A very good replacement for this perfect-in-every-way-but-discontinued Cowtan & Tout floral would be…..?
I would be incredibly grateful for any suggestions.
Fabric Obsession
Patron of Architecture
I crave change from the routine but it takes me awhile to resettle. Our long, rainy spring has finally given way to summer and I am relieved; I flourish in the heat. On a good day in between spring storms I had gone out to run errands and arrived home to find a fort in a small tree in our front yard. As I came into the kitchen Bill began explaining, quickly yet calmly, how it came to be.
“You probably noticed the treehouse,” he said, slicing something into the sink.
I slid my bags onto the counter.
“I did actually.”
“They came up with the idea and had a plan and cut the wood by themselves. They just kept asking me for tools. And a rope.” He looked up at me, “I couldn’t say ‘no.'”
I nodded.
“I completely understand.”
So I went to find the middle and his friend, architects and master builders both, to have them give me the tour. This was just the beginning, they explained, and they outlined their plans with earnest eyes and descriptive hands.
“It’s like something out of Winnie-the-Pooh,” said my son as he and his friend admired their work and discussed its improvement at the same time.
It’s very difficult to argue with someone who makes reference to something that I hold as dear as Winnie-the-Pooh, so I nodded my head and hoped I would be as convincing if someone from our neighborhood association, a group that restricts the placement of lacrosse nets and “sold” signs, calls to explain that tree houses are not for front yards. Just in case, I’m ready to offer the crabapple in the back.
Gold Smith
I was curious when I heard about Michael Smith’s new book, Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design. Close on the heels of Kitchens and Baths and focused on the renovation of just one house, I wondered if it would seem rushed. Worse, that it would be filler.
As it turns out, it is pure gold. I read the book cover-to-cover in one sitting and it is the most remarkable tale of the most remarkable project.
A talented designer, trusting and generous clients, a team of exacting craftsmen and a beautiful Malibu setting combine to deliver something incredibly special.
Christine Pittel tells the tale in an intimate and conversational tone; I felt as if I were looking out over that bluff, tip-toeing behind Smith in Will Fisher’s antique shop and overseeing the placement of the pietra serena stone alongside Jim Sangster.
I can with much certainty predict that I will never be involved in a project of any kind that will be executed with the same level of care and precision. Rather than instilling envy, the story of this process filled me with awe. Without pretense, it is a story of passion and commitment to that unnamable thing that goes “click” when something is right.
You can find Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design here.
All images courtesy of Rizzoli; photography from top, Fernando & Gerardo Montiel Klint, Francois Halard, Klints, Halard.
Hope Springs
I am on the outs with the weather, holding it at a distance as a friend or lover who has delivered a thoughtless slight but cannot be cut loose. “Not personal,” of course, and I can’t pretend it’s so, but still I don’t care to reengage and can’t forgive. It’s no coincidence that every thing I seem to be ripping from magazines and pulling from showrooms is green. Apple and kelly and acid, anything for every room to cut the gloom of the clouds and the rain. Suddenly, there seems to be a place for satin, space for leather and always a spot for chintz. Ribbon from a friend’s gift graces my inspiration board and boxwood balls bounce across the front beds and still it is not enough.
I need spring.
These are not meant to be used together or even in the same room. They are, clockwise from the largest leather sample top, B. Berger Green Leaf, Garrett Leather Chatham Chartreuse, Cowtan & Tout, Moss Rose, which would be on my office chairs now if it were not for Dexter, Serena & Lily Grass Trellis, which will live at my kitchen windows eventually, if I could just focus long enough to figure yardage, ribbon from a dear friend and Schumacher Honeycomb in Lettuce from the Mary McDonald collection.
Padding the Walls
I know that you will think I’ve come unhinged, but we really are expecting snow. Three to five inches and my sanity is, seriously, hanging by a thread. I told Bill last week, “When people ask how I am, I am going to say, ‘I am not fine.’ Because I’m not.” So I have retreated a bit to small, dark spaces and started thinking about the bathroom that we recently finished in the basement. I kept the original turquoise sink and toilet because, well, they’re turquoise and what could be more fabulous? Now I get to paint the walls.
This page from a recent Serena & Lily catalogue caught my eye. I thought this might be a clever way to use the four-hundred-and-fifty-two sample jars of paint that I have languishing in my basement.
Then, somewhere trolling the internet, I ran across an image of Cecil Beaton’s powder room and, truly, I cannot imagine anything more charming than guests tracing their hands on the wall.
I had asked the boys (it is the basement, so mostly their domaine and their crowd) what they thought about my painting frames around squares of chalkboard paint and then their friends could draw their own pictures on the walls. “They wouldn’t do anything crude would they? Naughty?” I asked. All three, in three different exchanges said, “Yeah, mom, of course they would.” And I thought with annoyance not for the first time, “Girls wouldn’t.”
So I’ve settled on something in-between. I think I am going to paint replicas of some of my favorite paintings, something of an Abstract Expressionists hall of fame, and leave a few blank with the tempting chalkboard centers. Naughtiness be damned.
Images, from top, Serena and Lily, unknown, Graham and Brown Wallpaper and Cafe Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum here in town which is a personal favorite.
