Category: OPULENCE & SPLENDOUR

Luxury and the arts From houses to cars and from Hockney to van Dyck, a profile of the best and the worst

Problems at The Plaza

New York apartment for sale for a sum 21% lower than the current owner paid for it in 2008; it has a controversial past, links to a dictator and was once ‘sold’ for just $1

One of 164 units in 1 Central Park South – better known as The Plaza Hotel – in New York has gone on sale for £12.4 million in spite of having been bought by its current owner, Bolat Nazarbayev – brother of the authoritarian dictator and “Leader of the Nation of Kazakhstan” Nursultan Nazarbayev – for £15.6 million in February 2008.

Unit #1801 at 1 Central Park South was transferred into the ownership of Nazarbayev’s then wife, Maira, eight months later for just $1 but then became part of a number of legal suits when the fertilizer tycoon discovered the woman he’d married was already married to someone else. Bizarrely, it later emerged that he, himself, was supposedly a trigamist and married to two other women.

Also, for a time in the ownership of Bolat’s step-son, Daniyar Nazarbayev – a “rich kid” once engaged to the Prime Minister of Malaysia’s daughter Nooryana Najwa, originally named Daniyar Kesikbayev and once accused of “falsely claiming a place at Columbia University” – the apartment achieved mention in court again in April 2014. At that time, the New York Post reported Daniyar had allegedly failed to pay £102,000 in building fees and that the condo’s board wished to “kick him out”.

Bolat Nazarbayev and Maira Nazarbayeva in happier times

Daniyar Nazarbayev and his then fiancée Nooryana Najwa

The interior of the apartment during the time when Bolat Nazarbayev and his family occupied it

The space has been redecorated in a more neutral fashion recently

In further court cases as part of their “wild family feud”, the Nazarbayevs continued their arguments over jewellery and various properties in the US and France and at one point Maira was even held under house arrest in Kazakhstan. After these matters were resolved, #1801 at 1 Central Park was transferred back to Bolat Nazarbayev and recently, after having been decluttered of its dictator-like décor and neutrally staged, has now been listed to sell.

The 18^th floor, 4,064 square foot condominium is being marketed as providing accommodation that includes 3 reception rooms, 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It has previously been listed to rent for sums as high as £630,000 per year and is now described as “competitively priced” by Francis Caamano and Mehdi Ettouati of Lafayette Realty.

The Numbers – #1801, 1 Central Park South

February 2008: Sold for $20.2 million (£15.6 million, €18.1 million or درهم74.2 million).

October 2008: “Sold” for $1 (£0.78, €0.90 or درهم3.67).

June 2012: Offered to rent for $68,000 per month (£53,000, €61,000 or درهم250,000 per month).

October 2014: Offered to rent for $55,000 per month (£42,000, €49,000 or درهم202,000 per month).

October 2016: Asking price of $17.9 million (£13.8 million, €16.1 million or درهم65.8 million).

May 2017: Asking price of $16 million (£12.4 million, €14.4 million or درهم58.8 million).

Taxes: $136,944 per year ($106,000, €123,000 or درهم503,000 per year).

Common charges: $62,652 per year ($48,000, €56,000 or درهم230,000 per year).

May 18, 2017
Making a Maisonette

Maisonette within building redesigned by eccentric architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis for sale for £6.75 million

Bladon Lodge in Boltons Place, SW5 was built in 1836 and remodeled by the acclaimed eccentric and architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis in 1928.

Swedish singer Jenny Lind (1820 – 1887) and Sir Clough Williams-Ellis CBE, MC (1883 – 1978)

The late architect was best known for having designed and built the Welsh ‘fantasy village’ Portmeirion; it was used for the filming of amongst other things ‘The Prisoner’

At one time home to an Austrian ambassador to London and the Swedish singer Jenny Lind (1820 – 1887), Bladon Lodge suffered bomb damage during the Second World War and is now divided into a number of apartments. One – that was previously marketed in August 2011 for £5.95 million ($7.7 million, €6.9 million or درهم28.1 million) – is currently for sale for £6.75 million ($8.7 million, €7.9 million or درهم31.9 million).

Created to designs by Swiss architecture practice CAPS by combining two units on the ground and lower ground floors of the building, the 3,349 square foot apartment offered consist of a large reception room with a mezzanine study over, a dining kitchen, a service kitchen, 4 bedroom suites and a utility room. It comes with a secured parking space and access to the communal spaces of Cresswell Gardens and The Boltons.

Strutt & Parker are the selling agents.

May 16, 2017
Spirit & Speed

Chelsea studio house built for “spiritual artist” Arild Rosenkrantz and later home to the extremely eccentric lesbian heiress and powerboater ‘Joe’ Carstairs for sale for £8.95 million

“Spiritual seeker” and artist Baron Arild Rosenkrantz (1870 – 1964) was born in Denmark, studied in Rome and married his Scottish cousin, Louise Mackenzie, in 1901. His commissions included ceiling panels at Claridge’s Hotel in Mayfair and illustrating the Danish edition of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery Adventure and now a Chelsea home built for him is for sale for £8.95 million ($11.5 million, €10.6 million or درهم42.4 million).

Designed by the Maidenhead based architect Clifton Robert Davy (1879 – 1929) and Grade II listed since 1997, red brick built, 4-storey 5 Mulberry Walk is described as being of a “stripped Classical Mannerist style”. It features the artist’s initials on the rectangular profile downpipe and was his home from when it was finished until 1922.

Baron Arild Rosenkrantz and one of his works

Marion ‘Joe Carstairs’ once remarked: “I was never a little girl. I came out of the womb queer”; of her biographer Kate Summerscale added: “She was blithe, bold, courageous, unself-conscious, imperialist, impervious to social change”

Subsequently sold to the eccentric and extremely masculine heiress Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs (1900 – 1993) for £3,000 in the early 1920s (the equivalent of just £167,000, $215,000, €197,000 or درهم791,000 today), 5 Mulberry Walk became the party venue for the “fastest, artiest, gayest, not to mention the most alcoholic and drug-addicted set in London at the time”. Carstairs – a lesbian described as “usually dressed as a man, having tattooed arms, and loving machines, adventure and speed” – remained there well into the 1930s and even had a name plaque for a doll she was obsessed with, ‘Lord Tod Wadley’, placed on the building’s door.

Extending to 3,163 square foot in total, 5 Mulberry Walk is currently divided into two apartments. The first, a ground floor studio with a 32-foot wide garden, has 1 bedroom whilst the second covers three floors and has 4 bedrooms. Each has a large artist’s studio space and in total there are 2 kitchens, 3 bathrooms and a roof terrace as well.

5 Mulberry Walk, which is most definitely ready for modernisation and reconfiguration internally, is offered by Russell Simpson.

May 14, 2017
The Best 4x4xFar

Immaculate 1993 Land Rover Range Vogue for sale; its price will astound but its condition will impress

An immaculately presented twenty-four year old Range Rover has gone on sale for £42,500 ($54,800, €50,100 or درهم201,200).

Offered by West London based Graeme Hunt, the 1993 Land Rover Range Rover Classic Vogue LSE 4.2-litre is boldly described as “an absolute cracker” and has passed through the firm’s hands twice. The grey with tan interior car has every conceivable extra, an upgraded stereo and a Brooklands body kit.

The present owner, one of Graeme Hunt’s “most endearing and trusting customers”, acquired the vehicle three years ago and “embarked on a stratospheric restoration – a restoration upon which he chose to put his mark on, and in an indulgent manner”. The result is a luxury car complete with carpeting more befitting of a Scottish castle than Kensington and a definite future classic.

May 13, 2017
A Fashionable Bargain

£39 million summer house on Lake Geneva that was designed by one of the architects of the Eiffel Tower to be sold at auction without reserve

Built in the Belle Époque style on the north shore of Lake Geneva, Château de Promenthoux is a 13,988 square foot house on a plot of 9 acres. It has been on the market for £38.8 million (CHF 50 million $49.9 million, €45.7 million or درهم183.5 million) but is now to be sold at auction on the 15^th June “to the highest bidder” by Concierge Auctions.

Couturier Jean Philippe Worth (1856 – 1926) commissioned Stephen Sauvestre (1847 – 1919), one of the architects of the Eiffel Tower, to build Château de Promenthoux as his summer house in 1896. The son of the “father of haute couture”, Charles Frederick Worth (1825 – 1895), opted for a building that featured Meillerie stone pillars and brick walls covered by dark wood and an interior dominated by parquet flooring, paneling, velvet wall coverings and soaring ceilings.

The private harbour of Château de Promenthoux can accommodate numerous boats and is protected by two jetties built of Meillerie stone blocks and an outside break-weather

Original owner Jean Philippe Worth and his architect Stephen Sauvestre

Current owner Linda Durand

Now restored “with modern amenities”, the 4-storey house has 7 imposing reception rooms, 8 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, 3 kitchens and separate accommodation for staff. It comes with a hydraulic lift, a gym, a sauna, the largest private harbour on Lake Geneva and also enjoys the most spectacular of views across the water.

Of why she is selling, current owner Linda Durand remarked:

The property has been in our family for almost two generations. I grew up here as a kid and then I remained in the property with my family and I raised my children here.

The property is a very large house that could be called a mansion, could be called a small castle. It’s so natural, it’s so remote, giving a big atmosphere of peace and quietness… Within just half an hour’s drive you can be skiing, sledging, cross-country.

The house is not a proper wooded house. Just the style it was given was the wood, which means the house was very safe. It is very solid, very, very well built… It was built as a family home but it could be used by an organisation for international purposes, for a consulate, by an embassy, a private club.

After discussing an auction, we decided it would be a different opportunity to sell the property in a certain time frame… We want to enable the property to continue to belong to someone in a certain time frame and not be on the market for maybe longer.

Situated within a district of Switzerland most famous for the production of white wine, Château de Promenthoux is 7.5 miles from Geneva and 27 miles from Lausanne.

May 13, 2017
Fun at Faringdon

£144,000 per year sought for Oxfordshire mansion that was the scene of a most curious ménage-a-trois; it is owned by the writer Sofka Zinovieff

“Tall and willowy” writer Sofka Zinovieff inherited Faringdon House in Oxfordshire at the age of 25 from her eccentric, bisexual uncle, Robert ‘The Mad Boy’ Heber-Percy, partner of the owner of the house since 1918, the 14^th Lord Berners, Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson (1883 – 1950). She has recently placed it on the rental market at a price of £12,000 per month ($15,400, €14,200 or درهم56,700 per month) through Knight Frank.

Artist, composer and writer Lord Berners and “uninhibited” Heber-Percy occupied Faringdon House as a ménage-a-trois with the latter’s wife, Jennifer Fry, for several years and during that time visitors included everyone from the poet Sir John Betjeman to the artist Salvador Dalí, the Communist politician Tom Driberg MP and the writer H. G. Wells. Heber-Percy died in 1987 and it was at this time that the Georgian property passed to its current owner.

Lord Berners famously once entertained Penelope Betjeman’s horse Moti to tea at Faringdon House

Dyed pigeons are still to be found at the property

Sofka Zinovieff

Of her home, which she has variously herself occupied and also let to “cover the impossible costs”, in May 2016, Zinovieff told House & Garden:

It’s funny how it has all worked out. The inheritance hasn’t changed me in the ways that my mother feared it might. I never wanted my identity to be bound up with my house and my life in Greece has saved me from that. No one there has ever even heard of Faringdon.

Extending to 14,510 square foot, Grade I listed Faringdon House was built between 1770 and 1785 for the poet Sir Henry Pye (1744 – 1813). It includes 5 reception rooms, 12 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, stands in grounds that extend to 14.81 acres and comes with an outdoor swimming pool with turreted changing rooms and a lake.

Lord Berners’ gravestone is situated within the grounds and on it appears an epitaph he wrote himself. It reads:

Here lies Lord Berners

One of the learners

His great love of learning

May earn him a burning

But, Praise the Lord!

He seldom was bored

Curiously, another testament to the activities of the property’s eccentric former occupants lives on at Faringdon in the form of pigeons dyed in “jewelled hues”. Pictured in marketing literature for the house, a charity, the Pink Pigeons Trust, is named in their honour also.

May 12, 2017
Rich Pickings

Trophy house with a “dictator interior” in The Boltons has nearly £10 million sliced off its asking price; iceberg home behind reduced by £5 million

A house in London’s second most expensive street has returned to the market at the much reduced price of £30 million ($38.8 million, €35.5 million or درهم142.6 million) in spite of having an interior that would only appeal to the likes of Bashar al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein.

Previously marketed at £39.5 million ($47.1 million, €47.1 million or درهم188.3 million) in 2015 through Russell Simpson and now offered by Knight Frank, semi-detached 6 The Boltons extends to 9,781 square foot and comes with a 2,469 square foot mews house to the rear in Creswell Place.

Both buildings are described as “requiring modernisation throughout” and in total provide 5 reception rooms, 16 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. The main house has a lift to all floors, air conditioning and as well as parking for 5 cars, there is an internal garage and an interconnecting garden.

For those with another £32.5 million ($42.1 million, €38.5 million or درهم154.5 million) to spare, Knight Frank also offer another house adjoining the Cresswell Place mews house. Featured in The Steeple Times last May, that house, Cresswell House, has also had a rather punchy £5 million ($6.5 million, €6 million or درهم23.8 million) sliced off its asking price. A super-compound anyone?

May 10, 2017
Tito’s Toy

Ex-President Josip Broz Tito 1964 Fiat 500 Jolly by Ghia to be sold at auction in London

Josip Broz Tito liked cars. It appears he didn’t care if they were little or large and someone without the means to purchase his £2.5 million ($3.1 million, €2.9 million or درهم11.4 million) 1971 Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman Landaulet – featured on these pages in April – could acquire a 1964 Fiat 500 Jolly by Ghia owned by him for the lower, yet still somewhat punchy, sum of £70,000 to £100,000 ($90,500 to $129,300, €83,200 to €118,900 or درهم332,400 to درهم474,800) at an auction in London in May.

Josip Broz Tito, born Josip Broz (1892 – 1980), President of Yugoslavia (1953 – 1980)

To be offered by Coys of Kensington at their forthcoming Royal Horticultural Halls sale in Westminster on 18^th May, the ‘Economical’ converted Fiat 500 was owned from new by the 1^st President of Yugoslavia. He was pictured using it on numerous occasions.

Subsequently part of the Classic Automobile Museum collection in Belgrade for a number of years, the white runaround – chassis number 1100271507 – has covered just 12,500 miles and is described as “driving like new”. It comes with a certificate of authenticity and would make the perfect accessory for the owner of a super yacht, seaside estate or golf course.

May 9, 2017
Take Me To The Titanic

Apartment in mansion block in Sloane Square for sale for £6.2 million in spite of needing updating; it is within the building from which a Mayor of Chelsea lived and departed to his death on RMS Titanic

A third floor flat in a portered mansion block on Sloane Square has gone on sale for £6.2 million ($8 million, €7.3 million or درهم29.5 million) through Cluttons in spite of being decorated like a relic from the 1980s. It is situated above Hugo Boss’ flagship store and within Grade II listed Wyndham House, the building from which a former Mayor of Chelsea went to his untimely death aboard the RMS Titanic in 1912.

Previously priced at £6.5 million ($8.4 million, €7.7 million or درهم30.9 million) when marketed by Russell & Simpson in February 2016, the 2,684 square foot lateral apartment includes a 30-foot long reception room, 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and features such details as ornate ceiling friezes and plasterwork and working fireplaces. A larger 5 bedroom flat within Wyndham House sold for the staggering sum of £12 million ($15.5 million, €14.2 million or درهم57 million) in July 2015 according to Land Registry records.

Wyndham House resident and Mayor of Chelsea from 1909 to 1911 Charles Head (1869 – 1912) perished aboard RMS Titanic, his body was never recovered but a sundial was erected in his memory in nearby Cadogan Place Gardens

Aside from being one of Chelsea’s grandest residential blocks, Wyndham House was at home to one of the victims of the Titanic maritime disaster in the early 1900s and it was from here that Charles Head, Mayor of Chelsea between 1909 and 1911, went to his death in April 1912. Head, a Cambridge educated barrister turned director of Head & Co. insurance brokers and underwriters at Lloyds of London, was a well known supporter of the arts, a councilor from 1906 and had only married 18 months earlier. He travelled alone on a £42 first class ticket (the equivalent of £4,400, $5,700, €5,200 or درهم20,900 today) on the Titanic’s maiden voyage and bizarrely had taken out a £25,000 insurance policy “against ocean accidents”. His precaution left his widow very well provided for given such a sum was the equivalent of £2.6 million today ($3.4 million, €3.1 million or درهم12.4 million).

May 8, 2017
Marlene’s Motor

1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport cabriolet to be auctioned; it attracted the attentions of Marlene Dietrich and has a Hermés interior

In October 1949, the chameleon-like actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901 – 1992) was photographed “descending elegantly” from a custom-built T26 Talbot Grand Sport by coachbuilders Franay at the Paris Salon. That car subsequently won the 1er Grand Prix d’Honneur at the Concours d’Enghien in June 1950 and is now due to be sold at auction in May.

The “outrageously exclusive” short-wheelbase Grand Sport, chassis 110121, was first presented in white and came with a luxurious red leather interior and fitted luggage by Hermés. It was described as “an automobile destined for the serious sportsman and chic Parisian society in equal measure”.

Marlene Dietrich “descending elegantly from the car, the crowd surrounding it completely mesmerized – a very rare instance of the occupant upstaging a Grand Sport” at the Paris Salon in October 1949

As it is presented today – The 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport cabriolet by Franay

Subsequently subject to another makeover by Franay whilst still owned by Talbot in the winter of 1950, the 4.5-litre car was presented at the Brussels Auto Show in January 1951 in black with a new, simpler grille design. After appearing at the Concours de la Grande Cascade that summer, the vehicle passed into the ownership of an unknown “manufacturer of hard candies” and was given yet another grille – this time in the style Pininfarina Ferrari 212 Inter.

Returning to the Concours d’Enghien in June 1952 and then having its final appearance on the Franay stand at the 1953 Paris Salon, the Grand Sport was sold to a butcher from Versailles. It was bought for just $800 (the equivalent of £5,100, $6,600, €6,100 or درهم24,200 today) in 1960 by Jim Bandy, an American military officer stationed in France, and then taken by him to Baltimore, Maryland in 1963. Sold on several times and subject to an engine swap with a Talbot Grand Sport Saoutchik coupé, chassis 110101, the car was partially dismantled in the 1970s and it was not until 1992 that its restoration was to properly begin under the guidance of the highly regarded Austrian restorer Egon Zweimüller.

Completed in 2010, the restored “one-off cabriolet” is now described as “compelling and unprecedented”. It again has a Hermés interior and luggage – this time in black – and has been verified by the Talbot-Lago and Saoutchik authority Peter M. Larsen.

Offered with an unsurprisingly punchy estimate of £1 million to £1.3 million ($1.3 million to $1.6 million, €1.2 million to €1.5 million or درهم4.8 million to درهم6 million) by RM Sotheby’s, the 1948 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport cabriolet by Franay will be sold at Villa Erba on Lake Como on the 27^th May.

May 8, 2017