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In 1940, Henry and Irina Moore’s London home was damaged during the Blitz, and they moved to a small, semi-detached house in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. At the time, they thought it was a temporary move – but instead they bought the other half of the house, and gradually acquired more land, enabling space both for several studios, and for Moore’s massive sculptures to be sited in the landscape. The organic, abstract forms punctuate the charming gardens and surrounding sheep-grazed fields, while the studios, containing maquettes, equipment and works in progress offer extraordinary insight into his practice. But the house, Hoglands, visitable via pre-booked tour, also holds clues – for it is here that Moore’s extensive collection of non-Western art can be seen, as well as paintings by Ivon Hitchens, Walter Sickert, and Gustave Courbet, ceramics by Lucie Rie, and works by fellow sculptors Anthony Caro, Kenneth Armitage, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Also to note are the kitchen curtains; the fabric was designed by Moore.
Charleston in Firle, East Sussex
Paul Massey
This farmhouse – the country outpost of the Bloomsbury Group – needs little introduction: we all know of the debt interior design owes to Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s experiment in living – and loving. They moved in in 1916, and almost immediately began to paint – and not just on paper or canvas. Tables, cupboards, doors, fireplaces – all became viable surfaces for colour, pattern, and quasi-mythical scenes. The garden was designed by Roger Fry, a former lover of Vanessa’s who co-founded the Omega Workshop with her and Duncan Grant. If you’ve driven, be sure to visit the nearby Berwick Church too, which was decorated by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, and her son Quentin Bell, during the Second World War. (Somewhat controversially, Grant used his friend and probable lover, Edward Le Bas, as the model for Christ in the crucifixion scene.)
The Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany
Villa Stuck in Munich is a triumph of self-belief. Franz Stuck – who married an American heiress and became Franz von Stuck after receiving the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown – designed and built this house as a Gesamtkunstwerk, which translates to ‘total work of art.’ His aim was that it should amalgamate life, architecture, art, music, and theatre all in one space, and he designed literally everything – furniture, furnishings, and finish. Co-founder of the Munich Secession and Professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (his pupils included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Josef Albers) he drew on a variety of sources, with a particular concentration on Classicism and Art Nouveau. The result is unabashedly and gloriously full-on; both exterior and interior are garlanded with classical statuary, there’s a hand-painted (by Stuck, obviously) zodiac ceiling, gold mosaic walls, antique mirrors and decorative Jugendstil motifs – and that’s before we’ve even got onto the furniture, for which Stuck won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris World Exposition.
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