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...

Raising the bar...

Here's the conundrum. Every hotel needs a bar, yet no home really wants a bar. A 'home bar' is so declasse, and fit only for the sort of home where pictures of dogs playing poker are considered tasteful. If one is to have alcohol in view, then one ought to have a 'drinks trolley'.

So, with that profound advice out of the way, how does one create the essential, intimate and ever so slightly glam bar for a boutique hotel cum home, where guests can flirt with each other over a nice glass or two of Grande Annee?

We have designed an alcove with a pull out bar on castors, and closable cabinetry. It has all the charm of a luxurious little bar - the warm polished mahogany paneling, the gleam of shiny brass rails, the glint of light off the crystal and chairs so comfy that a day's work on one's feet is quickly forgotten; yet when one doesn't want to be confronted with the commercial aspect of one's endeavours, one can simply close the cabinets behind the bar, hiding all the bottles and glasses behind paneling that matches the wall panels, push the bar back into the alcove, and redecorate the surface at will with whatever object d'art one is in the mood for.

When the bar is open...

When the bar is closed...

The lounge will have lovely deep leather club chairs with plenty of little Louis XV styled tables at hand upon which to rest one's glass, and will double as our informal entertainment area (separate from our private, formal drawing room). At the end of the lounge (correlating to the right hand wall in the above plans, there will be a large plasma TV, recessed into the wall, covered by a framed moving oil painting, which rolls up in the frame when one wishes to watch the TV, and rolls down, when one wants to hide it from view. TVs have become [almost] indispensable household items, but that doesn't make them attractive...

Here are some more TV hiding ideas...







And here are some of the not so garish bars that we have taken inspiration from....

Doctors Urgently Need Your Help

This is a wild aside from my usual blogs, but I am compelled to send a message to anyone out there who cares. For fear of reprisal I have not posted in detail at Willowbrook Park , so please, please visit this new blog:

Doctors In Distress

and please also visit the official Treating Doctors Well site for further information.

Here some of our stories here

Coach Lanterns...

We have started to look at each light fitting for Willowbrook - an exhausting task, and we have finally come across some coach lanterns we like the look of for the outside lighting. They have a slightly Gothic quality to them. There will be a '9357 LD' on either side of the arch into the Carriage House, as one on either side of the French doors to the Terrace outside on the Second Storey. There will also be a pair on either side of the main gate, one on each stone gate pillar.

The hanging coach lamps (9855 LD)will hang inside the front portico (x2) and also outside in the loggia of the downstairs terrace (x3).

Then the matching lanterns on posts (9559 LD) will be dotted along the paths in the park. I think they should look quite stunning at night.

Whilst they are not strictly Georgian, they are by far the most impressive in the catalogues we have looked at. Others looked quite generic. What do you think? Does anyone know of better lighting companies we should try in Australasia?