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 not at Cavendish Mews. We are not even in London. Instead, we are north of the capital, motoring through the hedge lined lanes cut through the rich arable snow dusted farmland of Essex as world famous British concert pianist, Sylvia Fordyce, drives Lettice towards the little village of Belchamp St Paul* in her smart and select silvery sage green 1922 Lea Francis** four seater, two door tourer on a circuitous journey to take in some of the picturesque country villages along the way. Lettice met the famous forthright musician last week at a private audience after a performance at the Royal Albert Hall***. Sylvia is the long-time friend of Lettice’s fiancée, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes and his widowed sister Clementine (known preferably now by the more cosmopolitan Clemance) Pontefract, the latter of whom Sylvia has known since they were both eighteen. Lettice, Sir John and Clemance were invited to join Sylvia in her dressing room after her Schumann and Brahms concert. After a brief chat with Sir John (whom she refers to as Nettie, using the nickname only his closest friends use) and Clemance, Sylvia had her personal secretary, Atlanta, show them out so that she could discuss “business” with Lettice. Anxious that like so many others, Sylvia would try to talk Lettice out of marrying Sir John, who is old enough to be her father and known for his dalliances with pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger, Lettice was surprised when Sylvia admitted that when she said that she wanted to discuss business, that was what she genuinely meant. Sylvia owns a small country property on which she had a secluded little house she calls ‘The Nest’ built not so long ago: a house she had decorated by society interior designer Syrie Maugham****. However, unhappy with Mrs. Maugham’s passion for shades of white, Sylvia wants Lettice to inject some colour into her drawing room by painting a feature wall for her. Thus, she has invited Lettice to motor up to Essex with her for an overnight stay at the conclusion of her concert series at The Hall to see the room for herself, and perhaps get some ideas as to what and how she might paint it.
Lettice smiles as she inhales the fresh cold air through the chink in her automobile window she has open and looks at the passing landscape of snow-covered verges lined with trees denuded of their leaves that skirt the undulating white fields around them. “It’s must be so lovely and green in springtime, Sylvia darling.” Lettice opines to Sylvia, sitting across from her in the driver’s seat.
“Oh it is,” Sylvia replies over the loud rumble of the purring engine as she turns the steering wheel to guide the Lea Francis up a bend in the road and over a wintery white knoll. She grunts. “The only problem with this time of year and spring is how the weather can turn the roads into treacherous quagmires.”
As if attempting to prove her point, the Lea Francis skids slightly on the muddy road, making Lettice gasp.
“Don’t worry, Lettice darling,” Sylvia assures her nervous passenger as she changes the gear expertly with a noisy clunk. “I’ve done this trip many times before at this time of the year, and I know the roads well. We won’t come a cropper*****, I promise.”
They drive along Gage’s Road, through a cluster of thatched cottages which forms the hamlet of Knowl Green.
“We’re nearly there.” Sylvia announces. “Not long now.”
They soon drive into a larger cluster of weatherboard and stone farm buildings and cottages with thatched roofs which hug the road as it widens. The recent snowfall makes Lettice think how much like giant cottage loaves the thatched cottages look. A long village green hedged by a smattering of Elizabethan and Georgian cottages appears on the left-hand side of the car.
“Welcome to Belchamp St Paul, Lettice darling! That’s the Half Moon******.” Sylvia points to a thatched building with a crescent moon above the front door and a wing with a rounded bay window at the front extending out towards the road. The Georgian paned windows on the ground floor are illuminated with warm and welcoming golden light. “It’s our local, and where we will have supper tonight.”
“So, we’re not dining at ‘The Nest’ then?” Lettice asks.
“Good god, no!” Sylvia scoffs as they motor past a fork in the road with signposts indicating to Ovington, Clare, Cavendish and Sudbury on a small island which it shares with a red telephone box******* its bright paint standing out against its white snowy surrounds. “You’re only here for the night, Lettice darling, so I didn’t ask Atlanta to join us, nor get Mrs. Silas to cook for us.”
“Mrs. Silas?” Lettice queries as Sylvia changes gears with a noisy clunk again as they continue along Vicarage Road, following the sign to Cavendish and Sudbury.
“She’s the wife of the farmer I bought the parcel of land I built ‘The Nest’ on, from.” Sylvia elucidates. “I pay her as a housekeeper-cum-cook. She keeps an eye on the place when I’m not here and cooks for me if I’m staying on my own without Atlanta, or have a house party and Atlanta can’t manage the catering alone. I can probably rustle us up some toast, scrambled eggs and some tea for breakfast tomorrow, but don’t ask anything more of me in the kitchen, Lettice darling.” she chuckles throatily. “Anyway as it is, I’m changing my plans.”
“Oh, Sylvia darling?” Lettice queries.
“Yes,” Sylvia admits guiltily. “I was going to stop at my beloved ‘Nest’ for the duration before I go on my next tour of the provinces, but I’ve had the most delicious invite from a rather dashing Lieutenant-Colonel to his country place, just outside of Chippenham********.” She sighs resignedly. “He’s married, of course, and is a brute and a boor: but that’s why I’m attracted to him!” She lets out another pensive sigh. “It will be a disaster of course, but as I told you last week, I always pick the wrong kind of man.”
“I see.” Lettice says with a grimace as the car motors past a smattering of thatched Georgian cottages.
“Oh look!” Sylvia exclaims. “There’s Mr. Silas, the man I bought the land from, now.” She points a black leather driving glove hand at a man trudging up the road towards them on the left-hand side of the road. He cuts a lonely figure walking up the road alone against the wintery landscape on an overcast day, with his head down against the wind. Sylvia depresses the horn of the Lea Francis twice, making a loud, yet cheerful, hooting noise. He looks up from watching where he walks and waves to Sylvia’s approaching car. She waves back enthusiastically as they motor past him. “He must be heading for the Half Moon for a ploughman’s lunch.”
“Won’t that upset Mrs. Silas?”
“Oh Mrs. Silas will have been too busy this morning with airing ‘The Nest’ for me, on top of her own chores, to make Mr. Silas luncheon.”
They motor past a lovely old church set well back from the road behind a low snow capped brick wall.
“That’s St Andrew’s*********.” Sylvia points out. “It’s far grander than one might expect of a local parish church in a farming village of this size. I’ll show it to you tomorrow before I motor you into Sudbury to catch the LNER********** back to London. I’m sorry, Lettice darling. I feel a bit beastly, not taking you back to London myself and all, after I invited you up here.”
“It was always part of the plan, Sylvia.” Lettice assures her. “That I would take the railway back to London. You were stopping up here for a week or so. I was only ever coming for the night, so it isn’t like I’m weighed down by luggage, with only my overnight valise and a brolly to return home with.”
They motor on just a little further, past a gentle bend in the road.
“Here we are then.” Sylvia says as they slow down and pull up to an old and dilapidated farmer’s gate in a rather scrappy looking hedgerow. Leaving the motor in park with the engine running, she gets out.
Lettice watches Sylvia. Dressed in an oversized and rather mannish soft brown velvet cloche pulled low over her head and a luxuriously thick half-length mink fur coat synched at the waist with a wide leather belt with the collar turned up to shelter her from the winter winds of Essex as they slice across the fallow fields, she looks tall and almost androgenous. This look is perpetuated by the fact that she is wearing a pair of roomy Oxford bags***********. Lettice smiles to herself as she remembers her maid at Cavendish Mews, Edith’s, scandalised look when she answered the front door to Sylvia dressed this way. “Don’t worry my dear,” she had assured poor Edith as she stood in the entrance hall, eyes agog at the sight of a woman in slacks. “They’re all the rage in Berlin!”, as if that would allay Edith’s concerns.
Sylvia walks up and unlatches the gate which is loosely tethered closed with a rusty old chain and opens it before getting back into the Lea Francis and driving it forward up a boggy driveway of sorts created by two rutted tracks made by motorcar tyres in the mud. Putting the car back into park again, she gets out and closes the gate behind them, reaffixing the old chain. Getting back into the motor, Sylvia catches Lettice’s surprised look. “You don’t think I want to alert people to the fact that there is a house hidden just up there behind that copse, do you, Lettice darling?” she asks. She smiles a smile that is a mixture of smugness and cheekiness. “It isn’t called a retreat for nothing, you know.”
They motor up the rutted track through the dusting of snow and into the copse. Lettice gasps with amazement as a smart red brick cottage with mullioned windows, several large chimneys and a sharply angled slate roof built in the picturesque British Arts and Crafts style of Charles Voysey************ begins to emerge from behind the trees.
“You’d never guess this was here, Sylvia darling.” Lettice exclaims.
“Now you see why I call it, ‘The Nest’.” Sylvia says knowingly, her red lipstick painted mouth breaking into a broad and proud smile as they motor up to the front of the house, where Lettice can see the wintery beginnings of a neat, landscaped cottage garden. “It’s so perfectly coddled amidst the trees. Welcome!” She brakes and turns the engine off.
As Lettice hauls her blue leather overnight valise out of the maroon leather back seat, she looks up at the façade and remarks, “It’s so lovely and compact.”
“Oh, don’t be fooled, Lettice darling.” Sylvia replies. “Sydney Castle************* is an absolute whizz at making as much as he can out of even the smallest space. It may look modest, but ‘The Nest’ has four bedrooms, all with their own private bathrooms, so my American friends from New York won’t complain about the archaic plumbing like they do about the big old houses they stay in over here: sharing bathrooms or worse yet, not having any indoor plumbing at all!” She bends down and lifts a terracotta plant pot with a dormant shrub of some kind in it and fishes in its saucer underneath, withdrawing a key. She puts the key in the door and unlocks it. “Come along inside, Lettice darling. Mrs. Silas will have turned on the central heating and stoked the fires in the main rooms already, so it will be nice and toasty.”
“Central heating!” Lettice exclaims. “What bliss!”
A short while later, after being shown to her spacious bedroom upstairs under the steeply slanted roof, unpacking her case, freshening up in the modest adjoining ensuite bathroom and changing from her tweed travelling clothes and Burberry macintosh************** into a rose and marone silk georgette knife pleated frock, Lettice makes her way back downstairs to the cosy drawing room, where she finds Sylvia, still dressed in her Oxford bags, but now accessorised stylishly with a pair of heels rather than boots, and a smart white silk blouse with a cross over frill, draped languidly in a roomy white lounge chair, smoking one of her Craven “A”*************** cigarettes pleasurably.
“Is this one of your clever Gerald’s outfits, Lettice Darling?” Sylvia asks, blowing out a plume of pale grey cigarette smoke into the air above her head as she appraises her guest.
Released from beneath her over-sized brown velvet cloche, Sylvia’s black dyed sharp bob sits neatly about her angular face. She wears no necklace or earrings, and only the large aquamarine and diamond cluster ring on her left middle finger on her elegant pianist’s hands. As with the drive up, Sylvia’s face is caked with a thick layer of white makeup which she has simply touched up and reapplied after any damage incurred enroute, her red painted lips the only colour afforded her in her entire outfit aside from the cool blue of the aquamarine. As she lounges lazily, she almost blends into Syrie Maugham’s shades of white.
“Yes, it is, Sylvia.” Lettice replies, doing a pirouette which causes the skirt of pleats to fly out prettily. When she stops, she notices a faceted glass vase of tulips on a low black japanned oriental coffee table. “Tulips!” she remarks. “In winter! Will your home never cease to amaze?”
Sylvia takes a long drag on her cigarette, the paper crackling as she does, before stubbing it out into the chrome smoker’s stand next to her chair and blowing out a final plume of acrid cigarette smoke. “They’re freshly in from Mrs. Silas. Mr. Silas is a flower grower, selling flowers to stallholders in Covent Garden, so he has quite a few greenhouses. Coffee?” She indicates to a dainty blue and white patterned Nipponese**************** eggshell porcelain***************** coffee set next to the vase, set upon a silver salver.
“Thank you.” Lettice says, picking up a cup and pouring herself some coffee before adding sugar and milk.
“Sadly, the house doesn’t amaze when it comes to this room, Lettice darling.” Sylvia mutters disappointedly. “Which of course is one of the reasons I invited you here.”
Lettice looks about the room, which is designed in the prevailingly fashionable Arts and Crafts country style of heavy wooden pieces intermixed with the cleaner and more modern lines of the Modernist movement which is slowly taking hold. The room is dominated as she would expect by a grand wooden piano. The sleek lounge is white, whilst oriental tables, lacquered and japanned sit around them on the blue and gold carpet Sylvia replaced Syrie Maugham’s white one with. The chrome pillar smoker’s stand standing next to Sylvia’s lounge chair gleams in the illumination from the overhead pendant lights. The wall behind her is dominated by a large black and cream marble open fireplace in which a fire, laid by Mrs. Silas a little earlier, crackles contentedly.
“I see what you mean by your love of blue and white porcelain.” Lettice remarks as she admires a pair of large bulbous Japanese blue and white urn flanking the fireplace.
“It’s not quite as fine a collection as Adelinda Gifford,” Sylvia acknowledges with a wave of her hand. “However, I do have a few nice pieces, even if I do say so myself.”
“I’d say more than a few, Sylvia.” Lettice counters.
“But you see what I mean by Mrs. Maugham’s rather uninspiring white walls.” Sylvia goes on.
“Oh,” Lettice remarks with an awkward chuckle. “The paper is rather lovely.” She walks up to it and runs her hand over the delicate embossed white diamond shapes covering the paper.
“It’s insipid!” Sylvia retorts bitterly. “All that money wasted on shades of white. And that’s why I want you to inject this room with drama and colour, Lettice darling!”
Lettice takes a seat in the chair opposite Sylvia and places her dainty demitasse****************** on the round table at her right. She looks up at the white feature wall into which the large marble fireplace is built. There are no paintings hanging on it, other than a single watercolour landscape in a gilded frame above the mantle, highlighting the vast expanse of space. She sighs deeply. “A feature wall is far greater than a demilune console table,” Lettice cautions her new friend, anxious not to disappoint her if she says no. “It’s such a large space.”
“And that’s why I want you to paint it, Lettice darling!” Sylvia goes on. “It’s the perfect canvas for you to be bright and bold!” she enthuses. “Release that inner artiste that I know is within you.”
Lettice sighs even more deeply and stares up at the offending wall. “What were you thinking, Sylvia darling?”
“What were you thinking, Lettice darling?” Sylvia answers her friend’s question with a question.
Lettice doesn’t answer straight away as she looks up at the wall and then around the room, to see where the light comes from. Large and long mullioned windows imbedded into white painted wooden panelling overlook the front garden along the wall opposite the fireplace, whilst more wooden panelling, painted white by Syrie Maugham grace the remaining two narrower walls. Lettice considers a pair of very beautiful blue and white oriental lidded ginger jars featuring flowers that stand at either end of the mantle shelf. “Can you get your Mr. Silas to paint the wall a flat navy blue?” she asks Sylvia.
“Either him or another local.” Sylvia agrees. “If I ask nicely. Why?”
“Well, I don’t think I’d like to paint the entire expanse of wall myself,” Lettice replies. “But I might consider painting a pattern by hand over the top of a darker colour if someone could paint the base layer for me.”
“Consider it done! And, what would that pattern look like, Lettice darling?” Sylvia asks, leaning forward in anticipation, barely daring to breathe in case she frightens Lettice off the idea of painting the wall.
“I’d take inspiration from your blue and white porcelain.” Lettice ruminates aloud as she stares at the ginger jars and two smaller vases that flank a tiny vibrant green Bakelite******************* mantle clock that sits in the middle of the wide mantlepiece. “But white on blue perhaps, rather than blue on white, with a gilded element.” Her eyes begin to glisten with excitement and enthusiasm as her lips turn into a smile. “Something from the garden perhaps. Flowers, or leaves.” She gasps. “Feathers!”
“Well, this is ‘The Nest’, Lettice darling.” Sylvia remarks, scarcely daring to hope. “Of course,” she adds with twinkling eyes and a wily smile. “If you take my job on, as I hope you will, Lettice, I’ll have a word with my friend. She’s a senior journalistic contributor and editor at The Lady********************, and I know she’d love to get in here with her best photographer and report an exclusive on Sylvia Fordyce’s secluded country retreat, decorated by Syrie Maugham and Lettice Chetwynd.” She pauses. “Or shall we make that decorated by Lettice Chetwynd and Syrie Maugham?”
“Are you trying to take a leaf out of Alisdair Gifford’s book to curry favour, Sylvia darling?”
“Well, I had rather heard from Nettie that a splash of publicity wouldn’t hurt as an incentive.” Sylvia’s smile widens and her eyes glitter with delight. “Call it my trump card, if you like, Lettice darling.”
“You said you were going away. Could I borrow a few choice pieces of your blue and white porcelain whilst you are gone, to give me inspiration?”
“Of course, Lettice darling! You may have full run of ‘The Nest’ if you wish. Whatever you like.”
“Well, it would be rather fun.” Lettice muses. “A whole wall to hand paint and decorate.”
“Of course it would.” Sylvia purrs.
“And I do like big and bold statements.”
“Which is one of the many reasons I asked you to take on my little project, Lettice darling.”
Lettice doesn’t answer straight away, and the air quickly grows thick with Sylvia’s anticipation as she waits for Lettice’s reply with baited breath.
“Very well Sylvia. I’ll do it!”
“Oh hoorah!” Sylvia applauds, clasping her elegant long fingers together in delight. “Thank you, Lettice darling! I knew I could count on you.”
“Let’s sit down and talk about the logistics of this. When did you say you would be touring the provinces again?”
*Belchamp St Paul is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, England. The village is five miles west of Sudbury, Suffolk, and 23 miles northeast of the county town, Chelmsford.
**Lea and G. I. Francis started the business in Coventry in 1895. They branched out into car manufacturing in 1903 and motorcycles in 1911. Lea-Francis built cars under licence for the Singer company. In 1919, they started to build their own cars from bought-in components. From 1922, Lea-Francis formed a business relationship with Vulcan of Southport sharing manufacturing and dealers. Vulcan supplied bodies to Lea-Francis and in return received gearboxes and steering gear. Two six-cylinder Vulcan-designed and manufactured cars were marketed as Lea-Francis 14/40 and 16/60 as well as Vulcans. The association ended in 1928 when Vulcan stopped making cars. The company had a chequered history with some notable motorcycles and cars, but financial difficulties surfaced on a regular basis. The Hillfields site was abandoned in 1937 when it was sold by the receiver and a new company, under a slightly different name, moved to Much Park Street in Coventry. It survived there until 1962 when the company finally closed.
***The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington in London, built in the style of an ancient amphitheatre. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941.
****Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.
*****In the Eighteenth Century, anyone who took a headlong fall from a horse was said to have fallen “neck and crop”. “Come a cropper” was a colloquial way of describing a “neck and crop” fall, and is first cited in Robert S. Surtees' Ask Mamma, 1858. We now use the term for failing badly at something.
******The Half Moon Inn is a pretty thatched tavern overlooking Belchamp St Paul’s village green. With low beams and an old log fire it maintains most of the original features of the current Georgian era building. Originally built in the early Sixteenth Century, The Half Moon has been at the centre of Belchamp St Paul village life for more than four hundred years.
*******The first standard public telephone kiosk introduced by the United Kingdom Post Office was produced in concrete in 1921 and was designated K1 (Kiosk No.1). The Post Office had taken over almost all of the country's telephone network in 1912. The red telephone box K1 (Kiosk No.2), was the result of a competition in 1924 to design a kiosk that would be acceptable to the London Metropolitan Boroughs which had hitherto resisted the Post Office's effort to erect K1 kiosks on their streets.
********Chippenham is a market town in north-west Wiltshire, England. It lies thirteen miles north-east of Bath, eighty-six miles west of London and is near the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
*********It is not known when the first church was built on the sight that today houses St Andrew’s Church of England in Belchamp St Paul. There was a church, however when the Dean of St Paul's, Ralph de Dicto, visited Belchamp on the 15th of January 1181. This early Norman church consisted of a nave with north and south doorways and a chancel. It was dedicated in honour of St Andrew the Apostle who is the patron saint of missionaries, mariners and fishermen. All churches dedicated in honour of St Andrew are usually near rivers. It would seem that after the visitation of Dean William Say in 1458 a major rebuilding of the church took place which was completed in the year 1490. The building which we now see consists of a chancel, nave, north aisle, tower and south porch. The roof dates from 1490 and is of the trussed rafter, beam type, often found in Essex churches.
**********The first Sudbury station was built by the Colchester, Stour Valley, Sudbury & Halstead Railway, which even before the opening on 30 July 1849. A railway line has existed there ever since and continues to run today. It is the northern terminus of the Gainsborough Line, a branch off the Great Eastern Main Line in the East of England, serving the town of Sudbury, Suffolk. In 1925 at the time this story is set, the railway would have been run by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER).
***********Oxford bags were a loose-fitting baggy form of trousers favoured by members of the University of Oxford, especially undergraduates, in England from the mid-1920s to around the 1950s. The style had a more general influence outside the university, including in America, but has been somewhat out of fashion since then. It is sometimes said that the style originated from a ban in 1924 on the wearing of plus fours by Oxford (and Cambridge) undergraduates at lectures. The bagginess allegedly allowed plus fours to be hidden underneath – but the argument is undermined by the fact that the trousers (especially in the early years) were not sufficiently voluminous for this to be done with any success. The original trousers were 22–23 inches (56–58 cm) in circumference at the bottoms but became increasingly larger to 44 inches (110 cm) or more, possibly due to a misunderstanding of the measurement as the width rather than circumference.
************Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in the Arts and Crafts style and he made important contribution to the Modern Style, and was recognized by the seminal The Studio magazine.
*************Sydney Ernest Castle was born in Battersea in July 1883. He trained with H. W. Edwards, a surveyor and worked as chief assistant to Arthur Jessop Hardwick (1867 - 1948) before establishing his own practice in London in 1908. From 1908 to 1918 he was in partnership with Gerald Warren (1881-1936) as Castle & Warren. He worked on St. George's Hill Estate in Weybridge, Surrey with Walter George Tarrant (1875-1942). Castle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1925. He designed many buildings, including the Christian Association building in Clapham, a school in Balham and a private hotel in the Old Brompton Road, as well as many private residences throughout Britain. His firm’s address in 1926, when this story is set was 40, Albemarle Street, Piccadilly. He died in Wandsworth in March 1955.
**************Thomas Burberry established Burberry in Basingstoke in 1856 at just twenty-one years old, founded on the principle that clothing should be designed to protect people from the British weather. A few years later in 1879 he invented gaberdine, a breathable wearable and hardwearing fabric that revolutionised rainwear. The Burberry trench coat was invented during the First World War with epaulettes used to suspend military equipment, but in the inter-war years, with the Burberry check registered as a trademark and introduced as lining to their rainwear, it became a luxury brand for the wealthy.
***************Craven A (stylized as Craven "A") is a British brand of cigarettes, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco. Originally founded and produced by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 until merging with Rothmans International in 1972, who then produced the brand until Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999. The cigarette brand is named after the third Earl of Craven, after the "Craven Mixture", a tobacco blend formulated for the 3rd Earl in the 1860s by tobacconist Don José Joaquin Carreras.
****************Nipponese is the adjective used when relating to a characteristic of Japan or its people or their culture or language. It was used predominantly before the Second World War, and goods exported from Japan were marked Nipon. The term Japanese became the common adjective used after the war, making a pivotal moment of change in Japan’s history after the atomic bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
*****************Eggshell porcelain is actually a type of Chinese porcelain characterized by an excessively thin body under the glaze. It often had decoration engraved on it before firing that, like a watermark in paper, was visible only when held to the light; such decoration is called anhua, meaning literally “secret language.” It is very delicate and fragile.
******************A demitasse is a small coffee cup. It was the French, in the 1800s, who originated the demitasse and turned after-dinner coffee drinking into an art. Demitasse means “half-cup.” The cups are, typically, half the size of a regular coffee cup, holding two to three ounces of beverage.
*******************Bakelite, was the first plastic made from synthetic components. Patented on December 7, 1909, the creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewellery, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms. A plethora of items were manufactured using Bakelite in the 1920s and 1930s.
********************The Lady is one of Britain's longest-running women's magazines. It has been in continuous publication since 1885 and is based in London. It is particularly notable for its classified advertisements for domestic service and child care; it also has extensive listings of holiday properties.
This 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Sylvia’s roomy Art Deco cream satin armchairs are made by Jai Yi Miniatures who specialise in high end miniature furniture. The black japanned coffee table and round occasional table with their gilded patterns are vintage pieces I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom.
The chrome Art Deco smoker’s stand is a Shackman miniature from the 1970s and is quite rare. I bought it from a dealer in America via E-Bay.
The three toned marble fireplace is genuinely made from marble and is remarkably heavy for its size. It, the two brass fire dogs and filagree fireplace fender come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop, as do the two blue and white vases and the two blue and white gilt ginger jars on the mantle. Also on the mantle stands a little green and gold Art Deco clock, which is a 1:12 artisan miniature made by Hall’s Miniature Clocks, supplied through Doreen Jeffries Small Wonders Miniatures in England.
The two large blue and white urns flanking the fireplace are Eighteenth Century Chinese jars that I bought as part of a large job lot of small oriental pieces of porcelain, pottery and glass from an auction house many years ago.
The tiny blue and white coffee set with coffee pot, creamer, sugar bowl and demitasse cups in the foreground on the coffee table are all hand painted. I acquired them from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop. The silver tray the coffee pot, creamer and sugar bowl stand on also comes from there. The faceted glass vase on the coffee table is an artisan miniature made from real glass. It comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The tulips in the vase are very realistic looking. Made of polymer clay they are moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. They are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.
The silver cigarette lighter and the packet of Craven “A” cigarettes on the table were made with great attention to detail by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire. The Swan Vesta’s matches sitting in the holder on the smoker’s stand also come from Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures.
The painting above the mantlepiece is a 1:12 artisan piece made by Amber’s Miniatures in the United States.
The blue and white carpet interwoven with gold I acquired through an online stockist of 1;12 miniatures on E-Bay.
The embossed chequered wallpaper is art paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
