Great Sets

August 19, 2011UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

Thank you for the responses to the posts this week. I’ve chosen to end on an up note; for those of you who were interested in my relationship with my mother and had not read the essay, “Growing Up,” it is here.

I was late to Mad Men but now I am January Jonesing for the return. This post originally appeared March 11, 2009.

Maybe it’s because of this, but I’m a little weary of the straight and sleek.

Troubling times call for a little lift.

Follow my mother’s advice – you may not be able to change your life, but you can always change your hair.

A shampoo and set or some such thing. Some bounce. An errant curl to toss out of your eye.

Make sure it’s a bit of mess to show you’re not too much of a good girl. The time is right.

Image, top, January Jones and Jon Hamm from Mad Men used without permission, but much gratitude, from AMC, Ingrid Bergman, Sofia Loren, Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor, all from IMDB.

Freudian or Jungian?

August 18, 2011UncategorizedProductMrs. Blandings

I can’t tell you how much fun I am having going back through old posts. I’m like that person at the cocktail party who laughs the hardest at her own jokes. This post was originally published March 7, 2008.

Frankly, you don’t have enough time to hear about my mother. But, I was in Brookside on Wednesday, and World’s Window, a symphony of imports and snappy gifts, was carrying some of these action figures.

Who says only those with a fascination for fantasy a la Marvel Comics and Steven Spielberg get to have miniatures of their idols?

Hero worship is all relative, right?

It is certainly your choice to be, or not to be, a collector of such kitch.

Not to be morbid, but maybe you would want only this, and nothing more.

I know Aesthete’s Lament is a purveyor of the classics.

And, Mamacita would surely be persuaded to pony up. My question is, if Accoutrements put out a line of famous designers, who would make up your collection? (Ask the Blandings boys, it’s all about the collecting.)

Nancy Lancaster? She would definitely come with this hat and coat.

Van Day Truex? And a place setting of Tiffany bamboo?

John Fowler? Crown included.

Albert Hadley? Glasses, for sure.

Billy Baldwin? Brown vinyl box.

David Hicks? “on decoration” firmly grasped.
Or maybe you would go with a more current crew. Kelly Wearstler; full wardrobe, including wigs.

Thomas O’Brien? Alone. Perfection. OK, maybe a Gio Ponti vase.

Steven Gambrel? Well, for me, yes. Could I stand to leave him in the box, or would I need to bring him out to help with furniture placement? He’d have his labradoodle, Dash, by his side.

Ruthie Sommers? Blue and white porcelain to pile around? Yes, Courtney would be camping out at Target to be the first one on her block. Fifty-one mentions. Sister, you might need therapy.

All black and white photos, except Truex, Influential Interiors, Suzanne Trocme. Truex from his biography by Adam Lewis. Wearstler, Modern Glamour. Thomas O’Brien, Inspired Styles. Gambrel, House and Garden. Sommers via Alkemie.

Roots of Addiction

August 17, 2011Uncategorizeddesign books, Musings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

I mention that the Mrs. Livengood of this post was one of my mother’s best friends; I later realized she was one of mine. It was her birthday yesterday and I thought we would throw some good wishes her way. Krissy appeared in the previous post; she was helping me open my birthday presents. This post originally appeared October 15, 2009.

You know those stories about celebrities who give their children controlled substances? And how you read these accounts and wonder, “What were they thinking?”

Well, my mother was a little guilty of this. When I was small and we lived in Atlanta my mother made a very good friend while we were on the playground. I, in turn, became very good friends with the friend’s daughter as these things sometime happen.

While my parents’ house was an ever evolving array of tasteful yet jazzy (probably department store) finds, Krissy Livengood’s parents’ house was not.

Krissy Livengood’s parents had a pair of Wassily chairs. When I walked through their living room I was mesmerized by the slats made of leather. With every visit I’m quite sure her mother anticipated wiping my grimy fingerprints from the cool chrome. I could not resist running my hand along that silvery steel.

They were wonderful. I was in awe of those chairs. In my memory the room where they resided was always quiet, but perhaps my ears were ringing. While everyone else found it so intriguing that Krissy’s father had one blue eye and one brown eye, I thought that merely a quirk of nature. The thing that made the Livengoods interesting – fascinating even – were those chairs.

We moved from Atlanta when I was eight, but the chair addiction was firmly established. Imagine my delight with Judith Miller’s new book, Chairs. Over one hundred chairs, beautifully shot by Nick Pope, on big pages, presented in chronological order. Truly a chair lover’s dream.

And a terrific red cover. Almost as good as having a Wassily of my own.

P.S. Mrs. Livengood, in true Southern fashion, has passed her chairs to her daughter. Who now goes by Kristin.

Chairs by Judith Miller was provided to me for review by the publisher, Conran Octopus. All photographs by Nick Pope. The Wassily chair is fourth from the top.

My Mother Was a Crazy Person

August 16, 2011UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

I had my cards read at a birthday party I attended in May. The reader asked me about my relationship with my mother and I told him that she had died nineteen years ago. “She was unstable,” I told him. “She is not unstable now,” he replied, “And you need to honor her.” He suggested planting a tree or some such thing. Going through old posts I noticed how often I mention her; the rest of this week will be a small tribute. This post was originally published May 9, 2008.

I could have also titled this “A Tale of Many Sofas” but it seemed important not to bury the lead. My mother was, indeed, crazy. Not, she always said, “Healthy people take the stairs!” (like I do) but really crazy. I’d love to put a name on it for you, but there doesn’t seem to be one. Clinically depressed with a soupcon on paranoia, or something close. I’m going to tell you now that she died sixteen years ago. I always hate it when someone asks a question about my mother and I have to say she’s dead. It’s not upsetting for me, but it’s so awkward for the inquirer. You know, because people are generally nice and mothers dying is bad.

She was aesthetically focused for sure. The picture, above, was taken in Atlanta and I have no memory of it ever being that cold there. Clearly, this was all about the look. My mother loved clothes. A lot. And shoes. She was a smidge taller than I am, close to 5’10” and she wore a size 6 shoe. Like her feet had been bound as a child. When we cleaned out her closet after she died she had beautiful shoes from size 5 to about an 8.5. I mean, a deal’s a deal.

She read a lot and she read a lot of magazines but I don’t remember any shelter magazines. She was creative and stylish, but I didn’t think house stuff was really her thing. I sort of had an impression that she got things the way she liked it then left it alone for five or ten years or so. Then I started going through pictures.

The picture with my dad, above, was taken in “the apartment.” That squarish sofa with its jazzy geometric upholstery very nearly screams 1965. It made the move in it’s original fabric to the new house.

Within a year it was recovered, maybe slip-covered in this solid, nubbyish linen. I think it’s sporting a contrast welt. (I jumped off of a couple of pillows and hit my head on this coffee table. I still wear the scar.)

I have no memory of the floral chair in the background and it is never seen again. Banished. (Note the Victorian crystal lamp; it resides in my living room now.)

Ah, Spring. Apparently blue floral was the way to go, but in the curtains and not the chair. That was all wrong. So, curtains up, nifty new chair. And, yes, jazzy p.j.’s if I do say so myself.

This is my birthday, mid August, 1970. Same sofa.

And then, within two weeks, gone. Black leather, with a chair to match is in its place.

My parents got divorced and we moved from this house in ’72, so a new set of sofas appeared within two years. And curtains and a rug.

And this floral chair, which I think might be ingrained in my subconcious, because I think I love it. But I don’t remember it or any of its predecessors. I do, however, remember receiving that Scarlett O’Hara Madame Alexander doll. She graced my shelf for years.

The sofas made the transition to the townhouse in Tulsa and stayed the rest of her life. They were recovered maybe twice in the next twenty years. The thing about being crazy is, it didn’t necessarily diminish all the other things she was. Smart, funny, creative. She was fabulously unstable, but she was also just plain fabulous. She came by her craziness naturally as her mother was crazy, and yes, I do understand the implication. I just hope someday one boy takes the time to sit down and sift through the pictures and take note. Of themselves, of my craziness or the sofas. Moms are like that. We need to be remembered.

On Aging and Writing – The State of the Blog, Year Five

August 15, 2011UncategorizedMusings from the Dream HouseMrs. Blandings

My friend Mrs. Grizwald mentioned once, “It’s funny how there are billions of the people in the world and only 365 days in a year, yet we are always delighted and amazed when we find out we share a birthday with someone.” It’s true. I recently discovered, while thumbing The Secret Language of Birthdays yet again, that I share a birthday with Myrna Loy. I’ve probably mentioned it to a dozen people since then.

As a great over-thinker, birthdays offer me the guilty pleasure of self-indulgent self-reflection. It’s not just the heat of August that makes me quiet and pensive, but the recognition that my year is about to begin again. I rarely run willy-nilly, but rather pick a careful path and to do so, every now and then, I have to survey the terrain. The funny thing is, the most significant insights seem to find me. It’s remarkable with the amount of information and observation that bombards me daily, that there are some things that hit at just the right time. That stick.

This year, about the time I started to be still and take stock, two men, writers both, stopped in to remark on aging. The first was F. Scott Fitzgerald. In a review of his essays, The Wall Street Journal noted Fitzgerald as saying that old people were incapable of self-improvement, “Almost barbarians.” And by old he meant thirty.

The next was David Foster Wallace in his collection of essays, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, “I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable – if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”

Also in the Journal (the Journal offering some sticky stuff that week) was a review of Kurt Vonnegut’s Novels & Stories, 1963 – 1973. It was noted that in response to the question, “When may we expect your next novel?” following the release of Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut reported thinking, “Next novel? That was it. That was my novel.” This notion was very sticky.

About this time, I finished Jonathan Franzen’s second novel, Strong Motion. Franzen is one of my favorite contemporary writers. Strong Motion was like looking through a box of your college boyfriend’s childhood pictures. I recognized him, though he was not so lean. But I didn’t like the book and I couldn’t care for the characters and I know more about seismology than I ever wanted to. I’ve past feeling the need to finish an unenjoyed book, but I needed to know Franzen better. I took the book by spoonfuls and about three-quarters of the way through I realized that what it was showing me, the stickiness of it, was that writers mature.

There are books that I keep holding up to myself as the excuse to not begin, but they are not the beginnings. Like all other things, writing takes practice. At a book signing here in Kansas City someone asked Franzen about his process, and he said, spinning his arm like he was hitting the final chords in an air guitar solo, you just have to keep churning and churning until there is something.

I am insecure, anxious and dismissive of my writing. A middling talent. Something that could have been something, but will not; I’ve started too late. And, if I have a story to tell, I feel that it is one story, only mine, and if that is all there is to offer then it’s not really a talent. It’s dictation.

Still, I am writing in my head all the time. Turning the words for blog post or article or some other as yet undiscovered thing. It tumbles and tumbles and tumbles and then it sort of throws itself out onto the page. I don’t know how to begin if it is not finished yet.

But I believe that American lives can have second acts. Creativity and complexity do not end in one’s thirties. And even though I may be in a sort of active intermission, a vivacious mingling in the lobby rather than a full-on second act, I think it may be richer than if the same sort of momentum had converged for me at twenty-six. Middle age does not encompass only atrophy, decay and regret even among grown-ups.

So I’ve decided to ignore these words of Fitzgerald and Wallace and follow instead the implied message of Vonnegut, whom I care for least of the three. I’m 46 today. I’ve been writing Mrs. Blandings for four years. The exercise of sitting down and writing this blog every day has been remarkable. I don’t intend to quit blogging, but I need to try to write some other things. Some longer things. I’m not quite sure how that will affect what happens here, but I didn’t want you to think I’m losing interest. I’d just like to write something that takes longer to read than a minute-and-a-half .

In addition, I need to get my house in order. Literally. The moving out and the moving in to the house with no name has left everything in a jumble. I am taking a little time off. A week. Maybe two. But I will re-post some of my favorites here just in case you stop by.

You will never know how grateful and flattered I am that you make Mrs. Blandings part of your day.