'Mlinaric on Decorating'

      I've had this book - large, hardback, excellent photography - on my shelves for years now, but as with any 'recently' published book I feel a bit reticent about posting images from it, but here goes....

     Mr Mlinaric, born in 1939, is one of Britain's foremost interior designers, though now retired.  He has worked for the likes of Mick Jagger and the Rothschilds.  As a child he was inspired by a number of chance encounters with remarkable interiors; Widcombe Manor near Bath, home of Jeremy & Camilla Fry; Leixlip Castle, home of Desmond & Mariga Guinness.  Ireland in general stirred his visual imagination: Dublin, 'a perfect Georgian city, shabby and seedy, old-fashioned, with little shops with turf fires burning', and the decaying country houses of the Ascendancy, 'when a celling came down, the family just closed the door and moved to another room.  They wouldn't sell their houses, hoping for a better days, and as a young man found that very romantic, just holding on and keeping things.'  There is something very poetic about these sentiments. He trained at the Bartlett, moving from architecture to interior design after a year.  He was part of the whole Swinging Sixties thing, and apparently knew everyone, some of whom, such as Ozzie Clarke moved in the circles documented in Peter Schlesinger's 'Checkered Past'.  There is a short documentary ostensibly about young men, including Mlinaric, with long hair made in 1967 by the BBC.  One way, perhaps, of seeing that whole 'Swinging Sixties' phenomena is as an attempt to re-enchant the world, to revive the poetic and the mystical.

     David Mlinaric seems, from the beginning of his career, to have worked in two styles, one contemporary and one traditional.  It is the latter that interests me and in particular there are three schemes from quite earlier on in his career which I think are quite masterful: Thorpe Hall (1970-72), interesting not only because it represents his own taste, but was done with such assurance for somebody in their early thirties; Beningborough Hall, (1977-79), for the National Trust; An Eighteenth Century Lodge, (1977-1979).  It was this last scheme that I remember from an early edition of World of Interiors.  Later work this style is to be found at Luggala (1997-2006), Waddesdon Manor (1990-2002), and Milgate Park (2002-2006).  At times it is Neo-Classical, at other times almost Neo-Victorian.  Sometimes, interestingly, 'Sixties'.  Perhaps it never went away.  (Though Thorpe Hall stands almost out of time.)  Anyway, Mlinaric moves with ease and admirable skill between styles, and with these remarkable skills he has contributed to the public realm here in the UK with restoration of Spencer House, London, the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden; The National Gallery; The National Portrait Gallery; and the design of The British Galleries at the V&A.  His knowledge must be encyclopaedic. 

Mlinaric on Decorating  Mirabel Cecil & David Mlinaric, Francis Lincoln Limited, 2008