Treasures of the ‘King of Chelsea’ up for sale

He SPEARHEADED Swinging Sixties London counterculture, became a style guru for a youthful Mick Jagger and his memorial service last year was attended by the duchess of Cornwall.

Now i can disclose society antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs, dubbed ‘the King of Chelsea’, is to bequeath an astonishing legacy.

a treasury of his belongings are to be sold at Christie’s — among them 29 letters by French impressionist Henri Matisse.

‘they are about Matisse’s work in tangier, with little drawings,’ explains Peter Hinwood, Gibbs’s partner in both life and business.

Gibbs, who died aged 80 in Morocco, kept the letters at one of London’s most exclusive addresses — albany, the discreet 18th-century mansion where former hellraisers Bill Nighy and terence Stamp are among those who have ‘sets’, as apartments in the building in Piccadilly are known.

Gibbs’s own set was just above Nighy’s. ‘Christopher kept the letters in a safe,’ adds Hinwood, ‘although it wasn’t a safe really: more something to keep the cash in.’

in a separate sale, Christie’s is auctioning some of Gibbs’s more substantial pieces, including a pair of George iii white-painted bergère chairs from Woburn abbey — the duke of Bedford’s family seat — and a George iii mahogany desk owned by the 5th Lord Harlech, British ambassador in Washington when John F. Kennedy was president.

‘there was a photograph of my father which Christopher kept in the desk,’ remembers Harlech’s daughter, Jane ormsby-Gore. ‘Christopher loved things which had wonderful stories.’

a third sale of some of his quirkier items — the skull of a roman soldier, a slave’s shackle and his grandfather’s shoes when he was a baby — will take place at south London auctioneers roseberys.

But his thirties basin from albany has already gone: a gift to designer Manolo Blahnik. ‘it was enamel, with lovely enamel taps,’ says Hinwood. ‘a beautiful thing.’

Gibbs memorably observed that taste was not something that could be learnt but was, instead, ‘something you catch — like measles or religion’.