Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury Art: Working together: House decoration

House decoration: Bell and Grant

After the Omega Workshops closed Bell and Grant continued to collaborate on the decoration of private houses, providing a design service for their friends and working on occasional commissions. Mary and St John Hutchinson and Maynard Keynes were among their first customers and they later decorated rooms for Vanessa's brother Adrian and for the Woolfs at 52 Tavistock Square. They also decorated their own home Charleston farmhouse.

In 1927, they created a large-scale decoration for Chateau d'Auppegard near Dieppe, the home of American artists Ethel Sands and Nan Hudson. After the carefree atmosphere of Charleston, Vanessa and Duncan found the household very genteel. As well as providing a description of the decorations in a letter to Roger Fry, Vanessa also complained that:

The strain to keep clean is beginning to tell. Duncan shaves daily - I wash my hands at least 5 times a day - but in spite of all I know I am not up to the mark... It's almost impossible to find a place into which one can throw a cigarette end without its becoming a glaring eyesore.

Decorations in the garden loggia, Chateau d'Aupeggard, Dieppe
Copyright holder untraced

Penns-in-the-rocks Copyright holder untraced

The work was carried out in the garden loggia in the style they had come to adopt, reminiscent of early Italian frescoes. It was clearly a success as ten years later Dame Ethel invited them to decorate another of her homes in Chelsea.

Between 1929 and 1931 they worked together on a commission for Lady Dorothy Wellesley to decorate her house, Penns-in-the-Rocks, Sussex. The dining room was filled with colour. The curtains were pale mauve silk appliquéd with yellow and orange and studded with sequins, and the carpet a mass of brilliant contrasts. The room was dominated by a series of murals stretching from floor to ceiling and separated by octagonal mirrors.

In 1932 they designed a music room for the Lefevre Galleries in London which was greatly publicised in the press. The theme was Autumn and the walls were decorated with six flower panels, each incorporating a mirror. Other decorations included rugs, curtains, needlework panels on the chairs, lamps and cushions. Even the piano was painted by Duncan, repeating the pattern of leaves used elsewhere in the room.

From 1940 - 1943 Grant and Bell worked together on the Berwick Church murals. Their last major shared decorating task, a mural for the dining room of Devonshire Hill School in Tottenham, was painted in 1944.

Architectural Review,
'A Music Room decorated, furnished and painted by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant'
Reproduced courtesy of The Architectural Review