The Johnston Collection at Fairhall House is one of Australia’s most intriguing small museums. In 1986, antiques connoisseur and collector William Johnston (born 1911) bequeathed his elegant East Melbourne home, Fairhall, and its vast array of contents to the people of Victoria. The museum is managed by the not-for-profit W R Johnston Trust and its enlightened guardians who, since 1990, have regularly invited guest curators – as Mr. Johnston instructed – from various creative fields to rearrange and reinvigorate the collection. In 2010, Japanese-Australian designer Akira Isogawa and, in 2012, co-creators of the Romance Was Born label, Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett, were the first guest curators invited from the fashion industry. Now, it is Richard Nylon’s turn. Voxfrock editor Janice Breen Burns and photographer Monty Coles joined him for a tour of The Johnston Museum ahead of tomorrow’s official opening of his curation entitled, Feathering the Nest. (Long post; allow 10 minutes read time and scroll down – way down! – for links to a rich programme of talks, walks and workshops associated with the curation, including a special conversation about life, millinery, and everything glamourous between Mrs. Breen Burns’ and Richard Nylon at Fairhall on the evening of August 12.)
In Gwendolynne’s room
Richard Nylon’s favorite colour is see-through. Well, of course it is. He is also fond of silver-topped Georgian walking sticks, foxed mirrors, tarnished silver, metronomes, French baroque music, tri-corn hats (though he rues the growly, “Aarrr, Aarrrrs…” that follow him like a demented pirate chorus whenever he wears one) and, naturally, Gwendolynne Burkin. Some of this I knew; much of it I didn’t until today, though I have known Richard since he showed his first hats with Gwendolynne’s clothing designs more than two decades ago. They were delicate, flighty things, as I recall, possibly made of lace, or possibly tendrils of some spidery something that Richard coaxed to wiggle and shiver like elegant extensions of the pretty girls who wore them.
The sum of Richard Nylon’s parts has always been – how shall I put it? – not your average. He is one of Melbourne’s most intriguing men; a gifted milliner, insatiable historian, teller of stories (or, “spinner of yarns”, but that might suggest his stories aren’t true and they always, most fascinatingly, are), a striking flambouyant (I use the word both as noun and adjective) and now, as luck would have it, unleashed in one of Australia’s most intriguing museums as a guest curator of the vast Johnston Collection of antiques and objets d’art at Fairhall house.
For a man so disposed to the rare, the exotic and the bloody lovely, this is Nirvana.
So, we follow him, Monty Coles and I, from room to room of the labyrinthine Victorian/Georgian mansion, impressed at how bright and fresh everything looks (not a hint of museum-esque fug or mustiness here) chatting and photographing as we go. “This is the Gwendolynne Room.” It is the first of nine and love pings from every corner and carefully curated object in this ode to Richard’s longtime muse, partner d’intrigue, collaborator and friend. The room is lamp-lit (shades cut from ancient Chinese robes), draped with Spitalfields silk (we get the full fascinating history of Huguenot silk craftsmen fleeing France and settling in Spitalfield, London), dotted with chinoiserie and Egyptian treasure-lets. “Gwendo loves these muted colours…Gwendo loves this oriental look…Gwendo uses Egyptian motifs in her work…Gwendo….” (Gwendo, for the handful unfamiliar, is a veteran designer of bridal and special occasion exquisitries who will see the room for the first time at tomorrow night’s launch. I intend to stake a spot nearby to see her delight when she does.)
Richard lightly touches a matrix of tiny framed miniature portraits he has arranged on a table; “They’re lovely, aren’t they?” All of them girls. “All nubile young ladies – a plethora of young ladies! – in need of a wedding dress”. A Gwendolynne dress, naturally, and there are several, picked for their gleam, their silhouette, or beadwork, or sheer, heartbreaking prettiness, from her archive, to hang gently in an open closet, or recline on a rich silk-brocade covered chaise longue in the centre of the room.
The next room is starker, bristling with carved marble and alabaster busts, lush oil portraits, delicate porcelains, and a statuette of Mercury mid-leap in the corner. It’s too early for us; Richard has still to assign a hat to every head in here – the only room devoted to his profession – and a more extravagant set of feathered wings to Mercury’s feet. But, this is where the tangle of artful and poignant Richard-Nylon-esque meanings he intended for the museum and those who will wander through it in the next few months, begins in earnest. “This is an intervention room,” he says, laughs, and demonstrates how he will “intervene” in one marble chap’s historionic misery by clamping a very gay, very sparkly diamente chainmail mask over his eyes. “It’s all right; I’ve worn this, and he can see. But, he’s soooo miserable, he needs something shiney, and fun and camp to wear.” And so do we all.
More rooms – sumptuous, mesmerizingly appointed rooms – are shot through with more layers of meaning and Richard’s often bizarrely deep knowledge of history. His fondness for the “colour” see-through, for example, is spelt out on a grand dining table in a glinting forest of glass and crystal, studded with camellias. Look again, though, and the “forest” resolves into the shape of a man, laid out like a corpse with a guard of shrouded portraits and mourning mirrors keeping melancholy vigil. “That’s (late medieval) Charles VI,” Richard says, “A man who suffered terribly from the delusion that he was made out of glass, couldn’t be touched. I did a fair bit of reading on it.” The king’s insanity was grounded in a fear of intimacy. Another sufferer, Richard found, a French princess, was convinced she had swallowed a glass piano. “There’s a lot of melancholy going on in here.”
Melancholy, or a poignant pall of something like it, permeates all the rooms. In one, veils of laddered black stocking fabric are stretched across heavily carved picture frames, laid over tarnished silver goblets, platters and jugs, and set upon a battalion of low pedestals. Its symbolism is about the weight of ownership: “Silver was such an important thing but, it’s so…heavy. Possessions can be such a burden…”
In another room, six feathered metronomes tock-tock-tock the transcience of time amid the magnificent remains of a giant (disantled) grandfather clock. And, in yet another, shattered clouds of wisp-dyed and wrinkled “Miss Havershamish” (Richard’s term) veils are at once heart-flutteringly lovely and sad as a jilted bride. Every room is an evocative art installation and Richard’s intention unmistakeable, though open to private interpretation. There is longing here, and sadness, fear, humor. There is even desperation and addiction in a kitchen as prettily dedicated to the paraphenalia of tea drinking as a crack den is rudely devoted to drug taking.
Richard’s brief was open ended. “Louis (Le Vaillant, museum director) said, “Do what you want until I say no.” And, as the affable M. Le Vaillant said “no” only twice; to the removal two large items of furniture, he enjoyed a heavenly freedom. “But, I did have to keep in mind; “How does this all relate together, how does this relate to Mr. Johnston? How does this all relate to me?”” He found parities in William Johnston‘s life and his own, and there are blips, here and there, sometimes barely discernable, that acknowledge those synchronicities: the melancholy, the thrum of longing in some rooms, and a seam of country themed paintings running through the house. “He was a little country gay boy, a bit like me in a way; but a bit of a spiky bastard too…”
In the end, however, it was a lush oil portrait, hung between rooms and dating back to 1601, of a certain Robert Peake the Elder, Lord Edward Montagu, that chimed most truly with Richard the guest curator. The Lord is magnificent: erect, robust and apple-cheeked, sporting a particularly marvellous ruff that would serve as handsome accessory to any of the lordly Richard Nylon‘s many memorable ensembles. “In fact, you know that ruff I wear sometimes,” he says now, not in the least coyly (and I do recall the item), “That’s me pretending to be Lord Montegu. He was a very groovy lord.”
And on that note….
For tickets to a full programme of walks, talks, workshops and lectures during the season of Feathering The Nest, to October 20, click here.
