mount street mayfair – Lavender's Blue

Making a Statement

Most recent news stories about Mayfair focus on how it’s changing. Mount Street, once a commercial backwater, now hosts Britain’s chief fleet of fashion flagships and international designer powerhouses. Waves of overseas money are buying up former English aristocrats’ homes on Rex Place and Balfour Mews. “In the last 10 years the number of antique shops and galleries in Mayfair has fallen,” observes Jamie Sinai. “Nevertheless London as a whole remains a strong centre for antiques.” Indeed sometimes it’s hard to keep track of what fair is when. Bada, Battersea, Lapada, Olympia and best of all, Masterpiece. There are still a few art and antique galleries on Mayfair’s South Audley Street including Mayfair Gallery and Sinai and Sons. The former was started by Jamie’s Iranian born father; the latter, his uncle.

“My dad set up Mayfair Gallery over 40 years ago,” explains Jamie. “Prior to that he gained a wealth of experience in the hustle and bustle of Jaffa. That’s where he first traded in collectibles and antiques before moving to London. Dad put his entrepreneurial spirit and international experience to good use by establishing Mayfair Gallery.” Jamie sees the core business as adding to the extensive inventory, providing professional art and design advice, maintaining a good shop front and attracting serious customers. It’s successful. “My dad has a great eye for new pieces. He looks for unique well made pieces showing quality artistry and craft.” Jamie oversees the day to day running of the Gallery alongside his younger brother. His English born mother also works in the family business. “We all muck in!” Stock is mainly 19th century with some earlier, some later pieces.

The internationalisation of world cities has affected business. “We do still have some UK buyers,” he says, “but the main interest is from overseas. We’re starting to see more Chinese and Indian customers. The US was strong at one point, in the Eighties and Nineties, but less so now. The Middle East continues to do well.” So far, so good. Jamie’s role at the Gallery, though, is to take it forward into the next decades of the 21st century, to move into new areas. Holding regular exhibitions – the most recent was on the Impressionists – is one innovation. Gallery as shop as gallery. The website features a 360 degree tour of the interior which is linked to the Google Street View of South Audley Street. Virtual shopping at its integrated best. “One of my challenges is to communicate to people yes we’re high end but we also sell smaller pieces at a medium price point.”

“It’s a slow changing industry compared to others,” Jamie reckons. “That’s not always a bad thing but it takes time to implement change. The auction houses have embraced change better.” His wider mission is to alter the way people view antiques, to make them more relevant, more appealing to the younger generation. “I like placing really fine antiques into very contemporary settings. Overly traditional interiors can be cluttered and overwhelming. On the other hand, minimalist rooms are often cold and lacking. Bringing the best of the two together you get a very nice harmony. I want to try and promote that style and look, to celebrate the vibrancy of antiques in a new context.”

Jamie started working life as an auditor for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. It sounds a world away from art and antiques but he believes it equipped him with an outsider’s insight into the industry. “Clients ranged from small retailers right up to FTSE 100 companies. It was a real eye opener into how businesses are run.” He believes it will take time to change the public’s perception of antiques. “Taste is definitely cyclical. It’s driven by the media. Right now, everyone is being swept along by the big craze for technology. Look at the queues outside stores when a new smartphone is released! There’s not much individuality but that will come back.” He reckons people will get bored of spending money purely on functional items and will start looking for belongings with character. “For me, it is very exciting to continue to explore new ways of promoting antiques.” Jamie Sinai is a breath of fresh air in an industry in danger of becoming stale. It’s time to say goodbye to safe greige interiors and hello to statement antiques.

Mayfair + The Grosvenor Estate London

All That Glitters

“He walked, as was his custom, through the shaded streets and pleasant squares of Mayfair,” writes Michael Arlen in A Young Man Comes to London, 1932. “This corner of town was our hero’s delight. He loved its quiet, its elegance, its evocation of the past. Of Mayfair he wrote those stories which no editor would publish. In those stories he dwelt on the spacious lives of the rich and on the careless gaieties of the privileged.”

Mayfair has long been celebrated in literature, most famously in the 1890s in Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and Lady Windermere’s Fan. This compact area, north of Piccadilly and west of Hyde Park, a patchwork of streets linking the generous squares of Grosvenor, Hanover and Berkeley, has been developed by several landlords over the last few centuries, most notably the Grosvenor family. There are four “golden streets” of the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair and neighbouring Belgravia: Mount Street, Elizabeth Street, Motcomb Street and Pimlico Road.

Mount Street shines the brightest. East to west, it starts opposite Alfred Dunhill off Berkeley Square and ends at Grosvenor House Apartments, Park Lane. The hotel is on the site of the Grosvenor family’s original townhouse or rather town mansion. Edwin Beresford Chancellor records in 1908, “Park Lane is synonymous with worldly riches and fashionable life. Down its entire extent, from where it joins Oxford Street to the point at which it reaches Hamilton Place, great houses jostle each other in bewildering profusion on the eastern side while on the west lies the park with its mass of verdure and, during the season, its kaleidoscopic ever-shifting glow of brilliant colour.” Park Lane is London’s Park Avenue (Manhattan not Bronx).

Between the classical Protestant Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street and the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception, known to all and sundry as “Farm Street” after its address, lie Mount Street Gardens. First laid out in 1890 on the site of a former burial ground, the gardens are now a sanctuary for locals, travellers and wildlife. Native London Plane trees grow between a more exotic Canary Island Palm and Australian Mimosa in this sheltered oasis.

Close to where Mount Street meets South Audley Street is the Mayfair Gallery. A treasure trove of furniture, lighting, paintings, sculpture and objets d’art, it was founded by Iranian born Mati Sinai who has dealt in antiques since the 70s. “Mayfair was and still is the premier location in London from which to exhibit and sell some of the pieces we have acquired over the years,” he says. “There is a peaceful serenity to the area.” His two sons Jamie and Daniel have joined the family business. “Once upon a time,” Mati says, “90 percent of our sales went to Japan and the US. Whilst we do still get customers from those regions, the growth of Russia, the Middle East and now China has radically changed our business.” A pair of vast vases commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I stand proudly in the shop front. The streets may not literally be paved with gold, but even on the outside of the red brick buildings are blue and white ceramic vases set in terracotta niches.

Mayfair has always attracted the rich and famous. Chesterfield Street alone boasts three blue plaques marking the homes of former Prime Minister Anthony Eden, playwright William Somerset Maugham and dandy Beau Brummell. The Queen was born in Mayfair, 17 Bruton Street to be precise. A Michelin starred Cantonese restaurant called Hakkasan is now at that address. Sketch on nearby Conduit Street is such a fusion of art, music and food that it is an installation itself. Art curator Clea Irving says, “Mayfair has a high concentration of artistically minded people – architects, artists, fashion designers, gallerists.” The fine dining restaurant at Sketch has two Michelin Stars.

A property budget of £1 million will at best stretch to a studio flat in this “golden postcode”. Established over 30 years ago, Peter Wetherell’s eponymous estate agency is on Mount Street. “Wetherell recognises that people from around the world seek Mayfair’s finest properties,” he says. A few doors down, 78 Mount Street has just been sold by Wetherell for £32 million. This corner mansion, originally built for Lord Windsor in 1896, has five reception rooms, nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms spread over six floors. An international influence is evident in its architecture, from French neoclassicism to Italian Renaissance and English Arts and Crafts. Two of Osbert Lancaster’s architectural idioms originate in Mayfair: “Curzon Street Baroque” and “Park Lane Residential”. Another two could easily be “International Eclecticism” and “Grosvenor Grandeur”.

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