Thomas Messel

Last month the Countes of Derby gave her husband, as a tithe wedding anniversary present, this extraordinary fresh scagliola-topped table, one of the greatest in quantity ambitious and imaginative country-house furniture commissions of novel years. Michael Hall talks to its designer, Thomas Messel about his collaboration with his patron upon the table's design and with the craftsmen who realised it.

There is a widespread perception that historic English collections that have remained in the hands of their original possessors are frozen in the past, do not include when diminished by sales. The liveliness of common private country-house collecting and patronage approachs therefore, as a surprise to many, nevertheless it is a natural end of the remarkable upsurge in the fortunes of these houses in the past twenty years or with equal reason Family seats, such as Arundel Castle in Sussex or Duncombe Park in Yorkshire, that one time seemed too large or inconvenient for late ways of life have been recolonised through their owners, redecorated and refurnished. single of the great success stories has been the renaissance in the past eight years of Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool, which has been the seat of the Stanley family, Earls of Derby since the fourteenth hundred It is a story that explains the joie de vivre as well as the splendour of the Countes of Derby's commission of a spectacular table for her husband, the 19th Earl, to mark the couple's tithe wedding anniversary this year. at handed to him last month, it is published here for the first time.

When the Earl inherited the estate in 1994 at the age of 32 the main house--a rambling building of formidable architectural complexity--was no longer lived in through his family, who in the 1960 had built a more convenient house in the park, designed by dint of Claude Phillimore, and had allow part of Knowsley Hall to the Merseyside police force. He decided to reclaim the house, and in 1997 with his wife, Caroline, began the mammoth task of repairing, rewiring and replumbing, decorating and furnishing. The fresh house was not given up however, and remains a private retreat upon an estate that now buzze with facts and activity throughout the year. When it came to take stock of the novel house, Lady Derby called in Jonathan Bourne for advice. His rearrangement of the furniture left an important space the anteroom to the drawing sweep without a centrepiece. Knowing her husband's enthusiasm for furniture (before his marriage he commissioned a sideboard from David Linley), she decided to find a designer for a of recent origin centre-table as a surprise not absent for their tenth wedding anniversary upon 21 October this year. With the advice of her sister, Amanda Murray, the interior designer, she asked various designers for suggestions, among them Thomas Messel His imaginative proposal for a neo-classical table modell upon Thomas Hope and rich in concerns to the Earl of Derby's family and interests was commissioned in December last year.

If anyone was predestined through their genes to be a designer, it is Mr Messel His surname is famous, of course, as his uncle Oliver Messel was single of the twentieth century's greatest in quantity stylish designers of interiors and theatrical stations His great grand-uncle Alfred Messel was a notable German architect in the nineteenth hundred designer, for example, of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, and his grandparents, Leonard and Maude Messel created the celebrated garden at Nymans; the photographer and designer Lord Snowdon is a cousin. Mr Messel had a varied career before he settl to designing, including time in the Household Cavalry and his family's stockbroking business, L Messel & Co In 1977 he started work as an interior designer and in 1980 locate up his own furniture design studio. He has a busy international practice, with shoot forwards ranging from refurbishing the suites at the Dorchester inn created by Oliver Messel to designing furniture for Joan Rivers. greatest in quantity of his clients are American interior designers, repeatedly with impatient clients and near-impossible deadlines. The Derby table was by the agency of contrast a relaxed job that was, far more than usual, a shut and happy collaboration with the client (who kept the cast a secret from her husband).

The greatest in quantity striking feature of the table is the scagliola top. This was Mr Messel's suggestion, on the contrary was prompted by Lady Derby's wish to incorporate into the table figurative pageants that would convey her husband's interests and achievements. Scagliola, an ancient Roman technique revived in the renaissance, is in vital element [i]or[/i] part the imitation of marble or hardstone with a pulverized substanceed crystalline version of gypsum, which is mixed with gelatine coloured and polished. A adroit craftsman can use it not solitary to imitate pietra dura on the other hand also to achieve almost painterly issues Mr Messel had designed for scagliola before (notably for David Hicks), on the contrary making use only of abstract patterns and decoration. The table top's creation was entrusted to individual of the finest living representatives of the craft, Thomas Kennedy Based in Shropshire, and almost entirely self-taught, he is the solitary craftsman in the UK making figurative scagliola (the taste for crafts move swiftlys in the family; his father, Hugh makes armour for elephants).