A Bit of Glitter Added to Busy Royal Visit

So enough of the ‘hood.

Prince Charles’ Thursday itinerary was all glossy L.A. It began with a tour of the West Hollywood workshop run by British craftsmen who repair expensive porcelain and crystal, and ended with a planned $2,500-a-ticket fund-raising dinner at the spectacular estate of producer Aaron Spelling. (Charles didn’t know it at the time, but when he was touring the crafts workshop he eyeballed earthquake-damaged stone urns belonging to Spelling.)

The heir to the British throne took a stroll through the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see the work of R. B. Kitaj, an American painter living in London. He motorcaded over to the Huntington Library in San Marino for a glance at a Chaucer manuscript and, of course, the pride and joy of the library’s art collection, its famous “Blue Boy” by the British painter Thomas Gainsborough.

Somehow, somewhere late in the day, Charles penciled in a last-minute private chat at the Bel-Air Hotel with Barbra Streisand--each apparently a fan of the other. “They have known each other for a very long time,” said a British Consulate aide.

Charles was his usual chatty self at the West Hollywood shop of former Wedgwood master craftsman Frank Brookes, querying restorers in the workshop on the painstaking work required. “Hasn’t driven you mad yet?” Charles asked of a Danish trainee in the shop.

The little cottage-like houses that make up Brookes’ workshop on Nemo Street overflow with porcelain, crystal, glass, ivory and jade objects, some just chipped and others shattered into hundreds of pieces.

“Press pool, please be cognizant there’s an awful lot of expensive things in here,” said a security man as camera-toting photographers wedged themselves into place.

For the occasion, Brookes spiffed up the shop, traded in his own dusty work clothes for an immaculate double-breasted suit and invited friends and family to meet the prince. It was such an occasion for Brookes that he hired out the restaurant across the street to serve up lunch and champagne later for his guests. Mounted on the storefront, the American flag and the Union Jack flapped in the wind.

Being surrounded by objects in need of repair because of the Northridge earthquake, Charles queried the workers on how they personally fared.

“There is a real danger of something bigger though, isn’t there?” he mused. “They always say that.”

Workers bent over their tables, silently and intently painting, bonding and sanding as Charles was shown around the workshop, selected for this visit because it was an example of a British craft. Though Brookes has several master British craftsmen and designers working with him, he has also hired a number of Latin American immigrants. (The prince and his aides have stressed that in touring Los Angeles, Charles is interested in seeing how businesses employ and train workers.)

“Do you get tired? All that concentration,” he said to 20-year-old Betty Juarez, who bonds and sands pieces.

He looked around the room of largely Latin American workers. “Do you all speak Spanish here?”

“I speak a little Japanese,” piped up one woman.

As he has every day, Charles mentioned the quixotic weather. “I couldn’t believe yesterday!” he confided to a countryman, surprised that Los Angeles didn’t live up to the sunny stereotype. “It actually rained !”

And in his wake he left, as usual, fans charmed and besotted, as the British would say.

“If she doesn’t want him, I’ll take him,” swooned Joan Lee, a Beverly Hills client of Brooks, referring of course to the Princess of Wales.

The prince spent the end of a crisp fall afternoon in the Huntington Library--something of a palace itself--where he was greeted by library board of trustees Chairman Robert F. Erburu, chairman of Times Mirror Co., and led from one great piece of history to another.

In the dimly lit Trustees’ Room, he pored over unbound leaves of a Chaucer manuscript and held a 19th-Century edition of “The Art of Travel” by Sir Francis Galton up to his nose.

“It reminds me of when I was a child and I used to go to the library at Windsor,” Charles said. “The books used to always smell like this.”

The book was one of several that the British explorer Sir Richard Burton took with him on his search for the source of the Nile river, Charles was told.

“He was a great sexologist,” said Charles with a chuckle to Alan Jutzi, chief curator of rare books.

“The prince had recently read a book about Burton,” Jutzi later said, explaining that among Burton’s interests was human sexual behavior, and that he had translated the Kama Sutra into English.

As on every stop, the prince was enveloped by cameras. When he stood looking at an old manuscript and suddenly stuck a signet-ringed pinkie toward a page, the room exploded in strobe lights. Usually the prince completely ignores the photographers and reporters. But in the Huntington gallery, as he stood observing one painting and turned to look across the room at “Blue Boy,” camera flashes erupted three feet from his face.

“I’ll have to go and find an optician,” cracked Charles, who flies to Hong Kong today.