
Cecil Beaton (1904 – 1980) was a British Photographer, interior designer and stage designer.
The house he occupied until 1945 at Ashcombe, Wiltshire, near friend Edith Olivier was decorated with limited funds using exaggerated baroque furniture. The walls of the ‘Circus Bedroom’ were painted by visiting artist friends, including Rex Whistler and Oliver Messel, in a kind of Surrealistic overstatement.
He published The Book of Beauty (1930) and memoirs in a Scrapbook (1937); during the 1930s, he worked for Conde Naste, publishers of Vogue and Vanity Fair.
During World War 2, he was a war photographer for the British Ministry of Information, working in Africa and India.
In his later years, Beaton rented for a short time each year a suite at the St Regis Hotel, New York, which he decorated, and Vogue published the results. He designed the sets and costumes for Gigi (19159) and My Fair lady (1965), winning academy awards. Active as a set designer, he was assisted from the late 1940s by Martin Battersby and others.
Recognition
Appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1957, Received the Légion d’Honneur in 1960.
Sample of works
More Interior Designers
You may also be interested in
Lust, heartbreak and suggestive sculpture: was this art’s greatest love triangle? – Encyclopedia of Design
The sensual American graffitist Cy Twombly, who lived in Italy from the late 1950s until his death in 2011, lushly inscribed his epic canvases with love poetry – Shelley and Keats, Cavafy and Catullus. The work was like an abstract expressionist Valentine’s card. Cecil Beaton was a British Photographer, interior designer and stage designer.
Sibyl Colefax (1875 – 1950) British collector and interior designer – Encyclopedia of Design
At Onslow Square and Argyll House, she opened salons. Lady Oxford, Lady Asquith, Lady Cunard, and Lady Ottoline Morrell were her rivals as hostess. She continued to entertain on a small scale at her house, Lord North Street, London, after her husband Arthur Colefax died in 1936.Read More →