Tudor or Today?

Annie Block, Mark McMenamin, and Meghan Edwards -- Interior Design, 5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

When Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst was a director at the Gagosian Gallery in London, she began staging cutting-edge summer exhibitions on the grounds of her ancestral home, Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire's Cotswold Hills. Subject matter was restricted to contemporary sculpture, and mostly everything was for sale. A few years later, design took over from art, thanks to a partnership with dealer Kenny Schachter and auction house Phillips de Pury & Company.

The tradition continues this year with "Sotheby's at Sudeley Castle, A Selling Exhibition," organized in association with the Carpenters Workshop Gallery and running May 28 through August 1. Spread over 220 acres are 23 one-of-a-kind and limited-edition designs including special commissions. Imagine Marcel Wanders's shiny Bon Bon Gold lounge chair, 2010, just inches from a mid-1600's building ruined during the English Civil War. Or Studio Job's gravity-defying Pouring Jug in the shadows of the Dungeon Tower once owned by Richard III. The juxtaposition of Queen Catherine Parr's tomb with Jurgen Bey's fantastical TeaSceneryDeluxe installation? Sublime.

Top image: Spaghetti Corten, Pablo Reinoso's bench in weathered steel and teak, is part of "Sotheby's at Sudeley Castle, A Selling Exhibition" in the U.K.