The Chatsworth Suite...

Looking back through the archives it occurred to me that I have blogged about Chatsworth, about the Chatsworth Suite bathroom, and made allusions to it in other posts such as the fabric and carpet posts, but I have not collected all those thoughts together to demonstrate the overall look for the suite; so here we go!

The Chatsworth suite is themed around the English Baroque style. So heavily carved mahogany furniture, rich red damasks and dramatic golds accents are all key in the decor.

Starting from the ground up we have a rich red carpet such as one of these...

with a rug in front of the open hearth:

The open hearth has a heavily carved marble mantlepiece with a gilded baroque carved mirror above and an ormulu clock with a matching set of garnitures...

Above: The clock

Below: The Mirror (similar)

Below: The fireplace

Then there are the curtains, which are made out of a delicious berry red velvet damask of a gold background by English fabric house Jim Dickens. The fabric will be used for not just the window drapes but also the four poster curtains...

Then there is the wallpaper. We are not sure about whether to use a damask wallpaper (which would not be the same as the Jim Dickens fabric) or whether to use a stripped wallpaper to get away from the issue of differing damasks. Our fallback plan would be to use a crimson paint until something perfect comes along. Here are some of the papers we have found so far...

The last one would be my preference for the wallpaper. What are your thoughts???

For the most part Willowbrook will be able to be furnished with authentic period antiques, but there were still a lot of pieces which we needed to have made - as firstly you simply can't source them for love or money in NZ, and if you could they would be at Sotherby's or Christie's prices (which are not in the budget). So the next best thing was for us to search through old Sotherby's and Christie's catalogs, cut out pieces of furniture we liked the look of, tweak them on Photoshop to make the designs exactly what we wanted, and then to have them hand-carved out of sustainable mahogany overseas. Here are some examples of the pieces we have chosen for the Chatsworth suite...

Above: The bed, modified now to ensure the scrolls continue all the way to the posts, and placing a molded panel detail on the headboard and toeboard. Below: The bedside cabinets.

 Below: An escritoire.

There will also be a pair of carved and gilded Chippendale styled chairs...

  and a full length mirror...

Mahogany furniture actually comes in a range of colours depending on the stains and finished that are applied to them (as you can see from the examples above). We had seen some reproduction furniture which looked all too 'repro' because of the dark purple colour (and sometimes the mere shoddy job of the carving). 

We also wanted to ensure that all the furniture was exactly the same colour so that we could mix and match it about the rooms in the future without it clashing (as it would if you put the bedside cabinets above with the fourposter bed above in the colour in which it is shown). So after receiving samples of the work to ensure that the carving was up to scratch, we then chose the stain colour. We whittled the choice of stain colours down from 24 to 6:

and then chose the one which we thought would look traditional and warm without looking too purple:

And finally the ceiling. We can't have the room being let down in the details, so we have chosen a heavy acanthus and egg motif ceiling rose for the chandelier, and a matching cornice molding...