Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers CHATSWORTH AUTUMN FINE ART SALE 28,29,30 SEPTEMBER 2020

3 B ernard Nevill, textile designer and educator, who died in January 2019 aged 88, was a passionate collector of antiques throughout his life. Nevill was evasive about his childhood and education. At age 16 he became the youngest student in St Martin’s School of Art, where he was taught dress design and fashion by Muriel Pemberton, and he later studied under Madge Garland at the Royal College of Art; he later lectured at both places. The 1950s were unwelcoming to young designers, but he succeeded in establishing a name for himself doing freelance work, and in 1961 was employed by the London department store of Liberty & Co., first as design consultant and then as design director. He had a keen instinct, not only for what was to be valued in the past but for what trends in fashion were likely to evoke interest. As a lecturer and as a designer, his erudition and enthusiasm infected all around him, both students and clients. After leaving Liberty’s in 1972, he designed textiles for another thirty years. His work brought him sufficient income to buy houses in which to store his mounting collection of books, textiles, clothes, furniture, and objets d’art, some of them vast. His immense collection of original sample books, design books, etc., with samples from William Morris and others, cloth of all types, silks etc. which he amassed while at Liberty’s and later. In 1976 he purchased West House in Chelsea, which he emptied of its contents, cramming his own acquisitions into the fifteen rooms; and in 1977 he bought the stable block at Fonthill estate in Wiltshire, the demesne in which William Thomas Beckford had built his huge mansion to the design of James Wyatt. In 1987 one of his rooms in West House was used as Uncle Monty’s London home in the cult film “Withnail and I”. Income from “Withnail” enabled him to buy more antiques, which took up even more space. Nevill never completed work on either of his houses – he was always too busy seeking, buying and arranging more antiques. Collecting, he told his friends, was a disease – he simply had to rescue beautiful objects even when he had no use for them, as he wanted to save them from death. At age 80 he fell ill and had to part company first with West House and then Fonthill, the contents being put up for auction. He took only his most treasured possessions to his new home, a flat in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Crates of antiques that he could neither bring with him nor bear to part with remained in storage until he died. This sale includes a large collection of furniture, pictures, copperware, glass and delph-ware, ornaments, and an important collection of fabrics, curtains, sample books, and sample fabrics, rugs etc. from West House and Fonthill. See Lot 1263, a large collection of sample books, sample fabrics, original drawings/designs of clothing, fabrics, carpets, wallpaper, furniture etc., catalogues, reference books is of particular importance, see description. A large collection of books from the various libraries created by Bernard will feature in our Rare Book Sale in Dublin on December 8th. Julian C. Walton Bernard Nevill (1930-2019)