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?

Our Altar Stone...

When our friends Jack and Judith were staying with us, we asked Jack if he would do us the honour of consecrating the altar stone for Willowbrook Park's chapel for us (Jack being an Anglican Bishop).

The beautifully carved altar stone was given to us as a gift by our friend and architect, Chris, and his wife Robyn. It is made out of Carrara marble, and the documentation of the consecration of the stone along with a relic of St Catherine of Sienna (shown below) are now sealed inside the stone in a small recess.


I thought I would post a picture of our altar stone and our small oratory at Eden, our current residence, as it will have to be dismantled at the end of this month, and the room redressed as a bedroom prior to placing our house on the market - Yes, the big day is looming and if all goes to plan we will sell our house this summer and shift into the carriage house in the autumn whilst the manor is being completed.

So, here are a couple of pictures of our chapel, as we prepare to say goodbye to our little sanctuary, and prepare for the next part of the journey.

Above: The Altar

Below: Close-up of the tabernacle

Above: Our small shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham

Terrazzo.

Whilst we have now settled on the three marbles which we are going to use for our foyer, I did some research on Terrazzo, just to see whether this would be a good option for the stairs and foyer. As it turns out, the cost of the cement preparation and marble chips, and then the copious grinding and polishing makes it about the same a marble tiles. Hence, we settled on the marble below:


Beige marble (background) for the floor, with the medium tone and dark tone marble for inlaid work around the borders and in the circular compass tesselation in the middle. The gold-leaf glass tiles provide nice highlights to the marble (and I'm sure we can incorporate then somewhere).

Terrazzo is a product that can be used on walkways, patios, floors, and counter-tops. It is actually more a process than a product. It is made by layering concrete then sandy cement, then scattering a dense covering of selected chips of marble / stone / glass / shells etc on top of the cement. Once it has dried well, the surface is progressively ground down and then polished to achieve the finished effect.


This is an eco-friendly option as one can recycle the stone chips or glass, and there is no carbon cost to importing granite or marble as everything is created on-site.

Above photo from the NTMA website

Above photo from DMI Tile and marble Inc


More examples of Terrazzo floors...

Above photo from DMI Tile and marble Inc

Above photo from the NTMA website

For a good article on how Terrazzo is made, visit This Old House here

Dining Room... and Damask Wallpaper

Above: The dining room at Chatsworth, laid for Christmas.

I think that red is the perfect colour for a dining room. The colour red heightens the senses and evokes feelings of desire and craving, of passion and heat: an ideal way to enhance one's gustatory experience. Just as the flavours of food are immensely enhanced by its appearance, colour and aroma, one's surroundings should enhance the experience of one's dining companions as well.

I love the three examples below. The gilded picture frames on the red silk background are stunning (and red and gold is my favourite colour combination).

Above: The dining room at Buck House

Below: The dining room at Chatsworth

Below: The dining room at Althorp

Below: Red silk damask wall covering.

One would think that finding a red damask wallpaper would be fairly straight-forward, but no!

The closest one we could find was the Trefoil pattern from The Royal Collection, but although the green version comes in green on green, the red version doesn't, it comes as red on gold, which when one is planning to hang many gold-framed pictures on the wall becomes too much of a good thing...

Above: Mulberry Trefoil

Below: Emerald Trefoil

Above 3 photos from The Royal Collection Website

After Min's very useful comment about a wallpaper supplier called Tapetorama we found the hummingbird wallpaper from Cole and Son for the Blenheim Suite. Then after a visit to Icon textiles and wallpaper in Auckland - which was thoroughly unsuccessful in finding a red damask wallpaper- the very helpful people there suggested we contact Cole and Son and have them make us bespoke wallpaper. One of the staff had just returned from a visit to their factory outside London and saw them making all the wallpaper. So, we have been given a selection of damask patterns, from which we may choose, then we decide what background and foreground colour we would like, and which we would like flocked, and then they hand-make it from their original blocks, which date back about a century. As long as one orders a minimum of 100 metres, then there are no problems.

Damask is a reversible fabric made out of silk, cotton, linen or other synthetic fibres, woven with differing warp and weft threads (sometimes actual gold or silver threads) to create the reversible and often iridescent patterns. The word Damask is derived from the city of Damascus, which was once a large city trading in fabrics, textiles and furnishing. It was preeminent in the Byzantine and Islamic world for its weaving. By the fourteenth century Damasks were being woven on drawn looms in Italy. Today, however, most are made on computerised Jacquard looms.

Above: Examples of 14th Century Italian Silk Damask

Below: Gold on Gold- Too much of a good thing?

We have also started looking ahead to how we can turn the ballroom around for dinners for weddings. These pictures capture the style and ambiance we wish to recreate at these times...

The 3 above photos are of the Hotel Du Pont, Delaware

The Olive Grove...

We have finished planting our little olive grove. The trees are so small you can hardly see them at all, but they should make good progress over the spring.

At the end of the Bluebell walk one arrives at the lake, and passing through a serpentine glade in the lakeside Oak wood, one arrives at the olive grove and Tuscan garden. The olive grove has 12 olive trees of four different varieties, designed to cross pollinate each other (although each variety is self pollinating to a greater or lesser extent. The varieties are:

Frantoio: A Tuscan cultivar known for its excellent oil quality and flavour and moderate to high yields of easy to pick olives. It is frost hardy and a late ripener. Although it is self fertile, its yields improve by pollinating with Leccino. It is the main pollinator for other varieties.

Leccino: Quality and production similar to Frantoio, but more vigorous and higher yielding. Frost hardy. Resistant peacock spot. Late flowering. Pollinated with Frantoio, Pendolino, Picholine or Moraiolo.



Koroneiki: A vigorous, early bearer but late ripener from Greece. It is a small shrubby hardy tree bearing large crops of small fruit, useful as an evergreen shelter. It is self fertile and naturally resistant to Peacock Spot. The olives are OK for pickling as cocktail olives, but it is known for its very high yields of high quality oil.


Manzanillo: This is the world's most popular table olive. It has a high flesh/pit ratio. The tree is small, spreading, early-bearing, and high- producing: well-suited to pickling or oil. The oil has a peppery flavour. It is self fertile but its yield improves with pollination by Frantoio. This is one of the good home garden varieties, with the advantage of early ripening, but the disadvantage that it is prone to Peacock Spot and susceptible to hard frosts.

Hopefully one day the grove above will resemble the grove below...

The fences on the western side have been planted with 3 varieties of grape vines, so one day they will become a verdant border and complete the Tuscan theme. We are currently looking for a press which will handle grapes, cider apples and olives, so we can bottle out own wine, vinegar, cider and oils...


Update 14 January: We now have our first crops of olives and the trees are starting to bush out more...