As mentioned in my previous post, we visited Oxburgh Hall today. It’s an amazing and very beautiful property. And it’s only a 45 minute drive from where we live now.
The moat is one of many features that make Oxburgh Hall so fascinating and alluring. Ironically I’d been thinking, do we really want to go here again? We’ve been so many times before. It might be boring. How wrong could I be? I’d forgotten the chief reason I love Oxburgh Hall. The interiors.
It’s the incredible opulence of the interiors that really make this place sing. To me at any rate. I mean, just look at that fireplace, above. It’s the combined effect of all the elements: from the sheer scale, to the huge range of objects, surfaces, textures, patterns and colours. I find it intoxicating.
The chair above is in the same room – a library – as the fireplace. And what a chair! I love the patterns in the textiles. I love the carving of the wood. And the two set each other off. The carpets and wall decor add to the riot of design excess. Fantastic! Behind the chair you can just see an open door that’s worked into the wall. There are also similar ‘secret’ doors disguised as extensions of the book collection.
Even the areas between rooms are places where you could dawdle for ages, admiring anything and everything, from the paintings on the wall, to the walls themselves. The walls pictured above and below are ‘wallpapered’ in embossed gilt leather, itself painted in dazzlingly rich colours.
And then one can get lost in admiring just one aspect of the experience. Let’s take furniture and wood first:
There are loads of lovely chairs. Sadly you’re not allowed to sit on them! I bought a large carved high-back chair from Willingham auctions a while back, which we refer to as my ‘throne’. But, beautiful as it is, it pales against this one. I plan to try my hand at some carving inspired by such things. One day! And then there are chests, cupboards, sideboards, and whatnot. Look at the inlaid metalwork – brass, I think? – below. Amazing!
Equally breathtaking, if stylistically quite different, is the marquetry on such pieces as the chest pictured below. I want this level of fabulousness in my life! How it might work, or not, on our much humbler scale. Who knows? Got to be worth a try though, eh?
There’s a very dark room, shown in the next two pics, below, which is/was, I think, the smaller non-formal family dining room. Dimly lit – originally intended to be used and enjoyed by candlelight – and filled with richly carved dark wood, it’s just incredible. The wooden stuff is a crazy mish-mash, but it all works together beautifully. The library fireplace looked difficult to top. But then you walk in here, and it’s even more richly extravagant. Albeit in a rather different manner.
The sideboard above – only just visible in the gloom – epitomises the room; cobbling together elemnts of different eras, styles, and origins, it still works as a unified entity. And the lighting and wallpaper add to the opulent yet cosy charm.
The next few timber derived jewels are to be found in the sleeping quarters. The headboards and footboards, the side panels, the four-poster posts, all are ornately carved. Below are just two examples I liked enough to photograph.
And here we have a ‘simple’ stool like chair, one of a pair. Mechanically it’s simplicity itself. But the aesthetics, design and execution, on the other hand, are dizzyingly florid. Both bottom and top elements feature what I can only describe as ‘high-breasted nymphs’… lovely!
And then there’s the art, or the various types of objects, from weapons to bibelots. The social politics that allow some to wallow in such opulence, whilst for others it’s dung for breakfast, dung for lunch (if you’re lucky enough to get any lunch), rounded off with dung for dinner… well, it doesn’t really bear thinking about. But have things really changed very much, in this respect?
As Grayson Perry observed, in his Reith Lectures, ‘democracy has bad taste’. Or, put another way, for stuff to be such that anyone and everyone can have it, usually means it’s going to be cheap, crappy, mass-produced tat. Amassing vast collections of labour intensive master craftsman level creations will always be the preserve of the privileged few.
Dotted around the place are a number of weapons, and even some bits of armour. In the gun room, now serving as the NT bookshop, there are a number of Napoleonic era muskets (and an Austrian air rifle, of similar vintage). Pictured below are some terrifically attractive pistols. I have vague plans to make myself a pair of replica flintlock pistols, an idea seeded by seeing a pair of genuine articles at the house of my aunt and uncle in Harpenden.
Yet another brace of future projects revolve around storage. And whenever I see things such as the following chest, I take note. The avian theme reminded Teresa of the many bird-focussed artworks at Anglesey Abbey. The latter are mostly paintings. These are made with inlaid materials, in a chunky mosaic style, possibly using stone.
Heraldic items have a strange charm. I bought a small stained-glass window from an antiques shop in Framlingham years ago. Sadly it’s slightly damaged. I’ve long intended to use it as a window panel in a foot. But I’ve not got around to it as yet.
There’s a fab stone in one of the outer walls that features a stylise heraldic helmet, replete with crown and flowing bits that might be stylised feathers, or some form of drapery. I meant to get a pic, but had gotten satiated and lazy from a surfeit of photography by that point.
In times where toadying to the powers that be was an essential aspect of survival, grovelling to God – the ultimate power, in theory – could set one at odds with earthly powers. This is attested to by, amongst other things, the ‘Priest’s Hole’ at Oxburgh Hall.
Then there are such things as this, below, which – I rarely read the captions explaining stuff – looks like a model of a font cover. And, even more extravangtly opulent, the incredible altar in the nearby chapel.
Oxburgh Hall is an amazing place. Visits there are inspirational.