June 2012
1 post
House of Details: Merchant's House Museum in New...
On Thursday, June 7th, the Merchant’s House Museum in Manhattan’s East Village is having its annual summer benefit party in its garden. This year’s event, titled A Greek Revival, will help support the museum’s Historic Furnishings Plan and provide important funding to a property very special to me and to the history of New York City. It is a house so unique and ripe with period...
May 2012
3 posts
Beauty and Memory
I have been out of the city a great deal this week, driving past rural cemeteries preparing for Memorial Day. Their lawns are mowed, flags for Veterans arranged, and soon many graves will have arrangements of flowers. When I was younger I thought it was waste to place flowers where no one can see them.
Since then, I have learned that they have long provided a primordial connection between the...
Kerri McCaffety's "New Orleans New Elegance"
Our good friend and prize winning photographer Kerri McCaffety has a new book out, New Orleans New Elegance, by Monacelli Press. Kerri (who has also photographed several of my own projects, some of which will be appearing in my upcoming book) has put together a collection of 40 homes throughout New Orleans, including my own French Quarter apartment and those of our friends Peter Patout and Robert...
American Silver's Golden Moment
I have long appreciated American silver of the mid-19th to early part of the 20th century. Great wealth and well trained designers and craftsmen freed from the strictures of European guilds, created fantastic objects unique in the history of the decorative arts.
Imagine impeccably made objects with polar bears sitting on icy ledges that also serve as bowl handles, a snake’s body curling into...
April 2012
3 posts
Inspirational Art: The Paintings of Ralph Earl
When devising color schemes and decorative detailing for homes, I often look to historic portraits and paintings for inspiration. I especially admire early American portraits and interiors. They continually inspire me through their novel colors and rich features such as patterned carpets, sculptural upholstery forms, and painted Windsor furniture.
Historic portraits give the viewer a sense of...
House of Details: The Pasha Suite at Le Jardin des...
This month we are starting a regular post titled “House of Details”. It focuses on the unique aspects of well designed houses. I would like to examine all kinds of houses, some of our own design, but also by other designer as well, both old and new. They will have several things in common – be an expression of the universality of the best design and rich with examples of great details.
The...
Bringing the Indoors to the Outdoors
Lately, our clients have been calling us to help ready their porches and sun rooms for the upcoming season. They come now with high expectations, hoping to see fully developed schemes and plans. What used to be an afterthought filled with collections of matching wicker furniture bought from the local pool and patio shop are now handled like interior spaces, down to the accessories and...
March 2012
5 posts
Albert Hadley
The quiet of his room and the brilliance of the decoration stand as memorial to him.
Beds that Inspire
I am working from home this afternoon, sitting on my bed. My book captions are due next week. As I perch here, I am thinking about beds, especially those that tempt you to linger well past your wake up time or are inviting enough to work in. A capital model that especially stands out is Edith Sitwell’s bed, in which she was famously photographed by Cecil Beaton being served tea in a fine...
The Big Effect of Small Works of Art
I am currently working on finishing an apartment here in the city, looking for those final details that will complete the rooms. During my search, I was reminded of the great value of including small works of art. A modest scale painting or print adds interest and quality, and its impact is often so much greater than its size and cost. They often add an element of surprise— their...
Gimp and Cord! I Sing Your Praises
My mentor, the decorator Kevin McNamara, offered me much sage advice on decoration. He was clearly old school after working with Mrs. Brown of the august firm McMillen, then with Albert Hadley and Sister Parish. Amongst the many things I learned from him were that, first, a sofa or chair should always have a bit of trim. The second is to avoid double welts at all cost and use a beautiful gimp...
Going Back to the Old Neighborhood
Our offices are moving—again, alas— but to a great space off University Place. I used to have an apartment around there many years ago, so I look forward to being back in my old neighborhood. Thinking back to those days makes me sentimental about that old place, which happened to be both my first published project and where Jayne Design Studio had its genesis. I still like how it...
February 2012
3 posts
Four Amazing Apartments in Four Hours
We are working on photographing our work for a forthcoming book monograph titled American Decoration, to be published this October. The day we started to organize the shoots with a series of scouting visits to consider angles, flowers, timing and the like was also William Cullum’s first day on the job at Jayne Design Studio. He literally walked into four of our most handsome projects. He...
Pillows are Important
Recently I went to a party at Fortuny launching a collection of pillows by Malcolm Kutner. Fortuny pillows are great in almost any form because of the subtle pattern designs and colors of their textiles, which meld handsomely to almost any interior. We have used them everywhere, from the most august drawing rooms to sun porches. The examples on display are super duper models, some with elaborate...
The Unexpected Charms of the Parasol Court at the...
I was in Las Vegas last week to lecture at the Las Vegas Market, filled with fascination, but not seeing any great decoration. Then a call came from one of the great aesthetes of our time, Stuart Feld, the leading eye behind Hirschl and Adler and expert on American painting and the decorative arts. He wanted me to visit his Duncan Phyfe show at the H&A galleries in New York, which I had...
January 2012
3 posts
The View from Young Collectors' Night at the...
The Winter Antiques Show, now in its 58th year, is constantly evolving. First conceived as a specialty fair for collectors interested in the finest of English and American antiques and decorative arts, it has broadened its mission to include the best of the 20th century as well. This august show, on which Americana Week in New York is anchored, has learned to adapt to changing tastes. Much of...
A Visit to the New American Wing at the Met
Earlier this week I attended the opening of the newly refurbished American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing the reinstallation of the collection was like attending a high school reunion —it was great to see old friends again. And, all of it looked exceptionally well in its flattering new environment. The new galleries, of which there are 26, are now positioned on one floor in...
Marking the Arrival of Carnival Season with Mardi...
Last week we decorated our balcony in New Orleans for Carnival season which starts twelve days after Christmas on January 6th, and continues through to Mardi Gras, the day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. The timing of Carnival is something that New Orleans got right —up north, we Yankees face post-New Years let down when all the winter festivities stop. New Orleanians get...
December 2011
4 posts
Love, Time and Being Practical as We Approach the...
Furthering my interest in images of Father Time and prints, I bought a new example from The Old Print Shop to celebrate the New Year. It is James McArdell’s 1765 print of Time Clipping the Wings of Love. This seemingly harsh allegory has a coda — Love escapes and triumphs over Time.
My decorator advice for this week is that process is as important as product; how we conduct...
A Simple and Beautiful Approach to Christmas...
I have always thought that the most attractive Christmas decorations are those that are immediate and simple, and put together with minimal fuss. An arrangement of greenery and fruit, and a few pieces of antique or vintage religious art can make any interior instantly festive. They also offer a quiet and straightforward beauty that can be refreshing to the eye.
This Christmas season I have been...
Famous Men in Stylish Hats - A Decorator Cliché
Busts are decorator standards. Does anyone else employ them besides decorators?
I have six in my own collection. When I was a student at Winterthur, I thought it would be wonderful to collect copies of all the busts Jean-Antoine Houdon made of the American worthies. Jefferson had an original group at his house at Monticello. My own come with varied histories and provenance.
I found my...
The Surprising Use of Mirrors in Gardens
Today I was in Oyster Bay working on a project that will be finished next spring. I was discussing the gardens with the landscape architect, Cece Haydock, and she proposed a series of trellises that we all agreed would be quite handsome. I then suggested adding an architectural mirror, assuming that it would be taken in jest — but she also loved the idea.
People can be surprised by the...
November 2011
4 posts
Giving Thanks
For more than a score of years we have been making our way on Thanksgiving Day to lay a wreath of Indian corn at the Pilgrim Statue in Central Park. We read a description of the first Thanksgiving written by Edward Winslow in 1621 and the Mayflower compact. We speak about our gratitude and our awareness of the sacrifices that have allowed us to have so much. Then, the Rev. Stephen Gerth offers...
The Transcendent Influence of Mrs. Parish
We recently received a fine new book on Sister Parish which is very worthy of attention by anyone wanting to learn more about the greatest practitioners of 20th century decoration. Written by Martin Wood and titled Sister Parish: American Style, it presents an in-depth look of her work and the influences that shaped it.
This compendium affirms her legacy with personal anecdote and rare...
A Visit to the New Islamic Galleries at the Met
The Islamic Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened with great fanfare this month. It is handsome, informative and a triumph of the best museum practice. This is no small feat when the exhibits, at least to the uninitiated, appear repetitive.
Now formally known as the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia, it features 1,200 objects...
Decorating with Antiques
On Saturday I participated in a panel discussion on the use of antiques in decoration at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show. The other participants, David Kleinberg and Suzanne Lovell, and I were invited to start the panel with a five minute slide show with illustrations of our work and a short synopsis of our different approaches. I concluded that I use antiques virtually every way one can: in...
October 2011
4 posts
A Halloween Surprise
I remember my mother’s description of making this marionette of a witch during her first years teaching school at Los Felix Elementary School in Los Angeles. Due to wartime rationing, art supplies were scarce, so she constructed the papier maché head of recycled towels and left over art class paints. An old dress was cut up to make the costume. To complete it, she placed a rhinestone button...
The Return of Bowne & Co. and the Delightful...
I was gladdened to hear that Bowne & Co., an old-fashioned letterpress print shop featuring 19th century presses and drawers full of antique type, is re-opening. The store, which was affiliated with the South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan but closed during that Museum’s recent difficulties, is being revived under the auspices of its new overseer, the Museum of the City of New...
The Brilliant Effect of Early Stained Glass at...
I have long been captivated by the brilliant effect of early stained glass. I like the colors — the rich yellows, blues and reds — and the graphic nature of the designs which frequently include heraldic emblems, flora and fauna and scenes inspired by master prints. Part of their remarkable quality derives from the nature of the materials and the craft behind them. There was a great...
An Introduction to Dering Hall and a tribute to...
An interesting new site called Dering Hall has launched. It is a designer marketplace where decorators, architects and artisans sell a curated selection of objects and their unique designs. The approach is interesting because this group of creative people typically only make their ideas available to their in-house clients. Here they have a chance to offer them to a broader public who seek these...
September 2011
4 posts
Wire Furniture, Now and Then
These great pictures of wire chairs came to me via the blogging world. They were featured on a post on The Improvised Life forwarded to me by my good friend, writer and blogger Jane Lear. Jane is one of my closest friends—she is smart and witty, so I always pay attention to what she has to say on her site, janelear.com. When she recommended The Improvised Life of which she is a big fan, I knew I...
Schloss Charlottenhof and the Pleasures of Tented...
Recently my friend attended a wedding in upstate New York where he was offered the privilege of staying in a tent village for guests for 150 dollars. Everyone in the group had received an invitation to enjoy a bit of nature and an evening singing around the nuptial campfire. The day before the wedding a clarion call went to all the guests warning that the weather had changed and they should all...
The Nefertiti Gallery at the Neues Museum in...
This weekend I visited the Neues Museum in Berlin. As you may know, it is a masterful reconstruction of the early 19th century museum by Friedrich August Stüler on Museum Island. Badly damaged in World War II and then left exposed to the elements until the 1980s, it was rebuilt by David Chipperfield Architects. Largely due to careful conservation of the original building, the latitude allowed by...
Lt. Col. Timothy L. Adams’s Assumption of Command...
Last month our family gathered at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, NY, where the United States Marines maintain a squadron of KC-130 aircraft – these are the huge transport planes that are now so essential to our military efforts — to see our cousin, Lt. Col. Timothy L. Adams, assume command of Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452.
It was a very proud moment for him...
Veil Lifted
A black veil in the form of a construction net has been lifted from outside of our building, restoring our view and allowing sunshine to pour back into our windows,
I feel like a 19th century widow freed of her funeral veil. We now have a fine sight into Madison Square Park, with its round reflecting pool and ancient trees along with the Metropolitan and New York Life Insurance towers just...
August 2011
5 posts
Revisiting the Design Legacy of Jean O'Brien
I spent a short while looking over my old blog posting at InteriorDesign.net and was amused by the range of topics I wrote about and by many of the comments I received. My pieces on historic and traditional ideas were somewhat of a novelty on a site focused on modern trends, but the emphasis was always on finding correspondence between old and new ideas. Those connections always reveal something...
The Noho Star and Savoy: The Importance of...
Last week my friend Dan and and I met for dinner at our favorite neighborhood stand-by, The Noho Star. It is a unique place in Manhattan—it is decidedly not part of a chain, the menu is varied, the staff congenial and the interior a great monument to post-modern taste. Restaurant interiors have an average life of five years, but this one has been here more than twenty. How long can it...
Comfort, Charm and Style: Emily Post's "The...
I have frequently been asked what books had the most bearing on my thinking as a decorator and one that always comes to mind is Emily Post’s The Personality of a House from 1930. This volume, by the well known author of Etiquette, the authoritative book on manners, presents the principles of good decoration, along with essential knowledge of architectural history, period styles and furniture...
The Rocking Chair - "Wooden Narcotics"
Rocking chairs remind me of summer and I think almost every house benefits from having one on its porch. Sometimes I use them inside, both for sculpture and comfort, such as in this bedroom on Long Island with its rocker placed by the window seat.
Rocking chairs are an American invention. When I was a student at the Winterthur Museum studying the history of the decorative arts, there was an...
July 2011
4 posts
Medium Colors for Island Rooms
Over the last few weeks I have spent a lot of time on resort island, alas, working. Within the past ten days I have been to Palm Beach (an island), Fire Island and Nantucket. The isolation of being on an island and surrounded by water makes these places feel special. I always find it remarkable the sense of calm that comes with the ferry rides or crossing the bridges that connect them to the...
“Client's Own” -- Decorating with a Client’s...
The genius of a great decorator is the graceful incorporation of what we call in the business “Client’s Own,” that is the personal possessions that our patrons bring to their projects and expect us to use. Sometimes this is out of economy and at other times sentiment, but you never know what they will introduce. Ugly or ungainly objects, of course, can sink an interior and in those cases I...
Now that the Season for Porches is here…
I like rooms that reflect their place in the world and the personality of its occupants. I also like rooms that express the seasons. Rooms that are seasonal, say a cozy den for winter or formal dining room for holidays give a house richness and variety. Porches are the quintessential summer room and here I offer a retrospective of some I have decorated.
The best porches combine traditional...
"Every Good Painting Needs a Shot of Chartreuse” -...
One of my early mentors was Walter Montgomery, a great Angelino architect and watercolorist. He spent part of his career in the 1950s, designing crypts and chapels forForest Lawn Cemetery, one of which I was amused to find out ended being Michael Jackson’s final resting place. His creative outlet, however, was painting. I grew up with some of his pictures in my home and now two hang in my...
June 2011
5 posts
Rainbows (or the Rainbow Effect)
With the advent of Same Sex Marriage, the Gay Pride Parade this past weekend, and the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots that started the modern push for equal rights for gay people, the city is filled with rainbows—a symbol, amongst other things, of gay pride.
I find this ironic, especially in light of an early 20th century remark by Paul Klee to his students at the Bauhaus. He stated that the...
Curious Treasures from Finch & Co.
I have always had an appreciation for the curious and exotic, hence for the last decade I have lived with a stuffed bat hanging from the ceiling of my apartment. Now that popular taste has caught up, having taxidermy in one’s house is not that unusual.
So when the truly unusual and rare crosses my path, it gives me pause. That is why I like Finch & Co, in London so much. The Finches are...
Guild Hall, A New Orleans Pop Up Shop, and the...
During a recent visit to New Orleans, I was invited to a pop up shop by my good friend, Nadine Blake. She has a great store herself and fantastic taste, so I was particularly keen to go. The shop she took me to is called Guild Hall, the brain child of Damon McFadden and Shayne Hart. It is filled with a carefully curated collection of unusual objects, much of it one of a kind. Some of it falls...
Jeffersonian Folly on Shack Mountain,Virginia
During a recent visit to Monticello to speak about my book The Finest Rooms and especially Jefferson’s Tea Room, I was able to also visit Shack Mountain. This beautiful villa was designed in 1937 by Fiske Kimball, the renowned Jefferson scholar known for many things, including being the first Chair of the School of Arts and Architecture at theUniversity of Virginia and for heading Monticello’s...
Seeing Silver Furniture Anew
During my recent trip to Copenhagen, I visited Rosenborg Castle especially to see the silver furniture, which is incredibly rare. In the 17th and 18th centuries European courts were sometimes furnished with silver furniture covered in silver repoussé, most memorably in La Grande Galerie (better known as the Hall of Mirrors) at Versailles. Among other examples of silver furniture that could have...
May 2011
4 posts
Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsen’s Museum: A Nordic...
One of the highlights of visiting Copenhagen is seeing the Thorvaldsen’s Museum design by the architect, M. G. Bindesbøll.
Begun in 1839, it was built to house the works of Bertel Thorvaldsen, one of the greatest neo-classic sculptors. I first learned of his work when I was writing my masters thesis on The New York Crystal Palace—central to it was his colossal grouping of Christ and...
A Visit to Copenhagen and the Triumph of the Egg...
I was in Copenhagen last month for the Design Leadership Summit conference. It was a great experience being with so many important decorators, interior designers and architects. The prime lesson for me is how valuable we are, both singularly and collectively, even if popular culture espouses that we are being replaced by the world of do-it-yourself-ers and pre-packaged decoration being handed...