Doing an interview last month I visited a local designer’s home. In the bunk room for her grandchildren hangs a large board featuring each member of the family’s name; all visitors to the house are encouraged to sign. What more significant gesture of welcome than to have your hostess invite you to draw on something of hers in permanent marker? It is as if you become part of the house.

It reminded me of Cecil Beaton’s powder room with its clever handprints. (I’m especially fond of the women who drew in their bracelets.)

I like drawing on walls, as maybe you’ve noticed, but the idea of doodling on lampshades has come up before.  (I’m quite taken with Temo Callahan’s home and his bedside lampshade decorated by his friend James Shearron, which was featured in House Beautiful.

Which leads me back to Nicky Haslam’s new book and its applicable inspiration.

 A few of Haslam’s rooms feature these exquisite lampshades with highly detailed illustration.  It’s the sort of thing that makes a room undeniably personal.

Lacking Mr. Haslam’s skills, I’m mashing together all of these ideas and ordering a paper shade for the entry lamp that my friends can sign or doodle on their way in or out.  (The current shade came on a yard sale find and, until this picture, was still dusty from the basement when I shifted the lamp downstairs. I worry that she thinks she’s living there, and am avoiding telling her that it’s only temporary.) That is, I’m ordering the shade just as soon as I finish painting the interiors of the dining room built-ins, a project that I had not planned that has turned that space upside down.  How do these things happen?

Inspiration, it seems, comes when it comes.

For those who asked, the paint of the dining room that you can see just beyond the stairs is Benjamin Moore Queen Anne Pink.  The interior of the cabinets is – almost – Goldfield.