By George

Design history of full of mysterious personalities—decorators who doggedly remain in the shadows, designers about whom one knows nothing, craftsmen of brillance who left few documents behind, et cetera. One of these intriguing people is George Sebastian, a tastemaker who put Hammamet, Tunisia, on the social map in the early 1930s and built one of the North African country's most admired houses.

Prior to that date, Sebastian's life is one of conjecture, though surely a bloodhound sort could amass enough to write a thrilling biography. That he came from Roumania appears to be generally accepted, appearing on the scene in 1918 or thereabouts and settling in Paris. The sleek Mitteleuropean dandy certainly was known enough by the 1920s to have moved into the orbit of French interior designer Jean-Michel Frank. Somewhere along the line he seems to have befriended the future Duchess of Windsor, either (says one source) during her youthful sojourn in Peking during her first marriage or (says another) through her second husband, Ernest Simpson. He also became close to society photographer Baron Adolph de Meyer and his decadent wife, Olga. And though Sebastian, by all accounts, was gay—one suspects the love of his life may have been American artist Porter Woodruff—he nonetheless advantageously married, in 1929, Flora Krauth (1877-1939), a wealthy widow 20 years his senior.

Flora Sebastian, with her fox terrier, at Dar Sebastian. Image by George Hoyningen-Huene for French Vogue, January 1935.

A plump, soignée native of Wheeling, West Virginia, with an unfortunate nose, the bride, née Flora Elizabeth Stifel, came equipped with a significant inheritance based on the manufacture of printed cotton fabric, along with an inheritance from her late husband, an Iowa insurance-company founder. And with his rich bride, Sebastian sailed to Tunisia, where he built a black-and-white villa that bears his surname and which still stands on its sandy, palm-shaded demense overlooking the Bay of Hammamet.

The front door of Dar Sebastian in Hammamet, Tunisia, which was constructed around 1930 by George Sebastian. Image by David Massey from "Maisons de Hammamet" (Dar Ashraf Editions, 1988).

A period photograph of the bay-side façade of the Sebastian house, which is made of concrete and stucco painted blinding white.

A 1930s view of the latticework pavilion on the top of Dar Sebastian.

Low-slung, snow-white, and dappled with delicate screens, Dar Sebastian (Sebastian House) was much-admired in its day and was reportedly designed by George Sebastian himself. Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright found the structure worthy of abundant praise, with the latter apparently calling it "the most beautiful house I have ever seen." Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who owned a house in Hammamet also, was part of the Sebastians' circle and was deeply enamoured of the waterfront mansion too. "The house, perfect and requiring no ornament, is like a line that never breaks," she wrote in her entertaining autobiography, Shocking Life. "The architecture is white and smooth—arcade after arcade, alleys of ever growing cypresses, and a vast crystal blue swimming pool; a long black marble table, on banquet days veiled with tuberoses, asphodels, and lilies of the sand." As for the interior decoration it was a chic, spare conglomeration of furniture by Jean-Michel Frank, Eyre de Lanux, and other gilded createurs of the time.

The living room of Dar Sebastian, with white-painted walls and vaulted ceiling and a white marble floor. The oak furniture, much of it designed by Jean-Michel Frank and Eyre de Lanux, was upholstered in white wool, and gathered around a vast white divan flanked by white-plaster lamps with molded swags. The only other colour accent in the house was black, which showed up in the zebra-skin rug, other furnishings, and architectural details such as door frames and window grilles. Image by George Hoyningen-Huene for French Vogue, January 1935.

Some sources claim Dar Sebastian was built in 1927, another that 1932 is the correct date, and yet another that construction began in 1923 and was finished seven years later. Yet another source, the book Maisons de Hammamet, declares ground was broken in 1927 and construction completed in 1930. (I have been unable to locate a precise year from an unimpeachable source but I will update this post when I do.) Be that as it may, Dar Sebastian still stands, used since 1962 as a cultural center, and some of its original furnishings remain on the premises, including several low wood Ananas cocktail tables by Jean-Michel Frank, which last time I saw them were sway-backed and warped by humidity. An adaptation of the Ananas design—distinguished by its sawtooth legs—still stands beside the swimming pool at the heart of the house, this one a weighty dining table made entirely of black marble. And whether they are Frank designs or not, upstairs in Flora Sebastian's dressing room are a few pieces of white-painted furniture that once were covered in fine parchment in the Frank manner, though the brutal salty and humid climate caused it to peel off.

George Sebastian, dressed in Tunisian style.

Flora Sebastian's dressing room, where the furniture—here a cane-back chair and dressing table—were sheathed in pale parchment.

The extraordinary sunken tub of white marble, part of the master suite of Dar Sebastian.

The swimming pool that occupies one wing of the house is bordered by shady loggias. Image by David Massey from "Maisons de Hammamet" (Dar Ashraf Editions, 1988).

A closeup of the poolside dining table, made of black marble after a design by Jean-Michel Frank.

The Sebastians divorced in the mid 1930s. In 1937 Flora married Eric Dunstan, a British film critic and journalist known as the "Golden Voice of Radio"; she died two years later, leaving him her considerable fortune. George stayed on at Dar Sebastian, presumably content with his divorce settlement, and there he reigned as the undisputed leader of Tunisian society's array of European expatriates and seasonal socialites, a group one writer described as a "collection of international oddities settled down on the African shore to do some rather elaborate sinning." His beloved Dar Sebastian, however, was requisitioned by Nazi forces during World War II and hosted the presence of General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, a Nazi officer known as "The Desert Fox." After the war, Sebastian returned to his post as Dar Sebastian's chatelain and ultimately sold the house to the Tunisian government in 1962. When he died is anybody's guess.

Flora Sebastian's bedroom today. Image from Tunisia.com.

The kitchen, where the doors and cabinets are painted white and decorated with giant nailheads in Tunisian fashion. Image from Tunisia.com.

The main salon as it is today. Image from Tunisia.com.

Details Count: Oak Hill, Brookville, New York

The living room of Cynthia and Guy Fairfax Cary in Brookville, New York, in the 1930s. Image from SPLIA, via Old Long Island.

The decorator of Oak Hill, the Long Island country house of lawyer Guy Fairfax Cary and his wife, Cynthia, is unknown to me at present, but I am intrigued by the unusual placement of the two chairs in the foreground—a deeply comfortable chintz-covered armchair with a slipper chair sidled up alongside and turned facing it.

Rather like a DIY tête-à-tête, no?

It's a charming idea, whether you're wanting a chat with someone special or plan to read to one's child.

Cooking With Class: The Elsie Experiment (Edition 1)

Elsie de Wolfe's chef and his assistant hard at work in the kitchen of Villa Trianon, the interior decorator's house in Versailles, France. Image by André Ostier, circa 1930.

As American-born interior decorator and hostess Elsie de Wolfe stated in her 1934 cookery book, Elsie de Wolfe’s Recipes for Successful Dining, “the perfect meal is the short meal.” The lady’s stick-thin, couture-clad silhouette indicates she took that directive quite seriously. So do the postprandial complaints of her guests. Deposed king or ascendant starlet, all moaned about the small portions and speedy eating one experienced at de Wolfe’s residences in Paris, Versailles, and Beverly Hills. Nobody, however, found fault with the wines, uniformly excellent vintages chosen by de Wolfe’s rotund husband, Sir Charles Mendl, press attaché of the British embassy in Paris.

Whether the guests muttered darkly about the flavors showcased in de Wolfe’s menus too is unknown. Certainly recipes of long ago often require some adjustment for more adventuresome modern tastes, as much as they demand increased clarity in terms of directions. Thanks to Fannie Farmer and generations of her professional descendants, home cooks nowadays expect exact measurements and certainty of results rather than the vagueness of cookery books of old. Exactly why were those directions so casual, one might ask? Because most of the time those early recipe compilations were directed at women with a cook on the household payroll, a man or woman who could fill in the directional gaps through decades of kitchen experience.

Though my husband and I rarely fear vagueness when it comes to recipes and are prone to trying out new dishes without preliminary testing, we wanted the readers of An Aesthete’s Lament to get value out of The Elsie Experiment. It is our weekly Julie/Julia Project take on de Wolfe’s only cookery book, which everyone knows about but nobody seems to actually use. Therefore we will attempt to make concrete sense out of the book’s sketchiness in the hopes that should you, Dear Reader, own a copy, you might bravely tackle its period offerings. Each Monday morning we will present a recipe or two from de Wolfe’s slim green volume and explain how we adjusted it/them for 2009 tastes. Though be aware we will not be following the recipes in order, in order to spare you, say, a gauntlet of meat dishes.

From its name alone Alsatian Soup, the first of de Wolfe’s 83 recipes, sounds earthy and rustic—neither of which qualities one associates with Elsie de Wolfe, that lover of rock-crystal candlesticks, leopard-skin upholstery, and flower-dappled chintz. Close examination of the dish’s ingredients, however, reveals the expected Franco-German heartiness is only superficial, its components nothing more exciting than boiled cabbage, breadcrumbs, Swiss cheese, and a splash or two of consommé for moistening. And FYI: Alsatian Soup is not a soup; it is more of a gratin or a casserole. It also has nothing to do with the region's well-known Alsatian Cabbage Soup, since de Wolfe's version contains no bacon, bacon drippings, or apples and has little broth.

ELSIE DE WOLFE’S ALSATIAN SOUP, 1934

Make a good consommé, and serve separately young, tender cabbage prepared as follows:

Cook the cabbage ten minutes in boiling salted water; drain well and rinse with fresh boiling water. Then chop the cabbage, butter an earthenware baking-dish, put in a layer of cabbage, a little consommé, a layer of fine bread crumbs and grated Swiss cheese, and continue in this way layer after layer until your dish is full. Make the top layers of bread crumbs and grated cheese. Cook in a moderate oven for one hour. Serve first the cabbage and then the consommé.

So far, we agreed, so bland. What additions, my husband and I pondered, would logically make Alsatian Soup more flavorful for our (and, one hopes, your) table? Piquancy and a touch of herbal smokiness might help, which led us to the pantry in search of caraway seeds, a traditional accompaniment to cabbage. We came back with a canister of fine sea salt and a container of ground white pepper too, since de Wolfe’s recipe is bereft of seasonings, excepting the chicken consommé, which took mere minutes to prepare and five hours to cook—and was sublime.

ELSIE DE WOLFE’S CONSOMMÉ, 1934

Cut a fowl in pieces and place in four quarts of cold water. Let it come slowly to a boil, and then let it simmer for three hours. Add one-half small onion, and one-half stalk celery, diced, one tablespoon salt, one-fourth teaspoon pepper, and simmer two hours longer. Strain [to remove the solid ingredients] and let cool without covering. Remove fat [by skimming], and clear.

[Note from The Aesthete: Straining the cooled consommé through a double-layer of cheesecloth is an excellent way to remove what fat remains in the consommé after skimming.]

Once the consommé preparation was out of the way, my husband and I concocted an improved, updated take on Elsie’s Alsatian entry, which is as follows. And, yes, it was delicious! We'll be making this one again for Thanksgiving.

ELSIE DE WOLFE’S ALSATIAN SOUP, 2009

AS ADAPTED BY AN AESTHETE’S LAMENT

Serves 6 as a side dish or 4 if made as main course for a light luncheon.

INGREDIENTS

A 2.5-pound Savoy cabbage, cored, with leaves separated, rinsed, and patted dry

4 to 5 ounces of Swiss cheese, grated using medium holes (we used Boar’s Head Gold Label Imported Swiss Cheese)

1.5 to 2 cups of prepackaged fine bread crumbs (you could always make your own, though we used the No-Name brand we picked up in Canada over the summer)

Caraway seeds

Ground white pepper

Fine sea salt

DIRECTIONS

STEP ONE

Place a rack in center of the oven and then pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking (Penguin Books, 1968) revealed the “moderate oven” specified by Elsie de Wolfe is 320F to 370F. We split the difference, more or less, and settled on 350F.

Fill a tea kettle with fresh water and set on high heat until boiling.

Butter a round two-quart soufflé or casserole dish and set it aside until ready to use.

STEP TWO

Fill a large pot with cold water and a healthy sprinkling of salt. Set the pot on high heat and bring to a vigorous boil. Add the cabbage leaves to the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes. Place a colander in the sink and dump the cooked cabbage into the colander. Allow it to drain well and then pour fresh boiling water from the tea kettle over the cabbage to rinse it further. Let stand for about 10 minutes until cool enough to handle.

STEP THREE

Transfer the drained cabbage leaves to a cutting board and roughly chop the them into pieces measuring approximately 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch.

STEP FOUR

Cover the bottom of the buttered baking dish with a layer of chopped cabbage. Sprinkle over the cabbage layer 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs, a hearty dash or two of caraway seeds, a light sprinkling of white pepper, a pinch of fine sea salt, and a layer of grated Swiss cheese. Continue layering in the previously stated order—(1) cabbage; (2) bread crumbs; (3) caraway seeds; (4) white pepper; (5) sea salt; and (6) Swiss cheese—until the baking dish is full. The next-to-last layer should be bread crumbs; evenly pour 1 cup of consommé over the bread crumbs and top with the final layer of grated cheese.

STEP FIVE

Bake for one hour or until the cheese is light gold in color. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 or 10 minutes before serving.

SERVING SUGGESTION

For a light lunch serve the cabbage mixture with a bowl of consommé, toasted bread with butter, and a glass of chilled Riesling. For a dinner the cabbage mixture alone would make a lovely accompaniment to roasted or grilled meats such as sausage, pork, or lamb.

Get Inspired: Book Covers

Some interior designers go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when they need a little creative pick-me-up. Others stare intently at antique carpets or a scrap of handsomely coloured wallpaper. When I'm stumped for a colour scheme, however, I turn to the nearest shelf and begin perusing vintage and antique books. The covers often offer terrific colour combinations that would look splendid writ large in a room's curtains, fabrics, and furniture.

At the moment two of my favourite book covers are Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance (Belford, Clarke & Company, published around 1890) and Nancy Mitford's Don't Tell Alfred (Hamish Hamilton, 1960). The former volume's decorative cloth cover would make a wonderful scheme for a library or a grand drawing room—imagine a space kitted out with sumptuous sofa covered in gauffrage velvet in that exact shade of moss green, low tables of shimmering cinnabar-red lacquer, walls taut with woven black horsehair, and the shimmer of gold here and there, on frames, chandeliers, and such. The latter's book jacket, on the other hand, wears an illustration by Cecil Beaton that is lively with sulphur yellow, acid green, dirty white, and ruby red, with a splash of black. How very Dior, no? Lots of satins, I think, and masses of silk taffeta.

Well Spent: Ballard Designs' Burlap Tablecloth

It looks like nothing special in the catalogue it graces. But Ballard Designs' burlap tablecloth has become one of our household's must-haves, along with thick white Turkish bath towels and Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers.

We own two of these fully-lined, jute-fringed accessories, the 96-inch version. Presently one is stored for future use while the other conceals and dignifies a cheap flea-market Formica-topped round table in the master bedroom, its surface piled with books and such. The sandy colour is nondescript, which makes the cloth enormously useful in a variety of decorating situations; show it off as is or inventively combine it with another cover, such as an antique paisley throw or a crisp white Belgian-linen cloth when dining. And the rough texture lends it a bit of visual warmth. The fringe is a trifle stiff and doesn't always hang properly but that's hardly noticeable.

Ballard Designs' burlap tablecloth is available in three sizes: 36 inches to 96 inches. Prices range from $55 to $75 at present, thanks to an online sale. Just don't order the fussy protective glass topper.

Why Isn't This Still Made? (Edition 23)

On Monday afternoon my husband was tooling around the countryside, stopping at antiques shops he had never had time to visit. And at one he found a triumph for just $15: a large berry bowl, four cups and saucers, and two plates, all from an early-19th-century china service. The price was great, the scalloped edges are lovely, but the pattern is even better.

Rendered in a black-orange-and-white palette that reminds me of 1830s England (and which matches perfectly the colours of our dining room), the china is spangled with sprays of gilding and features a strangely appealing combination of fantasy flowers, jagged leaves, trailing tendrils, and an unexpected geometric motif that resembles the face of a slightly irritable bird of prey.