A BROWN AND GOLD LACQUER FOUR-POSTER CANOPIED BED, 19TH CENTURY

By repute, Brighton Pavilion

The Collection of Walter P. Chrysler Jr., Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc. New York, 6-7 May 1960, lot 382

Supplied to Gregory Smith by McMillen Inc., New York, 17 May 1961

E. Brown, Sixty Years of Interior Design, The World of McMillen (New York 1982), ill. p.133 and 138

Mario Buatta was famous for his luxuriously appointed bedrooms, always anchored by a four-poster canopied bed, which was as much a reflection of his own taste as that of his clients: 'I have been sleeping on a canopy bed since my third apartment, which was on 62^nd street. You feel like you’re in your little world. Those Hollywood beds that are king sized are hideous. It’s a whole sea of mattress.' Unsurprisingly, he chose to acquire what was arguably New York's most illustrious canopy bed in the 1970s, one that appealed to his strong love for richly abundant and multicoloured surface decoration.

The offered lot was formerly in the celebrated Walter P. Chrysler Jr. collection, where it was acquired by Nathalie Davenport of the venerable decorating firm McMillen for their client Gregory Smith's Octagon Bedroom in his apartment in the Pulitzer Mansion on E.73rd Street. The juxtaposition of the exotic, scintillating lacquer surface with more sober Neoclassical mahogany case furniture and a medieval wooden sculpture of the Madonna and Child was striking, and remains to this day one of the most iconic New York interiors of the second half of the 20th century.

Like many pieces of lacquer furniture, the bed has long been reputed to emanate from Brighton Pavilion, George IV's seaside retreat that started life as a late neoclassical villa but was transformed by John Nash into a coruscating oriental palace after 1815. Although the interiors were famously decorated by the Crace firm with a riotous abundance of Chinese and Chinese-inspired furniture and objects, George IV's bedroom itself was far more sedate, with a carved mahogany bedstead supplied by the designer Robert Jones and visible in Nash's watercolour views of the Palace rooms in the 1820s. No comparable bed to the offered lot is recorded in the comprehensive 1828 inventory preserved in the Royal Collection. George's successor William IV and Queen Adelaide continued to use the palace during their brief reign of 1830-37, though no documentation or visual record of their bedroom interiors has come to light. The same is true for Queen Victoria, who visited when still an unmarried queen in 1837 and 1838, and again in 1842, 1843 and 1845, after her marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. With regards to these visits a housekeeper's ledger intriguingly mentions 'one of their late Majesties’ black and gold bedsteads’ was altered for Queen Victoria’s use, though no further details of this piece have emerged.

Queen Victoria sold the Pavilion to the town of Brighton in 1850, finding the palace too small and ill-suited for her growing family,and judging the increasing flow of visitors to Brighton too intrusive on her privacy. Prior to the sale the Pavilion's entire contents were stripped and sent to London, where many items were re-used at Buckingham Palace, though some furniture and fixtures have since returned. In the absence of archival evidence or inventory marks on the Buatta bed, it seems unlikely it was ever in the Royal Pavilion collection. However, even if the bed may never have been slept in by the Prince Regent or Prince Albert, it seems fitting that it was used by a different kind of Prince in the late 20th century. The bed became indelibly associated with Mario Buatta's persona, so much so that the New York Times commissioned the then-New York based Greek artist Konstantin Kakanias to produce a drawing of Buatta working in his bed for publication in their Style magazine (see final lot in the sale)