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PHOTOGRAPHY .................................... Farleys House Lee Miller’s kitchen cupboards “This one’s the oldest,” says Ami Bouhassane, pointing to a jar in a high kitchen cupboard. “That’s a chilli sauce from 1952. That’s a pepper jam from 1954. That’s red currant jelly from ’55. It’s the same colour as the plum jam from 1975… Dad’s quite brave; he thinks they should stay where they’ve always been but, because of the pressure in the jar, they could explode, and they are merrily sitting above the two Picasso lithographs.” The potentially explosive preserves were made by Ami’s grandmother, Lee Miller, in her exemplary 1950s fitted kitchen in Farleys House at Muddles Green. “When Lee died in 1977, she was a celebrated cook. She was the equivalent of a celebrity chef. The world had forgotten Lee Miller, war correspondent and surrealist photographer. And now it’s completely turned on its head and everyone has forgotten about her as a cook and they remember her as a photographer.” Every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen is full, as is so often the case with truly experimental chefs. “I thought I’d get some of the gadgets to show you,” says Ami, returning from the larder with various contraptions. “We have heaps of gadgets. This is a Legumex which is meant to be one of those awesome time saving devices with rubber fingers for peeling potatoes. But the whole time-saving aspect is completely destroyed when you have to clean it.” She picks up another. “An ice shaver. Early slushies! I don’t think she ever used this one. She used to buy two of everything - one for Farleys and one for their London home - and get her parents to send things from America. There are four boxes in the larder of weird gadgets that never made it back together again after they’d been cleaned because they were so complicated. “She would trawl through magazines and, if she saw an interesting ingredient or cooking product she wanted, she’d cut it out and paste it in her notebook. She once discovered edible gold leaf, bought in a job lot and covered a whole roast chicken. That was very expensive, so she found Reynolds food wrap which was gold on one side. Much cheaper.” Whilst you could believe that Lee had just stepped out, the kitchen is no shrine. It’s still in frequent use by the Penrose family and Farleys staff and visitors. <strong>Brighton</strong> photographer Tony Tree has been documenting the house over the past six years and has had to find moments in between coffee breaks and mealtimes to record the kitchen contents. “It being so intact has a lot to do with Patsy,” explains Ami. “She was Dad’s nanny and she just stayed on. She ruled, and we never questioned the contents of the kitchen, so we lived with our stuff alongside Lee’s. We just knew to check the label and, if there wasn’t a date, then we knew that we really shouldn’t use it because it predated use-by dates.” Lizzie Lower Farleys House & Gallery is open every Sunday until the end of <strong>October</strong>, with tours leaving regularly from 10.30 until 3.30. farleyshouseandgallery.co.uk Photo of Ami Bouhassane and her father Antony Penrose by Tony Tree © Lee Miller Archives, England <strong>2018</strong>. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk ....31....