Summer Garden...

The Summer Garden in St Petersburg is located where the Fontanka River flows out of the Neva River. It was founded in 1704 by order of Peter the Great, who was personally involved in planning it, and is laid out according to strict geometrical principles.
The Summer Garden is home to marble statues acquired from Europe especially for Russia's new capital, and also to rare flowers and plants, as well as fountains. It was a traditional location for courtly life outside the palace, and balls were held here by the nobility, who also enjoyed simply taking the air in the Garden

Above: The Muse Euterpe "Giver of Delight"

In 1777 the Summer Garden was severely damaged by flooding: Several statues were destroyed and fountains broken. However, it was soon restored to its original regular plan. Today its avenues are adorned by 79 sculptures by Italian sculptors of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, including Boratta, Bozzazza, and many others - the oldest collection of garden statues in Russia. And the selection of mythological themes in the statues is no accident, as the images of the gods and heroes of Antiquity reflected the ideas underpinning Peter the Great's state and the city's metamorphosis.

Above: Ceres, goddess of grain and the harvest

Below: The goddess Athena

Above: Architectura (muse of architecture)

Below: Apollo Belvedere

Above: Julius Caesar

The Summer Garden is also the location of Peter the Great's first Summer Palace, built by the great Italian architect Domenico Trezzini and still there today.
This Summer Palace - a two storey Dutch-styled building with a high roof and comparatively modest interior - was one of St. Petersburg's first stone palaces. Its original interiors have been preserve to this day.

I was reminded of the Summer Garden and all of its statues when we bought our first statue for Willowbrook. It is a statue of Bacchus. We chose it because of the deity's mythological connection to the countryside and to the harvest. Here is a (rather poor) photo of it taken last Winter...

Bacchus or Dionysus, was the god of the grape harvest, of wine and wine making, of ritual madness and parties (bacchanalia), and was also the driving force behind Greek theatre. He was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks. Other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan crete.

Above: Bacchus, satyrs, a goat and a maenad: a pretty typical party really!

His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; and in others, fromEthiopia in the South. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religious life, being one of the twelve Olympians.

Above: Nymphs offering the young Bacchus wine, by van Everdingen

Below: A Bacchinale by Nicolas Poussin

The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a mature, bearded and robed male. He holds a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked youth: the literature describes him as womanly.

Above: The Feast of Bacchus by Peter Paul Reubens

In its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of wild female followers, maenads and bearded satyrs. Some are armed with the thyrsus, some dance or play music.

Above: The Triumphe of Bacchus by Annibale Carracci

The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers. This procession is presumed to be the cult model for the human followers of his Dionysian Mysteries / Bacchanalia. In his Thracian mysteries, he wears the bassaris or fox-skin, symbolizing a new life.

Above: Another bacchinale (I think also by Poussin)

Below: Midas and Bacchus by Nicolas Poussin

Below: A bacchanale ? Artist

One of my favourite composers is Camille Saint-Saens. His opera Samson and Dalila is sublime and features one of my most cherished arias, the arrestingly beautiful Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix (Dalila's love song to Samson). The opera also contains a wonderful orchestral poem/dance of a ritual Bacchanale which has overtones of Greece, Egypt and the East...Saint-Saens' Bacchanale from "Samson et Dalila"...

Eden: The changes over the years...

This post is dedicated to saying farewell to our little villa in town, as we look forward to the foundations being laid for The Carriage House at Willowbrook Park, and look back with fondness on the hard work that we have put into our little house and garden of Eden.

The original house dates back to 1910. The section, the first in the street and the largest remaining, was purchased in 1907. Many of the other sections have been subdivided and terraced house or flats have been built on them.

When we purchased the property in 2003, it looked like this...

It was brilliant white with blue eaves and window frames, and lots of wild shrubs in the front garden. Over time we painted the white and blue in off-white and cream, and repainted the royal blue door in high-gloss black. We removed all the shrubs and defined the garden border with boxwood hedges. We then planted standard iceberg roses around the front garden...

The back garden which was a little bare was eventually exposed to the same treatment...

Above: Before
Below: After

The drawing room...

The original wallpaper in the drawing room and kitchen was forest green (above and below)

The wallpaper was stripped and the whole room re-primed

before being painted a light parchment colour...

The kitchen got the same treatment...

Above: Before
Below: After

The worst room in the whole house was the master bedroom, which was being used by the previous occupant's daughter. It was brilliant white and lime green with purple striped curtains with hearts on them...

In a desperate attempt to sleep at night we initially painted over the nauseous green with white, then one night (after too much wine and too much Moulin Rouge) we entered the red phase...

This lasted from 2004-2008. We then grew tired of the melodrama, and opted to calm things down a bit with beiges and neutrals (but kept the gold accents to lux it up)...




The gold silk damask duvet, dust-ruffle, and pillow cases were all home sewn, and the crown and bed-head were self gilded. Needless to say, we will be getting professionals to do the painting at Willowbrook; and I can't wait for a bedroom with a flat ceiling and walls of equal heights!


Then there was the upstairs study, which was the custard yellow bedroom of another daughter.

This became the first study...

A small private space thoroughly overstuffed with books and curios which at the time had nowhere else to live...

Back downstairs again, there was the dining room. This was an original room from 1915 (dated from the newspapers found stuffed in the framing as insulation when we tore the room apart). It was weatherboard construction which had been covered with scrim and then coated in anagylpta, and then painted several times. When the wind blew in the right direction I swear I could see the walls bellowing from within. In its last incarnation it had been left a terracotta colour, which is what we made do with for a while...

In the big renovation of 2008, we tore all the walls, floor and ceiling out, and re-lined them with Gib-board...

We had the ceiling re-plastered with a period cornice moulding and centre medallion, banished the ugly hanging candelabra, and strung up an empire-styled basket chandelier...

Modern as the gray under-paint was, we went ahead an painted the room a Wedgwood blue. This has been our practice run for the Card room / China room at Willowbrook...

The Mandarin coloured downstairs bedroom was transformed into study number 2...

Still ridiculously over-stuffed (my need to hoard not curtailed by a mere lack of physical space)....

But by far our biggest challenged was bathroom number one, the fluorescent orange bathroom...

We immediately painted the bathroom in order to shower without fear of migraines. But no matter what shade we chose, we couldn't hide the fact that it was dated...

So we had the ceiling, floor and four walls ripped out, rebuilt, water proofed and tiled with a beige marble. We chose a nice new bath, loo and vanity (and tried to make the most of the modest space with which we were challenged.

All of this was made harder and doubly expensive when we found out that the first building company had done such a sub-standard job of rebuilding the bathroom that the tiler was not prepared to tile it. The building company, disagreeing with the tiler and a second building consultant, refused to fix the job, and we had to pay a second company to tear down their work and complete it to a professional standard. But I think it was worth it...

Back in the garden:

Just off the drawing room was a small cobbled space...

We thought we would convert it into an outside extension of the drawing room by creating a little courtyard. This was pleasant by day...

Above: A vista from the courtyard down to the swimming pool

and could be dramatic by night...

But despite the many changes, and the quirky charm of our little cottage, we found ourselves in need of a bigger venture and a grander space. Having lived with asymmetric rooms, 100 year old wooden joinery, and bijoux spaces for a decade, it was time to design a new home from scratch. This coupled with our love of entertaining, of antiques and art, and of Georgian architecture and gardens gave birth to Willowbrook Park.