Baldissera

Today the library ceiling has been repainted with a celestial mural designed by Castellini, featuring a sundial, in the style of his uncle, Piero Portaluppi.

In an early photo ochre silk curtains and Venetian red lacquered 18th-century dining chairs counter the cool minty green walls – which apparently read darker here than in reality. Many of the fabrics, such as the striped silk covering the dining chair in the foreground, come from the Castellini family line of textiles, C&C.

Photo by Richard Powers

A later photo of the dining room by Richard Powers insinuates a change in color for the walls from green to gray but a recent photo, below, suggests otherwise. It might be agreed that this last photo of the dining room exhibits the true mint green described by House Beautiful.

The dining room appearing much as it did when first photographed eleven years ago.

Alternating stripes of a blue and green wallpaper by Tessuti Mimma Gini cover the walls of the family sitting room, featuring a grand walnut and oak bookcase from a Tuscan pharmacy beneath portraits of famous Italian painters of the 16th, 17th and 18th-centuries, and Piero’s collection of 1600 pieces of marble excavated from the ruins of ancient Rome (top three photos). Beyond the red silk covered chaise longue is the family dining room.

A hand-painted forest scene in the family dining room invokes the rural elegance of an Italian country house. The inlaid doors are surrounded by Fior di Pesco marble.

In the sala dello zodiaco zodiac symbols designed by Piero Portaluppi decorate the walls and floors.

Another dining room, perhaps the breakfast room, was photographed by Richard Powers and, as with many of the photos he photographed, discovered at The Caledonian Mining Expedition Company blogpost.

In a bedroom a painted settee covered in Pierre Frey’s toile de Nantes is accented with pillows covered in the family’s C&C Caramel silk.

One of the bedrooms, as photographed by Richard Powers.

Photo by Richard Powers

A view of the palazzo and its gardens as photographed by Richard Powers.

And again here, as photographed by Piero’s daughter Olympia for Italian AD.

Photo by Richard Powers

Photos by Simon Watson for House Beautiful, September 2004

First photo by Davide Lovatti for T Magazine, March 1, 2013

Piero’s daughter, Olympia, photographed his apartment for the February, 2015, issue of Italian AD and is the author of her own blog, Milly and Olly.

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The Louche Life

Posted March 23, 2015. Filed in Collected Cool, Italian Modernism, Moderne

The title of today’s post, The Louche Life, may conjure for many a disreputable association, but I intend it in the most complimentary way, in the sense that “louche” signals a seductive hedonism in the realm of the interior as theater for sensory pleasure and delight. If sexy interiors make you squirm, do not proceed further!

Interior design stars and longtime friends and business partners of Dimore Studio, American Britt Moran and Italian Emiliano Salci, recently moved from their 18th-century courtyard apartment on the via Soferino in Milan to an austere 1930’s apartment overlooking the densely wooded park of Palazzo Cicogna, very near to the elegant Villa Necchi designed by Piero Portaluppi in the 1930’s, featured in the 2009 film I Am Love. The modernist constraints of their new apartment encouraged the design duo to embrace a more modern and daring approach than they had in the past. A quality of 1960’s elegance and glamour pervades the richly appointed rooms, layered with an eclectic mix of old and new within an envelope of brilliant and unexpected color combinations. Expressing a disdain for minimalism, Moran and Salci embrace richly layered rooms that combine the best of comfort and elegance with an edge of modern glamour. This approach, for me, is the future of modernism – a soulful antidote to Le Corbusier’s “machine for living”.

Two people – both highly successful designers’ in their fields – instantly came to mind when I laid my eyes upon these rooms: the Yves Saint Laurent and Francois Catroux of the early 1970’s. Their is a seductive, exotic bohemian quality to these rooms that elicit visions of Saint Laurent dressed in his military-inspired khaki shirt with cravet and flared pants accented with a thin belt, and Catroux alongside his wife and Saint Laurent muse, Betty, dressed similarly. In fact, if Saint Laurent were breaking into the fashion scene today this apartment could represent his taste for haute moderne, as did his early love affair with the inventor of the modern interior, Jean-Michel Frank, and his contemporaries. In fact, the owners liken the color of the living and dining room walls to the cinnabar color of YSL’s Opium perfume bottle. Pilar Viladas said it best in an article she wrote for Town & Country: I found its “elegant, low-slung proportions, its rich color scheme, and its air of languid luxury almost cinematic. The blend of sophistication and idiosyncrasy was exactly what I envisioned for T&C’s design coverage”. This is the new face of modernism.

Pods of round modern tables piled with books and personal bibelots float between a sumptuous sofa in the English style by Vico Magistretti and vintage armchairs by Saporiti. The golden latticwork of the heating vents mimics the antique gold of the wooden screen separating the living and dining rooms.

On the library side of the main lounge a reading light by Josef Frank sidles up to a chair designed by Ico Parisi, Gio Ponti and Gianfranco Frattini covered in a fabric designed by Josef Frank.

Britt Moran (left) and Emiliano Salci sitting in front of a vintage wood shelving system signed Osvaldo Borsani are intended to break up the abundance of red in the living room.

A brass-framed three-part mirror designed by Gio Ponti for a dressing room sits atop a vintage desk piled with the owners collection of books, vases and porcelains.

An Orientalist atmosphere pervades the dining area with a 19th-century embroidered silk screen hanging above a credenza topped with Seagrove pottery from Moran’s hometown of Ashboro. Modern round stools surrounding a large lacquered dining table by the 20th-century Italian architect Ignazio Gardella echoes the collection of round tables in the living room. A blue wainscot was carried over from the entrance hall to create interest.

In the dining area adjoining the kitchen Gio Ponti Superleggera chairs surround a table designed by architect Ignazio Gardella displayed with a French faience service. The light comes from a Berlin nightclub; the flowered wallpaper is from Cole & Son.

Dimore Studio-Milan-AD France-Oct 2015-Julian Hargreaves

A tribute to 1930’s Italy, Emiliano Salci’s room is furnished with a chair by Paolo Buffa and a floor lamp by Paavo Tynell set before an Italian 1940’s cabinet.

In the spirit of the 1950’s, Moran’s bedroom features the original retro-glam laminate for the walls, to which he paired a Ponti headboard with integrated shelving.

The glamorous bathroom is a study in gold and reflective surfaces.

Photography by Guido Taroni for an article written by Pilar Viladas for the April, 2015, issue of Town & Country.

Additional photos by Julian Hargreaves were later added from the October, 2015, issue AD France.

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A Lasting Impression

Posted March 9, 2015. Filed in Cool Classicism, Directoire Style, Frédéric Méchiche, French Style

If not for a photo of the somewhat humble and rustic facade of this charming house in a Swiss village one might assume from the photos below that the rooms contained within belong to a château in the French countryside. An admitted nature-phobe, Frédéric Méchiche has no interest in bringing the natural splendor of the outdoors indoors: “All this green stuff, you know – trees, leaves, buttercups and flowers. No thanks, not for me.” But he made a concession for friends owning this 18th-century mountain home set in a rural landscape, transforming it into a sophisticated manor house fit for a Francophile. In derelict state when purchased with insensitive and unsightly transformations made over the years, Méchiche renovated the interiors from the ground up, revealing the dwelling’s original flagstone floors and honey-colored stone in some areas and installing antique stone floors with cabochons from Burgundy, parquet de Versailles, and gilt Louis XVI boiserie in others.

If the rooms appear familiar they should. They were featured in The World of Interiors until resurfacing recently in the Russian publication of Architectural Digest. Without prior knowledge identifying their creator is not difficult either: simply search out neoclassical architectural details and furniture with a penchant for the Directoire, a coolly elegant monochromatic scheme of cream and gray, striped fabrics and an occasional nod to modernism in the form of a black-and-white photograph or Giacometti sculpture. The results produce an atmosphere of noble antiquity through the lens of a modern eye – elegant, restrained and timeless.

Méchiche created space and light in the living room with mirrors hung on Louis XVI cream-and-gilt boiserie, echoed in the Louis XVI sofa of the same palette. It appears Méchiche also conceded to allow natural foliage in the form of rosemary to adorn the Louis XVI mantel.

A view en enfilade reveals the entry, dining room and small sitting room beyond the main salon.

An intimate bijoux sitting room – my favorite room in the house – has trompe l’oeil walls painted to resemble grisaille wallpaper. The chandelier is early 19th-century Swedish.

Coolly elegant, the Louis XVI French gray paneled dining room hosts Empire chairs around a minimalist iron table designed by Méchiche on bare bleached floors. Above hangs an 18th-century Swedish chandelier by Odiot.

Méchiche created a library out of a series of attic rooms, installing an 18th-century staircase and furnishing it with suede sofas and a Swedish chandelier.

The most rustic room in the house, the “trophy room”, features a monumental 17th-century refectory table and baronial walk-in fireplace.

The spirit of a Swedish country house pervades the kitchen’s dining area, punctuated by a neoclassical-style Alsatian stove from the 19th-century.

A Giacometti sculpture greets visitors in the stair hall, where Méchiche installed a wrought iron railing.

Méchiche had the insides of the silk curtains draping the Louis XVI lit á la polonaise in “Madame’s bedroom” hand-embroidered with sprigs of flowers taken from the design of an 18th-century waistcoat.

Méchiche created a period Directiore bathroom for le Madame, featuring panoramas by Dufour framing an alcove for an antique bathtub (found in London), an Empire chandelier, graphic antique black-and-white stone floors – the whole set withing Directoire paneling.

Photography by René Stoltie.

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A Man and His Houses, Part III

Posted February 27, 2015. Filed in Palladian-Style, Pleasure Pavilions, Villas, Villas & Villa Style, Wright Ludington

“October Hill” was collector and art patron Wright Ludington’s third and final home in Montecito. After moving to California in 1915 to attend the Tatcher School in Ojai he would make Montecito, California, his home, eventually inheriting his father’s Spanish-Colonial-style villa in 1926 at the age of 27, which he renamed Val Verde (see A Man and His Houses, Part I). In 1957 he conceived of a modern Palladian-inspired villa in collaboration with architect Lutah Maria Briggs to better showcase his collection of antiquities and art. This, his second home, he named Hesperides (see A Man and His Houses, Part II). In 1973 Ludington decided to downsize and called once again upon Lutah Maria Briggs to collaborate on an elegantly spare pavilion washed in white.

An elegant, spare and private facade defines Hesperides, designed by Lutah Maria Briggs. The down spouts, or canales, were inspired by Mexican architectural prototypes.

Plain, cubic volumes and a flat roof are merely adorned by a simple cornice in a model created by Briggs based on sketches Ludington provided. The house is sited on a hill and all rooms are oriented around a central terrace providing a transition from house and garden, garden and hillside, opening up to views of sky and sea. The terrace, in the top photo, was planted with lavender, magnolias, boxwood, and evergreens and punctuated with geometric columns of white painted cement. Black painted bricks define the linear layout of the pebble surfaced terrace.

Ever sine I first laid eyes on “October Hill”, and its rooms and collections contained within, it has filled my dreams. Though I have long admired his previous residence, Hesperides, October Hill possessed the romantic predilections of an aesthete and collector. I think, too, the scale and assemblage of his collections into tableaux evolved and became more refined and pleasing to the eye. In his previous villa there tended to be too many diminutive pieces grouped en masse, making it difficult to appreciate any one of them. Here there is an elegance in his ability to curate and edit his varied collections, best showcasing their intrinsic beauty.

A dreamy, ethereal and coolly dark ambiance informs the cedar plank-lined salon – sanded and painted in successive layers of green and white and rubbed with red glaze and umber – which feels introspective given its restrained materials, color palette and design. Over the Provencal chests hang a pair of Roualts – Clown and Child and Wrestler. The Corinthian capitals used as tables were moved here from the salon at Hesperides. Evocative of a cabinet of curiosities, the rooms which Wright Ludington fashioned for himself at October Hill distill a lifetime’s passion for collecting reminiscent of the 18th-century gentleman amateurs.

Ludington’s unerring eye and intuition achieved what few can accomplish: the perfect marriage of an ideal of the natural and man-made worlds. Here he has grouped three terra-cotta Tanagra figurines, small cycladic figures, a rare Roman torso, Roman glass vials and Sumerian black basalt beads of King Gudea and a priest.

Adjacent walls in the salon are hung with a stylized floral cotton that nicely compliments and contrasts the black terrazzo floors and black painted furniture: an 18th-century chinoiserie Venetian secretary and a Portuguese lacquered chair. A still life by Dunoyer de Segonzac hangs above the secretary.

Another vignette in the salon features a portrait by Modigliani and Vuillard’s Interior with Baby above a Portuguese painted chest. The chairs are Italian.

Ludington created an artful still life atop a Portuguese desk, including a late medieval Madonna and Child, a South American ivory head of Christ, a French 18th-century mechanical toy, carved bone sailing ships and a human skull from Mexico encrusted with turquoise and gold.

In Ludington’s booklined bedroom and study a Portuguese mirror hangs over an Italian Baroque console that was believed to have been made for a stage set. The dried flowers in cachepots are a sign of their times, but how I would love to remove that saccharine basket of cheerful posies!

The master suite featured an 18th-century English bed with a variety of embroidered hangings. Through the Venetian doors, which he relocated from Hesperides, is a view toward the salon.

A covered loggia presents an arresting study in black and white, including the larger-than-life Hermes found at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, previously a part of the collection at Landsdowne House until acquired by Ludington in the 1920’s.

The terrace includes a narrow pool looking toward a Roman column and torso fragment.

Ludington’s vast collection of Classical and modern statuary and sculpture were integrated into the design of the landscape, creating a virtual Pompeii come to life.

Germaine Richier’s La Feuille and a voluptuous Maillol stand before modernist columns-as-ruins on the lavender covered terrace.

At the age of 91 the great collector and arbiter of taste passed away, in 1992. Here is a copy of an article posted in The Los Angeles Times commemorating his life and times. Much of his collection can now be viewed at The Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

ENTERTAINMENT – The Los Angeles Times

Ludington Bequests to Santa Barbara Museum

October 5, 1992 | SUZANNE MUCHNIC, TIMES ART WRITER

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art has received a donation of 175 works of art from the estate of Wright S. Ludington. The bequest includes oil paintings by major Impressionist and modern artists, modern bronze sculptures, a group of Luristan bronzes and rare Roman sculptures and architectural fragments. A prominent art collector and founding member of the museum, Ludington lived in Santa Barbara from 1927 until his death in May at age 91.

Treasures of a Lifelong Passion written by Robert Henning for House & Garden, March 1983, with photography by Charles White.

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A Man and His Houses, Part II

Posted February 26, 2015. Filed in Craig Wright, David Hicks, Leonard Stanley, Palladian-Style, Pleasure Pavilions, The Classicists, Villas & Villa Style, Wright Ludington

For many years I was under the impression that Wright Ludington’s villas Hesperides and October Hill were one and the same. I actually discovered Ludington’s final Montecito residence, October Hill, first in a 1983 issue of House & Garden. It wasn’t until I happened upon posts written years later by The Blue Remembered Hills on Wright Ludington and his houses that I began to put the pieces together. Since then I have added a 1973 issue of Architectural Digest to my collection, which features villa Hesperides. Through this course of discovery I have learned a great deal more about the villa and the man behind the fantasy.

Wright Ludington made a career of collecting antiquities and art from a young age. After thirty years of collecting and entertaining at Val Verde (See A Man and His Houses, Part I) he decided he wanted a smaller classically-inspried residence designed to better showcase his collection of antiquities and art. Enter Santa Barbara’s first female architect, Lutah Maria Briggs, and her assistant Joseph Knowles, in the year 1957. In collaboration they conceived of a spare and elegant Palladian-style pleasure pavilion just off Bella Vista Road, which Ludington aptly named Hesperides. It was here, until 1973, that Ludington entertained countless designers and art world luminaries, many of them contributing to the evolution of a man and his house. The interior designer Leonard Stanley is noted for his contributions to the design of most of the interiors.

Ludington succeeded in creating more than a shrine to his beloved collection, he achieved the status of artist himself. Classically trained in the arts at Yale, Ludington curated a collection spanning pre-Columbian jewelry, Greek bronzes, Greco-Roman statuary, provincial Italian furniture, modern European paintings and sculpture, Gothic altar figures, and much more, into an arresting paean to the history of art. It has been commented that Ludington collected not what is stereotypical but what is remarkable and alive in art, daring to place a Paul Jenkins painting next to a Ming jar with a deft eye. Therein lies his talents, the art of the mix.

In the “Large Room”, as Ludington referred to it, grand proportions with a soaring ceiling painted dark to contain intimacy hosts his prize possession, a Roman marble figure of Hermes discovered near Hadrian’s Villa, set into a niche. It was moved here from the Beaux-Arts-style gardens Lockwood de Forest III created for him at his previous villa, Val Verde. The airy grandeur of the space allows us to believe we have entered the villa of a well-traveled patron of Palladio in the Italian countryside of the Veneto. An imaginative collection of art and antiquities includes an 18th-century chinoiserie screen, a Greco-Roman torso, Corinthian capitals used as end tables, a Mexican Mixtec skull encrusted with turquoise and gold, and Sumerian figures grouped with Gothic wood sculptures. Ludington created an elegant foil of pale limestone color for the walls, the floors and the chic framed-out upholstery. Legend has it that Billy Baldwin, a guest of Ludington, remarked that what the “large room” needed was a pair of showstopping chandeliers. One day, outside his shop in Los Angeless, Dennis & Leen, Leo Dennis sketched a proposal for a pair of large-scale ornamental chandeliers that, unless they were recently removed, remain in situ to this day.

Wright Ludington posing in the Large Room at Hesperides.

A young David Hicks posing for House & Garden in the main salon.

Ludington’s eye for creating original and striking spaces is evident in the gallery, what he called the “great hall”, which he had finished black to better showcase his impressive collection of paintings, which included some of his early Paris acquisitions from the 1920’s, including a 1923 Picasso Woman with Turban, upper far right, and a monumental work by Braque titled Nude. Surrounding an Italian commode are paintings by Picasso, Bonnard, Kokoschka and Rédon.

An exotic vignette in the gallery includes an 18th-century Venetian cabinet displaying miniature museum of Liristan bronzes, a chinoiserie figure from the Brighton Pavilion, a black marble horse’s head, and a chinoiserie fire screen.

Another side of the gallery features Dérain’s Woman’s Head, one of Ludington’s first acquisitions, next to an Italian inlaid commode. Other famous names depicted in the gallery include Sutherland, Rouault, Matisse, Modigliani, Chagall, Dali, de Cherico, John, O’Keeffe, Utrillo, Rousseau, Stella, Dégas, Lipchitz, Vuillard, Cocteau, Magritte, Maillol, Epstein, and Henry Moore.

For the dressing room and study Ludington created a French atmosphere with walls of walnut boiserie complimented by a Brunschwig & Fils fabric. A carved Italian console centers one wall adjacent to an 18th-century découpage desk beneath a portrait of Wright Ludington by Sorine.

The opposite end of the dressing room and study featured a daybed set into a window bay.

Wright Ludington’s bedroom featured a pair of antique Venetian doors and a 17th-century English bed with its original hangings. The walls were lined with art books and personal portfolios. Could you imagine anything better than to be surrounded by your beloved books?

In the guest house a Paul Jenkins painting contrasts a trompe l’oiel bureau near the bed and a painted Austrian armoire in the foreground. This is said to have been the bedroom Billy Baldwin stayed in when he was a guest of Ludington (see The Blue Remembered Hills for more on that story).

A close view of the secretary in the guest house reveals an a collection of priceless objects amidst Sicilian puppets and American toys.

Among Ludington’s many friends and consultants was Anthony Hail, the late designer from San Francisco, who suggested placing a black pergola facing the ocean at the far end of the terrace to “stop the eye”.

In a later, albeit black-and-white photo, the pergola is rendered in white. The landscape design at Hesperides was concieved by Elizabeth de Forest, the wife of Ludington’s long-time friend and landscape architect Lockwood de Forest III.

Two years following Wright Ludington’s death in 1992 Alice and Donald Willfong purchased Hesperides from another owner. Ludington had sold the villa in 1973 after downsizing to a smaller yet similar villa by design, October Hill, which I will cover in my next post. The Willfong’s were no strangers to rescuing important California landmark homes such Hesperides, having sold their most recent Italian Renaissance-style “castle”, Castillo del Lago, in the Hollywood Hills to Madonna (you may recall the uproar she caused after painting its tower and retaining walls in alternating stripes of sienna red and ochre). While restoring Castillo del Lago the Willfong’s were introduced to interior designer and furniture maker Craig Wright by the villa’s previous owner, Patrick Longchamp. When the day arrived to restore Hesperides to its original glory it was Wright they turned to once again – but not because the villa was derelict, but because its previous owners had bastardized its purity, painting its rooms in Floridian citrus hues.

Wright restored the essential ambiance of a palazzo in the main salon with reproductions of Italian antiques from his studio Quatrain. Sadly, the original elegant and minimalist mantel was replaced by a bolder design evocative of the 1990’s mantra “more is more” and “bigger is better”.

Though, in my opinion, the suite of reproduction furniture feels formulaic I do love the air of romance provided by potted lilies and palms in urns. While the Roman heads on the cocktail table date from the 1st and 2nd centuries the sculpture in the niche, which once housed Hadrian’s Hermes, is a casting of a Roman sculpture.

The dining room opens onto the entrance gallery, revealing a Roman torso of Hercules set before a northern Italian Neoclassical mirror.

The Willfong’s and Wright turned Ludington’s book-lined bedroom into a library and home office, painting the walls, doors and bookcases black to match the black terrazzo flooring.

Again, it is obvious what had been Ludington’s dressing room and study is now the master bedroom, with its French boiserie lined walls, punctuated by a show stopping Italian Neoclassical bed.

Last in the series of A Man and His Houses we will visit Wright Ludington’s final residence, October Hill.

Black and white photo of Wright Ludington’s salon by John F. Waggaman, from The Collector in America by Jean Lipman, 1971.

The Collectors: Wright Ludington featured in Architectural Digest, January/February 1973; photography by James Chen and Leonard Stanley.

Villa Hesperides: New Chapter for a Renowned Montecito House written by Marilyn Bethany for Architectural Digest, May 1994, with photography by John Vaughan.

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A Man and His Houses, Part I

Posted February 24, 2015. Filed in Spanish-Colonial Revival, Wright Ludington

Wright Saltus Ludington moved from Pennsylvania to California in 1915 to attend the all-male Thatcher School in Ojai, shortly followed by his father, Charles H. Ludington – a corporate lawyer, investment banker and editor of The Saturday Evening Post – in 1924. It was in nearby Montecitio that the elder Ludington purchased the Spanish-Colonial estate Días Felices (“Happy Days”) designed by Bertram Goodhue, in 1915. The following year Wright, a young artist and collector, and his friend Lockwood de Forest III, an up and coming landscape architect (and son of the founder of the Aesthetic Movement) who he met at Thatcher, concocted a plan to restyle the grounds at Días Felices into Italian-style gardens, renaming the villa Val Verde. Within a year Charles passed away and a 27-year-old Wright found himself the owner of his father’s estate.

It was over a European tour in 1922 that the two friends discovered they shared a common interest in art. Collecting along the way Wright Ludington returned to his then father’s villa in Montecito with loot in tow. By the time his father had passed Wright had amassed an enviable collection of art and antiquities to place within the villa and the newly designed gardens De Forest had laid out for him. De Forest created a stunning gallery to house Ludington’s impressive collection of paintings and drawings and enclosed the villa’s atrium to showcase his collection of Classical statuary, as well a pool complex, all in the Classical style. In the 1930’s de Forrest added a colonnaded “ruin” stretching along the original terrace.

For the villa’s interiors Ludington collaborated with a number of friends, many of them artists and decorators. Eugene Berman was one such decorator, a set designer for the New York Metropolitan Opera, who designed a suite of bedrooms. Oliver Messel was another, who painted a bathroom with flamboyant Roman murals. And Princess Rainier di San Faustino created the villa’s kitchen.

From that point forward the affable bon vivant, collector and artist made Montecito his home, becoming an eventual co-founder and patron of The Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He would eventually bequeath his entire collection of art and antiquities to the museum … but not before designing and living in two other Montecito homes. Preservationists attempted to maintain the glory of Val Verde in the recent past but lack of funding failed to support their efforts. Today the villa is once again privately owned.

The villa’s design was inspired by Spanish Colonial architecture, considered modernist at the time.

The classically-inspired pool complex designed by Lockwood de Forest III.

De Forest retained Bertram Goodhue’s 1915 design for the expansive reflecting pool.

View of the Lansdowne Hermes (a Roman, marble statue from the Hadrianic period, now in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art), against a backdrop of alternating columns and hedges. On top of each column is a sculpted basket of flowers.

THE INTERIORS

The entrance hall.

The salon

Up next we visit Wright Ludington’s Palladian-inspired villa, Hesperides.

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HOLLYWOOD AT HOME

Posted February 18, 2015. Filed in Holllywood Regency, Hollywood at Home

MARY PICKFORD and DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR. – The couple at their Beverly Hills home, Pickfair, in the 1920’s.

Growing up in California I enjoyed the proximity, excitement and glamour surrounding the Academy Awards. For many years Architectural Digest took us inside the homes of our favorite actors past and present, and I always looked forward to seeing how they lived … and if they had good taste! My favorite era was and remains the 1920’s through the 1930’s, not only for its unabashed glamour but for its attention to detail with an eye on the future. It was a period that balanced elegance and modernity with great style and ease – and every one looked like they were having such a damned good time! Today’s post honors Hollywood’s glamorous past with the hope it returns, leaving us breathless once again. From High Style to Hollywood Regency to Art Moderne, the homes of Hollywood’s past incites fantasies of an enchanted life. I hope you enjoy revisiting some of your favorite actors and their homes as much as I have.

MARY PICKFORD and DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR. in the living room their home Pickfair in Beverly Hills. From the Architectural Digest archives.

MARY PICKFORD curls up on a Chinese damask silk divan in the living room of Pickfair in Beverly Hills, 1920’s (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

BUSTER KEATON at his Italian-style home in Beverly Hills in 1929 (Architectural Digest archives).

JOAN CRAWFORD poses beside her ornate gilt grand piano at her Georgian-style house on Bristol Avenue in Brentwood. She had been living on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, but when stardom demanded a grander lifestyle, Louis B. Mayer—in a transaction not uncommon for studio chiefs eager to perpetuate the myth of stardom—loaned her $40,000 to buy the house. When she bought the house in 1929, she furnished it in “green and gold, silks and brocades,” hoping to achieve the sophistication she lacked, wrote one biographer, but she later called her efforts a “hodgepodge.” From the Architectural Digest archives.

BETTY DAVIS at her desk in her Beverly Hills house in the 1930’s. From the Architectural Digest archives.

BETTY DAVIS’ sprawling house featured heavy wood ceiling beams, a signature of its architect, John Byers. “I adore space,” Davis wrote in her autobiography, The Lonely Life. “In the city I want to push away the buildings with my own two hands and let the sky rush in.” From the Architectural Digest archives.

BETTY DAVIS, who was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, favored Colonial or English-style houses. “Always it was as much like New England as possible,” she wrote. From the Architectural Digest archives.

DELORES DEL RIO and CEDRIC GIBBONS in the living area of their Streamline Moderne home designed by Gibbons, a Hollywood set designer, in the early 1930’s.

DELORES DEL RIO and CEDRIC GIBBONS’ modernist living room, designed by Gibbons. Producer Joe Roth purchased the house a few years ago and brought in Michael S. Smith to refresh its interiors. Since then he has sold it.

The CEDRIC GIBBONS-designed house, refreshed by Michael S. Smith, as it appeared in Architectural Digest about six years ago. Photography by Scott Frances.

CAROL LOMBARD, reclining on a méridienne, hired a friend, actor William Haines, to decorate her Hollywood Hills home in the 1930’s. With his film career suffering, Haines had just begun a new one in interior design. Haines used custom lighting and furniture, such as lamps he fashioned from marble busts and a Neoclassical-style low table made in his own workshops—elements that were to become key ingredients in his signature look. He did not charge the actress a fee, hoping instead that positive reaction to the house would launch his business. He was right. From the Architectural Digest archives.

CAROL LOMBARD posing in her William Haines-designed dining room. From the Architectural Digest archives.

CAROL LOMBARD

Motion Picture magazine, noting touches like an overscale daybed, concluded, “Any male who ventures [into] Carole Lombard’s new house will feel as shaggy as Tarzan. Its femininity is so unmistakable that your first glance tells you that it is occupied by a single woman.” From the Architectural Digest archives.

GARY COOPER in his Beverly Hills house in 1933, formerly owned by Greta Garbo, enjoyed a bachelor existence, surrounded by the prizes he gathered on an African safari. From the Architectural Digest archives.

JOAN CRAWFORD at home, Beverly Hills

MARLENE DIETRICH cultivated her legendary glamour through her Beverly Hills residence as much as through her films. Decorated by legendary decorator Elsie de Wolfe in the early 30’s, the drawing room was enveloped in show stopping 19th-century Chinese wallcovering and an ankle deep carpet of fur. The room looks the same today – you’ve probably seen it! From the Architectural Digest archives.

MARLENE DIETRICH, who showed a preference for high-contrast black-and-white furniture, granted interviews in a living room with a exceedingly deep tuxedo sofa and a mural of leopard and zebra. From the Architectural Digest archives.

CARY GRANT and RANDOLPH SCOTT shared homes off an on from 1932 to 1942. Here they are posing in their rented Santa Monica beach house in the 1930’s. From the Architectural Digest archives.

CARY GRANT and RANDOLPH SCOTT relaxing in their Santa Monica Beach house sometime in the 1930’s. From the Architectural Digest archives.

WILLIAM POWELL

The James E. Dolena-designed whitewashed brick mansion was completed in 1935. Describing his lavish residence Powell would say that the architecture was “a combination of Regency, Beverly Hills Gothic, and early Chester A. Arthur.” From the Architectural Digest archives.

WILLIAM POWELL

The entrance hall of Powell’s Beverly Hills mansion was decorated with Guatemalan primavera wood and parquet floors. From the Architectural Digest archives.

WILLIAM POWELL

The second floor sitting room was decorated by William Haines, as was the rest of the house. From the Architectural Digest archives.

GEORGE CUKOR

The living room retained the same decoration installed by William Haines in the 1930’s throughout Cukor’s life. Today the home belongs to interior designer Lynn von Kersting.

GEORGE CUKOR

William Haines installed an elaborate velvet drapery treatment, neo-Classical architectural details and Venetian parcel-gilt blackamoors combining to create an appropriately theatrical dining room setting.

JACK L. WARNER’S nine-acre estate, which he built from 1926 to 1937, was a Neoclassical mansion designed by architect Roland E. Coate with interiors by William Haines and grounds by Florence Yoch. From the Architectural Digest archives; photography by Jeffrey Hayden.

JACK L. WARNER’s living room, designed by William Haines, contained a fraction of the Warners’ antiques, such as George III mahogany armchairs, a George III-style library table and cut-glass chandelier and an early George III lady’s writing desk, right. Under the arched doorways are two sets of 18th-century Chinese painted wallpaper panels. From the Architectural Digest archives; photography by Jeffrey Hayden.

The bar in JACK L. WARNER’s Beverly Hills estate was decorated later by Haines in the 1950’s.

JOAN BENNETT
In 1938, actress Joan Bennett commissioned architect Wallace Neff to design her 14-room house in the west Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills in her favorite French Provincial style. Then a divorced mother of two, Bennett got a white-painted-brick mansion so elegant that actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. said it resembled “the beautiful Joan expressed in bricks and mortar.” Though the exterior remained white-painted brick with blue shutters and dark-gray shingles throughout Bennett’s nearly 15-year residency, decor went through two color phases, said the actress, who was a talented amateur decorator. (She, did, however, have some help from a designer friend, Hazel Wray Davey.) “I’d furnished the house when I was a blonde,” Bennett explained, “and when I became a brunette [she began dyeing her fair hair around 1940], naturally the colors were no good with my dark hair. So I gave the house a brunette personality.” From the Architectural Digest archives; photo by Marc Wanamaker.

JOAN CRAWFORD in her Beverly Hills living room designed by William Haines.

GREER GARSON reclining on the sofa in the living room of her Bel Air home in the 1940’s. From the Architectural Digest archives.

GREGORY PECK

Pacific Palisades was the California town where actor Gregory Peck chose to settle down in the late 1940s. He and his first wife, Eine “Greta” Kukkonen, a Finnish former makeup artist, purchased a 1930s house designed by legendary architect Cliff May, famed for his ranch-style aesthetic and sophisticated appreciation of indoor-outdoor living. The picture shows the Pecks behind the green leather–clad bar of the den, which was accented by illuminated glass pilasters. As AD observed, the den was “a place for casual entertaining and where family evenings, kids [the Pecks had three sons], and dogs [the couple had several Alsatians] were welcome.” From the Architectural Digest archives; photo by Marc Wanamaker.

JOAN CRAWFORD

Beneath an artificial dogwood tree, Joan Crawford and her fourth and final husband, Pepsi-Cola CEO Alfred N. Steele, relax on the plastic-covered sofas of their 18-room New York City duplex penthouse in the 1950s. As one of the neat-freak actress’s decorators, Carleton Varney, once observed, “There was more clear plastic on that furniture than was on the meat in an A&P supermarket.” William Haines, Crawford’s longtime friend, who had been a leading man during the silent era, originally decorated the apartment. (Architectural Digest archives)

FRED ASTAIRE

Showman nonpareil Fred Astaire built his Beverly Hills residence in 1959, five years after the death of his first wife, socialite Phyllis Potter. The bachelor pad’s living room featured comfortable modern upholstered furniture clad in lively patterned fabrics, and walls hung with contemporary art. From the Architectural Digest archives; photo by Cyril Matland

KIRK DOUGLAS

Actor Kirk Douglas stretches out on a skylit sofa in his Beverly Hills home in the early 1960s. Above him hang two Pablo Picasso paintings that he and his wife Anne purchased in 1960. On the cocktail table stands a sculpture by Italian artist Marino Marini. All three works were eventually sold by the Douglases to fund children’s playgrounds. From the Architectural Digest archives; photo by John Bryson.

SOPHIA LOREN

Sophia Loren poses for photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, in 1964, in the master bedroom of Villa Sara, her 16th-century house near Rome. Purchased in 1952 by her future husband, producer Carlo Ponti, it was restored with architect and garden designer Imerio Maffeis and decorated by costume-and-set designer Ezio Altieri. The bedroom features frescoes of the four seasons, which were moved there from another room in the house; the Louis XVI painted bed was made in Tuscany. From Architectural Digest archives; Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt.

GRETA GARBO

Renoir’s 1909 Léontine et Coco, which depicts the artist’s son Claude, is displayed in the living room. Garbo had a passion for art and antiques and began collecting works by Renoir in the 1940s. Louis XV fauteuils attributed to Jean-Baptiste Tilliard flank the fireplace, where late-18th-century famille rose roosters are set alongside 19th-century Chinese porcelain boxes. From the Architectural Digest archives; photography by Billy Cunningham.

JEAN HOWARD

In the living room of photographer and hostess Jean Howard’s Beverly Hills home decorated by William Haines over a period of years, Venetian pieces—a carved gilt-wood mirror and a neoclassical console—complement Modigliani’s Portrait of Elvira, while an 18th-century lacquer coromandel screen and a porcelain lamp harmonize with the moody, dark-green walls. From Architectural Digest, June 1978.

JEAN HOWARD

Seating groups in the living room face away from the fireplace, creating a space that draws the visitor toward Jules Pascin’s painting The Model. The portrait is mounted on a wall of beveled-glass panels designed in the 1940s by decorator William Haines, who did the original renovation of the home for Howard and her then-husband, talent agent Charles Feldman. “Frankly, this house is for parties,” Howard said in 1978. “It loves people and good times, and I like to entertain several times a month. At one time or another almost everyone’s been here—from Judy Garland and Richard Burton singing their hearts out around the grand piano to President Kennedy, who loved coming back here for luncheons and dinners.” From Architectural Digest, June 1978.

JEAN HOWARD

Pascin’s Jeune Fille is a glowing focal point at one end of the living room. Beneath the portrait is an 18th-century Siamese standing Buddha. A bronze sculpture entitled Romeo et Juliette, by Miguel Berrocal, shares a low table with a tomato-shaped Lowestoft bowl. From Architectural Digest, June 1978.

JEAN HOWARD

Cranes decorate an 18th-century Japanese screen in the vibrant red dining room. “Elsie de Wolfe, an innovative designer and hostess, also taught me a great many things,” Howard explained. “For example, she was one of the first to insist that the floral centerpiece on a dining room table should be low, so that one could talk to the other guests and see them—without having to peer through a forest of greenery. In addition to learning from women like Linda Porter and de Wolfe, I’ve found a great deal on my travels. I’m always learning and collecting. I’ve found my paintings and furniture and coromandel screens in every part of the world.” From Architectural Digest, June 1978.

JEAN HOWARD

A Chinese red-lacquer screen decorated with flowers, and Camille Bombois’s painting Bowl of Roses contribute to the gardenlike ambience in a bedroom. “I hate ruffles and bows and gingham gewgaws, and I loathe four-poster beds with chichi draperies,” Howard declared. “They’re as chilling as a slumber room in a mortuary.” Behind the bed is an 18th-century Chinese screen with phoenix motif; the bombé commode and gilt-wood mirror, at right, are both Venetian. From Architectural Digest, June 1978.

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