Friday 6th January 2012
Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist who triumphed in the summer with an astonishing multi-room ceramic the like of which the world has never seen before… Meissen or Chelsea re-made for the modern age. He’s on the world stage, was wearing for his party private gilded Levis, one of only five pairs conferred by the company, yet is an artist with a monastic streak. His home is hill-top high and from it he sees far, all over London in fact. It was re-modelled and doubled in size by Bruce MacBain four years ago to give vast sweeping spaces in which are placed a few exceptional antiques and rather more paintings.
To be a true artist and Poor Little Rich Gay is to live more on a knife-edge than an ordinary Poor Little Rich Gay who is only the artist of his or her own life. Reggie has quite a lot of neck pain, for a start.
I saw so little of him at the party. He was always processing and pouring from a champagne bottle or in the kitchen with Bruno-France Bruno, the great mystery PLRG who always seems to manage a loan of Picassos for the bedroom. Wonderful food and drink!
Lord Arrowby, that sensational governmental formidability, was there, my part-time love interest in the slinkiest silver! Oh! there were developments. And Claude Noel, who was a very early mobile-phone user before moving to Hollywood and the specialist vintage Cadillac market. He was hot in white nylon combats with deliciously smooth small of back showing. I was reunited with Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist, who’s been away for months, staging La Bohème upside down with an actual rock orchestra, that’s an orchestra made of rock, with some glass for relief. In New York, the private apartment he stayed in had a concert hall with seating for 100. Harry said we were in the presence of Madonna’s brother’s former boyfriend. Madonna is an awful bore, apparently. But they were all there at that millennium eve party in Miami, with Versace and Rupert Everett.
Rufus Pitman had ruthlessly left Raj Zoroaster home alone on New Year’s Eve with a hurty knee. I do love love shown through conflict. So much better than kissy kissy lovey lovey yuck. Rufus has always been a huge encourager of Lord Arrowby and I entwining. He once spoke quite firmly to Lord A about it. I think it will have to be strictly above the waist though. Now he is writing a book about handwriting and I told him how, as an infant PLRG, I would learn italic because the adults were so against it. Such shopping opps, for nibs in different sizes and inks. He’s going to interview me properly.
Oh look, no space left for Lord Arrowby, that wounded loveliness! He did quite run out the door, but there’s more than meets the eye. He’ll have to have a whole entry to himself.
I do have one thought, though, not necessarily adjacent: we’re always told that love’s the great driver, what everybody craves. But some absolutely go round the long way to avoid it.
Thank you, Reggie, for throwing open your wonderful home on New Year’s Eve.