Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are at Glynes, the grand Georgian family seat of the Chetwynds in Wiltshire, and the home of Lettice’s parents, the presiding Viscount and Countess of Wrexham and the heir, their eldest son Leslie and his wife Arabella. Lettice is visiting her family home after fleeing London in a moment of deep despair. Lettice’s beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, had organised a romantic dinner at the Savoy* for he and Lettice in honour of his birthday. However, when Lettice arrived, she was confronted not with the smiling face of her beau, but the haughty and cruel spectre of his mother, the Duchess of Walmsford, Lady Zinnia. Lady Zinnia, and Selwyn’s Uncle Bertrand had been attempting to marry him off to his cousin, 1923 debutante Pamela Fox-Chavers. Lady Zinnia had, up until that moment been snubbing Lettice, so he and Lettice arranged for Lettice to attend as many London Season events as possible where Selwyn and Pamela were also in attendance so that Lettice and Selwyn could spend time together, and at the same time make their intentions so well known that Lady Zinnia wouldn’t be able to avoid Lettice any longer. Zinnia is a woman who likes intrigue and revenge, and the revenge she launched upon Lettice that evening at the Savoy was bitterly harsh and painful. With a cold and calculating smile Lady Zinna announced that she had packed Selwyn off to Durban in South Africa for a year. She made a pact with her son: if he went away for a year, a year during which he agreed neither to see, nor correspond with Lettice, if he comes back and doesn’t feel the same way about her as he did when he left, he agreed that he will marry Pamela, just as Bertrand and Lady Zinnia planned. If however, he still feels the same way about Lettice when he returns, Lady Zinnia agreed that she would concede and will allow him to marry her.
Leaving London by train that very evening, Lettice returned home to Glynes, where she has been for the last week, moving numbly about the familiar rooms of the grand Georgian country house, reading books from her father’s library distractedly to pass the time, whilst her father feeds her, her favourite Scottish shortbreads in a vain effort to cheer her up.
We find ourselves in the Glynes morning room, a room Lettice does not particularly like being in, summoned there by one of the Glynes’ maids, at the behest of Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie. The Glynes morning room is very much Lady Sadie’s preserve, and the original classical Eighteenth Century design has been overlayed with the comfortable Edwardian clutter of continual and conspicuous acquisition that is the hallmark of a lady of her age and social standing. China cabinets of beautiful porcelain line the walls. Clusters of mismatched chairs unholstered in cream fabric, tables and a floral chaise lounge, all from different eras, fill the room: set up to allow for the convivial conversation of the great and good of the county after church on a Sunday. The hand painted Georgian wallpaper can barely be seen for paintings and photographs in ornate gilded frames. The marble mantelpiece is covered by Royal Doulton figurines and more photos in silver frames. Several vases of flowers stand on occasional tables, but even their fragrance cannot smother her mother’s Yardley Lily of the Valley scent. Several clocks quietly mark the passing of time, whilst a fire crackles cheerfully in the morning room grate.
“Ahh, there you are Lettice.” Lady Sadie says as she glances up over her shoulder from her Eighteenth Century bonheur de jour** in the corner of the morning room. “Finally.” she adds with a slightly exasperated sigh.
“I was lying down on the chaise in my boudoir, reading Mamma.” Lettice defends herself against the last word spoken accusatorially by her mother.
“Wallowing is more like it.” scoffs the older woman acerbically, dropping her silver fountain pen with a clatter onto the top of some notes she has been making which jut out from underneath a large book of roses that stands open, leaning against the desk’s right corner drawers.
“I was reading Pride and Prejudice, I’ll have you know, Mama.”
“As I said,” Lady Sadie tuts. “Wallowing.” She turns around in her seat and faces her daughter, fixing her with a gaze that suggests she is no mood for self-indulgence, laying her wrist against the soft white Regency striped fabric on the curled back of the seat. “Well don’t just stand there! I didn’t send Emery on an errand to find you, just so you could stand in the middle of the room like a dolt. Come here, child.”
Reluctantly Lettice stalks slowly across the cluttered morning room, wending her way listlessly around occasional tables covered with bric-a-brac and vases of autumn blooms from the Glynes gardens, and overstuffed chairs that cover the beautiful oriental carpet until she reaches the cosy corner next to the crackling fire where her mother is.
“I’d value your opinion, Lettice.”
“My opinion, Mamma?” Lettice asks in surprise.
“Have you lost the ability to think for yourself whilst you have been living in London, Lettice?” Lady Sadie asks peevishly.
“No, of course not, Mamma!” Lettice replies, physically shying away from her mother’s stinging statement as though she had been slapped in the face by the countess.
“Well of course your opinion, then!” Lady Sadie sighs as she sees the hesitance in her child’s eyes. “We may not have a great deal in common, Lettice, but admittedly you are the only one of my four children who shares my love of gardening and flowers. I’m making plans for the plantings for next spring. I have some seeds that I already have seed packets from Webbs****.” She picks up a packet of Calliopsis***** seeds, the cover featuring brightly coloured red and yellow blooms executed by a skilled artist. “Now, I was thinking of doing something a little different, down near the ha-ha******. I was thinking I might plant an ornamental wildflower bed.” She smiles proudly to herself as she glances down at the packet, imagining the blaze of colour next spring. “Now what do you think of that Lettice?”
Lettice just looks at her mother in stunned silence.
“Oh, and I was wondering whether you think we might have some rather nice climbers along the western side of the Glynes greenhouses, just for a spot of colour there.” She picks up another packet decorated with drawings of beautifully coloured flowers in red, golden yellow, pale blue and white, and holds it up gaily. “What is your opinion about that?”
“My opinion?” Lettice finally manages to stammer.
“Well yes, child! I wouldn’t have called you down here if I hadn’t wanted your opinion.”
“I come home to Glynes after having had my heart broken by Lady Zinnia,” Lettice begins to spit hotly as bitter tears begin to form in her eyes. “After she forbids me to see Selwyn,” The tears begin to fall from her lids, like large diamond droplets. “And you, you called me down here so you can ask me whether I think we should have climbers along the western wall of the greenhouses?”
Lady Sadie sits quietly in her seat, ramrod stiff, as she fiddles with her silver fountain pen and listens in silence to her youngest daughter’s voice as it begins to rise.
“What kind of deranged mother are you, Sadie?” Lettice asks, deliberately using her mother’s given name to emphasise the divide between Lettice’s ideal of a mother, and the person her mother really is. “You are deranged!” She shakes her head. “No, no! Deranged suggests you have lost all sense of thought, and you are far from that. No, no! No, you know what you are, Sadie? You are perverse! I come here looking to mend my broken heart, and you want to ask me about perennials for your herbaceous border? This must be a new depth in our already pathetic relationship!”
Sadie remains silent for a moment before speaking. “I was only trying to help you, Lettice.”
“Help me?” Lettice scoffs angrily. “Help me?”
“Yes, child.”
“Help me? How does planning a wild garden or planning the Glynes parterre, talking like nothing has happened, help me, Mamma?”
“Oh Lettice, do stop being so melodramatic.” Lady Sadie replies reproachfully in her usually dismissive way, turning away from her daughter as she begins to stack up the packets of seeds neatly on the surface of her writing desk in front of her. “You always were prone to histrionics, and it really is most unbecoming.” She emphasises the last word with an inflection of repugnance that is unmistakable.
Lettice turns her head away from her mother, partially in shame, but also in shock that she should be talking to Lettice in such a way when she is feeling so vulnerable. It is true that mother and daughter have never gotten along throughout Lettice’s adult life, but Lettice feels that even Lady Sadie has some sense of compassion deep beneath her hard outer crust of steeliness.
“Don’t turn away when I’m speaking to you, Lettice!” Lady Sadie snaps. “Look at me! I’m your mother! It’s disrespectful to me, and shows an unattractive wilfulness and defiance in you! Are you listening to me?”
“Since I haven’t stormed out of the room in disgust yet,” Lettice replies deflatedly. “Amazingly I am, Mamma.”
“Yes, well, you also have a decidedly unattractive propensity to storm out of a room when people say things you don’t like.” bristles Lady Sadie with irritation.
“Only when you say something I don’t like, Mamma. It’s always you, never anyone else!”
“Well, be that as it may, how do you think histrionics, wilfulness and defiance are going to win over Lady Zinnia?”
“What?” Lettice blinks in a lack of comprehension.
“Your father can mollycoddle you all you and he like: let you take breakfast in bed like a respectable married lady*******, fawn over you as you languish in your bedroom and feed you your favourite Scottish shortbreads as a treat, but I’m having none of it, do you hear me?” She looks at her daughter with a hard, steely gaze. “None of it, Lettice.” She nods seriously.
“Don’t worry, I wasn’t expecting sympathy from you, my own mother. I know better than that.”
“You paint me as the villain, Lettice, and it’s not justified.”
“Isn’t it, Mamma?”
“No,” Lady Sadie replies with genuine hurt in her voice. “At least not this time. It’s hurtful and spiteful. Unfortunately, that is a trait you must get from me, as your father, for all his faults, isn’t a spiteful person. You misinterpret and misjudge my motivations as well, Lettice. I may not necessarily have done everything right by you in the past.” Lettice’s eyes widen in surprise at her mother’s rare admission of wrongdoing. “You are, after all, my most difficult child and the one I understand the least.”
“Oh, thank you very much, Mamma.” Lettice says sulkily, rolling her eyes.
“Now, now. Just hear me out, Lettice.” Lady Sadie begs in a fashion that at the same time remains crisp, noble and slightly self righteous.
“Alright.” Lettice folds her arms akimbo sulkily. “Go on, Mamma. I’m listening.”
“It’s not that I don’t care. I do. I just can’t warm to you is all. You shunned me when you were a baby. Nanny would bring you down to the drawing room for you to be presented to your father and I before dinner and you would shower him with smiles and kisses, yet you only ever had a screwed up face the shade of an aubergine for me as you cried when Nanny pushed you towards me. Nanny told me that it was probably just wind or a liver complaint, but I’ve yet to see an attack of biliousness that is directed at one human being in particular.”
“So it’s my fault is it, Mamma?” Lettice rolls her eyes towards the ornate white painted plater cornicing on the ceiling above. “Of course! Why am I not surprised? It is always is my fault.”
“I haven’t finished yet, Lettice.” Lady Sadie says warningly.
Lettice glares back at her mother, waiting for her to continue. “Very well.” she snaps.
“Well, as a result, you and I have never seen eye to eye on most things.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “I concede. Some things you have proven me wrong with when it has come to making the decisions you have made in your young life. I will never approve of this interior designing nonsense you insist on persisting with, however, at least you have made a good fist of it******. You even managed to wheedle your way into one of my favourite periodicals, Country Life*******: possibly just to spite me.”
Lettice snorts derisively, but cannot help but smile in spite of the anger she currently feels for her mother as she imagines Lady Sadie so put out when the two Miss Evanses, a pair of gossiping spinsters from the village, set upon her mother with the news about Lettice appearing in the magazine before Lady Sadie had even had a chance to look at it.
“However, at least it was Henry Tipping******** who wrote about you, and you can’t ask for a better commendation than that of the arbiter of the architecture and furnishings of country houses. However, on this point I am right.”
“And what point is that, Mamma?”
“Of course you should feel free to come to Glynes to mend your broken heart. It is, after all, your home, and always will be, I hope. However, it serves no purpose to simply shut yourself up in your boudoir and read silly romance novels.”
“I’m not shutting myself away.”
“Not all the time, perhaps,” Lady Sadie acknowledges with a flare in her nostrils. “But when you aren’t there, you are moping around the house and garden, rather like a sullen ornamental family ghost. Your father’s mollycoddling isn’t helping one bit. In fact, it’s causing the problem to linger, or is possibly even exacerbating it. Do you feel any better for your father’s tender ministrations, Lettice?”
Lettice unfolds her arms and puts them behind her back, lowering her head as she looks down and toys with the plush on the rug with the toe of her shoe. “Well, not really.”
“And how do you think this self-serving indulgence in being out of sorts is helping maintain your relationship with Selwyn Spencely?”
“What do you mean, Mamma?”
Lady Sadie chuckles in a brittle way. “Zinnia thinks she has you pinned. She thinks that she knows my youngest daughter. When she looks at the picture of you alongside her son, both of you smiling into the bright phosphorescence of the camera bulb’s flash, because the two of you foolishly concocted the idea to rub her nose in your relationship, rather than be cautious and wheedle your way in,”
“Lady Zinnia was set against me from the very beginning, Mamma.” Lettice defends herself as she interrupts her mother.
“Nonsense, Lettice! She might not be a habitué of yours, and she may indeed have other candidates she considers far more suitable for her precious eldest son, but if you and Selwyn had played the hand you were dealt differently, you would have won her over eventually.”
“My, my, such optimism, Mamma.”
“Sarcasm is also unattractive in a girl of your age, especially a jeune fille à marier***********. It implies a jadedness that should not be present in one so young as you.” Lady Sadie sighs. “Anyway, before you decide to interrupt me again, another irritating habit of yours, Zinnia looks at those endless photographs of you in the society pages and she sees a young and flippant flapper, who is easily broken.”
“But I am broken, Mamma. My heart is in pieces.”
“Now, at the moment I know that is exactly how you feel, but you are hardly broken.” Lady Sadie contemplates her daughter. “Bruised, perhaps, but not broken. I also know that in spite of the fact that I do not approve of your wilfulness, nor perhaps your outspokenness either, I do know that of all my children, you are the most resilient, except perhaps for Lionel, but let us say no more about him.”
“Indeed no, Mamma.”
“If you just crumple like this, and allow your father to mollycoddle you as you mope about the place and wallow in your misery, don’t you see, Lady Zinnia wins?”
“She does?”
“Of course she does! Do you want Zinnia to win, Lettice?”
“No, of course I don’t, Mamma!” Lettice replies in shock.
“Well then! You retreat here to lick your wounds self-indulgently, and then once you finally feel a little bit better, you start to think that Selwyn is too much of a danger to your wounded heart. He’s the future Duke of Walmsford: of course he is going to marry someone with a pedigree approved by his overbearing mother.” Sadie pauses for a moment. “However, that is where, unusually for her, Zinnia has played the wrong hand.” she adds triumphantly.
“She has?”
“She has!” Lady Sadie says defiantly. “Zinnia told you that she has packed Selwyn off for a year to forget about you, but what she really did in fact, was to pack Selwyn off so you would forget about him. By the time he returns, you will have found someone new. Of course, being the caring parents that we are, Zinnia thinks your father and I will encourage you to forget him and to marry someone else. In fact, knowing Cosmo, I’ll wager your father has already done so. Has he?”
Lettice’s cheeks colour.
“Aha!” Sadie crows triumphantly. “So, he has suggested it. So typical of Cosmo. Did he suggest Nigel Tyrwhitt?”
Lettice doesn’t reply again, her silence speaking loudly of her father’s suggestion.
“He always did have a hope that you and Nigel would marry. Your Uncle Sherbourne, God rest his soul,” She lifts her eyes upwards to the heavens as she clasps the pearls about her neck. “And your Aunt Isobel always wished the same. However, I had greater expectations for your you, and you found them.”
“But now I’ve lost him, Mamma. Selwyn is gone and I’m forbidden to write to him, and even if I do, Lady Zinnia will make sure that my letters to him are intercepted. What can I do, but move on from him to another young man?”
“Don’t be so feeble! You stay the course, Lettice. Show Zinnia that you are far from the flippant and feeble flapper she imagines you to be, and be the strong young lady that I know you are. Get up each day and get on with your life. Keep designing interiors. Keep shopping. Keep attending social functions, especially those where there are lots of photographers and reporters. Just make sure you don’t become involved with any eligible young man.”
“Mamma!” Lettice gasps. “I never thought I would hear such words fall from your lips!”
“If you really do love Selwyn, Lettice my dear, and I firmly believe that you do, you will need to be patient and wait for him to return. The newspaper men will quickly catch on to the fact that you are alone, especially since they are so used to seeing you with Selwyn after the last few months of your ill-fated campaign of publicity.” She thinks for a moment. “However, maybe it is not so ill-fated as you suppose. When the newspaper reporters ask you why you aren’t with Selwyn, tell them that he has gone away.”
“What good will that do, Mamma?”
“Because then the next question they will ask you is whether you have met someone new. They will ask why a girl as beautiful, successful and wealthy as you, is not on the arm of another new eligible and wealthy bachelor. They know how to sell newspapers.”
“And I tell them what?”
“You tell them that you are waiting for Selwyn’s return, when you expect a proposal to be forthcoming. You may not be permitted to write to Selwyn, but Zinnia said nothing about the newspapers not writing about your plight or your feelings on your behest. Let them tell Selwyn that you still love him and are waiting for him.”
“Tell Selwyn on my behest?”
“They get the London papers in Durban just as much as they get them here, and Zinnia won’t be able to stop a lovesick and homesick young man flipping to the society pages as he seeks solace in the faces of familiar names and faces, and thus seeing you and reading your words of commitment to him.”
“But what if he meets someone else there, Mamma?”
“He won’t.”
“But how can you possibly know that?”
“Because there are no young ladies in South African society who can possibly live up to Zinnia’s impossibly exacting standards and high expectations. If you can’t, how do you think the daughter of a local official, however venerable, will? Besides, if he reads that you are riding out the storm of his mother’s revenge and waiting for him, he’ll wait for you. I saw the two of you together at my Hunt Ball and I knew that you two were in love, and not just lightly – deeply – and that love will survive a year of absence. In fact, now that I come to think of it,” Sadie’s eye glitter with delight. “Do they not say that absence makes the heart grow fonder?”
“Indeed they do, Mamma!” Lettice cries, clapping her hands in delight.
“And that is another poor play by Zinnia from her very well stocked hand.”
“Mamma, you are so clever!”
“Of course I am, child. When it comes to matters of the heart, there is no-one better equipped that I to make sure that cupid’s bow hits the correct target.” Sadie snuggles back into her seat triumphantly. “Zinnia may enjoy revenge as a dish best served cold. Let’s see how much she enjoys eating her own cooking.” She stands up. “You just keep functioning, Lettice. Don’t give up. And for goodness sake, stop languishing around here like the family ghost! Go for a walk and get some fresh air. That will put some roses in your cheeks.”
*The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century. The Savoy was the first hotel in Britain to introduce electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. Carte hired César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine; they established an unprecedented standard of quality in hotel service, entertainment and elegant dining, attracting royalty and other rich and powerful guests and diners. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture. Its bands, Savoy Orpheans and the Savoy Havana Band, became famous. Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel. The hotel is now managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". It has two hundred and sixty seven guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The hotel is a Grade II listed building.
**A bonheur de jour is a type of lady's writing desk. It was introduced in Paris by one of the interior decorators and purveyors of fashionable novelties called marchands-merciers around 1760, and speedily became intensely fashionable. Decorated on all sides, it was designed to sit in the middle of a room so that it could be admired from any angle.
****Edward Webb and Sons, known more commonly simply as Webbs, were an English seed merchants or seedsmen, dating back to around 1850 when Edward Webb started a business in Wordsley, near Stourbridge. By the 1890s, Webb and Sons had been appointed seedsmen to Queen Victoria, and had become a household name around Britain. Fertilisers being crucial to the nursery industry, the Webbs in 1894 took over Proctor and Ryland, a well-known bone manure works in Saltney near Chester, and considerably expanded its activities, becoming Saltney's second largest business. Edward Webb and Sons were awarded a Gold Medal at the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show in 1914. During World War II the firm was the primary supplier of grass seeds and fertiliser for airfields, both under the Air Ministry and local municipalities. The seeds used for this purpose were chosen to withstand heavy aircraft traffic. Webb and Sons also assisted in the camouflage of landing strips.
*****Coreopsis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. Common names include calliopsis and tickseed, a name shared with various other plants. These plants range from 46–120 centimetres (18–47 inches) in height. The flowers are usually yellow with a toothed tip, but may also be yellow-and-red bicolor.
******A ha-ha is a type of sunken fence that was commonly used in landscaped gardens and parks in the eighteenth century. It involved digging a deep, dry ditch, the inner side of which would be built up to the level of the surrounding turf with either a dry-stone or brick wall. Meanwhile, the outer side was designed to slope steeply upwards, before leveling out again into turf. The point of the ha-ha was to give the viewer of the garden the illusion of an unbroken, continuous rolling lawn, whilst providing boundaries for grazing livestock.
*******Before the Second World War, if you were a married Lady, it was customary for you to have your breakfast in bed, because you supposedly don't have to socialise to find a husband. Unmarried women were expected to dine with the men at the breakfast table, especially on the occasion where an unmarried lady was a guest at a house party, as it gave her exposure to the unmarried men in a more relaxed atmosphere and without the need for a chaperone.
********It is seldom heard in the land of its origin — the United States. When you make a good fist of something, you succeed in doing it. You do a good job and achieve a certain degree of success. According to some scholars, the word 'fist' in the expression is used in the sense of 'hand' — someone who does physical work.
*********Country Life is a British weekly perfect-bound glossy magazine that is a quintessential English magazine founded in 1897, providing readers with a weekly dose of architecture, gardens and interiors. It was based in London at 110 Southwark Street until March 2016, when it became based in Farnborough, Hampshire. The frontispiece of each issue usually features a portrait photograph of a young woman of society, or, on occasion, a man of society.
**********Henry Tipping (1855 – 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, garden designer in his own right, and Architectural Editor of the British periodical Country Life for seventeen years between 1907 and 1910 and 1916 and 1933. After his appointment to that position in 1907, he became recognised as one of the leading authorities on the history, architecture, furnishings and gardens of country houses in Britain. In 1927, he became a member of the first committee of the Gardens of England and Wales Scheme, later known as the National Gardens Scheme.
***********A jeune fille à marier was a marriageable young woman, the French term used in fashionable circles and the upper-classes of Edwardian society before the Second World War.
Cluttered with paintings, photographs and furnishings, Lady Sadie’s morning room with its Georgian furnishings is different from what you might think, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures from my collection.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The catalogue of flower seeds and the Georgian book of roses on Lady Sadie’s desk are a 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. Therefore, it is a pleasure to give you a glimpse inside two of the books he has made. To give you an idea of the work that has gone into his volumes, the catalogue contains twelve double sided pages of illustrations and text. It measures thirty millimetres in height and fifteen millimetres in width and is only three millimetres thick. What might amaze you even more is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. He also made the packets of seeds, which once again are copies of real packets of Webbs seeds and the envelopes sitting in the rack to the left of the desk. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter. I hope that you enjoy this peek at just two of hundreds of his books that I own, and that it makes you smile with its sheer whimsy!
On the desk is a 1:12 artisan miniature silver pen with a tiny pearl in its end, made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures.
The Chetwynd’s family photos seen on the desk and hanging on the walls are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The frames are almost all from Melody Jane’s Dollhouse Suppliers in the United Kingdom and are made of metal with glass in each. The largest frame on the right-hand side of the desk is actually a sterling silver miniature frame. It was made in Birmingham in 1908 and is hallmarked on the back of the frame. It has a red leather backing.
The vase of primroses in the middle of the desk is a delicate 1:12 artisan porcelain miniature made and painted by hand by Ann Dalton.
The desk and its matching chair is a Salon Reine design, hand painted and copied from an Eighteenth Century design, made by Bespaq. All the drawers open and it has a lidded rack at either end. Bespaq is a high-end miniature furniture maker with high attention to detail and quality.
The wallpaper is a copy of an Eighteenth Century blossom pattern.
