PORCELAIN SET. - Lot 468

PORCELAIN SET. Compagnie des Indes, China, early 19th century. Comprising a dessert plate, a small soup plate and a bowl decorated with the monogram RAB (Bellamy family, the name of Violet Henson's maternal grandparents), time-worn gilding. Attached are a set of three dishes and two small soup plates and a teapot, decorated with a blue urn with gold floral motifs, age wear and accidents; two small porcelain teapots decorated with polychrome Chinese figures; two rice bowls, one of which is covered; a tea cup and saucer; four saucers and a covered juice jug. Age wear, accidents, as is. The Asian objects and works presented here highlight the style and personality of a legendary American-British couple, Jean Henson and his wife, Violet Tylden, emblematic figures of the cosmopolitan and refined Café Society of the interwar period. Jean Henson (1898-1974) came from a modest farming family in a small town in Georgia, USA. in the United States. Violet Tylden (1887-1971) was the daughter of a senior English army officer whose Huguenot ancestors settled in Norfolk and Lincolnshire in the 16th century. She spent her childhood on the family estate of her paternal grandmother, Eleanor Coates Bellamy (1823-1928), widow of the Reverend William Tylden (1818- 1876), at Ingoldisthorpe Hall, close to the royal estate of Sandringham. Jean, for his part, after taking part in the First World War as a volunteer in the US Navy, Jean moved to Paris in 1919, where he became a model for a time, posing for Man Ray, whom he had met in New York. Ray introduced him to Parisian artistic circles. Jean Henson and Violet Tylden met in Capri at the home of the famous Swedish doctor and writer Axel Munthe. They married on September 23, 1926, and decided to settle in Tunisia in Hammamet. For the next 50 years, this elegant and eccentric pair would welcome artists, painters, film-makers and actors from all over the world, making their estate the center of social and cultural life in this small Mediterranean village. Their residence and its marvellous garden, with a terraced path leading down to the sea between a double hedge of cypress trees, inspired many artists and photographers. It was on this immense beach that Violet posed under the lens of Georges Hoyningen-Huene, Horst and Beaton, in outfits provided by her couturier friends Lucien Lelong, Schiaparelli and Lanvin, to illustrate articles published in Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar. We present a selection of this wardrobe.