“Life at the Hunting
Lodge was Camelot”
John Cornforth
"What I wanted here
was something utterly unpretentious, very comfortable, with a veneer
of elegance and informality.”
John Fowler
 |
The grand, but diminutive,
Hunting Lodge, former home of John Fowler, co-founder of the esteemed
decorating firm Colefax and Fowler, is now home to Nicky Haslam.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON
|
For Love of Country
Nicky Haslam,
renowned interior designer and London man-about-town, calls a
16th-century royal hunting lodge in the English countryside his home
away from home—rose chintz sofas, portraits, flourishing garden and
all
By RITA KONIG
Updated March 24,
2011 12:01 a.m. ET
Driving down to
Nicky Haslam's country house from London, listening to the leading
interior designer and legendary partygoer sing along to Cole Porter
songs on the car stereo, we turn off a perfectly ordinary Hampshire
road and into the woods. Immediately, we find ourselves transported
from the mundane commuter belt to Little Red Riding Hood territory.
Winding along a muddy lane, we come around a bend and see ahead,
beyond a tilting, moss-covered wood gate, through the arching boughs
of oak and chestnut trees, the Hunting Lodge.
Nicky Haslam,
speaking on the phone. Above him is a portrait of his mother painted
by the Scottish artist Robin Guthrie. PHOTOGRAPHS BY SIMON UPTON
Haslam's enchanting
Jacobean-revival house was built in the 16th century for the Tudor
king Henry VII as a resting place from the chase in these once-royal
forests. It is said that here his eldest son, Arthur, Prince of
Wales, met his fiancée, Catherine of Aragon, upon her arrival in
England; Arthur died soon after the wedding, and Catherine
subsequently married his younger brother, the future King Henry VIII.
Charming history aside, the Lodge's true delight is its miniature
grandeur. "The English truly understand the dynamic between
buildings and land," Haslam says. "On the continent, the
country is tamed into submission round a house, while in America
homes are statements in that vast landscape. Most English houses,
grand or small, nestle in an intimate pastoral setting."
Once inside, the
Lodge is everything that is romantic about England, and perfectly
encapsulates that terrible phrase, "English country-house
style"—the combination of real beauty, some age, a bit of mud,
certainly a potted geranium or two and utter practicality. For
practicality is where the English, who never take aesthetics too
seriously, reign supreme. The entrance hall alone is a thing of such
charm. It is a perfectly proportioned, neat square, the paneled walls
painted in a slubby, satin, oystery color. The ceiling has a vague
marble effect. "To hide the cracks!" Haslam says. Centered
between two doors—one to a cloakroom lined with framed letters from
Charles and Camilla—is a console bearing a Baroque bust of an
18th-century nobleman, a pair of plants in cachepots and a basket
with various gardening implements. The door handles and fingerplates
are all ancient, brass and beautiful. The silk curtains, again in
oyster and hung from carved wood pelmets, are a nod to John Fowler,
legendary British interior designer and co-founder of Colefax and
Fowler, who was the Lodge's previous tenant. Today, there are still
quite a few of his elegant, understated hallmarks throughout the
house.
Haslam, sitting in
an outdoor pavilion PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON
Haslam leased the
house from the National Trust in 1978 or, as he puts it, "the
year Mrs. T came to power," and has been adding to the rooms
ever since. Each corner is filled with personal details that reflect
his eclectic style. There are piles of books on every surface;
pictures are stacked under tables and on chairs; end tables are
softly lit by pretty shades made from concertinaed Mauny wallpaper.
In one room, Haslam has hung the original floorplans for James
Wyatt's Waterloo Palace—it was to have been a gift from a grateful
nation to the Duke of Wellington after his victory over
Napoleon—which would have supposedly been far larger than
Versailles but funnily enough proved too expensive to realize.
Stacked against that are engravings and drawings from his friends:
Graham Sutherland, David Hockney and Lucian Freud. "I don't
consciously collect anything drily precious or impersonal; I just
seem to have acquired pretty bits over the years and, of course, some
of those bits came from now-famous old friends," Haslam says. "I
tend to look out for things with a resonance to my youth—artists or
objects that seemed romantic all those years ago. I never buy
anything purely for its value. I like possessions that smile back at
me."
This comfortable
country scene is in striking contrast with Haslam's London life,
where, in addition to running his thriving design business, his
evenings revolve around art openings, the opera, premieres, dinners
at The Wolseley and Scott's, shopping at Topman and holiday jaunts on
his friends' yachts. He is such a natural man of leisure that it's
easy to forget how hardworking he is. When asked about his recent
clients, Haslam says, "I really think giving lists of clients is
very common. But at a pinch you could mention Ringo Starr, Oleg
Deripaska, the Rodney Smiths in New Orleans, both the Saatchi
brothers, a mansion in Ireland, a chalet in Klosters, a mas in the
Midi, a couple of villas on Cap Ferrat . . ."
Haslam has also been
a columnist for the Evening Standard; regularly writes for the
Spectator; has contributed to Vanity Fair; is a talented artist—he
paints watercolors of the interiors he's designing for his clients;
and, as his earlier Cole Porter serenading suggests, he sings. He
recently headlined two nights at the Savoy's Beaufort Bar in London.
The best houses
reflect the inhabitant, and the Lodge is brimming with tokens of
Haslam's humor and buzzing social life. In the sitting room, the
walls are painted in oxblood mixed with distemper. "It's the
color of old cloth Elastoplast," says Haslam of its similarity
to Band-Aids. "They used to paint the outside of buildings with
it to stop the flies from coming inside." The glazed wood
mantelpiece is lined with photographs, invitations and Christmas
cards, which seems odd given that it's October. But then, one is from
the late Princess of Wales and another is a framed "Christmas
1965" photograph from Cecil Beaton. Over the past 50 years,
Haslam has rolled like a snowball through life, collecting colorful
friends, including rock stars, movie stars, royalty, oligarchs,
Etonians, couturiers, photographers, artists and godchildren, to whom
he collectively dedicated "Redeeming Features," his 2009
memoir. "We've all got Nicky stories, but you have to pardon him
for whatever he's done, because he's such a life enhancer. When
you're with him it is like the sun comes out," says Hannah
Rothschild, who recently directed a documentary, "Hi Society,"
about the designer.
The purpose of my
visit is to see the Lodge's latest addition, the garden room. The
outbuilding was originally designed by Fowler but had become run down
over the years. "I wanted to make it part of the main house even
though the two are not connected," Haslam says. "It clearly
needed a fireplace and when I found this dotty Rococo number, I knew
that a whole makeover was imminent!" He also decided to redesign
the attached working greenhouse. From the main house of the Lodge,
one walks through a Gothic door in the sitting room and out onto the
lawn. Double lines of pleached hornbeam trees lead down to a hidden
flower garden and an obelisk-posted white gate. Beyond, a meadow with
a rough-cut ride ends at the bank of a lake.
It is spectacularly
pretty, even more so because of the lawn, which is mowed in a
different pattern each week. During my visit, it was cut on the
diagonal and, as a very detail-oriented Haslam pointed out, the lines
moved uninterrupted through the gateposts. Looking back from this
vantage point, the main house looks like an 18th-century tiara, built
in the palest handmade pink bricks with a roofline topped by three
soaring gables. Roses, vines and magnolias garland the leaded
arabesque windows, under which rest antique metal benches. A lantern
with candles inside hangs from one of the vines.
The anteroom off the
sitting room, with a portrait of Haslam's mother by the Scottish
painter Robin Guthrie. PHOTOGRAPH BY SIMON UPTON
To continue to the
garden room, one passes through the leaf-shaded greenhouse, painted
in the subtlest shade of gray-green and lined by a waist-high shelf
stacked with dozens of aged terra-cotta pots, geraniums and other
green things awaiting instruction. An open cupboard displays a
collection of blue-and-white china, a gift from his friend Annabel
Astor (mother of Samantha Cameron, the British Prime Minister's
wife). Then, through a tiny vestibule papered by Fowler in something
18th century, silver and flowery, one comes into the new garden room.
The interior is
lovely and quite different from the Lodge. It has a double cube
footprint with an airy, pitched ceiling and three large French
windows. A pair of sofas flanking the fireplace are upholstered in
rose chintz. Many of Haslam's own fabrics are here, including a pair
of show-wood chairs covered in a rickrack stripe he calls Zephyr
after his black Pekingese dog. The lavender Balcony Stripe curtains
are also the decorator's creation, available through his firm, NH
Design. There are other Haslam originals, too: a plastic pineapple
ice bucket on the drinks tray that he found somewhere long forgotten
and painted white with green detailing, as well as wall sconces also
painted white with green spots. It's a charming room built for
Haslam's larger groups of friends. "When I entertain, I like it
to appear as casual as possible, but in fact I will have orchestrated
everything quite carefully, by producing surprises for the eye, mouth
and ear," he says. "I prefer to do it all myself. I'm a
pretty good cook and the house is too small to tell the help where
things should go."
In winter, Haslam
entertains in the Lodge's frescoed dining room, as he did last
December when he threw a 16-person New Year's Eve party. In summer,
he prefers one of the garden pavilions, with drinks before and after
in the garden room. Since the house is located less than 40 miles
from London, the designer enjoys inviting people for Sunday lunch,
such as his "greatest friend" Min Hogg, founder of the
style bible The World of Interiors, neighbors like Jemma and Arthur
Mornington (she is the makeup artist Jemma Kidd; he is the heir to
the Duke of Wellington), and Tom Stoppard, who has learned to be
careful of the house's low doorways.
The walls in the
sitting room are painted in oxblood with distemper. The Marie
Antoinette bust, which Haslam describes as "a very good
19th-century copy" of the Houdon original, belonged to the
designer's father and sits next to a bunch of flowers picked up at
the supermarket. ENLARGE
The walls in the
sitting room are painted in oxblood with distemper. The Marie
Antoinette bust, which Haslam describes as "a very good
19th-century copy" of the Houdon original, belonged to the
designer's father and sits next to a bunch of flowers picked up at
the supermarket.
I stayed the night
and after dinner we sat at the kitchen table listening to old tunes
on Spotify, a new free website that plays what seems like every song
ever recorded. It was funny, really, as Haslam nipped off to the
fridge for a delicious bottle of Yquem, to think how I was in the
house of one of London's most glittering and long-standing
socialites, a man who knows and has partied with everyone. And yet
here we were, cozily sitting in the kitchen of a wonderfully
decorated house, with the spirit of John Fowler and some royal
romance hanging in the air.
No comments:
Post a Comment