Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain's leading theatre designer of the 1930s, '40s and '50s. He created settings and costumes for all forms of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well as working in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic concepts were perfectly in tune with the times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, that style was becoming unfashionable, and Messel gradually abandoned theatre and built a new career designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.

Messel designed the costumes and sets for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly Last Summer (1959). It starred Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift, and was nominated for several Academy Awards, including two for Messel’s set designs.

This photograph of a set model was created by Oliver Messel for Mrs. Venables's garden. When the set was finally built, over 70 pieces of plants were used to create this sinister environment. Messel engaged Hugh Skillen, who had created head-dresses for Margot Fonteyn. 'He (Skillen) made the insect eating plants and all sorts of exotic, larger-than-life plants. I myself made banana leaves with waxed crinkle-paper and then mixed them all in with real plants. I made the vines from paper twisted round in coils and then covered them with pale green flock...'.