Designs for Living

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.

Lettice is sitting at her Hepplewhite desk next to the fire in her drawing room. On her desk sit two brightly coloured interior designs she has created for her new client, American film actress Wanetta Ward, using her watercolours and pencils. Whilst she works away, her old childhood chum, Gerald, also a member of the aristocracy who has tried to gain some independence from his family by designing gowns from a shop in Grosvenor Street, is sitting in one of her Art Deco tub arm chairs contentedly sewing beads onto his and Lettice’s friend, Margot de Virre’s, wedding dress bodice. Both have cups of tea from the pot Lettice’s maid, Edith, keeps replenishing.

“You sound displeased, Lettuce Leaf,” Gerald responds to a disgruntled huff from Lettice, drawing out his thread as he speaks. “What’s the matter?”

“Calling me that name doesn’t help, Gerald,” she mutters crossly. “I keep telling you, we aren’t children anymore. I hated it then, so imagine how much I detest it now?”

“Oh! We are techy tonight!” Gerald remarks without looking up as he pushes his needle back into the centre of a crystal bead. He pauses and looks up. “I’m sorry.” He pouts dramatically. “Friends again?”

Lettice looks over at him disgruntledly, but at the sight of her friend’s rather comical expression of remorse, she sighs, smiles and then laughs tiredly. “Yes Gerald.”

“So,” he looks over at the desktop littered with Lettice’s paints and jugs of murky water with brushes sticking out of them. “What’s wrong then?”

“It’s these designs!” She flicks her hands irritably at the offending pieces of paper and gives them a contemptuous look. “I’m not happy with them. Miss Ward says yellow is her favourite colour, yet I can’t quite manage yellow walls with blue furnishings.” She holds up a design of a music room with grand piano in yellow with blue accents.

“Oh,” Gerald’s eyes open widely as he nods. “Yes, I do begin to see what you mean. Well, it’s dramatic, I’ll say that.”

“It’s vulgar, is what it is.” She picks up her paint brush again, although is dumbfounded as to what to do to improve the image, other than to screw it up and start again, as she stares at the yellow wash spread across the page like a huge bruise.

“Well, she is an actress, darling.” Gerald remarks, going back to his sewing. “And part of the American mi…”

“Oh, don’t you start on the mediocre middle-classes again!” she interrupts, wagging her brush at him threateningly. “I scolded Margot when we were shopping at Selfridges last week. She sounded just like you.”

“Oh, bully for Margot!” Gerald smiles contentedly, taking up another bead, casting in onto his thread and plunging it into the fabric of the bodice. “I really must congratulate her next time I see her.”

“You’re a bad influence on her, with your overt snobbery.”

“It is true,” Gerald sighs. “But I can’t help it. It’s just part of my charm.” He bats his eyelashes across at his friend and smiles. “Anyway, you are the one who called Miss Ward gauche, so shouldn’t her home reflect a little of that gaudy, showy moving picture actress personality of hers?”

“Not if I’m designing it, Gerald. I have a reputation of exceptionally good taste to uphold.” She looks at her second design of a dining room, also with yellow walls. “Miss Ward be damned! Anyway Gerald, you of all people shouldn’t complain about the middle classes.”

Gerald sighs and drops the beaded bodice into his lap, whilst still keeping a firm hold of his needle. “That too is true, my darling. If it were not for Mrs. Hatchett and her coterie, well…”

“See,” Lettice smiles. “Did I not say that she would be the making of your couture house?”

“Hardly!” he retorts, giving her a shocked look.

“What? Aren’t she and her friends putting in countless orders for day dresses, tea gowns and evening frocks?”

“Oh they are!” he remarks. “But,” He exhales disappointedly. “Up-and-coming middle-class mediocrity Mrs Hatchett and her friends’ outfits are hardly going to make the pages of the Tattler or Vogue, are they? And even their money can’t make Grosvenor Street pay for itself. A day dress suitable for a Surrey village fête is hardly going to cost what a stunning piece of couture,” He holds up the exquisitely embroidered fabric. “For the London Season will. Why else do you suppose I’m sitting here embroidering Margot’s bodice in your Mayfair drawing room and not at home in Soho?”

“I assume because you enjoy my company.” Lettice teases with a smile.

“Oh I do darling,” Gerald says in earnest. “But I also love the fact that here I don’t have to pay the electricity bill.” He glances up at the glittering chandelier above them casting prisms across the white painted ceiling with its Art Deco cornicing.

“Nor the grocer’s bill,” Lettice smirks with a friendly chuckle, indicating to the plates on the black japanned coffee table containing the remnants of one of Edith’s chocolate cakes.

“Nor the wine merchant’s bill. The largesse of one’s friends is always welcome.”

Lettice looks back sadly at her friend. “Have you asked your father about an increase to your allowance, or perhaps an advance?” she asks hopefully.

“It isn’t as easy as that. I’m not you, Lettice.”

“I’ll have you know Gerald, that I get constant lectures from Pater about designing for my own class if I must insist on designing anything, and Mater just wants me to throw it all away and marry some dull member of the peerage, live in the country and have a dozen children.”

“A dozen?”

“Well at least three, like Lally.”

“Your sister is expecting again?”

“Yes, due in February, and Mummy is always comparing me to my propagating older sister, lording it over me that ‘Lally is married’, unlike me, and ‘Lally has children’, unlike me! She’s convinced my life is unfulfilled. I’m a girl, and I’m the youngest child and…”

“And you have your father wrapped around your little finger.” Gerald counters with a knowing look.

“Well,” Lettice blushes. “I can’t deny that I do seem to have some influence over the Pater.”

“Whereas I am just the second son: the spare.”

“Well thankfully you aren’t the heir, Gerald.” Lettice gives him a knowing look. “Otherwise, you would have to fulfil your duty to carry on the family line with some poor little debutante who must never know that her husband…”

“Is sexually inverted.” Gerald finishes Lettice’s sentence discreetly, stabbing the fabric with his needle. “Yes, I know that doesn’t help my cause in father’s eyes, any more than my wish to sew frocks for ladies.”

“At least you don’t wear them, revel in that fact and have photographic proof, unlike dear Cecil* does.”

“Nonetheless, being the second son, a fashion designer and a deviant,” Gerald blushes, looking towards the dining room, making sure that Lettice’s maid, Edith, isn’t listening at the green baize door. “I’m a disappointment, through and through. And my obvious shortfalls do not endear me to Father.”

“You asked him then?” Lettice asks with defeat. When Gerald nods in assent she adds, “Not even an advance?”

“Not a bean.”

“That’s so unfair.”

“My father isn’t your father, Lettice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we might be neighbours, but your father owns most of the neighbourhood. Your father is the Viscount of Wrexham with a fine estate, which Leslie has helped to modernise, thank goodness.” He raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Whilst my father is just Sir Bruton, a baron – an obstinate and old fashioned one, and an impecunious one at that – with a leaky roofed manor house on a plot of land that is getting smaller as he slowly sells it off. The golden pre-war days are gone, yet Father won’t face up to facts.”

“Poor Gerald,” Lettice says, standing up and putting a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder. Looking down at the beautifully beaded bodice in Gerald’s lap she continues, “Well, let’s hope that Margot’s wedding dress heralds better times for you as well as her and Dickie. At least this gown will appear in the Tattler, if nowhere else, and that means good business for you. That’s a beautiful pattern you are embroidering.”

“Thank you darling.” Gerald smiles as he looks down at his own work. Suddenly he sits up in his seat. “That’s it!”

“What’s it, Gerald?” Lettice looks up from her paintings in concern.

“Patterns!” He looks at her excitedly. “Did you not say Miss Ward was also interested in bold patterns?”

“Yes Gerald. What of it?”

“And did I not see you when I was here last week, flicking through some wallpaper samples?” He clambers up from his seat, carefully putting the beaded bodice aside.

“You did Gerald.” Lettice looks at him questioningly.

“The combination of blue and yellow is jarring when yellow is the main colour.” He gesticulates around him dramatically. “What if you swap it around? I’m sure there was a strong Prussian blue wallpaper amongst the samples: one that had a bold pattern highlighted in gold.”

“You’re right Gerald!” Lettice agrees excitedly. “It was a fan pattern! Of course! I’ve been looking at this the wrong way around! Paper the walls rather than paint them! What a dullard I am!” She grabs up her brush and dunks it into the jug of murky water.

“No! No! Don’t change your pictures!” Gerald gasps, anxiously hurrying around to Lettice’s desk and staying her elegant hand. “Use them. Show Miss Ward how jarring yellow is, and then pull out the paper. Show her how luxurious it is, and you’ll easily be able to convince her that it’s the right choice.”

“It is a bold pattern…”

“Yet an elegant one.”

“And it’s certainly glamorous.”

“And fans are very oriental, darling.” Gerald bats his eyelashes coquettishly as he pretends to hide behind an imaginary fan.”

“Oh Gerald!” Lettice giggles. “What would I do without you?”

“You’d never be able to decorate Miss Ward’s flat, that’s certain!” he smiles at his friend’s glittering eyes and gentle grin as she contemplates the possibilities he has helped instil in her mind.

*Cecil Beaton was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as an Oscar winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. Although he had relationships with women including actress Greta Garbo, he was a well-known homosexual.

For anyone who follows my photostream, you will know that I collect and photograph 1:12 size miniatures, so although it may not necessarily look like it, but this cluttered desk is actually covered in 1:12 size artisan miniatures and the desk itself is too. All are from my collection of miniatures.

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

Lettice’s Hepplewhite drop-drawer bureau and chair are beautifully and artfully made by J.B.M. miniatures. Both the bureau and chair are made of black japanned wood which have been hand painted with chinoiserie designs, even down the arms of the chair and inside the bureau. The chair set has a rattan seat, which has also been hand woven.

On the top of the Hepplewhite bureau stand three real miniature photos in frames including an Edwardian silver frame, a Victorian brass frame and an Art Deco blue Bakelite and glass frame. The latter comes from Doreen Jenkins’ Small Wonders Miniatures in England, whilst the other two come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House, also in England. The photos themselves are all real photos, produced to high standards in 1:12 size on photographic paper by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire.

The watercolour paint set, brushes, and Limoges style jugs (two of a set of three) also come from Melody Jane Dolls’ House. So too do the pencils, which are one millimetre wide and two centimetres long.

Also on the desk, are some 1:12 artisan miniature ink bottles, a roller, a blotter, a letter opener and letter rack, all made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures. The ink bottles are made from tiny faceted crystal beads and have sterling silver bottoms and lids. The ink blotter, sitting behind the paint box and next to the jug’s handle is sterling silver too and has a blotter made of real black felt, cut meticulously to size to fit snugly inside the frame. The letter opener and roller are also sterling silver. The letter rack which contains some 1:12 size correspondence, is brass. Like the other pieces, it is also made by the Little Green Workshop.

Lettice’s two interior design paintings are 1920s designs. They are sourced from reference material particular to Art Deco interior design in Britain in the 1920s.

The fireplace appearing just to the right of the photograph is a 1:12 miniature resin Art Deco fireplace on which stands an Art Deco metal clock hand painted with wonderful detail by British miniature artisan Victoria Fasken.

The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

Posted by raaen99 on 2021-07-11 06:51:14

Tagged: , watercolour paints , watercolours , brush , jug , chair , paintbrush , picture , painting , bureau , Hepplewhite bureau , Hepplewhite chair , teacup , blotter , inkwell , ink bottle , Art Deco , letter wrack , letter , mail , letters , correspondence , lid , crystal , sterling silver , silver , brass , roller , pencil , clock , photo , photo frame , frame , miniature , Art Deco wallpaper , Hepplewhite furniture , desk , flat , drawing room , fireplace , wallpaper , 1:12 , 1:12 scale , dollhouse miniature , dollhouse , toy , antique , artisan , hand made , hand made dollhouse miniature , furniture , Edwardian , dollhouse furniture , interior , tabletop , tabletop photography , miniature room , diorama , tableau