Saxon Henry's Blog, page 13

An Unsung Hero of Modern Design

A “Playboy” magazine cover from 1961 featuring modernism’s great designers. Edward Wormley is second from the left.

Resurrecting pivotal eras in design is irresistible to vanguards who understand that sometimes the best place to begin looking into the future is to take a glance back in time. The resurgence of the mid-century aesthetic, which defined the quietly sexy fifties and less subdued sixties, is proof that if vision and quality existed there is great material to mine. It’s interesting...

One Special Summer with Jackie O

Jacqueline Kennedy poses in front of the Taj Mahal. Photo courtesy JFK Library.

Hegel’s caveat “history teaches us nothing” may be relevant in cultural and philosophical realities but in the design world the statement is far from succinct. No one knew this more resolutely than Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, or as we have come to affectionately call her Jackie O.

Jackie readies to toss her bouquet at her wedding JFK; photograph by Toni Frissell courtesy of WikiMedia.

She was a style-sette...

Timothy Oulton Design Adventurer

W.E. Johns penned more than 100 books featuring adventures by Biggles.

“As the momentous words ‘England is now, therefore, in a state of war with Germany’ came somberly over the radio, Major James Bigglesworth, D.S.O., better known as Biggles, switched off the instrument and turned to face his friends, Captain the Honourable Algernon Lacey, M.C., and ‘Ginger’ Hebblethwaite. There was a peculiar smile on his face.”

Thus begins Captain W.E. Johns’s YA novel Biggles in the Baltic, one of over 1...

We’ll Never Be Royals

…but we can serve dinner as if we are, thanks to Bernardaud!

Nest Nest Nest features the Alliage pattern.

As I write this, I can feel the design energy draining from the Americas as the movers-and-shakers in our industry trek across the Atlantic to Paris for Maison & Objet. During the last iteration of the French fair, I followed the savvy coverage by Tamara Matthews Stephenson, and was particularly enthralled by her trending categories “tabletop explosion” and “return to classic design.” The...

Furnishing Pastimes of Henry VIII

The West (Medieval) Front of Hampton Court Palace.

As I mentioned in my last Improvateur article presenting a brief history of Hampton Court Palace, I launched into a furnishings fantasy when I heard the narrators and experts interviewed in the PBS documentary Secrets of Henry VIII’s Palace reveal anecdotes illustrating life within the palace walls during the Tudor king’s reign.

The Cartoon Gallery, looking east, hung with copies of the Raphael Cartoons. Built for King William III by Sir Chri...

Decorating Hampton Court Palace

The West (Medieval) Front of Hampton Court Palace.

The premise of this article and the next one I’ll post here on Improvateur (next week) began with a rather capriciousquestion: how would it feel to decorate Hampton Court Palace in a way that if the luminaries in Henry VIII’s court were alive today they would applaud? I’m going to attempt to give the courtiers a nudge in the right direction, a theatrical mis-en-scene for their machinations, so stay tuned! Today, I’m setting the scene with a b...

Musing Through Classical Mythology

A bronze statue of Mercury atop a fountain in the rotunda of the National Gallery of Art, after Giovanni Bologna. Image Saxon Henry.

As I was strolling through the National Gallery of Art a week and a half ago, marveling at the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses involved in their adventures around nearly every corner, I was reminded of a wonderful summer I once spent immersed in mythology. The names forming the cast of characters came rushing back as I spotted a marble sculpture of a Nereid...

The Peacock Room à la Whistler

James Whistler’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother),” a.k.a.“Whistler’s Mother.”

The most recognizable painting by artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler might lead you to believe he was as Puritan as his upbringing. The fact he could render such a realistic homage to piety in Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother)—better known as Whistler’s Mother—does seem to further the illusion that he was bleak to the battlements of his bei...

The Anecdotal Leonardo da Vinci

The well-dressed da Vinci exhibit attendee, yours truly!

I’m often amazed at how serendipity flows through life. This past April, I traveled to Europe to attend the Salone del Mobile in Milan and The Decorative Fair in London, never imagining my tale of these two cities would intertwine within one blog post given the furnishings in Milan were as modern as modern can be and the wares in London were anything but. In the end, it wasn’t design that intermingled them; it was literary history, as i...

Cinderella in the South of France

Poor Cinderella, whose work is never done.

“From morning until night, Cinderella worked very hard. She carried water, got the fire going, cooked, cleaned, and washed. The girl never had a moment’s rest. Her evil stepmother and stepsisters wouldn’t even let her sleep in her own bed at night. Instead, they made her lie down near the fire. And so she was always covered in dust and ash. The sisters cackled and said, ‘No wonder she’s called Cinderella.’”

Thus begins the woeful fairy tale that mode...