The
Dining room connects to the Living Room. At one end, a wood-veneered
wall is fitted with drawers, cupboards, shelves for glasses and a door that
leads to the kitchen quarters. When Gwynne upgraded the serving alcove in the
1960s, he inserted the built-in warming plates and bain-marie, and commissioned
the artist Stefan Knapp to create the beautiful yet utilitarian splashback,
which doubles as the serving hatch, in a pattern of gold and silver leaf enamel
baked on steel.
The round dining-room table is a marvellous dinner conversation-piece. Patrick
Gwynne designed it in the early 1960s to replace the original table,
which was in two separate rectangles, also designed by Gwynne. The base is
formed of two equal aluminium spinnings with an internal steel framework. The
top is grey-tinted glass sprayed black on the reverse; the trim edge is plated
steel. Sunk in the centre of the table top is a circular well with three
hidden coloured lights; the control knobs for dimming and colour variations
are at the host’s fingertips. A perspex bowl for flowers can be inset
in the well at a level so as not to interfere with guests’ views; or the opening
can be covered so that objects placed over it may be lit from below. The set
of dining chairs, covered in white vinyl and called the Executive Chair, was
designed in 1957 by the architect Eero Saarinen.
The Dining Room is separated from the Living Room by a folding screen door.
The Living Room side of the screen was delicately painted with images
of bamboo by Peter Thompson, an artist born and brought up in China; the side
facing the Dining Room is decorated with stalks of sweet corn highlighted in
gold leaf on a black background. Within the thickness of the wall is a recess
for storing ciné equipment.
The four ancestral portraits were painted about 1810 by Mather Brown,
an American artist who had settled in Britain in 1781. The older gentleman
is the Rev. Alban Gwynne (1751–1819), and his companion is his second
wife Susannah Jones (1754–1830), who together were responsible for transforming
the small fishing port of Aberaeron, Wales, into a sizeable harbour,
and hence creating the Gwynne family fortune. The young couple are the
Rev. A.T.J. Gwynne’s son by his first marriage, Col. Alban Gwynne (1784–1861),
and his wife, Mary Anne Vevers (1781–1837).
Through a double pair of sliding doors is the Balcony, with a south- and
west-facing aspect overlooking the pool. Gwynne designed the glass-top table,
on a white stove-enamelled base in the 1960s, as well as the two sets of four
aluminium plant containers. The four mesh chairs were designed by Harry Bertoia
in 1952.
