2021 Stack

Not having a lot to say these days, I thought I'd look at my photos for 'inspiration'. The first photo I took this year was of the books I got for Christmas. Hopefully none are from Amazon, but that's not in my control. I give Bill links to alternative sources and I know he feels much the same as I do about Amazon (or says he does) but I'm not sure where his kids stand. Mind, the presents they sent were all in variations of brown wrapping paper that can be re-cycled, so I'm hopeful.

The second photo is of a present from Helen, a cute idea but not likely to be used. It got a second photo because it has no name on the spine.

The Fashion of Film, Amber Butchart.  I'm a major fan of Amber Butchart and have been for several years now, ever since I stumbled upon the series A Stitch in Time. This book  like some of her others (I hope one day to have them all!) looks at categories of clothing that came out of certain types of films, such as Crime: Dressed to Kill; The Musical: Spectacular Fashion; Historical Epic: Dressed to Excess; Horror: Supernatural Chic; Romantic Drama: Seductive Style; Sci-Fi and Fantasy: Bionic Bodies; Art House and Independent Style with Substance. Unfortunately, I didn't come away with many ideas for clothes I might wish to wear, but there were lovely photos all the same.

The Weekend Crafter - Knitting, Catherine Ham. This is a book I found years ago at a thrift shop and it had several simple knitting patterns I meant to try. Unfortunately I must have loaned it to someone and it never came back. I would run into references to it and finally asked Bill to get me a replacement for Christmas. 

Cooking with Scraps, Lindsay-Jean Hard.  Unlike Hugh Fernley-Whittenstall's Love Your Leftovers, this isn't about mountains of meat but rather scraps of vegetables. Lately the cauliflowers Bill has brought home have been rather puny, more leaves than flowerettes.  However, I now cut off all the enclosing leaves and put them aside, which makes getting at the actual head easier (slides of roasted cauliflower are now a very popular main dish in our hosue). Then I slice off the green curly bits and steam them like I would spring cabbage or spinach. Finally, the white stalks that are left can be cut up into bits like sliced carrots or chopped (with the help of a Pampered Chef tool) finely to make cauliflower rice - a name Bill objected strenuously to until he realised how useful this was.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein and The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. Something I can't recall dragged me back into my fascination with the interwar period, perhaps re-reading a Phryne book? I was dismayed to find that neither this biographical work or the cook book were available through my library, so I put them on my wish list. Sarah, Bill's youngest, was asking him what I wanted. I told him to tell her to surprise me with either this book or the cook book and she did surprise me - she gave me both. I've not read either front to back as yet, only dabbled here and there. I've been over run with library books for a while now, but I hope to make them a priority soon. They are very much of their time, but that is what makes them so fascinating. Apparently, Ms. Toklas was so awed by Ms. Stein's writing reputation that she didn't attempt to document her cookery until after the death of Ms. Stein. Can't say I've read any other writing by this august person. 

Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns, Natalie Chanin. I'm not sure this was a great idea. I was keen because I thought it came with a bunch of patterns. It does and it doesn't. The patterns don't work for every one's computer. Bill was thankfully able to make them work after a fashion. However, one either has to understand how to make them into tiles - which means you end up with 40 pages to put together with tape - or to pay for a specialist printer to give you a large pattern. I ended up doing a couple of them with a printer for about £10. So it's not really a great deal. Also, a lot of the patterns have to do with applique by hand, which is sort of their hallmark. Not my cup of tea sadly. I think I was blinded by the coolness of the reputation. I appreciate that if you live near Florence, Alabama, the vast array of 100% cotton jersey fabrics is seductive, but I can't see me paying $30 a yard plus postage and duty. However, I do hope that the patterns will help me to upcycle some of the thrift store sweaters I've acquired over the years.

Threads of Life, Clare Hunter. This was an excellent book that I've read about it elsewhere.

Death by Water

I've been re-reading our Phyrne Fisher collection (by Kerry Greenwood). Comfort reading at its best in spite of involving plenty of murder, theft and other crimes. I'm not aware of being stressed, though on some level I probably am, however when stressed my brain seeks familiar territory. In the past I've read the print off Mom's and my Dick Francis collection. I'm now so familiar with the Harry Potter books the words don't make a movie in my head anymore. But I haven't got every plot of the Phryne books memorised yet. 

At the back of Death by Water I found not only a recipe for a 'Perfect Champagne Cocktail' but some post-it notes where I'd scribbled passages I particularly enjoyed - or had no idea about - in a previous reading. If you're like me you read through all sorts of things you don't know exactly what they are about but just guess from the context. It was rather satisfying to look these things up. 

Description of their cruise ship:

"...screens by Tiffany, furnishing by Liberty and William Morris, light fixtures by LaFarge..."

Illustrations on the Tiffany screens:

"...flowering gum and... a pohutukawa" (a New Zealand tree)

Bedspread:

"dark blue morocain" - A fabric; so far as I can tell this is another spelling for Moroccan and may refer to a distinctive print.

Terminology:

"So what were the on-dits?" Definition of on-dit: a piece of gossip or vague rumour.

"Fribble": Noun - a trifle, a frivolity; Verb - to waste something away, to fritter; to waste time.

"Keas" (a New Zealand bird - a very smart parrot) 

a Sou'wester

Chicken Veronique

References:

"Phyrne was in complete agreement with Oscar Wilde about people who were witty before breakfast."

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

                                                               - Oscar Wilde


"She may look like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth but as they said in the eighteenth century, I'll warrant that she wouldn't choke on cheese".  - 'butter wouldn't melt in her mouth' refers to someone who is very cool in their demeanor. Couldn't find any reference to choking on cheese other than literally.

And now, what you've been waiting for:

The Perfect Champagne Cocktail

1. Chill a bottle of dry champagne. It doesn't have to be expensive - in fact this is a great way to dress up cheap champage - but it must not be sweet.

2. Take a big glass and swill about a teaspoonful of Cointreau around to coat the inside. 

3. Drop a cube of sugar in, place three drops of bitters onto the sugar. If you like sweet tastes, put in two sugar cubes but don't add any more bitters.

4. Very gently pour in champagne and fill the glass. Garnish with a thin strip of orange peel.

5. This is the only champagne which can be drunk through a straw. To make a champagne cup, dilute this half and half with Schweppes lemonade. It's worth getting all hot and tired playing deck tennis if there is champagne cocktail in prospect.

Dress Advice from 1928 via Miss Fisher

Phryne Fisher has taken a job at a ladies' magazine as part of a murder investigation. A Miss Herbert is attempting to write a fashion column and mentions she admires the Fuji print dresses currently all the rage. Phryne thinks the dyes will fade quickly and they are a passing fad anyhow. 

They give themselves an imaginary £10 budget and see what each can come up with for a summer wardrobe.

Miss Herbert, who greatly admires Phryne's style, comes up with

- 2 cotton dresses
- 1 Fiji print dress
- a pair of cheap shoes and
- a cloche
for sixteen shillings and six pence for the dresses; the hat was expensive, but she said there is a shoe sale at Clark's. Last year's handbag will have to do.

Miss Fisher comes up with

- a tailored suit from Craig's - eight and a half guineas - in a lightweight fabric, eg crepe de Chine, in a solid colour such as leaf green, lobelia blue (or oatmeal for the timid); wine would be good for someone with dark hair. It must fit properly.

She will buy the following from  Treadways Colosseum

- a pair of pump shoes for three shillings elevenpence; 

- two tunics in pale or constrasting cotton for three and eleven each

- a straw hat, four and eleven. She will replace any cheap decoration with one of several scarves (eleven pence)

- a straw basket for 2 shillings to carry her purchases

- the remainder of her £10 will go to the poor.


Next summer, all that will be needed is to buy (or make) more blouses, scarves, gloves and stockings. 

Careful thought should be given to the colour of the suit, as it can last up to ten years. Hemlines can be followed with a new hem unless they drop too far, in which case a new skirt is a matching or contrasting colour will be needed. 

My thoughts:
 - Sadly, Phryne was wrong in predicting fashion would never expose our ugliest joint, the knee. Not that I'm fussed about this one way or the other these days.
- The story is much more entertaining in Kerry Greenwood's words.
- I must think about how to translate all this into a uniform for my retirement lifestyle.
- I'm eternally grateful for the decimal system.

Clara, the Clock and the Candles - Part I

This last Saturday Bill suggested we visit the Tynemouth Fleamarket. We used to go quite often but haven't in months. Bill's kids seem to enjoy browsing there, but I don't tend to go unless I'm looking for something specific. [Warning, this post rambles...]

A few months back we fell into the habit of eating breakfast in the dining room (as opposed to in the kitchen or in bed), using the 'good' Noritake china (which we use for dinner every night of late), our wedding silverware and some silver metal tea/coffee pots that belonged to Bill's mom. The cereals are decanted into glass jars, milk served in jugs (we each have our own) and other foods into non-commercial containers. I got this idea years ago from a blog called Like Merchant Ships. This lady stopped blogging abruptly, but posts occasionally on Tumblr. I thought she'd taken down her blog - I grieved it for months - and now I've found it again! The links don't work and some of the photos are gone, but the basic ideas are still there. She calls this decanting idea part of 'living on less'; I call it 'living better'. Beats the heck out of any fast food breakfast experience I know.

Anyhow, because of setting a fancy breakfast table - it looks great on the days when the sun streams in the window - with silver items, Bill decided the brass candle holder we bought years ago in a Whitby thrift shop didn't look right any more.

We went shopping to see if we could find any silver (glass, ceramic?) candle holders. We were also looking for a sugar bowl with a lid to hold coffee granules. Bill drinks tea at breakfast and I drink instant coffee. We both love improvising (a fancy word for 'making do'). He came up with putting my instant coffee in a short cocktail glass I bought at a brocante in Bourdeaux about five years ago. He provided me with an Apostle Spoon to dish out the small amount of coffee required for a proper cup instead of my usual mug. I always think of Mom when using a cup and saucer; mugs weren't something she ever had. I think they must have taken over after she was gone.






Never heard of Apostle Spoons? Me neither. I still forget and call them Pilgrim Spoons for some reason. Apparently the idea of a set in a nice little case has been around for hundreds of years and these sets are very rare. We seem to only have two...  You can read about Apostle Spoons here, if you wish. [I donated to Wikipedia when they last had out their hat, did you?]



Anyhow, the cocktail glass was only amusing for a few uses and with our damp climate coffee left in it absorbed moisture and hardened. The to-ing and fro-in of coffee between coffee jar and cocktail glass became tedious. So a sugar bowl with a lid was on the shopping list; the one we have actually contains sugar...

I was also looking for a small clock to put on the landing, where we watch TV. I don't own a functioning watch anymore, but we are trying to stop watching the telly and start getting ready for bed at 10 pm sharp. I may be slightly more determined than Bill but it was a nuisance to keep asking him the time. So I wanted a clock.

We found no suitable lidded dish or candle sticks on Saturday, but I did find a clock I loved. It is a French 8-day, Art Deco clock that actually requires winding, possibly the only 'real' clock in the station that day. The website below recommended winding it once a week, on the same day of the week. I let my clock wind down and then re-set it on a Sunday. It was odd, winding it up, as there was increasing resistance with each turn of the key. It was a bit scary! One thing I did notice, it is a solid lump of wood, with space for the clock works carved out and the marquetry added to the front. 




It needs a bit of cleaning, the inside looks a bit grubby and the back plate might look better if polished up (or perhaps that's just worn, I'll find out). Not sure what I might do with the wood, but this amazing website recommends beeswax polish, which we likely have (according to Bill).  If this horologist wasn't all the way down by London I'd be calling in with Mom's old clock.

I'm guessing this is brass, no idea if it will polish up... or not; I'm not fussed. Love the shape of the clock!

Writing this led me Google clock repair near Newcastle and I found a couple of possibilities - who says blogging is a waste of time?

Bill wants to put the clock in the living room, as since Mom's clock quit working we have no time piece in there. I follow his logic, but I'm enjoying the clock where it is now, on the book case. I'd rather have Mom's chiming clock repaired and replaced downstairs. I'll let you know if that happens in my lifetime.

Needs a bit of cleaning, but NO BATTERIES in sight! Only something about '2 jewels'.

Details

I found this photo I snapped on our last day in Basel last May. I think it was a big motivator for finding a dressmaking class. Although I like fairly plain clothing, there is something special about a hidden detail - the collar band or under collar, a pocket or coat lining - that can make a garment feel really special. None of the pieces I've made so far has been anything but straightforward, but I can see a day when I indulge myself.

We (re) watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them last night. If J.K. Rowling's imagination, Eddie Redmayne's perfect awkwardness or the spectacular creatures weren't enough, consider that the film is set in 1926 in New York and the clothes are to die for. I fell in love with the leather collar band on Newt Scamander's coat in practically the first scene and was captivated by the costumes ever after. I'm not the only one taken with that coat. 

There are entire Pinterest groups based on just figuring out how to make this coat. I'm not telling Bill I found a place where you can buy them in 'adult' men's sizes...

History of Jewellery and Chanel - Part IX

This is continuing a series of posts about a lecture I attended on  the history of jewellery in the 20th Century.

According to our lecturer, Chanel didn't understand jewellery at all. In spite of the fact that she associated with very rich men, Chanel preferred fake jewellery. You can read about some of her lovers: Boy Capel; Hugh Grosvener, Duke of Westminster; Paul Iribe.

Westminster's entry mentions an emerald he gave Chanel. Susan told us a story that says Coco had an argument with the Duke on his yacht and she threw the emerald into the water. (So, she was the model for the old lady in the film Titanic as well as being a fashion designer, eh?) I figure Grosvener was an unpleasant character anyhow. In 1931, when being homosexual was still illegal, he 'outted' his brother-in-law, for personal and political gain. The story is actually known to quite a few of us, as it is supposed to be the basis for the incredible book Brideshead Revisited.

In searching for meaning in my notes I found there is a lot on the internet about De Beers diamonds and the year 1929. What I think Susan was explaining was that with the instability of the stock market after the crash of '29, interest picked up in buying diamonds. They were attractive for their high value and relative small size. People didn't trust putting money in the bank, so diamonds were in demand and their price rose. Susan explained that this same thing happened in the 1960s and is happening now. With the growing interest in diamonds, people needed teaching about value not just being about size, but also about colour and clarity. 

We learned about a particular necklace design by one of Chanel's lovers, Paul Iribe. I tried to sketch this necklace, it was so perfect for its time. I don't remember the star, shown in the photo below, but the lines flowing around the neck are something like I drew and my note quotes Susan as saying 'the jewellery flows along with the evening gown'. 

However my source for the photo says this Chanel necklace is by Patrick Mauries and the examples of Iribe are quite different in appearance, so I'm not sure what to think, other than this was a Chanel product.

I hadn't realised that there was something rather unlucky about being involved with Coco Chanel, even if she didn't throw your emerald gifts into the sea. I had forgotten that Boy Capel died in a car crash allegedly on his way to meet up with her. Reading about Paul Iribe, I learned that he died of a heart attack after a tennis game at Chanel's villa on Roquebrune Cap Martin, between Nice and the Italian border. They say she literally wore him out. 

Next week we'll talk about cutting stones...

Brocade Grenade? - Part VII

Well, I'm most annoyed that I cannot find a photograph to show you a very gaudy piece of jewellery created by Georges Fouquet which was named (according to my notes) 'brocade grenade'; it didn't look like an explosive device but we were told that 'grenade' is actually Spanish for pomegranate. Susan admitted that it wasn't to everyone's taste, but made as it was from varying sizes of rubies closely set together, it couldn't be replicated. Maybe that's just as well. It was rather gaudy.

There is much of Fouquet's work that I could die for: he collaborated with my much loved Mucha.

More of this wonderfulness here.

Carrying on with the grenade/pomegranate theme, I'll venture that the 1920s was an 'explosion' of ideas and colours from other cultures, all with their particular styles of jewellery. The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the early 1920s created almost a mania for all things Egyptian and jewellery made of gold. [For major Downton Abbey fans, you may find it interesting to know that one of the discoverers of this tomb was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon; the Carnarvon's own Highclere Castle, where that series is filmed. Oh, and it turns out Lady Carnarvon has a blog!]

In addition to Cartier's cats, VanCleef and Arpels was commissioned to create Egyptian motifs for the Duchess of Windsor. Try as I might, I cannot find an example that ties together that jeweller, that person and that motif.  However, I can show you VanCleef & Arpels Egyptian jewellery; VanCleef and Arpels jewellery for the Duchess of Windsor; can't say I much care for what Google kicks up for the Duchess' Egyptian jewellery. Nevermind, we're still talking about the 1920s and the Prince of Wales didn't meet Wallis until 1931... Re-reading my notes, maybe I've mis-interpreted and the three don't actually overlap, only that VC&A were famous for Egyptian jewellery and they designed for that particular person.

Perhaps it was the growing nationalism in India and the fact that Gandhi took control of the Indian National Congress in 1920; or, more likely, because the Maharajas of India brought jewels to Europe on an unprecedented scale:

Alain Boucheron wrote in his biography of the house of Boucheron, The Master Jewelers: “The flamboyant Maharajah... arrived at Boucheron’s in 1927 accompanied by a retinue of 40 servants all wearing pink turbans, his 20 favourite dancing girls and, most important of all, six caskets filled with 7,571 diamonds, 1,432 emeralds, sapphires, rubies and pearls of incomparable beauty.”

With the fashionable short hair, long earrings, bandanas and bright colours were the jewellery accessories in demand. This brings us to 'tutti fruitti' jewellery, though that term didn't come about until the 1970s.  Feast your eyes on this fruit!

I've made several attempts to read A Passage to India, published in 1924; I confess that I find it rather boring. Maybe my reading list here will help me get through it should I find it again. Alain Boucheron, member of yet another French jewellery family, is mentioned in this article about the wealth of Indian maharajas.  I suspect The Master Jewelers would be a much better read, well, lighter reading anyhow.


I can't even begin to speculate what brought Oriental culture to the attention of the flappers of the interwar period. Nevertheless we were told that Jade Buddhas were immensely popular as well as Indian and Egyptian designs in the 1920s. No wonder, they are really beautiful.

Car and Coat - Part V

Apparently during the Victorian era just about every dress or blouse was covered with lace on the front. Things changed a lot around the 1920s.  For one, Sonia Delauney had the idea of making her car and her coat match.

Vogue magazine approved. 

We were told that Vogue magazine in the 1920s and 1930s had huge influence on jewellery design. Vogue's idea was that women should have not just matching cars and coats, but matching jewellery for each outfit, as in bespoke. So they've always had outrageous, unaffordable ideas; nothing new there then. However, Vogue was pushing the then new idea of choosing an item because of its brand name rather than because it suited one's features or lifestyle.

The 1925 Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts was also enormously influential, with a mini-town built of show houses. Items were displayed on glass plinths under bright lights to make them sparkle...pretty much like all jewellery shops show their wares now you might say. This was a new approach, completely different to the prevailing natural styles of art and gothic architecture as promulgated by John Ruskin. Instead people were exposed to Corbusier and Mondrian.

Cubism was a source of new design shapes and colours, particularly the geometric shapes. Also tourmaline crystal, often called watermelon crystal, became very popular.  One of my favourite Dick Francis books, Straight, is about a jewels dealer and a jewellery maker (and a jockey, of course); I read about tourmaline crystal along with a whole slew of fascinating gadgets. I recommend this book highly.

Going back briefly to Delauney's work (and her husband Roberts's), they were known for developing an art form, an offshoot of cubism called 'orphism'.  I quite liked the look of it, strangely enough. Also, I recently discovered that Bill actually hears some of the inane things I say! I read on some fashion blog or other in the last few weeks (I've looked and can't find it) that some designer has come out with dresses printed with 'fractured geometrics'. The phrase grabbed my attention for some reason and I was thinking it was the most interesting print I'd seen in quite a while.  Have a look and see if you don't agree. Anyhow, Bill and I were watching the season finale of The Voice UK and whilst I wasn't crazy about the song or the set, I did think maybe we'd been transported back to the 60s and when the stage lights played across the lines in the dancers' costumes (at about 1.10 if you want to skip to there!) that phrase (fractured geometrics) came to mind again. I mentioned this to him and he reminded me of it when I started comparing it with 'orphism'.  See what you think of the Delauney look. 

Tredegar House - Downstairs

As I mentioned, one grand house blends into another without something special to see or some personality to remember. The downstairs portions of these places are fairly predictable as well, though I'm always open to being surprised. There was one house we visited on this same trip where the kitchen would have been the envy of most modern chefs if only for the architecture. 

Otherwise the standard features include the bells that called the servants to the various rooms in the house. I never see these without thinking of Downton Abbey. (BTW, the next series of Downton Abbey is being filmed at Alnwick Castle, of Harry Potter fame. I'm looking forward to seeing if I recognise anything in common between the two films. Also, must find out how to visit inside Alnwick Castle, not just visit the gardens - it's not a National Trust Property. Have a feeling it might need to involve running their 10K race, but even that could be fun, exploring the grounds!)

There is almost always some sort of fake food around, hopefully to help children's imaginations. Everything I've read about living in grand houses is that the food was definitely not great. By the time it got transported from kitchen to dining room and served it was almost never hot. Which would help all those ladies stay skinny, right?

Better than the fake food, I love seeing the rows of copper pans. Those alone would cost a fortune, surely?

Of course there is always some hulking great stove - or two. 

I am particularly fond of menus. Usually there are not a lot of things there I would be excited to eat, if I even knew what they were. I'm more intrigued by the idea of knowing how to make those things and to present them beautifully. One day I'll have to do a series on 'Master This Menu'.  This is the menu for the Servant's Ball in 1921. Surely it must have been a buffet? One does find that there was an extraordinary amount of meat eaten back then, veggies being what poor folks could raise and eat. Also there seems to be a lot of desserts. My tummy hurts just reading the list, though I could fancy a bit of 'cream vanilla'.

Loved the art nouveau pattern on this platter. Art nouveau preceeded the inter-war years, but if anything I love it even better than art deco...

These 'jelly moulds' would likely have been as much for savory fare as for the gelatin and fruit concoctions I recall from my grade school days. Can't say I would be terribly excited about cold meat served up in cold gelatin. It wasn't until I moved to Britain, where vegetarians are quite common, that I realised gelatin was an animal product, even the stuff used to capture fruit. Doesn't bear thinking about, so I don't; I just eat it.

That is one of the things in my pantry shelves that needs 'used up', packets of gelatin. Can't wait to see the expression on Bill's face...

Tredegar House - Upstairs

I do love history, but a person can't absorb it all, so there are pockets that I stick with most often. If you've come here often you'll know that one of them is the interwar period - the 1920s and 1930s - between World War I and World War II.  

The walls are painted Indian Yellow, apparently a popular colour during the 17th century, but the name sounds to me like from the days of Empire. Oh duh; Britain's colonisation of India started in 1612.

As we went up the Great Staircase, which has had several renovations and around which was hung the family portraits 'of persons who built a great fortune in the 19th century and of those who spent it all in the 20th!', I spotted a rather Freudian looking one (as in Lucien Freud, grandson of Sigmund). That style made me guess when the person had lived, even though it turned out to have been painted c. 1913 by Ambrose McEvoy, 'a popular society portraitist' who predated Freud.

"Evan Morgan (1893-1949) was a Bright Young Thing of the 1920s, interested in society, fashion, literature, and mystical matters. A famous eccentric, he was known for his wild parties at Tredegar House." 

I would also add that, in spite of having had two wives, he was definitely more interested in men.   And he practiced black magic which involved turning a crucifix upside down for their rituals. When not involved in Black Masses, he was acting as chamberlain to Pope Pious XI. Weird, eh? Funny enough, Evan's also an exact contemporary of my paternal grandfather, who died before I was born, also at the age of 56. 

"Many of his regular guests were major artistic or society figures of the day, such as H. G. Wells, Ivor Novello, Prince Paul of Greece and Nancy Cunard."

I wonder how much they knew about his 'religious' practices?

Evan Mogan's first wife was Lois Stuart, an actress and artist. They married in 1927 as a matter of convenience: Evan needed a respectable cover for his homosexuality and Lois's family had concerns about her scandalous affairs with the Earl of Pembroke and the Duke of Kent.  The marriage ended in 1937 not only because they separated but because she died whilst visiting the Cartier family, the famous jewelers, in Budapest. Lois had hoped to return to her acting career and had begun taking slimming drugs which led to a fatal heart attack at the age of 37. You can just about see what she looked like during her married life here.

The King's Room - Evan's bedroom in the 1930s & 40s.

Of course, it was a room with a view...

Bill once explained to me about the men I saw carrying really tatty old leather briefcases on the Metro. He said that the leather meant they had money; the age and tattiness meant they had had it since their university days, which means they come from money. Well, that's one theory anyhow.

Did I mention he liked animals and had a bunch running around Tredegar House?

That's Evan with the bird. The expressions of the others in the photo are priceless. Is this the parrot that bit Herman Goring's nose?

I grew up with these boxes around; haven't seen one in ages!

I do love little excesses like this; extra long curtains are often seen in grand houses. When I made an enormous draping valence years ago, I gave it 'puddles of velvet' on each side. It was fun!

These cabinets make my mouth water. I would fill them with my fabric stash! Well, maybe books and fabric stash...

The bawth room.

Why don't we have bathrooms like these any more?

Wife #2: Russian Princess Olga Dolgorouky (please forgive my camera reflection).

The Dolgorouky's were one of Russia's oldest aristocratic families and Olga's half-sister was married to a Romonov prince. Her family fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution when Olga was a child. She spent most of her youth in Paris and London. A society beauty, in 1939 she was featured on the front cover of 'The Tatler'. Olga lived at Tredegar house during WWII and was popular with the estate workers. She trained with St Johns's Ambulance and volunteered at the local hospital.  She married Evan, 22 years her senior, for his money. However, the marriage was annulled after only five years. One wonders if it was his lifestyle or the fact that his money was running out that caused them to part. Olga moved to Guernsey where she died in 1998. She corresponded with the National Trust about Tredegar House, particularly to help them with the presentation of her bedroom, the Red Room.

Tredegar House and Evan Morgan both have plenty of admirers. Each link has some additional amazing tidbit. He exemplifies a part of why I find the interwar years so interesting, particularly here in Britain. It was clearly a crazy time in an already rather crazy place.