Mentmore Towers Stateroom Curtains

Mentmore Towers Stateroom Curtains, 1854.

The Mentmore Towers stateroom curtains, a magnificent and exceptionally rare set of three, massive, Gothic Revival, silk velvet, rust coloured, embossed, gilt embroidered and applique curtains.

Exceptional Provenance: The Staterooms, Mentmore Towers, Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild, Mentmore Towers.
Bernard Nevill (1930-2019), Fonthill, Wiltshire acquired from the Mentmore sale Sotheby Parke Bernet, Mentmore House, May 1977.

Illustrated World of Interiors, Positively Victorian, 20.02.02.

The silk velvet embossed with a Gothic trellis pattern of alternating circles, containing a hound and stag's head, and diamonds containing Tudor roses. The wide applique and embroidered borders down the side and bottom edges with interlocking raised work in gilt bronze round linen couched threads, gilt bronze wires and tinsel curls.

Cleaned and conserved, stable and suitable for use.

Massive Size:
Curtain 1 437 x 367cm, 14ft4” x 12ft½”.
Curtain 2 411 x 371cm, 13ft6” x 12ft2”.
Curtain 3 412 x 305cm, 13ft6” x 10ft.

Curtains can be sold individually

Mentmore Towers, Mentmore; one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era. Built between 1852 and 1854 for the banker and collector Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home and display case for his renowned collection of fine and decorative arts. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and George Henry Stokes, in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan.

Acquired by Bernard Nevill from Sotheby Parke Bernet, Mentmore House Sale, May 1977 and hung in his country home William Burn’s stable block at Fonthill Abbey. Bernard Nevill’s acute sensibilities as a textile designer, lecturer at the Central School of Art and Design, the Royal College of Art and St Martin’s School of Art, aesthete and collector ‘ had a discreet yet powerful effect on more than half a century of British fashion and décor ‘.

With an encyclopaedic knowledge of pattern and design Nevill regarded himself as an ‘assembler of things’. He was a brilliant, competitive shopper, outbidding all rivals. ‘Oh, we hated Bernard Nevill…he bought everything at the Mentmore sale‘.

Nevill was a compulsive hoarder telling friends he had to rescue beautiful objects even when he had no use for them as he wanted to ‘save them from death’.

Dimensions

Price

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance

Condition report