Newsletter (Archives)
Dates for your social calendar
French Tennis Open
Bath International Music Festival
Monaco Grand Prix
The Guardian Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
BMW Championships Golf
RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Preakness Stakes
Cannes Film Festival
Dante Festival
Royal Windsor Horse Show
Prague Spring International Music Festival
Kentucky Derby
Stan James Guineas Festival
Playtex Moonwalk
Royal Ascot - including Ladies Day
Hong Kong Stanley Dragon Boat Championships
Glastonbury Festival
Wimbledon Lawn
Tennis Championship
JPMorgan Asset Managements Round the Island Race
The Fortis Tennis Classic (Hurlingham Club )
Trooping the Colour
Le Mans 24 Hours Race
Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts
The Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair Charity Gala
Bramham International Horse Trials
Art 40 Basel
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Prix du Jockey Club
The Derby Festival
Garsington Opera
Grange Park Opera
French Tennis Open
Bath International Music Festival
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Prague Spring International Music Festival
Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup Polo Championship Final
Buxton Opera and Music Festival
Henley Festival of Music and the Arts
Hampton Court Palace Flower Show
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championship
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
BARGAINS IN THE BASEMENT
IN THE BASEMENT GALLERY
Hatherleigh Place, Abergavenny
Monday to Friday 10am to 4pm
Except Bank Holiday Monday 25th May when we will be closed.
other times available - please ask
For more pictures and details of sample items in the sale please send an email to Charles and Patricia Lester using the online contact form.
Special occasion outfits, apprentice rail items and lots of special bargains will be available in the Studio too.
Tops from £50 - Skirts from £30 - Scarves from £15
and more... If you want a full list - send an email to the address above!
Goodies in the Clear out
Lester Furnishing Fabrics
From £20 per metre to £100
Remnants, patchwork to full rolls Brocade fabrics with gold embossed Lester print. Originally up to £250 pm
Viscose and cotton satins, dress fabrics, and gold embossed wool ideal for curtains and throws.
Miscellaneous fabrics
From remnants to large pieces - often rejects or left-overs from film and theatre projects have been dug out of the boxes from the past. Not necessarily Lester designs but some very lovely things nevertheless.
Haberdashery
There are always surplus buttons, zips, beads, braids and ribbons. If you are lucky we will sort out some of the excess stock and hopefully they will not be too dusty.
Georgina's Rugs and Stained Glass - All Half price
There will be a range of luxury tapestry velvet rugs and various unique stained glass pieces - the majority of which are now at half price.
Jewellery findings
Georgina has quite a bit of old stock from the days of making jewellery - earring findings, brooch backs, clasps, catches and lengths of wire.
Flotsam and Jetsam
After over forty years of being in business and getting involved in a huge variety of projects has meant that we have accumulated a vast array of items. Some are more strange and wonderful than others but much of it has been sat in the 'don't-know-what-to-do-with-this-yet' boxes waiting for a moment of inspiration to give these things a new purpose in life. Well the moment of inspiration seems to have passed us by and we thought that it was about time for someone else to get creative with these treasures.
The Llansteffan “Palace” Retirement Project
Patricia reveals their plans and reasons for a major de-cluttering session.I have included a few pictures below to give you some idea of the enormity of the project.
Our ten year plan is coming towards its completion. Ten years ago we bought a seriously disadvantaged golf club – disadvantaged in that it was a boring bungalow of a building with no redeeming features other than the extraordinary views. 180 degree sea and estuary views – and from the top of the tower we have 360 degrees of glorious variety of countryside, water, castle, sunrise, sunsets, moon over the water – unbelievably inspiring. This building has now been remoulded into an exotic folly. We have designed the building ourselves and having got a bit carried away (it did not look quite so big on paper) we now have nearly finished it enough to start moving in. Having camped in the room that will eventually be the design studio, we now have the luxury of several bedrooms and the move is started – beds, books, rugs and still too much dust. There is still no visible extra space at Llanfoist House, but it is a start.
So there you go, having now reached an age where most people have retired we have fast forwarded the project of building this fabulous house where we can step back from the business and let our daughter and wonderful team continue with the day-to-day running of the business. We have incorporated into this folly by the seaside, ample space in which to create new designs and shapes and textiles, while enjoying the tranquil views and away from ‘what do you want me to do with this’ and telephone calls as constant interruptions! What we haven’t taken into consideration the huge amount of space in our present house that has been used as storage/dumping ground for ‘I’ll decide what to do with that later’ stuff.
The house that we are moving to is just as big in floor space terms – a massive folly with a tower – well you have to have a tower by the seaside – but 4 bedrooms rather than six and even more disastrously for dumping – NO ATTIC.
Old shoes and clothes have gone to Oxfam – but what on earth are we going to do with all these oddments of fabric, experiments that by their nature are rare pieces, part made cushions, cushions (my these take up so much space). It is amazing how much you can cram into a large house with lots of rooms. Rooms indeed have not even been into for a considerable time. It is both exciting re-awakening the memory, and daunting. There is so much.
An estate agent coming to view our home of 35 years said patronisingly: ‘you are downsizing?’ ‘No’ was my response ‘we are upsizing’. Our new home has a library for our thousands of books, a 35ft square central room, two conservatories (passive solar heaters) four bedrooms etc. but no places where things can be hidden. What it has become is a final place for the tons of stone, pillars, balconies, flooring that we have collected for the past 35 years. The conservatories have been built out of stone reclaimed from the local Abergavenny mental hospital – beautiful Bath stone that would have been crushed for roads. Our fireplaces were once Gothic windows – pillars that once held up balconies in chapels now support wisteria and grapes and the path of the 100ft long pergola beautiful York flagstones once trodden on by the unfortunates that lived in our Workhouse studios. The walled garden – vital for precious plants in a coastal location – still looks like a prison stone breakers yard – but the peach trees were planted some time ago and are growing beautifully – and yes there will be a pool if we can ever afford it. The part of the golf course that came with the club – 8 acres is gradually being filled with wildflowers and trees and shrubs to give a variety of framed views from every aspect. We have grown, from seed, thousands of aquilegia, oxeye daisies etc. and back breakingly planted them out in the meadow, so that in our dotage we can totter around and enjoy the wild-life.
I digress – the upshot of all this is that we have to decide what to do with all this ‘stuff’ because it just won’t fit into the new space and there is no room at the Workhouse, which is crammed full anyway. So fabrics that have been experiments, thwarted film projects, surplus from opera costumes and lots of interior fabrics, bits that would do for patchwork (collected over the years for me to play with when I retire – if I live to be 500 I will never use up all that lot) right up to lengths big enough for curtains, bedcovers, cushions, frocks – even some woollen fabrics left over from the time in the distant past – time before we decorated our own cloth –
And added to the dilemma of the house space being taken away – we have let a big chunk of the gallery building, so that space has gone too and soon the chapel will need to be emptied so that we can renovate that space – this will be more surplus building stuff that will need new homes – and then there is the workshop – well all the tools that he needs for building have already gone to the seaside – so surplus must go – at least the steam launch that had been started is now lining the top of the tower ceiling – so that is one major lump of wood that has found a home.
So the decision is to sort everything out and use the basement of the gallery building at the Workhouse – for a ‘bargains in the basement’ sale.
Click on images for a larger view
As it was in the beginning.
In the garden
Work in progress
The sea views - the whole reason why the building is here.
There will be a new website set up sometime later this year chronicling the journey of this building project. If you would like to know more then please remember to sign up for our newsletter.
Contact Details
Charles and Patricia Lester
The Workhouse Studios,
Union Road,
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.
NP7 7RL
Tel: 01873 853559
Fax: 01873 858666
Harrods, Plus Collections, Knightsbridge, London. 0207 734 1234
Our Collection in Harrods
www.charles-patricia-lester.co.uk
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