design MY
HERO
Designer, cook and author Sophie Conran on artist, designer and architect Oliver Messel
“A
bout 15 years ago, I was very lucky to stay in one of the houses Oliver Messel designed on Mustique, and that got me interested in him and his journey. Messel went to the Slade School of Art in the early 1920s and started off as a painter, got into set and costume design for theatre and opera, then worked on Hollywood films in the glamorous age of the silver screen. He designed Vivien Leigh’s costumes for Caesar and Cleopatra in 1945 and was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Suddenly Last Summer in 1959. He was also a portrait painter, an illustrator and a fabric designer. In 1966, he moved to Barbados and started a new career as an architect and interior designer. It is Messel’s architecture on Mustique, in particular, that interests me. It is sensitive, uses local materials, and is not overly big and grand. The houses he designed have a breezy, uplifting quality, lovely symmetry, and a feeling of being immersed in nature. He often used a particular shade of green paint, now known as ‘Messel Green’, and, with a sea view on both sides, the houses feel almost transparent. Messel was from an era where things were handmade and ideas were sketched out. His drawings are just wonderful, very sensitive and sweet, and he had a really good sense of colour. He often had to improvise because of wartime shortages, making costumes using things like sweet wrappers and pipe cleaners. The results were glittery, fun and whimsical. His work has great joy and charm, and is also quite timeless, and that is the main way in which he has influenced me. I like to think that what I do is charming, timeless, thoughtful and whimsical. We all need things that make us smile, and Messel’s work is all about the human experience and making us sing a little bit inside.” n
114 THE ENGLISH HOME
ABOVE Depicting elegant blue trees and set in delicate golden frames, these Chinoiserie Blossom wall panels (£305 for two) from the Sophie Conran collection are elegant, classic and timeless. RIGHT A coloured sketch by Oliver Messel showing the decorative scheme for the Crush Room at the Royal Opera House, which he decorated for a gala ballet performance in 1950. BELOW The Golden Bouquet chest (£675), designed by Sophie Conran and her team, is hand-painted and was inspired by antique folk wedding chests.
LEFT The Oliver Messel Suite at The Dorchester hotel in London. Designed by Messel in 1953 – whose inspiration for it came from Venetian, Rococo and Ottoman interiors – it was carefully restored in the 1990s. RIGHT With scalloped edges and delicate bamboo details, the Blossom hand-painted metal table (£295) is an engaging piece from the Sophie Conran collection at sophieconran.com Read more in Oliver Messel: In the Theatre of Design by Thomas Messel, £45, published by Rizzoli.
FEATURE KATHERINE SORRELL PHOTOGRAPHS OLIVER MESSEL IMAGES COURTESY OF RIZZOLI
Oliver Messel (1904–1972), one of the foremost stage designers of the midtwentieth century
