Bunny Mellon Style | Linda Jane Holden
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Intro: Welcome to the one and only Interior Design Book Podcast, Decorating by the Book posted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Linda Jane Holden: Hi, I'm Linda Jane Holden. And I'm so happy to be here with Suzy Chase today to talk about one of my favorite people, Bunny Mellon. My latest book is Bunny Mellon Style, co-written with Thomas Lloyd and Brian Huffman. My earlier books are The Gardens of Bunny Mellon, which came out and was released in 2018. And it's now in it's fifth printing. It's been something that people really enjoy, which I'm really grateful for.
Suzy Chase: Before diving into this book. I'd like to thank my new sponsor Bloomist. Bloomist creates and curates simple, sustainable products that inspire you to design a calm natural refuge at home. I'm excited to announce they've just introduced a new tabletop and kitchen collection that's truly stunning. Visit bloomist.com and use the code DECORATING20 to get 20% off your first purchase or click the link in the show notes. Now on with the show.
Suzy Chase: Rachel Lowe Lambert Lloyd Mellon was nicknamed Bunny by her childhood nurse. Mrs. Mellon's interest in horticulture started at an early age. Her father gave her a little plot outside of the dining room window when she was seven. Now you are a garden historian and author behind the books, Presidents' Gardens, The Gardens of Bunny Mellon, Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon and The Bunny Mellon Garden Journal in addition to Bunny Mellon Style. Now, while working at the White House during the Reagan administration, you learned of Bunny Mellon and her contributions to landscape design. I am beyond thrilled to chat with someone who knew the incomparable Bunny Mellon.
Linda Jane Holden: When I was about seven year old, I cut all the pictures out of my grandmother's Life Magazines and pieced in the scrapbook pictures of The White House. And that was in the 60s when the Kennedy's were there and I came to know later on and all those gardens and those pictures were the gardens of Bunny Mellon. Then in my high school years, I read everything. I could get my hands on about the White House. And then after college, I went to work in the West Wing in the office of the chief of staff.
Linda Jane Holden: And in that context met Mr. Irvin Williams, the gardener at the time, the head gardener. He was just a wonderful gentleman like a grandfatherly type, but the intriguing part about Mr. Williams is he had come to the White House 60 or 20 years before in the 1960s when Mrs. Mellon and Mrs. Kennedy brought him there when they were creating the rose garden and starting to restore the White House grounds.
Linda Jane Holden: So I being this young thing out of college with a love of history and love of gardens and wanting to know more, and he answered those topics for me. And so we had this great friendship and then many years later, he finally retired and he was about 83-years-old and it was in 2009. And we got together once again and started rehashing his memories of working at the White House and the gardens. Because back in the day when we talked, he always talked about Mrs. Paul Mellon.
Linda Jane Holden: So then in 2009, when we convened and we're talking one day, I said, "Oh, Mr. Williams, do you have the rose garden archives? It'd be great for us to pour over those together." And he said, "No, I don't. You need to call the White House Historical Association." So I did. And they passed me on to Mrs. Mellon in 2009. I was thrilled that she was still around and I didn't even realize it that she didn't live that far from me.
Linda Jane Holden: So I went online at the time. She had her Oak Spring Garden Library, and went online. She had instructions that if you wanted to come to the library, you need to send her a little letter telling her why? I mail it on a Monday and the next day I got a phone call from her librarian. I said, "Oh, you're calling so I can come and see the archives." And he said, "Linda, you can come see the archives anytime you want to, but that's not why I'm calling." And I said, "Well, why are you calling?" And he said, "I'm calling because she wants to see you." I said, "Why?" And he said, "I don't know, but when can you come?"
Linda Jane Holden: I went out there. And when I arrived, I went to the library and walked in and they said that she wasn't feeling well. She wasn't going to be able to make it down from the house. Could we reschedule? So we rescheduled. But he said, in the meantime, she had me pull out everything from the rose garden and the east, all the White House archives that we have here for you to view. So, that's what I spent all day doing. And I was just in my element. I'll just say that it was just an amazing experience.
Linda Jane Holden: There were all her original drawings. And so I got to do all of that and that day and then a couple weeks later, I came back, I arrived and they escorted me up to the oldest part of the library where the Rothko that immense amazing Rothko used to hang and there's a round table sitting right there in front. And they said, "Have a seat here." So she was 99 years old and she came walking down the hall away.
Linda Jane Holden: And I have to say, she's walking on her own steam with this big smile. And so I went down the stairs and she grabbed my hand and we walked back up the steps. And then she guided me over to the table and she took her seat and I took mine. I was there because she asked to see me. I had wanted to pull over the rose garden archives. I was not intending to write a book, at the time I was teaching school full time. I had a very, really busy life. I'm a mother, I have grandchildren. She turned to me at the beginning of the conversation with this wonderful smile and asked me a question that I was hoping she wouldn't ask me. Because I thought once I... If she asked and I answered, that would be a short conversation. I was so excited to be there.
Linda Jane Holden: She said, "Linda, you worked in the White House, which president did you work for?" And the chairs were these little, really small, low chairs. But I remember just sitting up straight and looking at her in the eye with that sweet smile. And I said, "Oh Mrs. Melon. I worked in Ronald Reagan's White House." And she threw her arms open and she got that big smile again. And she said, "Oh, Linda, Ronnie was my second favorite president. But Jack was my first." Then we were often running on the conversation.
Linda Jane Holden: She's like, "Well, what do you want you to know?" It's like, "Oh my." I said, "Well, I really want to know what your favorite color is." I'd read a lot about Bunny liking blue, but I wanted to her to tell me, I said, "Can you tell me what your favorite color is?" And she said, "You know Linda, that is not important." And I said, "But I'd really like to know."
Linda Jane Holden: She said, "All right, blue, all shades of." And I'm really glad that I persisted with her on that because that's really coming handy over the years, writing about her all shades of blue. It's been important information that she didn't consider to be important. And then this conversation went on for a couple hours and I just sat there, just like a spell had been cast over me. And I think this spell is still cast, today.
Suzy Chase: Yes. Over so many of us too.
Linda Jane Holden: Yeah. I can see why.
Suzy Chase: So I'm curious about the cover image and the process behind choosing what went on the cover of this glorious book.
Linda Jane Holden: Isn't it beautiful?
Suzy Chase: It is.
Linda Jane Holden: Well, that cover is from one of her Paris apartments. The guys and I, we were at Oak Spring Garden Library and the early days of June research. And we asked to see the watercolors or any imagery that they had. And so this is one that we thought was really fabulous. It was bright, and happy, and cheerful, and elegant and restrained yet it incorporated all the bits and pieces of her interiors from the artwork to the soft furnishings, upholsteries, those chairs, the painted floors were such an important part.
Linda Jane Holden: That's where she really put most of her design was on the floor. She said nothing should be noticed, which really means that everything should blend in. She also felt that nothing should look new. She called it having a satin look. Not satin fabric, but sat in. That it should look worn. And so those really are her guidelines. It should all blend. And I think you can see in this cover that it really does.
Linda Jane Holden: And nothing really pops off or stands at as new. And her best friend, I would say, call her best friend, Jackie Kennedy she added to that saying that everything should have a reason for being there. And so, that really encapsulates this picture, being such a gorgeous watercolor by Isabelle Ray who was very gracious to share this with us.
Suzy Chase: You wrote in the book, the Mellons conducted this private privileged life at their 4,000 acre farm in Virginia and at various other houses in apartments in Paris, New York City, Cape Nantucket, Washington, DC, and Antigua their Island Paradise in the West Indies. They preferred to go quietly about their lives in the worlds of philanthropy and art and separately, he enforce breeding and racing. And she and books, gardens and design. Dairy Moore Bunny's son-in-law wrote to you about the individuality of all of her homes. They were all different. And Bunny Mellon Style takes us into the designs of Mrs. Mellon's many homes. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Linda Jane Holden: Couple years ago when I was in Norfolk, Virginia at a speaking to the garden club there. When I was finished with my presentation and they repeatedly asked me what was next. And I said, "Oh, I'm just trying to keep up with this book right now." They kept asking one after the other during the Q&A and finally I said, "What do you want?" And they said, "You told us about the outside now tell us about the inside." So that's what we, Thomas, and Brian, and I endeavor together to do was to tell about the interiors.
Linda Jane Holden: I follow the same lines of thinking of Gardens of Bunny Mellon and tracked the houses. And what went on in the inside, I continue to learn about Mrs. Mellon, is that the elements of her design whether you have to look at her and consider her as an architect. She did it all. She bought the land in many cases, she designed the building, she furnished the house, all of it. And we can see that in each and every one of her houses.
Linda Jane Holden: That the house had everything to do with the gardens. And this is because she, 100% saw her gardens as art, as living and use them as such. Especially at Oak Spring if you look at the Gothic room, which has a view right onto the garden, the proportions of the windows are designed and perfectly set to view the bloom from inside the house.
Linda Jane Holden: They're strategic to the exact level of the bloom, because the blooms were the living art. That was her collection. Yeah, The Mellon’s collected many things, ceramics, fabulous art, but for Bunny, really her flowers were her collection. And she designed her houses to see her flowers. There are even some windows that had these small pieces in them. They're like prisms and they break down the light. She helped to focus the light on things she wanted to highlight. And so light was extremely important to her.
Linda Jane Holden: I would say at Oak Spring to use that as an example, it's hard to know really where the front of the house is. The front door was very nondescript, but what we considered to be the front of the house faces south and the backyard, the garden, her garden, which is about a half acre faces to the north, all gardeners know that it's wonderful to have the Southern exposure, because that brings in the beautiful light. In this case we'd pass through those gorgeous windows and bring the brilliance of the sunshine into the room. But then when you went into the back garden, the stone wall at the back of the garden that was whitewashed, just like her father had done. By the whitewash in the wall it created a scene that was ever changing through the day as the sunlight hit the chinks of the stone. And in her mind, I would agree with it. There was always something new to see.
Linda Jane Holden: She was always trying to create something new, to see a reason it had to be there. Like Jackie said, "Everything had to have a reason." The other way that she brought the garden inside was when you look through the book, you'll see some of the floral in that Gothic room, you'll see floral fabrics there and itself was bringing the garden in and in the living room, you see this lovely yellow sofa, and it has a butterfly pattern. Also in the garden, there are on the middle terrace. There are two butterfly imprints that are filled with flowers and there's a walk way across the way that is planted with bonariensis and other flowers that the butterflies love.
Linda Jane Holden: And when Mrs. Melon was alive, to walk down the pathway on the edge of the square garden, you would walk through a tunnel of butterflies. It was just breathtaking. And she felt that if you planted the garden for the butterflies, and if they came that you had indeed created a piece of heaven here on earth. And so the that's why you see the echoing of the butterflies in the house. Because once again, she was bringing the garden into the house. It was all interchangeable.
Suzy Chase: In your preface, you allude to hurdles and obstacles that you encountered in the research process of this book. Talk a little bit about gathering the writings, correspondence and interviews with people who knew her and who I would imagine most have passed away at this point.
Linda Jane Holden: Some of the gardeners I've gotten to know really well when I was researching The Gardens of Bunny Melon, and some of those gardeners had actually grown up there at Oak Spring. The gardener that tended to the Antigua house and her Cape Cod house. She had gardened with her for 25 years and she'd been in and out of the house, and she spent a lot of time with me too. John Baskett, who was the curator for Mr. Mellon curated The Mellon's art collection. He is in his 90s, he's in London. And he was just so helpful with these trans-Atlantic phone conversations. Also, Philippe Venet, who was Hubert de Givenchy partner. Mr. Givenchy and Mr. Venet had helped me tremendously with The Gardens of Bunny Melon. Mr. Givenchy passed away, but Philippe carried on and went to see him in Paris again. And he was a great help with Bunny Mellon's Style. And then he passed away recently, but he had known her very well and traveled with her into most all of her homes with Hubert de Givenchy. So he was an excellent printer source for the writing.
Suzy Chase: That leads me the story that I would love for you to tell about the lunch you had with Givenchy and Philippe Venet in Paris in the fall of 2015?
Linda Jane Holden: When we went to Rue de Grenelle which was their home there on the left bank, and there they stood at the entrance, the doorway to welcome, to give a kiss in each cheek and escorted me into the salon past the Picassos. And it was to talk about gardening with Bunny Mellon is why it was the gist of our conversation. But we spent the afternoon talking about their gardening experiences with Mrs. Mellon. And we had this fabulous lunch that was served there. And we sat at the table right by the windows that looked onto their garden.
Linda Jane Holden: And the bear's garden was all green and white, the just white roses. He shared with me his garden scrap box, about four or five of them. And we sat there together side by side, looking through these scrapbook. And he was telling me about his gardens and show me the pictures, and what had inspired him about the gardens. And I really struggled to know what to bring to him as a gift.
Linda Jane Holden: And what I ended up doing was I brought him herbarium, a very large book, blue linen cloth bound book that I'd gone to Mrs. Mellon's garden and cut the flowers in September, took them home and pressed them. And then when they were dry, I pasted them throughout the book with this large really wide beautiful satin blue ribbon. I wrote a French inscription in the front reminding him of when he had first taken Bunny to the potager du roi they had gone to the market there in Versailles.
Linda Jane Holden: They have this fabulous special market on Fridays and they gone to the market. And then afterwards he had told her he wanted to take her to this garden, but he had said, "Come with me." And she wrote about it later. And those are the words she remembered, "Come with me." And so I used that and he sat there and as he read through it, he got very emotional, shed a few tears. And so it, me really emotional experience, which I hadn't really anticipated.
Suzy Chase: I didn't realize Mrs. Mellon's relationship with Givenchy was so close. They traveled together. He had a bedroom in her Antigua house and she had a bedroom in his turret of his 17th century, French country house. And he even took her to Studio 54, which I thought was a hoot. One thing I noticed about her was she made these deep relationships with unlikely characters throughout her whole life.
Linda Jane Holden: That's a wonderful observation. Thank you for noticing that. She did. She could be a friend for life, Mr. Williams all those years later, they still spoke on Sunday afternoons on the phone, Sunday afternoons and still admired her. That's where she saw me that first time was because of Mr. Williams, my friendship with Mr. Williams, who she adored. And my first book, The Gardens of Bunny Mellon is dedicated to Mr. Williams and I used a quote Bunny said that day about him because she was a true friend. When she became your friend, she was your friend for life.
Suzy Chase: I just adore that this is both a biography and a study of Bunny Mellon's iconic style. Talk a little bit about collaborating with Thomas Lloyd, Bunny's grandson and Bryan Huffman.
Linda Jane Holden: Bryan has a wonderful sense of humor and he pretty much kept us in stitches of laughter a lot of the time, he was a lot of fun. And Thomas he uncovered a lot of family photos that were helpful. He came and did some research with us. Let's see. He invited me to his house at the Cape, which was fun. He inherited his father's house Bunny son's house. It's not Bunny. It wasn't Bunny's house, but you from this house, you could see her house. So, that was a lot of fun just to be there in that environment.
Suzy Chase: So there's so many magnificent highlights of Bunny's life. What is your personal favorite?
Linda Jane Holden: Well, I love her friendship with Jackie very much. I loved they're about 19 years apart. I just loved the way they thought along and really inspired you to other and enjoy each other's company. And Mrs. Mellon herself told me a story about how, when she was at the White House, because before she did the garden, she was involved in the interior space and helping Jackie prepare for an evening dinner. And they had introduced these round tables into the White House and then covered them with cloths.
Linda Jane Holden: So Bunny told me that she climbed down under the table to get the cloth straightened. And while she was under the table, Techie was standing next to it and she heard footsteps come up and heard this voice say Mrs. Kennedy, do you know where Mrs Mellon is? And Jackie said, giggle. She really lighthearted and giggle and said, "Mrs Melon is under this table right now. You have to wait your turn to talk to her." And she called Bunny, the patron saint of everyone at the White House because she handled so much of it and helped.
Linda Jane Holden: And she said when she had accepted to do the rose garden, Jackie said she was going to have to thank her in Japanese because she'd run out of words to say thank you because Bunny had done so much. So I just really enjoyed learning the interplay of those two and the happy moments. And then in the sad also how they went through the funeral and the building of the grave site and all that together, how they really stood by each other and helped to create and get things done.
Suzy Chase: So I think the Rose Garden was a great example of how Mrs. Mellon was no stranger to taking risks because she said to president Kennedy, "I'm a gardener. And I don't know if I can do something like this." And he said, "Yes, you can."
Linda Jane Holden: When she first went there with Perry Wheeler, who was her sidekick in the garden at first helped her with the hardscaping engineering part of it. So they're sitting under the Andrew Jackson, Magnolia just looking and thinking and chatting. And president Kennedy came bounding out of the oval office down the old steps and across the lawn clamoring and saying, "Do you have any ideas? Do you have any ideas?" Which implied his confidence in her to go forward with it.
Suzy Chase: We're bouncing around but I want to go to 1948 when Rachel Lowe Lambert married her second husband, Paul Mellon in the New York City, apartment of Foxcroft chum, and one of my all time, favorite decorator Sister Parish. To me this wedding seemed so low key and not very lavish. I love to hear about that wedding.
Linda Jane Holden: There's not a lot they were very private and she didn't write a whole lot about these things. And it was so long ago that, but people did that back then. The Reagans were also married in a living room, William Holden's living room. It was the second marriage for both. So they didn't want to cause commotion a lot of attention in doing so.
Suzy Chase: After Bunny married, Paul Mellon, they built Oak Spring Farm in Upperville Virginia. I think this is my favorite of all of her residences, 4,500 acre estate, which includes three primary residences. And more than 20 cottages. Could you please describe Oak Spring Farm.
Linda Jane Holden: Mr. Mellon base thoroughbreds. He had a blue mirror barn. I think he had about seven barns there, and a round barn he had hunters and trail riding, fox hunting, was one of his favorite sports. So you had the horses, you had all these grand Oak trees, hence the name. But there's this rise of land there had been an old log cabin and they wield it across the road.
Linda Jane Holden: And it is on that site where they built their home Oak Spring. Just at the foot of the hill, the little knoll, there is a Springhouse that is just charming and there's a spring and a stream and a Willow tree and all there. But I felt that, that architecture is what inspired knowing that bunny always look for inspiration because the house really replicates the Springhouse, the scene kind of the stone, the white washing, the country fight effect is in the house.
Linda Jane Holden: And so the house rambles around you enter from the side actually into a very square size vestibule and the floor is herringbone laid brick. And it goes back to her concept where she integrated the garden with the house. So here you're actually walking into the house, but you feel like you're standing on the garden path because it's all brick. And had views to the garden doors that opened to the garden. So on the first floor you had like a little living room on the right, and then you traveled down a little bit more.
Linda Jane Holden: And there was a bigger room where she spent most of her time where that yellow butterfly sofa was. And then beyond that would be the dining room. There was a commercial size kitchen. Off to the left she had a little kitchen. There's a picture in the book that she called her sunny kitchen. And someone described it as saying, it looked like one day Bunny said, "I need a kitchen here." And so she built this little kitchen and attached it to the house.
Linda Jane Holden: There was a little room for flower arranging right next to the kitchen also. And then going back to the front door, if you traveled back to the west, that's when you went into her library and then beyond that was Mr. Mellon's office. And then upstairs, there were two master suites. They each other owns suite and adjacent guest house. So it was a secret passageway also between Bunny's suite that had views of the garden, but that went into her daughter Eliza's room, but it was a hidden passageway. You didn't know if it was there unless you knew it was there.
Linda Jane Holden: That's basically it, it was very, very nondescript, very intimate, low ceilings yet the fires would be blazing in the winter, always an abundance of fresh flowers, candles, lighted, and just beautiful, lovely aromas. The shutters were open early with his sun by different butlers. And close at the end of the day, it was very much a daily rhythm through where the house was managed and run very quiet. Nobody went there unless they were invited.
Suzy Chase: One of Oak Spring's most recognizable feature, I think is the Arbor of crab-apple trees leading down that long path. And was it Bronson van Wyck who reproduced this for that special dinner or the opening of the Sotheby's Auction in 2014?
Linda Jane Holden: I didn't go to the auction personally. That's actually what spurred me on to start writing about her was that auction. And yeah, so he did, but what it is, is about 127' long and it connects the garden with the greenhouse and they are Mary Potter, crab-apple that have a pinky peach blossom in the springtime. And the fruit, what's wonderful about it is. So Bunny did everything with intent. The fruit that is the berries don't ripen until late in the year are probably still ripe on that arbor now, which is great for the birds. She's always providing food for the critters, the birds, places for the critters to hide. So that arbor served a dual purpose, which was to feed the birds.
Suzy Chase: And I read somewhere also that she didn't want the apples picked up?
Linda Jane Holden.: Right.
Suzy Chase: For that kind of lived-in luck?
Linda Jane Holden: Well, yes, that was the artist and her creating vignettes, still ice and scenery. And so they didn't mow until she told her it was time to mow and they had a short time in the morning to mow. Mrs.Mellon didn't want the mowers running all day. She wanted everything to look as though God had just touched it, just left it and had smoked exquisite moment. And so she had a lot of gardeners and that was part of their job was to pull the apples aside, do the mowing and then place the apples back where they had been.
Suzy Chase: You mentioned a little bit earlier about how her motto was imperfectly, perfect. She had many, many collections in our home, straw baskets, vegetables, ceramics, wooden walking sticks, rare books, contemporary art and grave silver pill boxes, and even jewelry by Schlumberger. I'm probably not saying that correctly.
Linda Jane Holden Schlumberger.
Suzy Chase: Schlumberger.
Linda Jane Holden: You're doing great. You're doing just fine.
Suzy Chase: Can you chat just a little bit about her various collections.
Linda Jane Holden: She loved beauty and an object that brought great regard to her, my favorite of her jewelry. She had this butterfly bracelet because I know how much she loved butteries. So, that's my personal favorite. But she worked with Schlumberger.J Who had been in New York city and in France and they designed jewelry together. And so she would commission him, they collaborated. And so he devised all these magnificent pieces that she wore, especially, she mostly had two types of clothes. Gardening clothes and then her dress-up closed for the events at the National Gallery of Art. So she would wear the jewelry pieces to those events. And so that's where the Schlumberger jewelry. And he's the one who told her that she didn't dress well in the early days.
Suzy Chase: Oh yes.
Linda Jane Holden: Yeah. And she wrote about this herself. And so, but he insisted that they go to Paris together and he introduced her to Cristóbal Balenciaga who took her in hand and then dressed her. And until he took an early retirement and that's when he introduced her to de Givenchy. She was very cooperative. Givenchy told me how she was so cooperative and liked how he dressed her. She wore Navy blue all the time. He created her bucket hats for her. She also wore a lot of t-shirts. The land vent t-shirts and he was making those for a while. And we have a picture on page 288 of her t-shirts and how she was trying to draw how she wanted him to make the t-shirt. And finally he told her, he said, "Bunny, you can just buy these at Lands End. It would be a lot cheaper if you just bought them on Lands End and then we don't have to shipping them across the ocean."
Suzy Chase: That's hilarious.
Linda Jane Holden: Yeah. So the other collection she had in the afterward, the afterward is very, very special. It's written by Susan Leopold, who was one of her librarians. And who has a PhD and Botany and Susan Luther afterward based upon her experiences, working with Mrs. Mellon a copy there of Sophie Greenwell's plant medicinal on page 292, Bunny collected Sophie's paintings. Sophie lives in Provence. And Susan has been there and got to know Sophie herself, but Bunny first read about Sophie in a magazine when she was traveling over in Europe. And she called Hubert to ask him about Sophie, because Sophie had worked with Hubert. So he introduced them and Bunny went to her farm. They're very remote, very rustic and rural farm and wanted to buy the collection.
Linda Jane Holden: So Sophie said, "Well, that's fine." And then of course she wanted to commission some pieces and Sophie said, "Well, can you give me a deposit?" And Bunny said, "Well, I don't have any money." She said, "Well, nothing?" So Bunny turned to her driver who happened to have $50 in his pocket. So he gave her the $50 and Bunny handed it to Sophie. And that was the beginning of their great relationship of this great artwork. Susan writes about that.
Suzy Chase: One thing I loved was her straw baskets. I just loved it. And she displayed them so beautifully on the ceiling.
Linda Jane Holden: That's her basket house. And that whole idea was one of her later additions. But when she was a little girl, she spent summertime with her grandparents up in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and on the weekends, she and her grandfather would go into New Hampshire, to west Ridge, New Hampshire where his farm was. He'd been born there and he had a farm, and they would... the little village, you had to travel through west Ridge to get to the farm. There was a basket factory, and these baskets were made in west Ridge, New Hampshire at the time.
Linda Jane Holden: So this factory was there and every weekend they would go into the factory and to get in the factory, though, there was a stream of water, right in front of the factory. And then two boats that you had to step over that took you across the stream and into the factory. And that's where all these baskets were. Years later, she built this basket house. So the basket house you'll see in the pictures is based upon this basket factory. She built a little pole in front of it at Oak Spring and has a sliver of a bridge across it, just like the board she had to cross in New Hampshire and then the water level. So the surface just below the surface level are these jets that just move the water ever so gently to recreate the atmosphere of that stream. That was gently rolling down through the village.
Linda Jane Holden: Inside she hung the baskets and just like she had seen done in the factory. So, that was the gist of it. That roof of her basket house is from a house she saw on the main river in the Loire in France. She was really surrounded by down to the basket, sees memory and images of the people that she had loved so much in her life. Her grandparents, her parents, her father figured largely into her designs too.
Suzy Chase: I just adore the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville Virginia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains that was designed and built by Bunny and funded by the Melons. You wrote in the book that she intentionally placed the beam off center as a symbol that God alone is perfect.
Linda Jane Holden: When you walk in the church, you go through these doors that really resemble the gates to her garden very much so and there's this vestibule that you... The hardware is just beautiful hand wrought iron, horses heads and latches and things that's just exclusive. But if you gaze up to the ceiling, you'll see that the beam is placed off center. She wanted the worshipers as they entered into the church to have this feeling of contriteness and an attitude of worship, and to remember their place. And that God was the only one who was perfect. And that's why we go into church to worship him and just to keep, to remind us of our place. The detail, and the thought that she put into her buildings, her architecture.
Suzy Chase: Well as Tory Burch, who bought Kings Leap, Mrs. Mellon's property on Antigua wrote restraint brings attention to the integrity of design. And I think that sums it up right there.
Linda Jane Holden: Tory was right on when she wrote that. Tory kept a lot of Kings Leap the way bunny had it. A lot of the furniture came with the house and I love that about Tory, where she valued it and she just updated the kitchens and the bathrooms, I think for the most part, but she's such a strong appreciation for that very thing.
Suzy Chase: Awesome. Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Linda Jane Holden: Oh, thank you. I have a website. lindajaneholden@gmail.com. And I am on Instagram. It's @lindajaneholden.
Suzy Chase: To purchase Bunny Mellon Style and support the podcast, head on over to decoratingbythebook.com. And thank you so much, Linda for coming on Decorating by the Book Podcast.
Linda Jane Holden: Thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.
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© 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Used with permission of Isabelle Rey
