A wonderful Lieder concert in a lovely church with dinner outside after the concert in the south of France in 1960. A Jaegar royal blue blazer and dog tooth white and navy skirt bought in the early 1960s. Mille feuille from the patisserie on Mount St. Joseph, Montreal, and delicious sandwiches in a delicatessen in Westmount, Montreal in late 1960s. Bouillabaisse by the sea outside of Marseille in 1960, and the very chic Inigo Jones Restaurant in Covent Garden, London in 1972.
FOR THE BEST
I realized after reading Susan Branch’s Martha’s Vineyard Isle of Dreams that so many good things can come out of a divorce. She bought a lovely cottage on Martha’s Vineyard and became a full time writer. Then I realized that so many good things came out of my divorce. My attorney got me the property allowing me to buy my flat at 12 Campden Hill Gardens in Kensington so that my daughter could go to St. Mary Abbots Church of England School; then we moved to Vancouver, Canada where I bought a condo and my daughter had a private education in state schools in West Vancouver and the British Properties! I then moved to Sherman Oaks in California where I bought a very nice condo, and when I sold it I paid off debt accrued when my daughter went to Smith College. I now rent from a friend a lovely tiny cottage with my studio next door—what more could I want? And if I ever have to move i shall buy a barn and convert it into a kitchen/dining room/living room/study/studio with a separate bedroom, laundry room and bathroom! Everything is for the best!
BALENCIAGA BY D.V.
In Diana Vreeland’s D.V. she writes about Balenciaga. “He was the greatest dressmaker who ever lived. … If a woman came in a Balenciaga dress, no other woman in the room existed. … You’ve never seen such colors—you’ve never seen such violets! My God, pink violets, blue violets! Suddenly you were in a nunnery, you were in a monastery.”
SMALL AND QUIET
Yesterday I realized that my work is small and quiet. And that realization is a godsend.
CHRIS LIBERTI
I have found a new artist for me—Chris Liberti. I really like his colors, his paintings. Elisabeth Larson likes his work too. I have a color reproduction of his work on my wall—I have no idea where it came from.
HOW COULD THAT BE
Today I just finished reading Killer Elite originally published as The Feather Men, and on one of the pages I read about the sister of one of my bosses in London. This has never happened to me before. I had met and visited her home with my boss. The chances of me reading that book were very very small. I then went to my bookshelves and found Montaillou—a book about the Cathars in the South West of France. My boss had given me this book many years ago. “Fiona Heathrow ‘80” was inscribed on the front page. She was a friend of my boss, and had been adopted. My boss told me that Fiona and a friend had visited a lady in the north of England—this lady turned out to be her real mother. The chances of them meeting like that were very very small.
REGRETS
A lovely little oil landscape that I wished I could have bought at a Bel Air garage sale—I couldn’t afford it! A lovely Fair Isle sweater at the Ventura thrift store—I didn’t have enough money!
A LIFE
I have just finished reading Patchwork: A Life Among Clothes by Claire Wilcox, Senior Curator of Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She wrote, “I want to say: we need to keep a watch on the years, We haven’t got forever.”
THE VERY BEST
An American friend saw a lady with the most beautiful emerald necklace at the opera in London. As they passed each other they said good evening, and the lady knew that he appreciated her necklace. On the day before my daughter’s wedding I saw a man with the most beautiful spaniel in Georgian Bath. As we passed each other we said hello, and he knew that I appreciated his dog. My parents stood looking through the gates of a stately home when the owner arrived with his dog. He asked if they would like to see his home, and of course they said yes.
JOHN PAWSON IN MALLORCA
Luciano Giubbilei is an Italian landscape and garden designer who three years ago bought the house of the late potter, Maria Antonia Carrió, in Mallorca. Six years ago John Pawson bought one of Carrió’s pieces. “She did that thing of saying, ‘Well, of course you wouldn’t want this plate … because it’s broken.’ And of course, having spent four years living in Japan, I thought, Well, I’ll have that one.”
theater memories
I remember sitting high up in the Gods in the Citizens Theater in Glasgow in the early 1960s watching Albert Finney in Pirandello’s Henry IV. The whole theater was filled with a magical energy. The next time this happened was in Los Angeles. I had gone to the market and was on my way home driving up Hilgard when my car almost on its own accord drove into the UCLA campus—there was no way I could have stopped it! So I bought a ticket for a student production of a play about Icarus. It was wonderful with two beautiful puppets being part of the performance and the audience too with a standing ovation.
FRENCH TASTE
Perhaps the first time I was fully aware of good taste was in France when I was 17. I was staying at Plantery outside of Uzes near Nimes when a lady came to a party on her bike—she was the epitome of simple, good taste. A few days later I was taken to visit her in her chateau where she lived with her husband and her nine year old son. Sitting in her living room I saw that the wall covering was the same as the fabric on her sofa. Both were from so long ago—so chic.
KENSINGTON
Mimi Thorisson’s husband, Oddur, writes in her blog Manger about reading Breakfast with Lucian—Lucian Freud is his favorite painter. “It demonstrates that he’s not introspective (which is comical given his family and famous name) but instructive.” I now have this book because of Oddur Thorisson. Freud’s house was in Kensington Church Street round the corner from Campden Hill Gardens where I had my Kensington flat.
ROBIN LANE FOX
I have just finished Thoughtful Gardening by Robin Lane Fox. He is a beautiful writer and I found myself ordering books by authors Alice Rawsthorn, Alain de Botton and Peter Beales. I ordered Alice Rawsthorn’s book on Yves Saint Laurent—in the documentary The September Issue the Yves Saint Laurent atelier comes over as very minimalist; Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness; and Peter Beales’s Classic Roses—many years ago I bought a book on roses that had belonged to one of the assistants at Burkard Nurseries in Pasadena. I no longer have it, I don’t remember what I did with it. I miss it.
EDMUND DE WAAL AGAIN
The weekend Wall Street Journal in early June mentions Edmund de Waal’s 2019 installation ‘library of exile’ at the British Museum—”an installation featuring 2,000 books by exiled writers from Ovid to the present, along with his own works in porcelain.” And de Waal speaks of needing silence for his new work inspired by poetry, “especially Han Shan, a Chinese poet associated with the Tang dynasty (619-907). Han Shan’s Cold Mountain verses are ‘beautiful, beautiful poems about what it is to be alone—to let the experiences of life just wash over you and keep going’.” During this coronavirus period many of us are experiencing long periods of being alone—de Waal is in his studio making his pottery; he says, “the heart of this has to be done in silence.”
Edmund de Waal’s library of exile
MORANDI
In 2018 at the UCLA Exhibit a very nice lady really liked my work. She told me how she had gone to Bologna; how I must go there to see the Morandi Museum! It is at 14 via Don Minzoni, 40124 Bologna, 39 051 649 6611. I have still to go to this museum but I have been in the Morandi Room on the way to the Sistine Chapel. This room is tiny and full of Giorgio Morandi’s still life paintings.
JOHN PAWSON IN LA
In Elle Decor’s May issue Giulia Molteni writes that she stayed at the Edition Hotel on Sunset in West Hollywood when they opened the Molteni flagship in Los Angeles. The hotel architect was John Pawson!
two wonderful exhibits
Being housebound with museums and galleries closed I thought of two wonderful exhibitions that I saw in the past: one in London and one in Pasadena. In London sometime in the 60s or 70s I saw an exhibit on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes with a huge banner hanging over the entrance to the exhibit or to a gallery. It was all so magnificent that ordinary life seemed so very ordinary in comparison. In Pasadena at the Huntington I saw such an exciting exhibit on the Bloomsbury Group in 2000 in the Huntington stables. The location was perfect with the colorful paintings next to Omega Workshop furniture, books and photographs. Two tour de force exhibitions!
THE RIGHT SPOT
I had an interesting experience putting a framed drawing on the wall in my cottage—it has now taken on a life of its own. I never realized just how important it is to have a framed piece actually hanging on the wall in a home or studio setting! And my friend David Barneda tried to find the right spot in his home for a painting—at last he found it et voila!
SOMETHING OF QUALITY
I love fortune cookies and I found one on the street the other day. It advised me to “treat myself to something of quality” so I did. I bought a wooden oil paint box by Julian of Paris. It is made of beech wood with a leather handle, brass hardware and a beech wood palette. It is similar to William Nicholson’s wooden oil paint box with his wooden palette that was on Fake or Fortune when they researched his still life Glass Jug with Pears.