Oliver Messel

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Oliver Messel
Stage design
PartnerVagn Riis-Hansen[1]
AwardsTony Award

Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel (13 January 1904 – 13 July 1978) was an English artist and one of the foremost

stage designers of the 20th century.[2][3]

Early life

Messel was born in London, the second son of Lieutenant-Colonel Leonard Messel and Maud, the only daughter of

Eton – where his classmates included Harold Acton, Eric Blair, Brian Howard, and Robert Byron – and at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College
.

Painting, stage design

After completing his studies, he became a portrait painter and commissions for theatre work soon followed, beginning with his designing the masks for a London production of

The Lady's Not For Burning (1950); Romeo and Juliet (1951); House of Flowers (1954), for which he won the Tony Award; and Rashomon (1959), which was nominated for a Tony Award for his costume as well as his set design. He also designed the costumes for Romeo and Juliet; Rashomon; and Gigi (1973), the latter two receiving Tony Award nominations.[4]

For film his costume designs include

Suddenly Last Summer (1959), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award.[5]

Wartime camouflage

During the Second World War Messel served as a camouflage officer, disguising pillboxes in Somerset. According to his fellow officer Julian Trevelyan, he revelled in the opportunity to give his talents free rein. The disguises of his pillboxes included haystacks, castles, ruins, and roadside cafes.[6][7]

Post-war career

In 1946, Messel designed the sets and costumes for the

Tchaikovsky's ballet, choreographed by Marius Petipa, The Sleeping Beauty, a production which famously starred Margot Fonteyn.[8][9] It became the first production of the ballet shown on American television, on the program Producers' Showcase. That production, the first ever televised in colour, survives on black-and-white kinescope[10] and has been released on DVD.[10] In 2006, it was revived by the Royal Ballet, starring Alina Cojocaru, with some new additions to the scenic design by Peter Farmer, and released on DVD.[11]

In 1953, he was commissioned to design the decor for a suite at London's elegant

Princess Margaret.[12] By the mid 50s, despite his earlier acclaim, Messel's set designs were viewed in the UK as tired and escapist in comparison to designs that aimed for photographic realism, which were popular at the time.[2]

Messel also contributed to retail design, creating the new Delman shoe store for H. & M. Rayne in

Old Bond Street in 1960. Whereas upmarket shoe stores had been discreet enclaves dressed with curtains and pot plants, while shoes were consigned to underground stores, this radical refit incorporated display stands and cases, some of them illuminated, to show off hundreds of pairs of shoes. An article in The Observer noted that: "Mr Messel and Mr Rayne are at one in thinking that shoes to buy should be as easy to see and handle as books in a library".[13]

Messel and the Caribbean

Oliver Messel came from a wealthy, well-connected family, and when his nephew,

Princess Margaret, a lifelong relationship with the British royal family began. Messel was later to design Les Jolies Eaux, Princess Margaret's home on Mustique Island in The Grenadines (a 45 min flight west of Barbados), and "Point Lookout" an extraordinary stone beach house on the northern tip of Mustique. In 1966, Messel, exhausted by a demanding theatre season and recurring arthritis, retreated to Barbados
and the lush beauty of the eastern Caribbean. He was 62 and at the peak of a career in which he had dazzled three decades of theatre-goers with his fantastic, romantic and inspired stage sets and costumes. The warmth, colour and vibrancy of the tropics seemed to liberate new sources of energy and imagination, leading him to what would eventually become a whole new career in designing, building and transforming homes. Not content to rest there, he also designed many furnishings for these homes, particularly for outdoor use.

Messel bought an existing house called Maddox, a simple bay house perched above a small beach on the St. James coast. With the help of his companion Vagn Riis-Hansen, with whom he had a 30-year relationship,

Heinz
family), Crystal Springs, Cockade House, Alan Bay and Fustic House. He designed and built Mango Bay from scratch and was commissioned by the Barbados government to restore the old British officers Garrison headquarters in Queens Park, creating an elegant adaptation of it to a theatre and art gallery.

He would probably have gone on to do more on Barbados, but was lured away by his friend Colin Tennant and his private island home, Mustique. Glenconner commissioned Messel to design all the houses built on the island. Between 1960 and 1978 Messel created some 30 house plans, of which over 18 have so far been built. Barbados remained his first island love and his home, and he died there in 1978, at the age of 74.

One lasting legacy is that his preferred light sage green shade of paint, now known as "Messel Green' by paint companies in the Caribbean, has been immortalised as many property owners choose this colour for its quintessential Caribbean-ness.

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-317-10549-7
    .
  2. ^ a b "Oliver Messel". www.vam.ac.uk. 21 February 2013. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
  3. ^ "Oliver Messel". www.vam.ac.uk. 8 June 2012. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
  4. ^ Thorpe, Vanessa (24 July 2009). "Art beat: Oliver Messel in Cumbria, Mike Figgis on the fourth plinth | Vanessa Thope". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 September 2018.
  5. ^ "Oliver Messel, Desert Island Discs – Broadcasts – BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
  6. ^ Hamilton, James; Robinson, William Heath. William Heath Robinson. Pavilion, 1995.
  7. S2CID 225574489
    .
  8. ^ Curtis, John (7 February 1937). ""THE DANCE: A PREMIERE: PHILADELPHIA BALLET TO GIVE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE OF TCHAIKOVSKY WORK."". The New York Times. New York Times. p. 168. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
  9. ^ "Ballet in 1946 - from Ballet.co". Archived from the original on 17 September 2008. Retrieved 15 January 2009.
  10. ^ a b "The Sleeping Beauty". 14 December 1955. Retrieved 27 September 2017 – via www.imdb.com.
  11. ^ Smith, Howard (1 January 2009). "The Sleeping Beauty, recommended by Howard Smith. '... utterly enchanting ...'". www.mvdaily.com. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
  12. ^ "Meet Lady Margarita's family: a who's who of the Tatler cover star's clan – from Princess Margaret to Lady Sarah Chatto". Tatler. 23 March 2023. Retrieved 13 April 2023.
  13. ^ Settle, Alison (1 May 1960). "Reading the Name in the Shoes". The Observer.
  14. ISBN 0-415-15983-0; Routledge, 2002) pp. 364–65; available at Google books here
    .

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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