In 1982, I got my dream job – the Artistic Director of the Edinburgh Tapestry Company, also known as the Dovecot Studios. Before being confirmed in the role, I was invited to lunch by its owner, the Marquess of Bute, at his stately home, Mount Stuart, on the Isle of Bute. I did know not to slurp and got the job.

We got our biggest and most important commission in 1984. One of the Dovecot’s directors knew the CEO of PepsiCo, Don Kendall, an avid art collector who had created a sculpture park and an art collection at the company headquarters at Purchase in upstate New York. The Hon David Bathurst convinced Mr Kendall that he should commission a set of eleven tapestries designed by the prominent artist, Frank Stella.

 

 

The commission was valuable but terrifying, since Stella’s work was intricate and geometric, making it difficult to translate into tapestry. It didn’t help when I asked Stella various questions about what he envisaged and he replied, ‘Use your judgment’ to each one.

Eventually the commission was successfully completed, and Mr Kendall came to see the last tapestry cut off the loom. He was piped into the studios. Lord Bute organised a dinner in honour of the event, but I wasn’t invited, as presumably too lowly. Perhaps someone more highly regarded dropped out, so I got a last-minute invitation. After dinner, Mr Kendall proposed a toast – to me! I sat there slack-jawed, hardly believing what was happening, but I secretly loved that Lord Bute was getting a sort of comeuppance.

 

 

 

Many years later, I found out that Don Kendall, who had seemed cultured and kindly in my encounters with him, was a pal of Richard Nixon. According to the Guardian:

‘…the October 1970 plot against Chile’s President-elect Salvador Allende … was the direct result of a plea for action a month earlier by Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, in two telephone calls to the company’s former lawyer, President Richard Nixon. Kendall arranged for the owner of the company’s Chilean bottling operation to meet National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on September 15. Hours later, Nixon called in his CIA chief, Richard Helms, and, according to Helms’s handwritten notes, ordered the CIA to prevent Allende’s inauguration.’

The actual coup did not happen until 1973, when General Pinochet, aided by the CIA, overthrew the elected Allende government.

I also later found out that the Hon David Bathurst had been disgraced when he had falsely claimed to have sold two paintings at a Christie’s auction, a Van Gogh and a Gauguin. It was, he said, to keep the art market buoyant.

When I left the Dovecot to work on my own, I preferred to work with more ordinary and more honourable people.