The Travellers: Ditchley Carpet

The Saloon at Ditchley Park
in a watercolor by Alexandre Serebriakoff.
Image via The Ditchley Foundation.

In this day of throw-away culture, The Devoted Classicist appreciates each sighting of a treasured furnishing that has been reused in another setting, sometimes even with a new owner.  The non-sequential series of posts that records these appearances is titled The Travellers.


Ditchley Park.
Image via The Ditchley Foundation.

Author Martin Wood writes in NANCY LANCASTER, COUNTRY HOUSE STYLE that the Saloon, mostly used for tea when there was a house party, had a large Portuguese needlework rug made especially for the room.  Countess Munster (the former Peggy Ward before her 1929 marriage and later a partner when Nancy bought the decorating business started by Sibyl Colefax that they reformed as Sibyl Colefax Limited) had discovered a prison in northern Portugal that was capable of taking on such work and that is thought to be the source of this 19 x 13 feet 10 inches carpet. 

The relocation of the magnificent Venetian folding screen from the Hall of Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, to the Drawing Room of Heron Bay, Barbados, was shown in the post here.  But the carpet from the Saloon of Ditchley travelled to another home of Ronald Tree as well.  After Nancy divorced Tree to marry Colonel Lancaster, she moved to his home, Kelmarsh, which the Trees had leased before buying Ditchley (and sold many of the furnishings to Lancaster).


A detail of a Sebriakoff watercolor of the
Library at Ditchley looking into the Saloon.
Image from Martin Wood's book
NANCY LANCASTER, COUNTRY HOUSE STYLE

Ronald Tree retained Ditchley for a short while after his marriage to his second wife Marietta until moving back to New York City, once home to each.  Although The Ditchley Foundation says it was Marietta Tree who commissioned Alexandre Serebriakoff to provide the lovely watercolor views of Ditchley, author Martin Wood writes that it was Ronald Tree who arranged for the series after he and Nancy divorced; it appears that a set was done for each Ronald and Nancy.  (The watercolor of the Library, shown in part above, signed and dated A. Serebriakoff Dytchley [sic] 1948 later sold at Sotheby's for $32,500).


Penelope Tree in her living room, N.Y.C. 1962
Photograph by Diane Arbus.
Image via private collection.

Ronald and Marietta Tree bought the 1907 Leland-Wesson (sisters Eufrasia Leland and Emma Wesson) double-width, Georgian style house at 123 (and 125) East 79th Street, New York City. (The original architects of the house were Foster, Gade & Graham; it is now the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations).  It was one of several properties in the immediate area that Vincent Astor had bought up in the 1920s and 1930s to prevent development for apartment buildings that would block the light for the south-facing garden of his own grand double-width townhouse on East 80th Street.  Friends of the Trees called the townhouse Little Ditchley because of the art and furnishings that had come from the Oxfordshire estate.  One of those items was the rug from the Saloon, visible in the Diane Arbus photo of the Tree's 13 year old daughter taken for a feature in Town & Country magazine.  (The photographer died in 1971 but a silver gelatin reprint authorized by the estate sold in a 2008 auction at Christie's for $15,000).  The rug apparently followed Marietta Tree's move to One Sutton Place South where she lived until her death, and sold at the Christie's 1992 sale of items from her estate, lot 133.


The rug in the loft of Niall Smith.
Photo by Jeffrey Hirsch for NYSD.

A 2008 feature on the Manhattan loft apartment of antiques dealer Niall Smith in New York Social Diary with photos by Jeffrey Hirsch and interview by Lesley Hauge and Sian Ballen revealed that the Ditchley rug had found an appreciated home yet again. 


Another view of the carpet from Ditchley.
Photo by Jeffrey Hirsch for NYSD.

The text of the NYSD article stated "Niall found the needlepoint rug at Doyle.  It had belonged to Nancy Lancaster who made it from the design of the front hall ceiling at Ditchley."  (Actually it was the rug in the Hall that had some of the same elements as the Hall ceiling but the Doyle lot may have been a resale from the 1992 auction).


The carpet from Ditchley in the loft of Niall Smith.
Photo by Jeffrey Hirsch for NYSD.

A caption of the NYSD article also revealed "a Biedermeier Recamier sits atop Niall's prized Nancy Lancaster needlepoint rug for which he paid 'four times the estimate'."  The Devoted Classicist finds it satisfying that well-made, well-designed neoclassical furnishings from the twentieth-century are still appreciated by discerning collectors today.

For more posts in The Travellers series, scroll down in the right hand margin of the regular web version of The Devoted Classicist to the heading LABELS and click on The Travellers.