Lately, I’ve been spending time with Bunny Mellon. The American Listerine heiress, society swan, gardener and horticulturist Rachel Lambert Mellon, nicknamed Bunny by her mother, was born in New York in 1910. Although she was from a wealthy background, her worth became stupendous upon her second marriage, to the banking heir Paul Mellon, with whom she became one of the most prolific art collectors of the 20th century. He bought Monets. She got Rothkos. Plus baubles, baskets and dozens of porcelain cauliflowers. When she died at the age of 103 in 2014, the sale of her possessions brought in $218mn.
I have been reading her biography, by Meryl Gordon, because I am intrigued by her influence on the world of luxury. Mellon was one of the most important patrons of the era, the tastemaker of her day. In particular, she shared an intense — and rumoured romantic — attachment with the Tiffany designer Jean Schlumberger, from whom she commissioned an estimated 140 jewels. These included a golden sunflower, beaded with emeralds and set in a terracotta plant pot (1960), and the first Bird on a Rock brooch — one of the US jeweller’s best-known designs.