Syrie Maugham

Syrie Maugham, 1901

Gwendoline Maud Syrie Maugham (born Barnardo , divorced Wellcome ; born July 10, 1879 in Hackney , London , † July 25, 1955 in London) was a British interior designer . She was the first woman in Britain to work in this profession.

Professional background

Syrie Maugham began her career in the 1910s as an apprentice in a London interior design company to learn furniture restoration, trompe l'oeil painting, curtain design and upholstery . In 1922, at the age of 42, she started her own company, Syrie LTD., At 85 Baker Street . One reason for starting the company was that Syrie, who was now married to William Somerset Maugham , did not want to be financially dependent on him. She later opened branches in New York , Palm Beach , Los Angeles and Chicago .

Syrie Barnardo was born in the Victorian era when the apartments were cramped and darkly furnished. She rejected these norms and planned glamorous rooms full of light, with furniture in different tones of white and mirrored walls. Other hallmarks of their style were books bound in white parchment, cutlery with white handles, fringes on sofas and beds, dining table chairs with white leather covers and lamps with white glass balls. It also started the new trend of revising French antiques from Provence. She had a congenial collaboration with the photographer Cecil Beaton , who perfectly staged herself and the spaces she had created.

Syrie Maugham became particularly known for furnishing the music room in her own house at 213 King's Road in London and the drawing room in her villa in Le Touquet . The music room was all white; the salon, on the other hand, was decorated in shades of beige , with curtains made of light pink satin . Both rooms served as showrooms in which she gave exclusive parties in order to advertise her style to wealthy customers. Although it had become famous for its white interiors, in the mid-1930s it turned to furnishings with baroque accessories and in other colors such as light green, strong pink and bright red. None of the rooms she designed has been preserved in their original furnishings, they can only be seen in photographs.

Syrie Maugham's daughter married in 1936 and her mother's home furnishings were one of her best jobs. After Syrie Maugham finished this job, she sold her own house and traveled to India with her friend, the American interior designer Elsie de Wolfe . The two women took 52 suitcases, a cook and two own porters with them. In the following years Syrie Maugham continued to work as an interior designer, but had passed the peak of her artistic work. In 1940, to escape the war, she moved to New York, where she continued to work from her apartment. In 1944 she returned to London.

Syrie Maugham's clients included Wallis Simpson , Marie Tempest , Oveta Culp Hobby , DeWitt Wallace , Elsa Schiaparelli , Edward Molyneux , Edward James , Mona Williams , Babe Paley , Bunny Mellon , Clare Boothe Luce , Alfred Lunt / Lynn Fontanne , Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll and Stephen Tennant . She redesigned the furnishings of The Glen , the Scottish home of Christopher Tennant, 2nd Baron Glenconner , who had detested the house's previous Scottish Baronial style. She redesigned Fort Belvedere for Edward VIII when he was Prince of Wales .

Private life

Syrie Barnardo was the daughter of Thomas John Barnardo , founder of The National Association for the Reclamation of Destitute Waif Children , which established numerous children's homes in the UK. She was the third of a total of seven children. Her parents were very religious, and so was the children. a. forbidden to go to the theater.

At the age of 16, Syrie Bardano became engaged to the son of a wealthy family; when it turned out that he had a mistress, the engagement was broken off. To distract herself from this incident, she traveled with her father to Khartoum in 1901 , where she met a friend of her father's, Henry Wellcome , an American-born British entrepreneur who had made his fortune in pharmaceuticals . She was 22 years old, he was 48, and they married shortly afterwards. In 1903 the couple became parents to a son, Henry Mounteney Wellcome. The marriage was not a happy one, and Syrie Wellcome was said to have had several love affairs, including with department store owner Harry Gordon Selfridge and writer William Somerset Maugham. Wellcome got custody of their son. Mounteney was learning disabled and unable to take over his father's business. He later became a farmer in Buckinghamshire at his own request. After his parents lived apart for several years, Syrie Wellcome gave birth to a girl in Rome whose father was Maugham, but who was initially given the surname Wellcome . Wellcome eventually filed for divorce for his wife's adultery, naming Maugham as an adulterer.

Syrie Wellcome and Somerset Maugham were married in Jersey City in 1917 , even though Maugham was homosexual . Syrie is said to have forced the marriage by attempting suicide. The couple lived apart most of the time, Maugham had a steadfast lover, and the marriage divorced in 1928. After the divorce, Syrie Maugham was given the house at 213 King's Road with all the furniture, a Rolls-Royce, and an annual allowance of £ 2,400  for herself and £ 600 for her daughter Liza. When she died in 1955, Maugham was jubilant: "Tralala, no more child support, tralala."

In his 1962 memoir Looking Back , Maugham made extremely negative comments about his ex-wife, which caused a public outcry. He also denied being the biological father of his daughter Liza. Syrie Maugham herself says she never stopped loving him. After Maugham's death in 1966, his former lover Beverley Nichols , who was also friends with Syrie Maugham, published the book A Case of Human Bondage , in which he defended the now deceased Syrie Maugham against the attacks of her ex-husband.

Web links

• Marianne Kohler: Style icon Syrie Maugham: She invented living in white on tagesanzeiger.ch v. November 18, 2012
• Past & Present: Syrie Maugham + All-White Round-Up on designsponge.com
• Brooks Peters: Mariage Blanc on huffingtonpost.com of 17 June 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} “Syrie Maugham” on oxforddnb.com
2. ↑ Pauline C. Metcalfe: Defining glamor: Syrie Maugham and Cecil Beaton on themagazineantiques.com ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Marianne Kohler: Style icon Syrie Maugham: She invented living in white on tagesanzeiger.ch v. November 18, 2012
4. ↑ Listed Building - Entry . In: Historic Scotland .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Syrie and Mounteney Wellcome on wellcome.ac.uk
6. ↑ ^{a b} Christopher Petkanas: High Gloss on nytimes.com v. October 28, 2010
7. ↑ ^{a b} three quarters on spiegel.de v. May 30, 1966