The Blenheim Suite...

Welcome to day 6 of the tour. Today we are sharing what has, surprisingly, turned out to be our most popular suite, The Blenheim Suite. I had always thought that the Brideshead suite would be our most popular, simply because it was the largest, and I thought that people might find my choice of decoration for this room too idiosyncratic.

We took our inspiration from the 18th century Chinoiserie-styled rooms popular in English country houses of the time. After hunting for quite a while to find the right wallpaper we settled on this turquoise paper by Zoffany. We really liked the crimson birds and pomegranates which punctuate the trellis-like branches and leaves. We then found a silk which complemented the colourings with which me made the curtains and had the bed upholstered. I found the throw pillows in Miami and brought them back with me (and people say accurate colour memory doesn't exist!). In time we are going to have a counterpane and top pillow covers made in a complimentary fabric, and possibly a corona with drapes behind the headboard. This is one room where less is not more.

Above: Bedside details.

Below: A sconce and headboard detail.

Above and below: Prints of a peacock and of a Chinese emperor, and sconces with a little blue and white jars. I suspect that in time the prints will be replaced with original artwork, and the jars replaced with finer antique ginger jars.

For now they are rather jolly accents...

The en suite has gray and white marble, with a matching vanity and mirror and nickel sconce lights with opaque glass tubing. The nickel matches the taps and gives the bathroom an Edwardian elegance.

We will share a few photos of the master suite at a later stage, but tomorrow we will be unveiling the Ballroom and Music Room for the first time. Join us then to see our own petit homage to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and how the piano was shifted into place.

Shopping for Chinoiserie...

The other day I went shopping in Dubbo for Chinoiserie for the Blenheim suite, and was surprised to come cross a fairly large stock of it at one shop, of varied shapes and quality...

I ended up buying only 4 little jars (which cost me $3 each) which I thought would make nice accents in the room:

When I get home at the start of next month I will be in full decorator mode. We have a professional photographer flying in to take photos for the website and promotional literature.

The main task I will have will be editing the rooms. Peter is currently cohorting all the themed items together for each room. I will then go through each room and arrange them, deciding what is going to stay and what is out. 

One of the things I have learnt from reading through many of my fellow bloggers' posts is that editing is the key in making sure a room looks tasteful. Anyone can find a conglomeration of themed items, be it cultural themes, colour themes, or temporal themes; but the real art to creating a tasteful vignette is to be incredibly selective in what goes into a room, and not just where it goes. 

One of the Hotel Inspector's biggest bugbears with interior design is people who offer boutique accommodation amongst the second hand detritus of their homes: idiosyncratic curios collecting dust, unedited surfaces decreasing both beauty and utility of spaces. 

Below is one such unedited vignette of the Blenheim suite. Peter and I have started to group the things we want to display in the room together, but as of yet there has been no editing...

For a start the temporary stained oak shelves are going in favour of a lighter brighter rococo gilt wood console with a Carrara marble top. The gold will help keep the room feeling light and bright and luxurious, whereas the dark timber starts to bring the room down.

We should have chosen to have the balloon chair water-gilded as well, but I don't think that the mahogany will have too much of a dampening effect with the large volume of teal silk comprising the bulk of the chair. 

We are pretty pleased with how the wallpaper turned out. It is a very strange colour to try to match, but we have chosen to try to match it to shades of blue always, and not shades of green, in an effort to bring out the most blue in the walls, carpet and fabric as possible. Then using gold accents, which will go with any colour, we will try to  create multiple vignettes, such as by using a range of sconces to display our oriental porcelain, Chinese Foo dogs, and cloisonne enamel vases on the walls...

I think a couple of sconces go a long way...

it may be a case where less is more...

We have a few very jolly Chinoiserie prints which we are having framed for the walls, and plan to create a seating arrangement at the foot of the bed with themed art books on oriental art and design, as well as books on the room's namesake, Blenheim palace. As you can see, there is enough room to carefully create a little sitting area at the foot of the bed...

Similar to the design of these other hotel rooms, which all seem to make use of the foot of the bed to create a separate area within a bedroom...

The black and gold lacquered Chinese cabinets have gold butterflies Japanned upon them. The little red and gold Chinese lamps on the bedside were the ones on either side of our bed at our last house. We have bought a pair of blue and white vase lamps to replace them, which are about twice the size, and will have a better scale within the space:

And of course we will have a few white phalaenopsis orchids. All our rooms have fresh flowers for guests whether they be cut china tea roses, or potted orchids...

A few of my favourite blogs which have many more examples of Chinoiserie design and offer items for sale are:

The Pink Pagoda

Chinoiserie Chic

The Enchanted Home

Blenheim Suite Furnishing and Balloon Chairs...

Last week we finalised and placed the order for all the furniture for Willowbrook. We had been working on the designs for about a year. For much of the house we have designed Chippendale styled furniture to match our own antique pieces. Much of the design was taken directly from Chippendale's Director. 

The pieces are being handmade out of sustainable mahogany. We had to search around many different manufacturers before finding one whose workmanship was passable for authentic period carpentry and whose carving was suitable skillful; but who also had ethically sourced mahogany. There is a one year lead in time for a house lot of furniture, so we had to place the order by the end of October to ensure it arrives on time October next year.

One of the less formal and more fun pieces we chose was a balloon chair for the Blenheim Suite.It will be upholstered in a tuquoise silk to match the Zoffany Manchu wallpaper and the custom designed bed stead, similar to the examples below.

Below: Zoffany's Manchu Turquoise Wallpaper. One can see the pomegranates in this swatch, but not the crimson birds which are very jolly indeed.

The bedstead is in the Chippendale Chinese style, with a gilded bedhead with birds carved into the surround. The birds tie in with the wallpaper and are also replicated in an oriental Chippendale-styled mirror for the suite.

Above: The bed head. What is shown in gray undercoat will be gilded, and the upholstery will be in a Chinese silk to compliment the wallpaper.

Below: Detail of the foot of the bed. Again, the upholstery will be in the same silk as the headboard.

Below: The Oriental Chippendale styled mirror.

It was great fun to design our own furniture. We printed out the entire director along with hundreds of photos of furniture we liked and then cut and pasted all the details together to create the perfect pieces of furniture. The carpentrty firm we are using has been very supportive and onboard with what we are doing, which is also very helpful. And the ever patient Robyn of Aureum Imports and McPherson Architecture has coordinated the whole project and helped us pull it together on time. Many thanks to her.

More Balloon Chairs...

Photos from Tumblr

Blenheim Wallpaper Update...

Just an update on the wallpaper situation. We you may recall, we have been searching for just the right chinoiserie-styled wallpaper for the Blenheim Suite, and we have found it. The wallpaper, featured above and below, is a Zoffany wallpaper called 'Manchu Turquoise'.

A close second, but lacking the wow factor of the crimson birds and pomegranates on a turquoise background was the Nina Campbell wallpaper "Birdcage Walk"...

Finally, I recall seeing this picture a long time ago, but have never found out what that name of the design is. Does anyone know?