BED-SITS

This morning, while paging through the 1920 edition of House & Garden's Second Book of Interiors, I passed many handsome rooms, most of which betrayed their time and place---typical Long Island country house drawing rooms, all correctly Georgian, stockbroker Tudor libraries, and Colonial Dining rooms.   Suddenly, the room above jumped out at me, and demanded a closer look.  It was something more unusual, rich, yet looser and more imaginative after the acres of floral cretonne and hooked rugs of most of the book.  Here was something bolder---a bedroom with drawing room pretensions---the furniture well chosen, loose and sparely arranged in the vaulted ceilinged space, long French windows, curtains freely draped, facing each other on two sides.  Old black and white photograph is deceptive.  My first instinct was that the room was likely in traditional Chinese export color schemes---all celadon and rose.   The bold Tibetan tiger rug should have clued me otherwise.  The caption describes something far more dramatic for this room

Okay, that got my attention.  I googled Mr. Thomas---the house was called Huntland (click HERE and HERE for more), and he himself was prominent in the foxhunting world in the land of silver stirrup cups and good English furniture.  How he came to have interiors of such imagination, or who did them for him, eluded me, but clearly he was a guy with some dash.

'Huntlands' the Joseph Thomas house in Middleburg, built 1830, and renovated by Peabody, Wilson & Brown, architects (Country Life in America)

Huntlands, plan of first floor, bedroom on left

The Thomas bedroom room appears to be missing from the history of Chinoiserie interiors  in America in the 20th century, a body which includes the Chinese Room at Beauport, not published by House & Garden until eight years after the Thomas Room.  It is worth noting that Henry Davis Sleeper was one of the ushers at Thomas's wedding to Clara Fargo in 1915---perhaps he had a hand in the Chinese bedroom?

Or Conde Nast's ballroom, decorated by Elsie de Wolfe, with its famous set of Chinese papers from Beaudesert, an Anglesey family house in England.

And of course, the Chinese drawing room of 1930 at Henry DuPont's Winterthur House, whose wallpaper came from the same set as that in the Chinese room in Beauport.  The DuPont room is seen below in a stereoview as it appeared when the family lived there, from the Winterthur Digital Archives.

I was tempted to veer off to Middleburg with more about the Thomas house, but instead decided to contemplate some of the bedroom's spiritual descendants, such as Pauline de Rothschild's Chinoiserie bedroom at Chateau Mouton, as famously photographed by Horst for Vogue, below.  The same

Or Nancy Lancaster's famous bedroom at Haseley Court.   One is tempted to wonder whether Mrs. Lancaster, in her own Virginia foxhunting days as Mrs. Field and later Mrs. Tree, had ever visited Huntlands and seen the glamorous Thomas bedroom.  Certainly her famous bedroom there, despite stylistic differences has much in common.

Last but not least, the longer I looked at the Thomas room, the more familiar the bed became.  And sure enough it is apparently the same bed for which Doris Duke paid $400.00  at a shop called The Flea Market in 1942, sold for many times that ($20,000 to be exact) at the 2004 Christies auction of her effects.  

UPDATE: Perhaps I should have followed through on Joseph B. Thomas after all, for had I thought about it a moment longer---or not been so focused on dramatic bedrooms, the lightbulb would have gone off and I would have realized that he was the same Joseph B. Thomas who, inspired by Fenway Court in his native Boston, developed Beekman Terrace, the first luxury co-op on the East River, complete with gondola landing, and who was married to Wells Fargo heiress and muralist Clara Fargo Thomas, whose house up here is one of the epochal houses of the 1930's, and which I blogged about HERE

AND TODAY IN NYSD:  In 'House' I interview Michael Kathrens, author of  American Splendor, the Residential Architecture of Horace Trumbauer, newly revised by Acanthus Press.  Click HERE

ELSIE GOES REGENCY

From Elsie deWolfe, who gave us such deathless design advice as "I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint", came this design for a house in the 'Modern Regency' style in 1926.  It was published in Arts & Decoration, and appears to have been a promotional gimmick, much like the "House of Tomorrow" or "Idea House" spreads that one reads in today's magazines, with lots of cross-promotional ads. Whatever the intent, it presages the style so beloved of Hollywood moguls for the next 2 decades.

One suspects that the future Lady Mendl did not actually do the architectural design, nor the professional looking sketches--or maybe she did, for the plan is very eccentric. 

Beyond that, I know nothing more about it.  You heard it here.

DECORATORS ADVERTISE

These advertisements for interior decorators date from the 1910's, nascent years of the profession as we know it today.  Some of the names still resonate, others are long forgotten.

Tapestries and Medival ironwork, and faintly ecclesiastical furniture were all popular motif of the era

At the end of the second quarter of the 19th century, Herter Brothers ruled the field.  By 1918, the original partners were dead, it's distinctive style was distinctly out of fashion, and as Herter looms, the firm was attempting to capitalize on the taste of the day.

One easily sees why some have lasted in reputation and others have not.  I leave the reader to form his own opinion

Yet more tapestry, needlepoint chairs, and the rich Georgian atmosphere so beloved by the bankers of the day.  It became almost the official style of the Long Island set of the era, and the Hampton Shops were among the chief purveyors of the goods required for the look.

Mrs. Muchmore, 'Consulting Decorator' of Hollywood and New York.  Too perfect.  One yearns to see examples of her work.  For much more about the wonderfully named Minnie Muchmore after she moved to Hollywood, click HERE

Elsie de Wolfe.  Need I say more?

And last, before there was Eleanor Brown, there was Miss Swift, purveyor of controlled, edited, highly luxe interiors for the elegant and the fashionable.  I'm not social historian enough to know when the four hundred became five hundred but it says so below.  Miss Swift's elegant showroom was an early work by Mott Schmidt (thanks to the ever-surprising Ancient for the head's up)

Even Elsie de Wolfe Had Bad Hair Days

And here's one of them, from House & Garden for November, 1917 in the Long Island house of Ormond Smith.  The chic Godmother of Interior Decoration, who brought light and trellis to American interiors, is here seen in a moment of overstuffed, overwrought, and over furnished frenzy.  And what's with the matchy-matchy going on with the light fixtures, rugs and little table in foreground all borrowing from the elegant trellis frieze.  I'd be voting this one off Top Design in the first round.