Syrie Maugham was and remains an influential designer from a time replete with ‘society decorators’, including Sibyl Colefax, Nancy Lancaster, and Elsie de Wolfe. Sadly, little but a photographic record remains of Mrs. Maugham’s work, nicely showcased just now in Pauline Metcalf’s monograph, newly published by Acanthus Press.  No one in the world of design does not at least claim to know about Maugham’s ‘white on white’ room treatments, revolutionary in their departure from the gloom of late Victorian and Edwardian decorative schemes. For those of us who love early ‘30’s cinema, one cannot help but be reminded of Mrs. Maugham when watching Jean Harlow lounge in her white on white bedroom in the 1933 ‘Dinner at Eight’.  As Metcalf surmises, set designers Fred Hope and Hobe Erwin doubtless considered this the height of chic and a clear encomium to Syrie Maugham.

As an antiques dealer whose trade is dependent on collectors, it is hard for me to endorse what use Syrie Maugham and others made of period pieces, with so much original finish stripped off and left plain, pickled, or painted white, with connoisseurship subsumed by chic. None of this is too surprising, though- as her designs marked such a break with the past, a thoroughgoing iconoclasm that extended to period furniture was probably to be expected. With all that, Maugham embraced contemporary makers and always included modern pieces in her designs.  The comfortable eclecticism that we now embrace certainly finds one of its most prominent early proponents in Syrie Maugham. As she was popular and consequently a popularizer, one wonders about the level of success of Jean-Michel Frank or the Giacomettis without her patronage.

Though competitors, Maugham was yet friendly with her contemporaries, indeed was a near neighbor to Sibyl Colefax, and travelled through India with Elsie de Wolfe. Not surprising, then, that some clients and design elements would overlap, with some commissions hard to distinguish, certainly between de Wolfe and Maugham. It was a surprise to find, in Maugham’s Palm Beach project for the Harry Payne Binghams, art moderne dining chairs identical to those we had acquired from de Wolfe’s Los Angeles commission for the Countess di Frasso.

We’ll admit, Chatsworth and Spencer House may be more vaunted- what you’d expect with several centuries’ head start. But you will certainly find some exquisite pieces at Chappell & McCullar, from history’s best makers- William Kent, Pierre Langlois, Gillows of Lancaster, François Hervé. In a word, extraordinary. Please find a selection of wonderful pieces, all currently in our San Francisco gallery.

Don’t forget to browse our website, www.chappellmccullar.com, where you will find a large selection of our other extraordinary pieces.

Of course, we welcome your inquiries, and delight in your purchases!

With warmest wishes,

Michael James Chappell & Keith D. McCullar

Presumably there must have been some ducal dust on the ‘attic’ items from Chatsworth, certainly on those bits and pieces salvaged from Devonshire House, demolished nearly 90 years ago and gathering, well, you know. With the sale now history and with a sale total of nearly £6,500,000, it will be interesting to see what further spruce up Chatsworth might experience.

Also of interest will be the unfolding deployment of items purchased at the sale. The trade was in evidence, but in the information age, nothing is secret, so it will be a particular feat to see how a dealer could make a purchase as prominent as at the Chatsworth sale, mark it up and then offer it for sale. There was a time when country house sales were six in a weekend and goods were cheap, a dealer could buy an extraordinary item or ten, salt them away for as long as a decade, and then bring them out, fresh, as it were, to the market. No one in the trade, I’m afraid, has that long a purse any longer, and items are almost invariably offered as soon as they are shop ready. That said, the Chatsworth sale commanded extraordinary prices and one can only conclude much of it was driven by retail punters, making if not a once in a lifetime, then a once in a decade purchase.

This week’s ‘attic’ sale at Chatsworth naturally enough puts me in mind of the phenomenon of the country house sale. I’ve been lucky enough to attend some fascinating sales over the last 15 years or so, and it might be as much for the opportunity to look within some extraordinary houses as to have the chance to acquire the contents. Prominent among these are Hackwood Park, with its exterior designed by John Vardy and its interior replete with surviving Vardy designed furniture, Adam designed Dumfries House, with its welter of Chippendale furniture, hardly moved since it was installed in the 1750’s, and Easton Neston, the seat of the Lords Hesketh, one of the most exquisite of all late baroque houses.

Dumfries, of course, was one of the most famous sales that never happened, with the Prince of Wales swooping in at the last moment to save both the house and its contents for the nation.  Given my vocation, one might ask what treasures we were able to acquire from any of the other house sales. The short answer is, not a stick. The why of this isn’t too hard to divine, either, as the notion of buying something exquisite from a country house always brings out all of the county set, all with the same objective. Consequently, whatever sells, sells well. Interestingly, the Hackwood Park sale in 1998 was right in the midst of a raging bull market- and, pardon the cliché, at the height of the dot.com boom- and attracted London city types hell bent on making a purchase. Well, that doesn’t include me, who has to make acquisitions at a price that allows me to sell at sufficient profit to allow the occasional purchase of groceries.

It was at the Hackwood sale I first noticed, with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, how much of the material purchased that came back on the market, selling at prices significantly below those achieved for the same items at the original auction. Presumably some of the dot.com/City types needed to buy groceries, too. As much as anything, this kind of phenomenon should serve to demonstrate that the more prominent and inviting the sale, the greater the buying frenzy, and consequently, the less likely one is to acquire something at a fair, much less a bargain, price. That is probably understated- for anything of any quality, the buyer will doubtless pay through the nose.

The forthcoming Chatsworth ‘attic’ sale brings front and centre the work done by François Hervé. One of a legion of émigré craftsman working in London, surprisingly little is known about Hervé, all the more surprising given his illustrious clientele. Besides the fifth Duke of Devonshire on commissions for both Devonshire House and the surviving Chatsworth, Hervé is known to have worked for the Spencer family at Althorp, and for the Prince of Wales at Carlton House, under the aegis of the prince’s favored architect, Henry Holland.

With all that, our own knowledge of Hervé remains sufficiently limited such that our gallery tags show only ‘flourished 1781-1796’ reflecting the dates of his known commissions. Considerable linkages exist between these, as well, both familial and political. The wife of the fifth Duke of Devonshire was the famed Georgiana, the sister of Earl Spencer of Althorp. And, both families shared with the Prince of Wales an affiliation with the reform minded Whig party. Interesting to speculate on what Herve’s pattern of patronage might mean, and if his work- some much of it in gilt in a clearly recognizable French style- might betoken a political and social liberalism on the part of his clients. Or, more probably, was a fashion statement shared by select members of the quality.