THE ORMOLU CIRCA 1750, THE CENTRAL ROCK CRYSTAL VASE LATE QING DYNASTY

CONSUELO VANDERBILT-BALSAN (1877-1964)

The daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Smith Belmont, she became a celebrated debutante at her parent's Newport residence, Marble House, where in August of 1895 she met Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough. Under enormous pressure to secure a match with a European noble family, Consuelo wed the Duke that autumn and returned to England and residence at Blenheim Palace.

Consuelo was first able to exercise her passion for French furniture when she constructed her London residence, Sunderland House on Curzon Street in 1904. A gift from her father, the house was decorated in the Louis XVI taste. The Duchess made numerous trips to Paris during this period both to furnish her house and visit her father who had taken residence in Paris in 1903 following his second marriage to Anne Rutherford.

She separated from the 9th Duke in 1905 and was officially divorced in 1920. The following summer she married the French aviator and her close friend, Jacques Balsan. Consuelo happily settled in France where she lived in the splendid 17th century Saint-Georges-Motel near Eure in Normandy and a house in Eze overlooking the Mediterranean until the outbreak of the Second World War. Fleeing to America in 1940, Colonel and Madame Balsan continued to surround themselves with the beautiful objects they collected over the years. Her paintings and furniture often followed her from her house in Oyster Bay to Casa Alva, a tropical retreat in Hypoluxo Island, Florida which was decorated with walls taken from Hamilton Palace.

Even at the age of eighty, Madame Balsan continued to collect when she moved to a new residence, 'Garden Side' in Southampton, New York. She outfitted the new house with boiseries from a Louis XV chateau, and surrounded herself with objects collected over half a century. It was at Garden Side that Madame Balsan was interviewed by Vogue contributing editor, Valentine Lawford in February 1963, a year before her death. Lawford describes the elegant figure seated at her 'tall Louis Seize secrétaire, signed Topino, with a row of shapely members of the famille verte lined up above it.'