NOVEMBER COLOURS AND STYLISH ANTIQUES

The days are getting shorter  at our house in Northamptonshire, November is a time of big fires frosty mornings and amazing colours. The leaves this year seem brighter than ever and the colour can be almost blinding when you walk under the oaks that arch above your head in blazing golds and reds. The evening skies have been putting on displays of  colour to match the richness of the trees below.

As in London we adore pictures and prints and hang them close together, covering the walls from low to high. In this, our drawing room in the country we have a large Verdigris Hexagonal Lantern hanging  from Charles extensive range in the centre of the room.

At this time of the year the fire blazes and week ends are cosy affairs in front of the fireplace, with good books, the week end's papers and going through auction catalogues looking for stock for the shop. 

We have just had in a wonderfully stylish early 19th century French mahogany bookcase, the glazed doors with the original glass and discreet yet high quality gilt bronze ornamentation.

More soon...................

ANTIQUES AND ELECTIONS

The waiting is finally over and America has decided......... 

This photograph I am sharing with my good friend Allison   back in the Kings Road we have been busy. I have written about decorating with antique prints and with antiques in general and we have some seriously decorative and great looking new stock coming in. I have always loved animals and dogs in particular so found this painting irresistible .....

PORTRAIT OF A WHITE DOG AND A BRACE OF PARTRIDGES

As the days get shorter there is a need for warmth and comfort, floating linens are for the breezy summer months we now need rich colours that look good in the long winter evenings and the depth of colour found in 17th and 18th century tapestries is perfect. Originally they were used for insulation as well as decoration, hung from great iron hooks imbedded in the ancient walls of the castles of Europe. Thankfully we now have central heating and so can hang these great old works of art for pure decoration. Just in, we have this late 17th century Verdure Tapestry from Felletin a small town next to Aubusson in the centre of France. Aubusson, located in central France on the river Creuse along with nearby Felletin, was a major producer of tapestries and, later. In 1665 Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619 – 1683), minister to Louis XIV, granted an official charter entitling Aubusson to be called a Royal Manufactory, in spite of the individual workshops maintaining independence and freedom of management.  Quality of output was varied as Aubusson was popular for more competitively priced weavings, however some examples surpassed even the work of Beauvais.  The Aubusson workshops were famous for verdure and landscape tapestries in the 17th and 18th century.


Arriving in the shop soon we also have this wonderful figurative tapestry, woven in wool at the end of the 17th, beginning of the 18th century in Aubusson. Taken from Greek mythology and showing the abduction of Europa by Zeus in the form of a white bull. Europa is depicted seated on the back of the bull who is garlanded with flowers 








Measuring roughly 8' high and nearly 9' wide. These wonderful antique textiles look as good in a stark modern environment as they do in a more traditional room, and for traditional we have a magnificent commode by Jacques Dubois veneered in kingwood with gilt bronze mounts and the most amazing marble I have ever seen...............