Make Your Bed

Interesting beds and bedrooms from life and art (and their interesting occupants) By Katie Dutton

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A View of the Roses: Vanessa Bell’s Bedroom at Charleston

Some of the most prolific thinkers, writers and artists of the 20th-century slept under the roof of Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, England. T.S Eliot, E.M Forster and Virginia and Leonard Woolf were just a few of the eminent guests to stop by. There were also some very forward-thinking, rather free-wheeling family dynamics at play here.

Vanessa Bell, Virginia’s sister, fellow Bloomsbury Group member, and artist, was the matriarch at Charleston. She moved into the house with her partner Duncan Grant, Grant’s lover David Garnett, and her two small sons Julian and Quintin (fathered by her husband Clive Bell) in 1916. On Christmas Day in 1918, Vanessa gave birth to a girl, Angelica, who although brought up believing her father was Clive Bell, was, in fact, the biological daughter of Duncan Grant - a truth she didn’t discover until she was eighteen. Confused yet? Me too. Nevertheless, Charleston was the family home for the Bells, Grants and their respective lovers for the next sixty-four years. 

Upon their arrival, Vanessa, along with her partner Duncan and other Bloomsbury Group artist, Roger Fry, set about transforming the property. Their decorative style was ‘full of sensuous beauty’ [1]. Influences from French Post-Impressionist art and Mediterranean architecture and design can be seen throughout the house, such as in the warm colours and shapes of the paintings, ceramics and Italian-style frescoes on the walls. The bedrooms and the furniture within them were approached with particular care. Although all akin in their artistic style, each bedroom included unique and thoughtful touches to provide a special and accommodating space for the person dwelling there. The bedroom allocated to Vanessa Bell’s husband Clive Bell (who became a permanent resident there in 1939), for example, was fitted out with carpet from his Gordon Square flat and included a library chair upholstered in a fabric designed by Vanessa, which he enjoyed to sit and read in.

Vanessa’s own bedroom was adapted from a larder on the ground floor in 1939. Now, in a room of her own, from the newly installed French windows, she had a view of the garden, where she could see and smell the roses: ‘I am sitting at my open bedroom window … it opens down to the ground and I look out on to the lawn … The monthly roses are in bloom. It’s a hot summer evening … the pinks are making the whole place smell …’[2] The room, as we can still see today, is adorned with artwork by Bell and Grant. By the door, a beautiful hand-painted wardrobe sits, done by Bell in 1917, with distinctive circle motifs and a colour palette of red, purple, pink, pale blue and yellow. The room also has a bath and sink, complete with murals.  

Vanessa has been undeniably overshadowed by her literary sister Virginia over the years, but the preservation of her home at Charleston has ensured her voice and work lives on. As one critic put it: ‘... Bell’s paintings and home decorations are anything but silent; they shout and scream in a cacophony of colour and shape, rude lines and sudden gentle shading.’ [3] They refuse to be ignored. We should not forget also her ground-breaking feminist project ‘The Famous Women Dinner Service’, depicting fifty revolutionary women throughout history, that she made with Grant from 1932-34 and went on public show for the first time last year. [4]

Like her sister Virginia so vehemently believed, that ‘a room of one’s own’ was a vital catalyst for independence and creative work, so too did Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant highlight the importance of one’s own space for privacy, work and rest. Through their thoughtful designs, ceramics and paintings, Bell and Grant provided a haven for their guests and inhabitants in each of their bedrooms. It’s no surprise then that the stories, artworks, ideas and relationships(!) that formed in these rooms were significant ones; going so far as to shake and alter the stuffy culture and status quo of early 20th-century Britain.

Notes

[1] https://www.charleston.org.uk/charleston-bloomsbury-history/

[2] https://www.charleston.org.uk/charleston-room-by-room/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jan/27/design-and-desires-how-vanessa-bell-put-the-bloom-in-bloomsbury

[4] Set of feminist dinner plates: https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/vanessa-bell-duncan-grant-famous-women-dinner-service-1254239

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The Beds of Kappe Residence

You wouldn’t struggle to find a place to kip in the Kappe residence. There are four bedrooms, not a particularly vast amount, but in terms of actual beds, there seems to be over double that amount, with one tucked away around nearly every corner. The house, located in LA’s Rustic Canyon, was designed by architect Ray Kappe as a family home for himself, his wife and their children. Built from 1965 to 1967, the house has, over the years, been heralded as ‘one of the greatest residences in Southern California.’

Ray Kappe was born in 1927 in Minnesota, North America, to Romanian immigrant parents. His design style is an extension of early modernist architects such as Rudolph Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, and Harwell Hamilton Harris. As well as being an award-winning architect, he is also a renowned educator; he helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture in the early seventies and was Director there until 1987. More recently, Kappe has gained acclaim for his work with LivingHomes - an enterprise aiming to design and build sustainable, modern, modular homes.

Kappe’s own residence was built using sustainable design principles and is made of glass, concrete and redwood, sitting on a steep slope above natural springs and amongst sycamore and eucalyptus trees. It’s like a grand, modernist, industrial tree-house, minus those annoying rope ladders. It includes some of my personal favourite design elements:  integration with nature, exposed wood, big windows, primary colours, and not forgetting, of course, a surplus of interesting beds. 

The beds are all nearly identical in their structures with low, wooden, frames. Many are without headboards which give the impression of day-beds. If furniture pieces had personalities, the day-bed, in my opinion, would be the most chilled of all, so it’s perhaps fitting that there are so many of them in this West Coast, Californian abode. 

You don’t have to wander far to find a place to settle down and read or gaze out at the trees beyond the windows; there is one in the living room and another in the study, as well as in the actual sleeping quarters. The beds also make effective decorative features and stand in as inventive room partitions as seen in the photo below. The bedding, in bright primary colours, sets off the warmth of the wooden flooring, walls and ceiling, and stands out charmingly against the modernist concrete columns and walls.

Like the rest of the house, the beds and bedrooms of the Kappe Residence are unique, inventive and charmingly refreshing; lights in the walls stand in for bedside lamps and books behind the headboard of the master bed make a charming display of colourful front covers - much nicer to look at than a stack of books on a bedside table.

It’s a laid-back, nature-loving, bibliophile’s paradise, i.e. I’d like this to be my home please. 

Notes

https://www.nowness.com/series/in-residence/ray-kappe

http://architectuul.com/architect/ray-kappe

http://architectuul.com/architecture/kappe-residence

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The Poet’s Bedroom: Emily Dickinson

In the 1860s at around the age of thirty-seven, the American poet Emily Dickinson closed her bedroom door in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, and saw little else but those four walls for the rest of her life. Wearing only white, and speaking to guests through her bedroom door (as she refused to come out), Dickinson’s behaviour in the latter part of her life is, in many ways, just as intriguing as her poetry itself.

The reason for this self-imposed isolation is unclear. Scholars debate whether her confinement was due to a physical ailment, perhaps epilepsy, or a psychological affliction, such as agoraphobia. Whatever the cause, the seclusion was serious - Dickinson was unable to attend even her father’s funeral; she listened to the service (which took place in the home) from a small opening in her bedroom door.

The bedroom had always been a significant space for Dickinson. Her niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, outlined a reason for this: ‘Her love of being alone up in her room was associated with her feeling for a key, which signified freedom from interruption and the social prevention that beset her downstairs.’ [1] For many single, middle-class women of that time, the bedroom was a respite from patriarchal pressures and a place where they could be the ruler of their own territory, small kingdom though it was. As French historian Michelle Perrot puts it, ‘[Women] live in these bedrooms, working, reading love letters, devouring books, dreaming. For them to close the door behind themselves is a gesture of independence.’ [2]

Away from the domestic duties that were expected of 19th-century women: cooking, cleaning and hosting guests in the rest of the house, in ‘a room of one’s own’ Dickinson could carry out the demands of her own desires, this being, of course, poetry. Her bedroom bore witness to the creation of a staggering 1,800 poems. Sadly just ten poems out of this collection would be published in her lifetime (most of them heavily edited too) but since her death and the discovery of her vast portfolio by her sister Lavinia, Dickinson has become one of the most groundbreaking of 19th-century, Anglo-American poets. Her distinctive, progressive writing style, focusing on themes such as death, immortality and the slightly jollier topic of gardens, has garnered fascination, praise and admiration from readers the world over.

The relationship between Dickinson’s writing and her bedroom is undeniably compelling, so much so in fact, that modern-day guests to the family home (now the Emily Dickinson Museum), can, for $100, spend an hour or two alone in her room. The museum began offering these private visits in 2015 and since then many fans, scholars and writers have spent time there, ‘They tend to arrive with a great passion for the poet and to leave with a new understanding of her place in their lives.’ [3]

The bedroom itself has also been restored to the state it was in in Dickinson’s lifetime. Thanks to the discovery of an original scrap of wallpaper (depicting a maze of delicate pink roses), and the recreation of her tiny, beloved desk and bureau, guests can immerse themselves in the very surroundings that Dickinson so enjoyed and longed to protect.

Her single bed, its frame made of dark, polished wood is the only item roped off from visitors. Although presumably cordoned off due to preservation purposes, I think the boundary around Dickinson’s bed also reminds us of the respect that should be accorded to this historic, intimate space. Although physically constrained within the four walls of her bedroom, Dickinson could be, in a creative sense, truly free there.

Notes

[1] Restoration of Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom, Emily Dickinson Museum https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/node/370

[2] p. 112, The Bedroom, by Michelle Perrot (transl. by Lauren Elkin), 2018

[3] Home Alone With the Ghost of Emily Dickinson, by Sarah Lyall, The New York Times, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/books/home-alone-with-the-ghost-of-emily-dickinson.html

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A Sacred Space

The famous Roman philosopher and sociologist, Benedict of Nursia (otherwise known as St. Benedict who, amongst many things, is the patron saint of nettle rash FYI), believed that art and architecture were essential tools for maintaining a positive and fulfilled life. Unlike the dark caves and uncomfortable straw mattresses of early Christian hermits, Benedict celebrated light, aesthetically pleasing, and thought-provoking spaces. 

The bedrooms of Benedictine monks and nuns, or cells as they’re more commonly known, were a natural extension of this ethos. ‘[Benedict] understood that we were likely to take our cue about how to be inside ourselves by looking around at the moods emanating from the walls around us.’ [1] Although appearing still rather austere by our modern standards, the minimal interiors and bare, often stone, walls in Benedictine monasteries create an apt background for contemplation and introspection. Any ornamentation inside a cell should be simple, so as to not cause distraction from work, but beautiful too, in order to inspire and motivate. In other words, and to quote Marie Kondo, ‘does it spark joy?’

Early monastic rules actually stated that ‘a cell was not a bedroom and must not become one’ [2]. This was due to a fear of monks and nuns retreating too much into themselves, and then subsequent desertion from communal life. Unlike how we view bedrooms in mainstream society today, i.e. private, expressive, intimate, a ‘cell’ should be, in the simplest terms, a modest and impersonal space for necessary rest before proceeding with daily (and nightly) work and prayer. 

Our Lady of Novy Dvur Abbey in the Czech Republic, designed by contemporary architect John Pawson, brings Benedict’s ideals of modesty and simplicity up to date wonderfully. By taking inspiration from Cistercian architecture, with an ‘emphasis on light, simplicity of proportion and clarity of space’ [3], Pawson has struck a chord between awe-inspiring and profoundly peaceful.  

In the guest sleeping quarters, skylights shine down upon the room, not unlike sunbeams shining from a cathedral window. White walls create a sense of purity and cleanliness, whilst wooden floorboards, shutters, beams and a bedframe reminds one of our closeness to nature (which is actually on show itself from the window framed along the length of the right side of the room).

Notes

[1] p.230, Great Thinkers, by The School of Life, 2016

[2] p. 68, 69 & 71, The Bedroom, by Michelle Perrot (transl. by Lauren Elkin), 2018

[3] Abbey of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, John Pawson, 1999-2004

Image credits: Abbey of Our Lady of Nový Dvůr, John Pawson. Photos by Hisao Suzuki & Jens Weber.

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Bedrooms Underground

Google Street View doesn’t exactly work in the South Australian mining town of Coober Pedy. Why? The clue’s in the name; Aboriginal for ‘white man in a hole’, Coober Pedy is, for the most part, under the ground.

The first ‘dugouts’ at Coober Pedy were created in the 1920s and thought to have been initiated by soldiers returning from the trenches of the First World War. These shelters beneath the earth would be quite a contrast to what the soldiers had endured in France, however. Where there were rats and fleas and perpetual mud in France, there were geckos and kangaroos and blistering sand as far as the eye could see in Coober Pedy.

With its moon-like landscape, cloudless skies and temperatures of up to 40 degrees (as well as freezing desert nights), Coober Pedy exhibits an undeniably harsh environment. Under the ground, away from the scalding sun, however, temperatures never waver from a balmy 19-25 degrees. Cool enough in summer, warm enough in winter.

Although famed for their opal mining (together with two neighbouring mines they supply 85% of the world’s opals), it is now also Coober Pedy’s underground facilities that are drawing the tourists. With streets, shops, restaurants, churches, hotels and even several mansions underground, a stay in Coober Pedy would inevitably be a unique one - whether you like subterranean spaces or not!

All of this makes for interesting homes and of course, interesting bedrooms. How must it feel to arise from bed and retire to bed in the unfaltering light of lamps, rather than the rising and setting of the sun? Some bedrooms in Coober Pedy have artificial windows and many have fans so an outside breeze can be emulated. I feel S.A.D. lamps may be quite popular there.

Decorating underground bedrooms is a bit tricky also. With exposed and rugged rock encasing the rooms, painting is difficult, wallpaper out of the question. With all dugout walls looking alike in their terracotta hues, it is down to the furniture and accessories to leave a unique mark on the space.

In the first photo, taken in a resident’s home built in the 1960s, we can, in fact, see pale pink painted walls. This provides a delicate background to floral accents. In the second photo, of a motel bedroom, we see (as is usual) little to no personal touches to the room’s interiors. A washed out blue carpet and bed cover provides the only contrast to the pale orange tones of the rock walls. Luminescent wall lights substitute for windows.

Photo credits: Abigail Varney & Smart Encylopedia