Drinks receptions - a private view

"A little wine and a new painting is good for the soul", Adrianna, circa 1992

Adrianna was a lady who loved her art, she would go to Bayswater Road or to Battersea to watch the artists at play and selling their art and she got into the habit of inviting her friends to see her new purchases on a very regular basis.

It was late Summer in 1990 when I first met her, through a friend I had met whilst temping in Pimlico.  My friend was a secretary by day and an artist by night.  I visited her on one of my latest scrounging efforts for cheap antiques at the Portobello Road market. 

It was the week before the annual Notting Hill Carnival and my friend had completed some large, brightly coloured canvases and being the person I was I had arrived early, before 8am, and had helped to set up and had made my first sale within an hour.  My friend was congratulating me as this willowy, tall woman, probably in her early sixties, came by and smiled.  She enquired about a painting she had seen the previous week and was mockingly appalled that it was the painting I had just sold.  She smiled and laughed at my response, and invited us both to her flat for drinks later that day.

Adrianna had been a creative executive for an ad agency in the sixties and seventies and had "retired" in her forties to travel and finally ended up in a rather large flat in Marylebone, a maze of a place although the living and dining rooms were huge and crammed with art pieces, sunburst and round cabin style mirrors.  In later years I would find out that she rotated her collection and had bought a garage a few streets away to store the rest of her treasures.

Adrianna had been running out of time that month and when we met later that day, she asked my friend to help with a drinks evening she was hosting.  She wondered if my friend would like to contribute some paintings as well with a view to selling a few if the opportunity arose.  I was already a very enthusiastic home entertainer and not being shy I offered to bring some snacks with me if I could come too. 

Adrianna agreed and for the next few years, a simple agreement evolved and I always brought a few platters of delicacies with me or prepared them in her kitchen whilst she and whoever was her helper on the evening buzzed around the flat cleaning and fluffing cushions.

She introduced me to a way of formal entertaining I hadn't experienced before.  For example, Adrianna insisted on attending to the door herself.  Later, I found out she had been born into a rather well heeled family and the maid had always answered the door to a party and sometimes her mother or father wouldn't know the names of the guests.  She firmly believed that if you invited someone to your home they should be greeted personally by the host or hosts.  It's a custom I've adopted to this day and at corporate receptions I normally ensure that at least three or four of the sponsoring hosts are at the door to meet and greet.

Adrianna also taught me how to work a room, whether helping with drinks or food or simply introducing people if they were new to her home.  She would also never assume I would help beyond preparing the food, so would always ask if I "minded" helping.  This is something else I have also brought forward into the way I entertain, never assume your friends will help, ask them each time.

Taking small platters of food around with you, platters in one hand and napkins in the other, is also a good way of managing a room.  For smaller private occasions you can easily see who's about to run out of wine or who is a little shy to talk, but in larger gatherings a good way of ensuring your guests are happy is to feed them and introduce them to people and help them break the ice.  You can also simply pop back to the kitchen to get more wine to top people's glasses up once the scouting of the room is complete.

This was also before email was the norm and Adrianna had the habit of getting a printer to create post cards for her.  If I remember rightly, it was normally a split image of her in front of the door to the grand entrance of her mansion building, flowers in her hands or a particular emblem of the time of year.  One year I think she posed in front of a friend's barn with two ducklings in her arms, grinning broadly for Easter... The other image was normally of something she had bought to show.  The cards would go out in envelopes with her regular invitation label on the back and a flourished signature and personal message.    On her invites however she had a red caveat, "RSVP essential" stamped in red wax, and by golly did you!