IN the spring of 1960, 30-something interior decorator David Hicks did not intend to buy a country house. An advertisement in The Times for Britwell House in Oxfordshire changed his mind. Still at the start of his career, Hicks had already established a signature style, described at the time as 'a world of beautiful things, of gay whimsical colour combinations, of rich materials, of subtle lighting'. At Britwell, the attraction was quite different: 200 acres of greensward, an obelisk in the park and, in the hall-the first space the visitor enters a Baroque chimneypiece of leviathan proportions, dominated by a handsome broken pediment.
Throughout his career, Hicks repurposed classical details in a manner that was sophisticated and high in impact. Pediments-triangular or segmental gables, placed above an entablature on columns or a cornice—were first used structurally in Greek architecture and subsequently employed decoratively: both externally, as in Palladio's soaring pediment on the façade of the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, Italy, and internally, to crown doors, windows, chimneypieces and niches, from the grandest examples, including the carved and gilded pedimented doorcase of the Saloon at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, to homelier examples in the halls and drawing rooms of country rectories across England.
In the double-height drawing room of a new house in Portugal in the 1980s, Hicks topped the chimneypiece with a tall, pedimented mirror frame that raises the eye to the ceiling, maximising the wow factor of the room. In other instances, he used pedimented furnishings to add elegance and symmetry.
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
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.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
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
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.
