1. Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel was an English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century.
11 Facts About Oliver Messel
1. 2.
Oliver Messel designed the costumes for Romeo and Juliet; Rashomon; and Gigi, the latter two receiving Tony Award nominations.
3.
Oliver Messel was Art Director on Caesar and Cleopatra, On Such a Night and Production Designer on Suddenly Last Summer, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award.
4.
In 1946, Oliver Messel designed the sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet's new and highly successful production of Tchaikovsky's ballet, choreographed by Marius Petipa, The Sleeping Beauty, a production which famously starred Margot Fonteyn.
5.
Oliver Messel came from a wealthy, well-connected family, and when his nephew, Antony Armstrong-Jones, married Princess Margaret, a lifelong relationship with the British royal family began.
6.
Oliver Messel was later to design Les Jolies Eaux, Princess Margaret's home on Mustique Island in The Grenadines, and "Point Lookout" an extraordinary stone beach house on the northern tip of Mustique.
7.
In 1966, Oliver Messel, exhausted by a demanding theatre season and recurring arthritis, retreated to Barbados and the lush beauty of the eastern Caribbean.
8.
Oliver Messel was 62 and at the peak of a career in which he had dazzled three decades of theatre-goers with his fantastic, romantic and inspired stage sets and costumes.
9.
Oliver Messel bought an existing house called Maddox, a simple bay house perched above a small beach on the St James coast.
10.
Oliver Messel designed and built Mango Bay from scratch and was commissioned by the Barbados government to restore the old British officers Garrison headquarters in Queens Park, creating an elegant adaptation of it to a theatre and art gallery.
11.
Between 1960 and 1978 Oliver Messel created some 30 house plans, of which over 18 have so far been built.