Mini-Posts
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Mini-Post | The Gilded Age and the Elms
Have you been watching the new season of The Gilded Age? I’ve been loving seeing Newport on screen, where the nouveau riche Russell family have just completed their home, with their (very handsome and eligible) son Larry testing out his architectural skills. Taking a starring role as the Russell home is the Elms, a beautiful read more
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Mini-Post | Château de la Reine Blanche
I have just come back from a lovely week in France where we travelled for a friend’s wedding. We were lucky enough to visit Chantilly, and there was a tiny landmark in the nearby forest that I could not resist visiting, as it played a pivotal role in one of my most favourite films… In read more
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Mini-Post | Nemours Estate
Welcome to Nemours Estate, a French neoclassical mansion with very beautiful almost-Versailles landscape gardens in Delaware! Nemours was built between 1909 and 1910 by Alfred du Pont for his second wife, Alicia. Alicia had a love of all things French, which inspired much of the home. Alfred’s third wife, Jessie Ball du Pont, loved all read more
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Mini-Post | Waddesdon Manor
Forever one of the country houses I’m most interested in, welcome to Waddesdon Manor, a French château in Buckinghamshire. Waddesdon was built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild and completed in 1883 – he wanted somewhere to escape from London to. (Very nice if you can!) As you may guess from the style, the architect was read more
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Mini-Post | Salem, Massachusetts
Salem is a coastal city that, before European colonisation, was lived in for thousands of years by American Indians and was part of a peninsula known as Naumkeag. Due to war, contact with settlers and a smallpox epidemic, many Naumkeag people passed away in the early seventeenth century. English settlers arrived and founded Salem in read more
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Mini-Post | Wightwick Manor
“The conditions of art should be simple. A great deal more depends upon the heart than upon the head. Appreciation of art is not secured by any elaborate scheme of learning. Art requires a good healthy atmosphere.” Oscar Wilde, “The House Beautiful” Lecture, 1882 Theodore and Flora Mander subscribed to Wilde’s ideas in this lecture, read more
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Mini-Post | The Wallace Collection
The Wallace Collection began as the art collected by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace – he was probably the 4th Marquess’ illegitimate child. His widow, Julie Amelie, Lady Wallace, bequeathed it to the nation. You can find the collection at Hertford House, which was the family’s London home. The 2nd read more
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Mini-Post | “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash!”
Today would have been Johnny Cash’s 90th birthday, so I’m sharing some treasures from a visit to the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville. Handwritten lyrics to “Folsom Prison Blues”, recorded for Cash’s debut studio album “Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar!”. Photos of Cash and his second wife, June Carter Cash, taken for read more
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Mini-Post | Miami Art Deco District
The Art Deco District, otherwise known as the Miami Beach Architectural District, entered the National Register of Historic Places on 14th May 1979. It was thanks to the determination of Barbara Baer Capitman (1920-1990), who founded the Miami Design Preservation League with industrial designer Leonard Horowitz in 1976. Capitman was highly committed to saving the read more
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Mini-Post | Toulouse-Lautrec’s Dinner with the Natansons
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec sketched this when he was being hosted by Thadée and Misia Natanson for dinner. Misia commands the scene in the middle: as one half of the ruling couple of Paris’ intellectual elite, she was painted by many artists and even inspired several characters written by Marcel Proust. She was a wonderful pianist read more
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