IN the autumn of 1931, invitations went out for a housewarming at Claridge’s. It was a mild Tuesday in November and guests arrived at the private entrance on Brook Street in the glittering Mayfair dark. The British Porcelain Ball began fashionably at 10 pm (supper at 11:30 pm; buffet at 12:30 am; carriages at 3:00 am) and it was the inaugural event in the hotel’s newly built Art Deco ballroom. The extension had been beneath a pile of proverbial bricks and dust, overseen by the architect Oswald Milne, for two years. By the time it was finished, the Great Depression had flattened the effervescence of the 1920s, making the antics of the Bright Young Things at parties such as this one—idealized in the past decade—look like so many boondoggles against a backdrop of mass unemployment. But this evening was in aid of the National Birthday Trust Fund and, beneath a silver-leafed ceiling, amid green columns and sharply cut, mirrored walls designed by artist Walter Gilbert, Society ladies spun in a rehearsed ballet, gamely dressed as porcelain figurines.
Claridge’s itself launched the space with a light hand. A press release lingers on the new heating system (‘much superior to the old type of radiator’) and ends with a line about ‘perfect’ ventilation. It calls the now-iconic decoration as ‘interesting and sanely modern’.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 06, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 06, 2021 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
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Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
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After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
