WHEN Jacqueline Duncan first opened the doors of the Inchbald in 1960, interior design was hardly regarded as an occupation, let alone a profession. With a few notable exceptions, such as Syrie Maugham, Nancy Lancaster and Mrs Duncan’s first husband, Michael Inchbald, interior decoration was the preserve of a breed referred to euphemistically (and, one suspects, pejoratively) as ‘nice young men who sold antiques’.
Mrs Duncan first encountered Mr Inchbald’s work in 1949, when he curated an exhibition at Peter Jones that juxtaposed exquisite English furniture with startling patterns and colours that caught the attention (and imagination) of locals accustomed to a more sotto voce style of decoration. In those days, the Sloane Square store’s interior-design department was akin to an upmarket decorating firm (it was where John Fowler cut his teeth). Even by its standards, the exhibition was something of a trailblazer.
‘A bedroom was furnished entirely with pearl-inlaid black lacquer furniture married with a brilliant pink fabric,’ she recalls. ‘A set of sabre-legged dining chairs, quietly elegant, was covered in a yellow MacLeod tartan and magnificent armchairs by Thomas Hope in leopardskin. They combined the shock of fashion with the familiarity of classicism. I was enthralled.’
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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
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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
It's always darkest before the dawn
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.
