OLIVER MESSEL (1904 - 1978)
Self Portrait at the age of 19
Reproduced on the jacket cover of
Oliver Messel, A Biography by Charles Castle
Thames & Hudson, 1986

From an early start of a career in the 1920s that lasted for five decades, Oliver Messel became one of the world's most sought-after and highly-paid scenery and costume designers for theater, ballet, opera and film.  From the West End to Broadway, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne to Hollywood, he charmed and enchanted audiences with creations which were "the epitome of good taste, delicate fantasy and magical illusion."  He designed the Royal Ballet's first post-war production of The Sleeping Beauty for the re-opening of The Royal Opera House, as well as the sets and costumes for the films Romeo and Juliet with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard, and Suddenly Last Summer starring Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn.   He also designed and decorated a number of interiors including the Oliver Messel penthouse suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London, and houses in Barbados and Mustique, including that of HRH Princess Margaret, who married Oliver's nephew, Tony Armstrong-Jones, afterward the Earl of Snowdon.    

"I had admired his creative genius as long as I can remember going to the theatre.  For genius he was, along with a number of other things - magic-maker, mimic, raconteur, entertainer, designer and painter."  Princess Margaret, at the opening of the Victoria and Albert exhibition of Oliver Messel's work in 1983.

"I attempted to use every device to make as much magic as possible."  Oliver Messel