Inside the Jewel Vault with Lucia van der Post

INSIDE THE JEWEL VAULT WITH LUCIA VAN DER POST

Lucia van der Post is the long reigning queen of luxury journalism. Born and educated in South Africa, the daughter of famous author Sir Laurens van der Post, she’s forged a decades long career in journalism. Starting out on London’s Fleet Street she became founding editor of the Financial Times How to Spend It magazine. She has written extensively on style, design and all things sophisticated, beautiful and tasteful.  

I hope you enjoy listening to Lucia's remarkable stories and discovering the pieces she holds most dear, as much as I did, making this episode.

And I want to hear from you!  What special treasures would you put into your fantasy jewel vault, and why?  Every so often I’ll compile your stories into a podcast of their own.  So please email me: jessica@juraster.com

Produced by Lizzie Wingham.  Engineered by Asa Bennet.

I wondered if we could just go back a little in time because your name has been such a by-line for luxury and style for so many decades. Where does it all start? Where back in childhood do you think you got this appreciation of excellence and beauty?

Well, I think a little bit of it is genetic. I mean, I can remember even as a small child noticing if things were lovely or not lovely. You know, I can remember suddenly looking up and thinking, gosh, my mother had wonderful taste. She had very little money, but she always dressed beautifully and her very tiny little flats always looked charming. And I just...I just remember back that instinctively, I can remember when somebody presented a lovely meal, I would notice that it was beautifully done. I just seem to respond in that kind of a way

But I wasn't born surrounded by beautiful things because my mother always had charming things. But my father was a prisoner of war when I was very young and was presumed dead and so we had very little money. So I wasn't born up in a grand house with lots of beautiful things.

I remember my mother had a way of making a room always look pretty. There were always flowers, there were always bowls of fruit, there was always lovely music playing, and it just always felt good, even though it was not filled with grand things, they were always filled with charming things.

And subsequently, you know, you've gone on to forge a career in, in journalism, writing about all things luxurious. So why do you think it's important to celebrate luxury?

Well, we all need clothes, we all live in houses, we all fill our houses with something, we all put on something every day. Why not put on something as attractive and make your house as attractive as possible? I mean, I find I'm very, very influenced by how things look. I mean, if something in my house is ugly, it's out. I mean, I just can't bear it, it irritates me. And I mean, it's the same with clothes. I feel very strongly about how things look. I mean, I do think it's a slight, not everybody minds. I mean, my husband, for instance, who is rather an intellectual, doesn't so much notice how things look. But he's very verbal, very literary, but he's not so visual. You know, some people mind more than others. 

And I think luxury matters because in the sense of things of quality, not just things that are expensive. I mean, as you will see from my jewellery, it isn't very expensive. Things of quality and character and individuality are things that I'm drawn to.

So let's go back to your childhood just again, just to touch on where you grew up. Whereabouts in South Africa were you born and did you have a happy childhood?

I was born in Durban, but I spent most of my childhood in Cape Town. In  one way, yes, in that my mother was a very loving mother, but it was, my father was, away, presumed dead in the war, and my brother, who was much older, was sent to Durban to school, so it was just my mother and I, so it was a little bit lonely. But fortunately, growing up in South Africa...It wasn't such a bad place to be poor in. There was the sea, there were the mountains, I had lots of friends at school. And in my day Cape Town was very beautiful but very dull. It's now wonderfully vibrant, full of wonderful design and all sorts of things going on, but it was pretty dull when I was a child.

And I suppose there was still segregation, racial tensions, apartheid. What impact did that have on you as a child?

Well of course when you're a child you accept the world you're born into and it took me some time to realise really what was going on, particularly in Cape Town, where you were pretty well insulated in that we had very few of the African tribes, I mean we weren't near the Zulu or the Khorsa, we mostly had what in my day were called Cape Coloureds, that's people of mixed race and I suppose from my position, I don't remember much tension. I remember having charming coloured people who worked for us, but of course looking back one realises how desperately unfair it was for them that they had to do all the waiting on us. But as a child it took me, I think it wasn't until I went to Durban, I was sent to Durban because of the difficulties in my family with my parents getting divorced, to live with an uncle and aunt. And I remember there for the first time being outraged at how people treated some of their, the people who worked for them. I can remember an aunt, a new Zulu lady came to work for us and my aunt asked her for her name and she said she was Julia. Well, my aunt had a daughter called Julia. And she said, not in this house it isn't, you have to think of another name. And I remember thinking how deeply unfair that was. I mean there was a lot of absurdity that one began to notice when one was about 16 or 17 but it took some time.

Well, I went to university in Cape Town.  Well, I went to university in Cape Town and I used to go and teach in night school in an African township called Langa. And I remember feeling incredibly ashamed that here I was, a kind of 17-year-old slip of a girl who had effortlessly been taught to read and literature and history and geography and all the things that one had learned. And here were these 40-year-old men, being taught by me to read and write because they hadn't had the same opportunities. And I remember just feeling mortally ashamed that they just had not had the same opportunities. That's when it really struck home how humiliating for a 40 year old to be taught to read and write by a 17 year old slip of a girl.

You said your father was away missing. At what point did he re-emerge from prisoner of war camp? How old were you then?

Well, he came back rather late because he was in the Far East. He was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Java. And the Far East war, if you remember, ended rather later. And then because his first language had been High Dutch, and he was in the Dutch East Indies in Java, what had been the Dutch East Indies in Java, where Dutch was one of the languages. And he'd learned by curious chance some Japanese before the war when he'd gone to Japan and of course he'd lent some Japanese in a prisoner of war camp.  And he stayed on to help the Indonesians fight for independence because the Indonesians who had were the colonial masters so to speak of the Dutch East Indies having abandoned the local population during the war when the Japanese arrived thought they could swan back as the colonial masters and the Indonesian said, hang on, no, we want independence. And my father believed in them getting independence and then he stayed on to help them. So he didn't come back till about 1947, at least I first saw him and I remember meeting him in about 1947. But he did not come back to us. He had already met my stepmother before the war. And so he used to come and visit us in South Africa, but he settled in London with his second wife.

Is this why you decided to leave South Africa and come to London? Was it to travel and to explore the world?

Well, my father, who was living in London, said, my brother had already come to England and he was an engineer and he was working for Rolls Royce. And my father said, why don't you come and just see if you like it? And I came and I loved London, felt at home straight away and met my husband very quickly and I've been here ever since.

In regards to writing - your father was a famous author. Do you think writing is in your genes and you're a wordsmith by nature? Is it something that just comes naturally to you?

Well, when I arrived in England, I was 20. And then we decided we wanted to get married and we were very young and very poor. I had to get a job. And with a degree in English and philosophy, there wasn't much else I could do. So it was really force majeure. 

I got a job. And in those days, there weren't all the jobs that are open to women now. There were no management consultancies. You didn't get graduate schemes at all the big banks or the big companies for women.

If you were very brave, you could be a lawyer, you could be a doctor, but I wasn't equipped for that. And so journalism seemed about the only thing that I might be able to do.

Let's look at the pieces in your imaginary jewel vault - are any of them to do with your early life?

Well, the first piece of jewellery I ever owned or was ever given was the little brooch of silver that my father brought back from Java, which he'd bought in Java where he'd been a prisoner of war for, what, four years? And that's incredibly precious to me for that very reason. I think it's, I think when I was a baby he'd bought me a teddy bear or something.

But it was the first real present I had from him, and it was my first ever piece of jewellery, that little silver filigree daisy, I think it is.

It’s a lovely exotic daisy, with a large domed and textured centre, and free flowing curved petals radiating out loosely.  Each of the petals is made of filigree work – I read that filigree came with the Dutch to Java and is now a traditional adopted craft.

Do you wear it often or is it something you keep tucked away as it’s so precious to you? Is this something he picked out and brought back and gave to you as a reunion gift almost?

But you know, I don't wear it enough. Having thought about this, I've decided I'm going to wear it more often. I don't wear it much, although I treasure it very greatly.

Yes, yes, you know, and I was terribly young, you know, jewellery was not in my sort of wardrobe or in my ken, so I was very thrilled with it.

Do we have any other pieces in here from meeting your husband in London?

Yes.  Yes, the next piece is a brooch. There's another brooch, which when we were very young and really not at all well off, my husband bought me that brooch. Apart from my engagement ring, I think that was the first piece of jewellery he gave me and he said when he gave it to me, because I'd just got my job I think on the Sunday Telegraph which was my first proper job, he said I want you to have of jewellery just like all the other girls that you could wear, you know, when you go to your lunches. And he gave me that brooch which he'd bought in a second-hand shop and he's not by nature a consumerist, so it was a very sort of sweet and precious present.

Isn’t that thoughtful.  It’s a pretty cartouche shaped plaque of pierced scrolls covered all over with bright vibrant gemstones and tiny diamonds.  Has he subsequently bought other pieces or is that it?

Yes he has.  We used to have a wonderful jeweller in our road called Vonguette who had a wonderful eye for jewellery and he's bought me several pieces from there.  I do think he's always a bit stumped about what to give me for a present though.

So let's go move on in your career. So you've got to London and you've taken your first job you said at the Telegraph, is that right?

It was the Sunday Telegraph which had just started up.  Well, it had been going a little while, not very long, but the design writer was leaving to get married. And so I was just dead lucky, I happened to write in and saying, were there any jobs going? I loved the paper. And she was leaving and so it was just serendipitous, the timing. And I remember the woman's editor asked me if I...you know, was interested in design and I quickly spotted that was where the gap was. So I said yes of course passionately. I knew very little about it at the time, I had to learn very quickly.

Well, in those days, women's pages were a kind of ghetto. You were stuck with women's subjects. There was food, fashion, design, and then usually some kind of bleeding heart piece. I mean, there was the four subjects, really. And I was the design writer.

At what point did you realise that you could forge a career out of writing about all things design related? 

Well, I became very fascinated by the subject. And I think learned pretty quickly because I jolly well had to. And I was then poached by the Sunday Times after I'd been three years on the Sunday Telegraph, or five years, five years, the Sunday Times design writer was leaving to get married. And so they poached me and I went to work for the Sunday Times. And when I arrived, they were still just the women's pages. But after a few months somebody called Hunter Davies, now a very famous author and journalist, came and changed them. I think they were the first kind of lifestyle unisex pages. He called them the Look Pages and I became part of the Look Pages. And I wrote on design but all sorts of other subjects. I mean Hunter was wonderful. He let one, if he liked the idea, he let you write it. And so I was there for five years and then just as Hunter was leaving, which I was very sad about because he was a wonderfully supportive and fun and creative editor, just as he was leaving, I got a telephone call from the Financial Times saying that the person who had originally founded the How to Spend It page, it was just one page and it had been going for a year, was leaving and would I be interested in the job? And that was 1973 and I said, yes, of course - I was.  That was the rest of my career. I was very, very lucky and I loved it.

When I joined it was one page, and then it became two, and then it became three, and then sometimes in the high season, it became four pages in the Saturday edition. And then it was a pretty obvious move. I mean, together with somebody called Julia Carrick, who was the commercial, who was on the advertising commercial side.

It was an obvious move to have a colour magazine, everybody else had a colour magazine. It wasn't a particularly original idea. I mean, there were two reasons for it. One was that we couldn't accommodate all the ads in the pages itself because fortunately the pages became quite popular. And secondly, the advertising clients, they wanted colour. They wanted their their wares to be shown in full glorious colour on glossy paper and it just grew and grew.

 And at this point, were you traveling extensively?

I didn't travel so much in those days because I did a lot of the writing and all the editing. I really started to travel much more when I officially retired in 1998 and I was a contributing editor, and I did a lot more travel then. I mean, I had travelled before, but possibly you know, two or three times a year, short, shortish trips, you know, to Paris for some design exhibition or you know, to New York to see something. But I didn't do so much of the travel writing, which I did a great deal more of after I'd officially retired, but I was still an associate editor.

You must have seen how luxury has developed over time. Luxury has come such a far journey, hasn't it? Where do you think it will go in the next decade or two?

Oh, it's changed out of all recognition. I mean, I can remember going to a little lunch where the late Mark Birley and Nina Campbell were introducing Hermes to London. Hermes was then a little Parisian atelier doing very refined, beautiful things. I'd never heard of it when they gave this lunch. And I think they gave us each an Hermes scarf, which I still have to this day.  But you know, and you think what it is now, it's almost as big as LVMH. And I remember LVMH starting. I mean, I can remember writing a big piece the first time that Bernard Arnault, when he bought the name Louis Vuitton from the Recamier family and how he's grown that. I remember the White Company, a young girl coming into me and she said she'd sort of got some nice white sheets she'd had made in Portugal. What did I think of them? I said, I think they're very pretty, Chrissie.  But look what she's done with the White Company.

If you were to write a future history of the world of luxury in the next 10, 15, 20 years, where do you think it's going? 

Oh my goodness me, I really don't know. I mean, it now appears to be... I mean, I don't follow it so closely now that it's not my working life, and I don't get invited to all the things that, you know, where you have sort of first-hand knowledge. But it seems so... it seems to me slightly vulgarised in that it seems so linked to the celeb world, which in the original days it wasn't.

It struck me as more refined, perhaps it's been also more democratised, which perhaps is a good thing, ever more people seem to have access to it, and they're all very clever at having sort of entry-level things to entice the less rich into their labels. But I mean for me one of the problems now is the superfluity of everything, you know. My tastes have always been for the niche. You know, I've never aspired to big labels. I've always preferred the niche, little known, made by a little craftsman or something. I mean you can see from my jewellery there's nothing big and expensive there at all.

So it's the authenticity that you think is at the heart of true luxury. Is that right?

Quality, creativity, workmanship, and a sort of spirit of some kind, which I suppose is what we call creativity.

It's sort of transcendence in some way, it's sort of yearning to, well, like your appreciation for beauty and excellence, it's wanting to take everyday things and make it an experience that transcends that.  So what's next in your jewel vault? What's its story? We've got a string of slightly baroque shaped South Sea pearls.  A lovely string of pearls is such a classic piece of jewellery, timelessly elegant.  

Lucia's South Sea pearls

It would be the pearls. I was on a press trip doing a story on Australia and we were in Broome, I was with a great journalist friend, we were doing the trip together, she was writing for Tatler and I was writing for the FT.  I thought well this is a perfect chance to buy some pearls and I had gone wanting to buy a sort of typical little string which suited my friend absolutely beautifully but it didn't suit me. Every time, these were the only ones that did, they have a very slightly grey tinge and they're kind of my go-to, you know, my everyday go-to. If I'm not wearing anything else I wear that. I love them and this must be over 20 years ago now that I bought them.

And how about other pieces from your travels? You've got some very colourful beads in here.

Well, I love Africa. Yes, those are African trading beads. The beads were actually made in Venice, but they were traded all over Africa. And I was in a very special shop in Johannesburg, which the man who owns it travels all over Africa buying very special artifacts. And I just saw those beads and I just absolutely loved them. I mean, I wear those in the summer with a summer dress. They're obviously not for wearing with winter clothes, but I just absolutely loved them. The beads are so lovely. And again, it wasn't very expensive. I mean, I would think 30 or 40 pounds, I've forgotten now.

But the man who owns the shop, there was the most extraordinary story because he was called Mark Valentine and because I was on a press trip when I went there I was introduced as Lucia van der Post, not under my married name, and he immediately said, oh are you any connection of Laurens? And I said well yes I'm his daughter.

And he said, oh, goodness me, he said, I helped your father. Look, one of my father's books was being made into a film, and they'd asked Mark Valentine to help them find locations for some of the events in this book, in Africa. And he'd been with my father looking for these locations. And he told me this extraordinary story that one day they broke off for a picnic whilst they were looking for a location.

And they sat in this dried-up river bed, which the river hadn't flown for over 30 years, and they were having lunch and my father suddenly said, you know, I don't feel happy sitting here. And they all said, this river has not flown for 30 years. My father said, I'm just very uneasy. Can we move? And they kind of rolled their eyes and thought, oh, humour the old man. And everybody moved everything 15 yards up the bank of the river. Ten minutes later, a flood came down, a flash flood, they would all have died. This was told me by a man I'd never met before. He was Mark Valentine, was there, and told me this story. Because people often used to say my father was a bit of a fantasist, but this story was told me independently by a man I'd never met before when I walked into his shop in Johannesburg. 

You said that you started travelling much more extensively in the late '90s. So, where have you been that was the most memorable?

The ones that are most memorable are not the most luxurious. I mean, I think my most memorable trips have mostly been in Africa. Walking with the Samburu up in northern Kenya in the Matthews Mountains was utterly memorable. Going up the Omo River into Ethiopia and looking at all the tribes on the banks of the Omo River was very memorable. Canoeing down the Zambezi in the very early days, before canoeing was very popular, was absolutely wonderful. Camping in, I mean the latest, the last adventure I had in Africa was going to Chad where we spent three days up in... going up through the Sahel into the Sahara and looking at the rock art. We camped in little one-man tents. That was utterly memorable. So those are my biggest, the things I've enjoyed the most.

It's a world away from the sort of luxury travel that is conjured up by the word, isn't it?

That's the formulaic interpretation. For me luxury is something unique and special. 

And you know, I mean to do those journeys you really need very experienced people. I mean you would not venture into the Sahara on your own. You'd die. And you know to be taken by somebody into these special remote places, these wildernesses, is for me a real luxury.

So we still have two beautiful pieces glinting away inside the jewel vault. Would you like to tell us what's next? 

Well, I've always, always wanted a rivière necklace. Long before Anna Wintour was wearing them, I wanted and I loved them. And the story of these two is that I one day saw one in a Bonhams catalogue and the estimated price was between 600 and 800 pounds and I was going to be away. So I left a telephone bid whatever you do with the person of 1200 pounds. And when I came back, I said, you know what happened? And oh, he said it went for 20,000 pounds. 

So I said, oh, so I obviously didn't get it. I'd kept the picture. And when I went to Sri Lanka, I went to one of the great jewellers and asked them to make one up for me like it. And that's the pale one you can see. That is of pale blue topaz.  They made that up. It isn't quite as beautiful as an 18th or 19th century one, but it's very similar and I like it very much. And then the inner one, the one in emerald green, comes from an American company called Larkspur - Larkspur and Hawk. And they make a speciality of making them according to the old traditions with paste and the same links and I bought that emerald green one from them so those are both modern but I wear them together.

Wow you wear them both together – gosh that must look really fabulous together, those colours work so well, the pale blue and the emerald green, very stylish.  You do love colour and like so many other things, you know how to put them together so well. 

Towards the end of your career you wrote two books, didn’t you, tell me how did those came about?

Well, after I'd left the FT, for a short time I went to the Times, for about five years, I had some columns on the Times. And when I was there, John Murray approached me with the idea for this book, Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me. And so I wrote that then in about, what, 2002, something like that. And then I wrote a follow-up, Celebrate.

And these books are guides on how to make your own life bright and beautiful and stylish. Tell us more about your intention behind them.

Well, I suppose I was trying to pass on a lot of the things that I'd learned through journalism. The thing about being a journalist is you have access to the experts in everything, whether it's beauty, whether it's fashion, whether it's interior design, you have access to them. And so, I mean, thanks to journalism, I've learned an awful lot along the way. And so I think that was the notion behind the book, to pass on some of the things I'd learned. I mean, there's stuff about beauty, there's stuff about clothes, there's stuff about...

food because I love nice food. I don't see any point in cooking bad food. You know, why? Why would you if you can make food nice and attractive? And so that's really the idea behind it. You know, a lot of it comes from the things I'd learnt. You know, I'd had to look into the beauty world. I'd interviewed some of the top beauty experts. The same with fashion, the same with interior design. So that was the thinking behind the book.

So we've got one last piece in your jewel vault. It’s a large silver plaque bracelet, richly ornamental and set with 3 large orange pastes and lots of pearls.

It's rather sort of baroque looking, isn't it?  It's very decorative, very ornate. But I love it.  If you're wearing a plain black dress in an evening, you put that on and you know, that's all you need really. I just love it. I mean, it's costume jewellery. I'm sure it didn't cost me an awful lot. And I can't remember where I bought it, but I'm very fond of it.

It's very striking - very baroque as you say, which is a sort of theme really in all the pieces that you have, there's form, there's, colour. And as you’ve pointed out it’s not about the value, it’s not the intrinsic worth that’s important to you, it’s about joy, it's about things that lift your spirits.

Jewellery in some languages means toy or joy, doesn't it? So I love the fact that this is your philosophy on jewellery too.

Which isn't to say that if I weren't very very rich there are some diamond pieces I'd like very much but I certainly don't feel unhappy without them! And there's meaning, mostly there's meaning. Because, you know, the trading beads are my connection with Africa. 

Lastly, I always like to ask guests which one piece from your vault would you keep if push came to shove and you could only keep one?

I think the brooch my husband gave me, even though the thing I wear most are the pearls. But that's the one I have most emotional attachment to. It was such a sweet, thoughtful present and at a time when we were really not at all well off.

I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we did recording it.  You can find images of all the wonderful pieces we’ve been talking about as well as the show notes and guest information.  Just go to www.insidethejewelvault.com/podcast where you’ll find all the episodes hosted on Juraster’s website, and you can also discover our spellbinding jewellery designed to transform.

And I want to hear from you!  What pieces would you put into a fantasy jewel vault, and why?  Every so often I’ll be collecting your stories into a podcast of their own, so please get in touch - email me: jessica@juraster.com.  

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