Tag: design

Ross Barr-Hoyland – What’s on your mantelpiece?

A 20-question interview with British men’s knitwear designer Ross Barr-Hoyland

The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?

To aim to leave the world a better place than you found it.

“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?

To strive to achieve and be better than the best person you could be.

Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2017?

The wars in the Middle East and Chechnya and what the regimes there are doing to gay men are unacceptable.

Our world is full of divisiveness and prejudice and Kerry Katona evidently went through an incredibly turbulent time in her life. The press unscrupulously had no shame in reporting such and instead of judging, we should be there to offer help and support and perhaps show some empathy and understanding.

Our lives are not always fairytales and “let they who are without sin cast the first stone” is a saying that springs to mind.

Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?

I don’t think there is anything in my life as such that I miss. I am working on my business – which is a dream many would wish for. It is by no means easy, but I am lucky in many, many respects.

What might you swap all your wealth for?

I wish I had great wealth to swap, but if I had immense wealth I would give it to all the causes I support in many ways from The Prince’s Trust to Style for Soldiers, Children with Cancer UK and RUComingOut. Even if I only had pennies, I would still like to give what I could as there is always someone in need of help.

Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank”. What’s your view on the state of the financial system?

I am by no means an expert but I do know everyone is finding it tough with cuts happening in every sector of business. I just keep my head down and focus on what I do in fashion and the revival of British manufacturing. What I will say is that my bank has been utterly incredible in supporting me with my business venture.

What phrase or word do you most loathe?

Being told I cannot do something.

In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home”. What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?

Aside from supporting the charities previously mentioned, I am honoured to have been supported myself by The Prince’s Trust. I serve them in whatever capacity they as a Young Ambassador and with the brand.

More generally, we might be an island nation but no man is. I think charity should be given where it is most needed.

The judge in Law Abiding Citizen states: “I can pretty much do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?

I am never without my phone, but I would never condone using any devices to cause harm to others.

Mobile phones do have their perks and do allow us to literally have the world at our fingertips, but I do wonder what we would be seeing if we perhaps looked at the world around us and lived in the moment a little more.

If you could fill a carriage on the Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?

With every single family member and friend who has supported and there for me and my business. We would have a good old knees-up and some much needed time off.

If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?

Well, I hope to never end up there, but if I did, I’d choose my mother’s Sunday roast at home surrounded by my nearest and dearest. That would be the best way to go.

What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?

That depends on the type of day you are having.

A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?

A martini.

Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?

I have enjoyed many so it would be rude to pick one in particular – especially as the memories of some are rather hazy.

Who is the most positive person you know?

I have to pick seven perpetually positive people who keep me going daily and they are Natasha Babar-Evans, Melissa Hulme, Sandie Chapman, Stephanie Ackrill, Sarah Agar-Brenan and Craig Burton.

I would also like to single out a person whom has inspired me immensely. Her name is Gaynor and she has just started a business called Holiday Hack. Over the last year, she’s faced some of the biggest obstacles anyone could have thrown their way but she hasn’t cried and she hasn’t crumbled. She is an incredible lady and always has a smile on her face – and she can also get you savings on a holiday too; maybe even on the Orient Express.

What’s your most guilty pleasure?

Having a long sleep wrapped up in my bed covers.

If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?

A phoenix and a stag.

If you were a car, what marque would you be?

Someone answered this for me at a networking event a while ago. They described me as a Range Rover.

Cilla Black presented Surprise, Surprise. Tell us the most surprising thing about you.

People think I’m a ‘social butterfly’ but I’m actually a ‘pub with a just a few people’ kind of guy.

What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?

Pictures of my family.

Ross Barr-Hoyland established his own men’s knitwear brand, Ross Barr, in September 2015 after being sponsored by the Enterprise programme of The Prince’s Trust. He focuses on reviving the British textile manufacturing industry by manufacturing in Britain.

Follow Ross Bar on Twitter at @RossBarrUK and Instagram at @RossBarrUK.

June 11, 2017
A Villa In The Sky

Gargantuan Mayfair aprtment goes on sale for £30 million; it has eighteen windows facing Hyde Park and is in a building designed by the architect of Broadcasting House

A vast maisonette, described as a “villa in the sky”, on London’s Park Lane has gone on sale for £30 million ($38.8 million, €34.6 million or درهم142.6 million) in spite of being in need of complete redecoration.

Split over the seventh and eighth floor of a portered building named Fountain House, the apartment offered extends to 6,897 square foot and includes 4 reception rooms, 2 kitchens, 10 double bedrooms, 2 staff bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. Its principle reception room is 38-foot long and its dining room is described as “easily sitting 22 guests”.

Houses on the site of Fountain House on 30th December 1930 (prior to their demolition)

Designed by George Val Myer (1883 – 1959), an architect best known for the BBC’s Broadcasting House, in conjunction with F. J. Watson-Hart and built by Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons between 1935 and 1938 on the site of demolished mansions, Fountain House includes around 60 residential units, offices, a fuel station and a car showroom.

On the market through Wetherell on a lease of 84 years, the service charge for the flat is £81,538 per annum ($105,584, €94,135 or درهم387,836 per annum).

June 8, 2017
A Take On Theresa

Artist Enzina Fuschini showcases her take on Theresa May at an exhibition in Chelsea; the work is supposedly anything but political

Italian artist and designer Enzina Fuschini held a press preview for her ‘Impact’ exhibition at Chelsea’s 508 Gallery on the Kings Road last night.

Aside from eleven 100cm by 100cm oil on canvas works, ranging in price from £3,000 to 4,000, and one larger canvas at £6,850, this energetic “pictorial force” has included a timely portrayal of Theresa May. The painting contains all the colours of the Tory leader’s “red, white and blue Brexit” but, according to its artist, presents “her in a timeless style with an ageless expression”.

Of the work, a spokesman for Fuschini remarked:

“[Enzina sought to] portray the woman behind the politician. The painting is not political. She had already started the painting three months before the General Election announcement and intends to give the painting to Theresa May as a keepsake”.

‘Impact’ will be shown at 508 Kings Road Gallery, London, SW10 0LD until 19^th June.

One of thirteen works by Enzina Fuschini on display at the exhibtion

June 7, 2017
Not So Little Italy

Vast “Italian style” oceanfront mansion in Orange County, CA relaunched for sale for £42.7 million; it has failed to sell at prices as high as £53 million

An 18,000 square foot barn of a residence described as “the finest oceanfront home in SoCal” has been relaunched to the market this month at a price 20% lower than when it was first listed in 2013.

Built in what is somewhat ambitiously termed an “Italian palazzo style” and featuring Spanish tile roofing, five imported European fireplaces and “terrazzo flooring evoking those in The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades”, 2585 Riviera Drive stands on an acre plot in north Laguna Beach’s private Irvine Cove community. It is one of twelve oceanside homes in a gated, 24-hour-a-day guarded community and enjoys “spectacular views” of the Pacific and access to a private beach.

Constructed to the designs of the Warner Group over a period of eight years and completed in 2010, the house offered occupies half of a larger plot owned until 2002 by Joan Irvine Smith, a woman whose family had at one time been the main landowner in the area. It features not only 5 bedroom suites and 9 bathrooms but also a screening room with bar, a 10,000 bottle wine cellar with tasting room and a 6-car garage with hydraulic lift.

Within the grounds stands a guest house that was designed to be “a scaled back replica of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut” and a 53-foot brass and glass waterfall made from materials salvaged from a Los Angeles bank. There are also 100-year old olive trees, a rose garden and a pool with cabana and spa.

An aerial shot of the site during construction

The house today with the ocean beyond

Owned by businessman Ronald K. Loder, the founder of RKL Consulting, and his wife Yolanda, 2585 Riviera Drive is for sale with Maxine Laube of Surterre Properties. Of it, in 2013, Mr Loder remarked:

“My wife and I love traveling to Northern Italy, particularly Bellagio and the lake country, where we’ve always admired the architecture… [But] I wouldn’t want [our house] to be construed as Tuscan in any way… Even though we built an Italianate palazzo, we wanted the flavor [sic] of mid-century design around us”.

“We wanted people to know they were stepping into an oceanfront property the moment they arrived”.

The Numbers – 2585 Riviera Drive, Laguna Beach

June 2002 – Land subdivided into three plots; 2585 Riviera Drive sold for sum of $10.5 million (the equivalent of £11.1 million, $14.3 million, €12.7 million or درهم52.5 million today).

July 2013 – Placed for sale for $65 million (the equivalent of £53 million, $68.2 million, €60.5 million or درهم250.6 million today).

May 2017 – Relaunched for sale for $55 million (£42.7 million, €49 million or درهم202 million).

June 5, 2017
Anything But A Steel

Renovated Pacific Heights, San Francisco residence with Danielle Steel as a neighbour for sale for sum 652% higher than it sold for in 1994

A buyer wishing to live just to the north of Danielle Steel’s architecturally striking ‘Spreckels Mansion’ home can now purchase 1994 Jackson Street in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights.

For sale with agent Malin Giddings, the 5,490 square foot, 4-storey detached house offered includes not only 4 reception rooms, 4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms, but also a bar, wine room, exercise room, elevator and barbecue. It comes with a 2-car garage, two balconies and a garden and is curiously described as having a “re-scripted aesthetic” that “caters to the 21^st century family while incorporating the best finishes of yesterday and today”.

Built in 1940 and completely reconfigured by Ken Fulk – an “incredible… sprightly… design guru” with a client list ranging from Napster’s Sean Parker to Bebo’s Michael and Xochi Birch, according to Vanity Fair – £8.40 million ($10.75 million, €9.62 million or درهم39.50 million) is sought for the house.

Indicative of the sharp rise in prices in the neighbourhood since it became popular with the titans of Silicon Valley, 1994 Jackson Street sold for $6.25 million in 2008 (the equivalent of $7.10 million, £5.55 million, €6.35 million or درهم26.09 million today) and $1.43 million in 1994 (the equivalent of $2.36 million, £1.84 million, €2.11 million or درهم8.67 million today). Plainly, now, this is a house that’s anything but a steal.

Prior to renovation – 1994 Jackson Street, Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California, CA 94109, United States of America as it was presented when sold in 2008

1994 Jackson Street today

The house is set just beneath Danielle Steele’s ‘Spreckels Mansion’ (2080 Washington Street)

Danielle Steel and her palatial home

1994 Jackson Street (viewed from the side)

The house has been made-over by San Francisco “man-about-town” Ken Fulk

He is famed for having designed homes for amongst others Michael and Xochi Birch

The staircase of 1994 Jackson Street

The house’s main reception space

The dining room

The kitchen

A colourfully carpeted entertaining area

A recreation room with a bar

The master suite has a bedroom area, sitting area, dressing room, balcony and bathroom

Another of the four/five bedrooms in the house

The view

A floor plan of the space

May 27, 2017
Robert Adam

With such a name, this suave gent just had to design landmarks. University of Westminster educated and Hampshire based Robert Adam (born 1948) followed his more famous namesake (1728 – 1792) and became a designer of “progressive neo-classical style buildings” in 1975. He won “the richest prize in architecture” in January 2017 and counts the Sackler Library at the University of Oxford, a “miniature Baroque mansion” at Eastwood Farm – complete with a lion on the roof – in Herstmonceux, East Sussex and the “KGB proof” Ingliston House on the Wentworth Estate in Surrey amongst his notable works.

(more…)

May 27, 2017
Living Large

New Jersey mansion, complete with 58 rooms, for sale for equivalent sum to what it cost to build in 1909; the £37 million house’s original owner was a man whose extravagance knew absolutely no bounds

George Crocker (1856 – 1909) makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby seem like an amateur. Born in Sacramento and the son of a railway magnate worth some $30 million on his death (the equivalent of £634 million or $812 million today), Crocker was willed a significant $6 million (the equivalent of £127 million or $163 million today) on the condition that “after the space of five years continuously he shall abstain from the use of spirituous, vinous, and malt liquors to the extent that he shall not during this period have been intoxicated”.

Crocker decided to ignore the terms of his father’s behest and from 1888 to 1891 lived in San Francisco as “one of the most reckless young men about town when reckless young men thereabouts were common” but then admitted himself to a sanatorium, put himself on the straight and narrow and finally collected the sum of $6 million in 1898.

With wealth and a glamorous wife, Emma Rutherford, a widow from California, Crocker set himself up as the toast of New York society. Though he owned a townhouse at 1 East 64^th Street and a villa in Newport, it was on paying $96,500 (the equivalent of £2.2 million or $2.8 million today) for the 1,100 acre Darling estate in Bergen County, Mahwah, New Jersey in 1901 that he truly became someone noticeable.

Choosing what he called “the finest site for a residence in the country”, Crocker commissioned an architect named James Brite (died 1942) to build him a mansion “sparing no expense”. Modeled on a Jacobean prodigy house, Bramshill House in Hampshire, England and built from Indiana limestone and Harvard brick, the “Crocker Mansion” or “Darlington” – as it is more widely known – cost $2 million to build (the equivalent of £38.2 million or $49 million today) and included 75 rooms and around 50,000 square foot of accommodation. Its features included steam heating, elevators, ice cream freezers, integrated vacuum systems and a switchboard and in its grounds a racetrack and 16 greenhouses were constructed whilst a pond was stocked with 4,000 trout.

George Crocker and Emerson McMillin

The design of Darlington was based on “one of the most haunted houses in England”, Bramshill in Hampshire; that building itself was also eventually separated from much of its estate and after being used as the European Police College was sold to developers City & Country for £25 million ($19.5 million) in 2014

Commentators wowed at the resulting creation and noted details such as a library painted after the style of the Italian Renaissance by Tiffany Studios, elaborate wood carving by Italian craftsmen and Tiffany silver chandeliers and a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ in the building’s 30-foot high Great Hall. In 1912, Architectural Record, chose even to swoon over the basement. They remarked:

“Where Bramshill’s cellar housed for centuries lanterns, tallow dips, forest faggots, wooden vessels for the distribution of light, heat and water through personal service of human slaveys, its American reincarnation is a storehouse of miracle workers in the comfort and luxury of modern domestic life”.

Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Crocker did not truly get to enjoy the fruits of their extravagant spending. Emma Crocker died in 1904 of cancer and George Crocker also succumbed to the disease in 1909. His estate was valued at $20 million (the equivalent of £422 million or $541 million today) and amongst items found at his mansion were 60,000 personally monogrammed, custom-made cigars valued at $30,000 (the equivalent of £635,000 or $813,000 today).

Sold subsequently to a “self-made” banker, industrialist and astronomy enthusiast named Emerson McMillin (1844 – 1922) in 1909 for $1 million (the equivalent of £21.1 million or $27.1 million), Darlington was next used to display a fine collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain whilst a herd of Jerseys were kept in the grounds.

After McMillin’s death, his widow sold the estate in 1924 for $685,000 (the equivalent of £7.6 million or $9.8 million) to the Darlington Development Company, which in turn made it available to the Darling Golf and Country Club. They converted the building to a hotel and club that “promised to offer a new dimension to life in Mahwah” but “the development corporation and the club were soon in financial difficulties” and the McMillin estate foreclosed and regained possession.

A new buyer came forward in the form of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark. They paid $478,000 for the property in 1926 (the equivalent of £5.2 million or $6.6 million today) and used Darlington as a theological seminary. The surrounding land was gradually sold off and in 1986, the Immaculate Conception Seminary also departed.

Darlington today – The 30-foot high Great Hall is still dominated by a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ

Darlington today – Ilija Pavlovic expanded the mansion by some 12,000 square foot and amongst other things added a large home cinema

Darlington today – Another addition comes in the form of a vast wine cellar; George Crocker’s father would not have approved

Subsequently restored and modernised with, according to Forbes, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and communications systems being installed, Darlington was placed on the market with just 12.1 acres in 2005 by Darlington Associates, a firm who’d built “multiple residential communities surrounding the mansion”. An ambitious figure of $25 million (the equivalent of £24.4 million or $31.3 million today) was sought for the now classified historic site but it was not until 2008 that a buyer came forth in the form of a local businessman named Ilija Pavlovic. He paid just $8.875 million (the equivalent of £8 million or $10.2 million today) and then embarked on the “challenge” of “both preserving the historic home while also restoring it to meet 21st-century standards”. The resulting creation spans four floors and includes amongst many other things a tea room, 3 libraries, 2 game rooms, 2 kitchens, a “his and her master bedroom wing”, 12 further guest bedrooms and 5 staff bedrooms.

The biggest issue with the house, it transpired, was that its 476 leaded windows needed to be replaced. This reportedly cost $2 million alone (the equivalent of £1.8 million or $2.3 million today) and in addition, Pavlovic renewed all the mechanical systems, redid all 19 bathrooms, replaced the slate roof and added amongst other things a spa with an indoor lap pool, a gym, a massage room, a beauty salon and a home cinema. There is also a gatehouse, a professional kitchen that can serve 250 meals at a time, a wine cellar, a poker room, a cigar room, a billiards room, an 8-car garage, a tennis court and an outdoor swimming pool.

Property blog 6sqft – which claimed Friday that the current owners do not live at Darlington full-time and simply use it to host events – reported that this still massive mansion minus its formerly equally gigantic estate is now for sale now for £37.4 million ($48 million, €44.7 million or درهم176.3 million) through a firm Mr Pavlovic chairs, Special Properties Real Estate Services – an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. Any buyer will undoubtedly be a vastly wealthy figure, but one can guarantee one thing: They’ll never live as lavishly as the barmy boozer George Crocker.

April 23, 2017
Living Large

New Jersey mansion Darlington, complete with 58 rooms, for sale for equivalent sum to what it cost to build in 1909; the £37 million house’s original owner was a man whose extravagance knew absolutely no bounds

George Crocker (1856 – 1909) makes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby seem like an amateur. Born in Sacramento and the son of a railway magnate worth some $30 million on his death (the equivalent of £634 million or $812 million today), Crocker was willed a significant $6 million (the equivalent of £127 million or $163 million today) on the condition that “after the space of five years continuously he shall abstain from the use of spirituous, vinous, and malt liquors to the extent that he shall not during this period have been intoxicated”.

Crocker decided to ignore the terms of his father’s behest and from 1888 to 1891 lived in San Francisco as “one of the most reckless young men about town when reckless young men thereabouts were common” but then admitted himself to a sanatorium, put himself on the straight and narrow and finally collected the sum of $6 million in 1898.

With wealth and a glamorous wife, Emma Rutherford, a widow from California, Crocker set himself up as the toast of New York society. Though he owned a townhouse at 1 East 64^th Street and a villa in Newport, it was on paying $96,500 (the equivalent of £2.2 million or $2.8 million today) for the 1,100 acre Darling estate in Bergen County, Mahwah, New Jersey in 1901 that he truly became someone noticeable.

Choosing what he called “the finest site for a residence in the country”, Crocker commissioned an architect named James Brite (died 1942) to build him a mansion “sparing no expense”. Modeled on a Jacobean prodigy house, Bramshill House in Hampshire, England and built from Indiana limestone and Harvard brick, the “Crocker Mansion” or “Darlington” – as it is more widely known – cost $2 million to build (the equivalent of £38.2 million or $49 million today) and included 75 rooms and around 50,000 square foot of accommodation. Its features included steam heating, elevators, ice cream freezers, integrated vacuum systems and a switchboard and in its grounds a racetrack and 16 greenhouses were constructed whilst a pond was stocked with 4,000 trout.

George Crocker and Emerson McMillin

The design of Darlington was based on “one of the most haunted houses in England”, Bramshill in Hampshire; that building itself was also eventually separated from much of its estate and after being used as the European Police College was sold to developers City & Country for £25 million ($19.5 million) in 2014

Commentators wowed at the resulting creation and noted details such as a library painted after the style of the Italian Renaissance by Tiffany Studios, elaborate wood carving by Italian craftsmen and Tiffany silver chandeliers and a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ in the building’s 30-foot high Great Hall. In 1912, Architectural Record, chose even to swoon over the basement. They remarked:

“Where Bramshill’s cellar housed for centuries lanterns, tallow dips, forest faggots, wooden vessels for the distribution of light, heat and water through personal service of human slaveys, its American reincarnation is a storehouse of miracle workers in the comfort and luxury of modern domestic life”.

Unfortunately, Mr and Mrs Crocker did not truly get to enjoy the fruits of their extravagant spending. Emma Crocker died in 1904 of cancer and George Crocker also succumbed to the disease in 1909. His estate was valued at $20 million (the equivalent of £422 million or $541 million today) and amongst items found at his mansion were 60,000 personally monogrammed, custom-made cigars valued at $30,000 (the equivalent of £635,000 or $813,000 today).

Sold subsequently to a “self-made” banker, industrialist and astronomy enthusiast named Emerson McMillin (1844 – 1922) in 1909 for $1 million (the equivalent of £21.1 million or $27.1 million), Darlington was next used to display a fine collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain whilst a herd of Jerseys were kept in the grounds.

After McMillin’s death, his widow sold the estate in 1924 for $685,000 (the equivalent of £7.6 million or $9.8 million) to the Darlington Development Company, which in turn made it available to the Darling Golf and Country Club. They converted the building to a hotel and club that “promised to offer a new dimension to life in Mahwah” but “the development corporation and the club were soon in financial difficulties” and the McMillin estate foreclosed and regained possession.

A new buyer came forward in the form of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Newark. They paid $478,000 for the property in 1926 (the equivalent of £5.2 million or $6.6 million today) and used Darlington as a theological seminary. The surrounding land was gradually sold off and in 1986, the Immaculate Conception Seminary also departed.

Darlington today – The 30-foot high Great Hall is still dominated by a 1906 Aeolian player pipe organ

Darlington today – Ilija Pavlovic expanded the mansion by some 12,000 square foot and amongst other things added a large home cinema

Darlington today – Another addition comes in the form of a vast wine cellar; George Crocker’s father would not have approved

Subsequently restored and modernised with, according to Forbes, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and communications systems being installed, Darlington was placed on the market with just 12.1 acres in 2005 by Darlington Associates, a firm who’d built “multiple residential communities surrounding the mansion”.

An ambitious figure of $25 million (the equivalent of £24.4 million or $31.3 million today) was sought for the now classified historic site but it was not until 2008 that a buyer came forth in the form of a local businessman named Ilija Pavlovic. He paid just $8.875 million (the equivalent of £8 million or $10.2 million today) and then embarked on the “challenge” of “both preserving the historic home while also restoring it to meet 21st-century standards”. The resulting creation spans four floors and includes amongst many other things a tea room, 3 libraries, 2 game rooms, 2 kitchens, a “his and her master bedroom wing”, 12 further guest bedrooms and 5 staff bedrooms.

The biggest issue with the house, it transpired, was that its 476 leaded windows needed to be replaced. This reportedly cost $2 million alone (the equivalent of £1.8 million or $2.3 million today) and in addition, Pavlovic renewed all the mechanical systems, redid all 19 bathrooms, replaced the slate roof and added amongst other things a spa with an indoor lap pool, a gym, a massage room, a beauty salon and a home cinema. There is also a gatehouse, a professional kitchen that can serve 250 meals at a time, a wine cellar, a poker room, a cigar room, a billiards room, an 8-car garage, a tennis court and an outdoor swimming pool.

Property blog 6sqft – which claimed Friday that the current owners do not live at Darlington full-time and simply use it to host events – reported that this still massive mansion minus its formerly equally gigantic estate is now for sale now for £37.4 million ($48 million, €44.7 million or درهم176.3 million) through a firm Mr Pavlovic chairs, Special Properties Real Estate Services – an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate. Any buyer will undoubtedly be a vastly wealthy figure, but one can guarantee one thing: They’ll never live as lavishly as the barmy boozer George Crocker.

April 23, 2017
Charlot Malin (1969 – 2017)

Oslo born, San Francisco based interior designer and philanthropist Charlot D. Malin had a day named in her honour by The City and County of San Francisco in November 2016. A mother of twins and the co-founder of Troon Pacific Inc. with her husband Gregory, “forward-thinking” Malin worked on properties for George Lucas and Robert Redford and supported everything from the San Francisco Opera Guild to the Voss Foundation. She considered “health the ultimate luxury” and loathed microwave ovens.

March 18, 2017
A Working Rolls

1959 Rolls-Royce estate car owned by late industrial tycoon Orin Smith to be auctioned; it was bizarrely designed to include beds and a loud air horn to “blast” cattle off the highway

Florida based businessman and retired CEO of the Engelhard Corporation Orin Smith (1935 – 2016) was passionate about cars and next month, those with deep pockets will be in with a chance to purchase 58 vehicles from his collection that will be sold, mostly without reserve, by RM Sotheby’s at their annual Amelia Island sale on 10^th and 11^th March.

Amongst the eclectic selection of classic and contemporary cars from the late industrialist’s collection is a 1959 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I estate car by H. J. Mulliner and Radford. One of just two examples, this immaculate short-wheelbase shooting brake was originally supplied to a Robert L. McCormick of Wichita, Kansas and transported to New York on the Cunard flagship Queen Elizabeth.

McCormick kept the car – which features a luggage space that can accommodate items up to 6-foot long – until 1965 and on selling it to a Palm Beach based judge named Lewis M. Schott, penned the new owner a letter that read:

The Radford conversion is a “complete job”. I will explain to your chauffeur and secretary how it makes into beds, etc, etc.

I’ll explain the 3-way horn switch to your employees. I used the loud horn for “blasting” livestock off the Mexican highways.

Finally, I hope you have as much fun out of the car as I have had. It should go 200,000 miles without work on it… A serious sacroiliac precludes long motor trips for me for a few years, and I’m an unhappy warrior when I think about it.

Sold again in 2007 to Florida Roll-Royce expert Richard Gorman, the shooting brake was then subject to an 18-month renovation. It is now presented in velvet green and a sage with parchment leather interior piped in velvet green and features upgraded air conditioning.

Of the overall collection to be sold on behalf of Smith’s family, Don Rose of RM Sotheby’s remarked:

I had the great pleasure of knowing Orin Smith and found him to be a true gentleman in every sense of the word.

In addition to his impressive gathering of some of the finest Rolls-Royce and Bentley automobiles, Orin displayed an eclectic taste with a keen eye for other icons of style, including sporting machinery from pre-war to the best of the contemporary.

The common thread here is beauty, in both design and engineering; fitting for a man of generous spirit devoted to excellence. Because of those qualities, Orin Smith was beloved to the Amelia Island crowd, which makes the offering of his collection at our Amelia Island venue all the more poignant.

Of the shooting brake itself, the auctioneer adds:

Numerous Rolls-Royce shooting brakes exist, but many of them are crude later conversions. This car is a true and authentic coachbuilt original, created to the exacting specifications of its original owner, and restored to that same high standard – air horns and all. Errant cattle, consider yourselves warned.

February 6, 2017