Posted on: Friday, October 11, 2002
An opulence of art at Diamond Head
By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor
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| Above: Jin de Silva, caretaker of Shangri La, opens the gates to the Mughal Garden at the Black Point home of the late tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Below: The mansion in the shadow of Diamond Head is styled with Islamic flourish, below.
Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser |
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With the public opening Nov. 6 of Doris Duke's Black Point home, Shangri La, Hawai'i will see a less-well-known side of the late heiress, philanthropist and collector.
Those on the tour will learn about a woman for whom it was a joy to climb a three-story scaffolding to spend hours with a cotton swab, gently lifting the grime from a painted panel. They will hear how she spent three weeks deciding on the placement of objects in one small room. They will be shown innovations she designed, such as the living room's glass wall that descends into the floor to allow guests to wander out on the lawn.
This place that was for many years Duke's winter home, built in late 1930s and the object of seemingly endless decorating projects until her death in 1993, is managed, as she willed it, by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. It is to be a center for scholars and students of Middle Eastern art and culture, and a place for the public to visit. Tours are being conducted through a partnership with the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
When foundation executive director Deborah Pope first entered the home two years ago, she stopped, speechless before a grouping that in any hands but Duke's might have become a jumbled mess: arrangements of 16th-century Turkish tiles, mother-of-pearl chests, a painted and carved ceiling commissioned of a Moroccan artist, a row of stained glass and plaster that allows a play of colored light in from the roofline and, ahead, an ornate black grille hinting at a courtyard beyond.
"The first thing that entered my head was that, very clearly, there's another dimension to this woman. ... Anybody who could do this house has a whole other side that has yet to be told," said Pope, who would come to deeply admire Duke's unerring eye, the way that she arranged pieces to show them to advantage, her commitment not only to collecting but to studying, cataloging and displaying pieces.
Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser It wasn't enough to possess a priceless Iranian tile mihrab, Pope said, but Duke would frame that prayer niche with an entire house. From the lawn, the viewer glances back through the window wall, across the living room to a pair of specially commissioned painted doorway panels that draw the eye to the piece, which glows with aquamarine, azure, old gold and burnt siena patterns. Vistas like this abound in the house — every window, door, hallway, path and stair-step waterfall causing you to look where she wants you to, toward blue bay outside, to a niche filled with art, to a fountain or garden grouping.
Jin de Silva, 75, longtime caretaker of the property, grows gruff-voiced and teary as he describes his introduction to the home. His sister, Kusuma Cooray, was Duke's chef and recommended him to her employer. He had planned to take a job as a shipbuilder in Australia but, he recalls, "My fate changed. Miss Duke sent me a ticket."
He stepped into the foyer for the first time in 1979, he said, "and I closed my eyes and sat down there and thought to myself, 'Oh, my God, what am I in for?'"
De Silva would work alongside Duke for more than a decade, hand-cutting bits of marble to create a fountain for her Turkish Room, ushering her guests in and out of the home, banging the gong that called Duke and her friends in to a meal.
• Starting: Nov. 6 Call 1-866-DUKE-TIX (1-866-385-3849) 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 3 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays (it's a Mainland ticket service). Or reserve online at www.honoluluacademy.org. He revels in the opportunity to tell her story, and tears up again as he says, "She was getting involved with everything, that was her passion, her love. ... I feel her spirit and that is the spirit I want to spread to the people."
Visitors to Shangri La will see just a fraction of the 14,000-square-foot home with its "uncountable" rooms, Pope said — but it is such a rich feast that more would be almost impossible to take in.
The tour covers the foyer, the courtyard, the living room and dining room with their view of the ocean, the lawn overlooking the 75-foot swimming pool and guest quarters named the Playhouse and a strange side view of Diamond Head. Then there's the elaborate Turkish room lined with hand-painted wooden panels, as well as a peek at the Mughal Garden, patterned after the pleasure gardens of Shalimar in Lahore, Pakistan.
But why, a visitor must ask, why an Islamic art collection in Hawai'i?
Because, explains Pope, Shangri La married two central loves of Duke's life, both discovered during an extended honeymoon with the husband she would shed sooner than either of these: her love of the patterns and colors and play of light in Islamic art, and the warmth of her reception in Hawai'i, where she was allowed to make friends with beachboys, surf and live her life largely unbothered.
From the outside — a plain-looking gate on a dead-end street — you have no clue of what Shangri La is like. Or Doris Duke, either.
Doris Duke named her guesthouse the "Playhouse." A terraced waterfall and marble steps descend toward a swimming pool bordered by lush landscaping. Views include Diamond Head and the Pacific.
Shangri La tours begin with orientation at Academy of Arts
• Tour Times: Wednesdays through Saturdays. First tour, 8:30 a.m.; last tour, 1:30 p.m.
• Where: Tour begins at the Honolulu Academy of Arts with a viewing of the Arts of the Islamic World gallery exhibition and video orientation; departs at timed intervals by 12-person van to the property.
• Tour duration: 2 1/2 hours; 1 1/2 hours at house
• Ticket Price: $25 including Academy of Arts admission and van ride from academy to Shangri La; $15 for Hawai'i residents.
• Ticket Limit: Four per person; no group reservations or school tours.
• Reservations: Required.
No ticket sales or start of tour at Shangri La.
