Tag Archives: Designers

Vote Early and Often

January 20, 2010UncategorizedDesignersMrs. Blandings

Perhaps you’ve heard Bloomingdale’s flagship store in New York is hosting the Big Window Challenge. I know a few New York bloggers have been sneaking peeks on their blogs. Starting today you can vote for your favorite window (truly a room-sized, well, room.)

Eileen Joyce, Operating Vice President for Interior Design for Bloomingdale’s has curated their entry, the perfect abode for The Urbane Traveler.

Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, founder of Apartment Therapy, has cooked up a little something for The Writer’s Romantic Supper.

And, my buddy, Eddie Ross, designed a spot on behalf of Elle Decor for The Modern Woman to call home.

Voting begins today and you truly can vote early and often. Daily voting here is encouraged. I can’t wait to see the actual rooms and who wins. And I will. Bloomingdale’s is hosting a party to celebrate the event January 28th and I will be there shamelessly toasting Team Eddie cheering everyone on. For information on the designers, the contest and the event, go to Apartment Therapy here.

Now

January 14, 2010UncategorizedDesignersMrs. Blandings

I received an email from Charlotte Moss today letting me know that her organization has made a generous contribution for aid in Haiti; she is encouraging the blog community to get on board. If we can’t donate ten thousand dollars we can donate something – and spread the word.

You can see Moss’s post on her site here. You can give directly to UNICEF here. Even easier, you can text 90999 with the word “Haiti” to donate ten dollars to the American Red Cross; the charge will appear on your phone bill. Right now. You’re sitting right there. It will hardly take a minute.

A Carnival for the Eyes

January 12, 2010UncategorizedDesigners, ProductMrs. Blandings

“What’s the matter?” “Oh, nothing, really, I just can’t find the picture of those snake sconces. I feel like I just saw them. Somewhere. Didn’t I show it to you?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t in those books; it was upstairs.” No, no it wasn’t, but I didn’t want to say that, so I just didn’t lift my eyes from the book and mumbled a reply. But Mr. Blandings was right. It was upstairs and I am publishing his triumph on the internet as he said, “I hate to be so excited, but I’m not right very often.”

This is the home, and the snake sconces, of Henry Wilson. Henry Wilson is quite an ordinary name for a quite extraordinary man. Wilson, who lives in London, is a photographer and artist who has a great love of India. Before I was on my snake hunt, the needlepoint pillows in this room captured my heart. Wilson designed and stitched them. Petit point. I can see five on the sofas and if you stitch you know what an incredible amount of time and care has been spent here. (If you click on the images, you can see them bigger.)

Ah. And he has stenciled the walls as well. In nearly every room are fantastic designs.

For fun, you know. Because he likes it.

I’ve been kicking around the idea of re-doing my tiny powder room again. Wilson’s is dreamy with its silver leaf walls and stenciling. That he did himself. Really, if I hadn’t found my soul mate, music would be swelling.

“Having stepped over the threshold of my small Victorian terraced house in Chelsea [my editor] summed up my surroundings fairly swiftly: ‘obsessive’. For once in my all-too-slow-witted life, I came back in a flash: ‘No, Rupert – focused.’ But, of course, I know it is obsessive. I’d go further: it’s compulsive and without an iota of intellect – it’s instinctive.”

Oh, Mr. Wilson, I would like to meet you.

All images World of Interiors, December 2009; photography by Henry Wilson. The title of the post is taken from the text and describes how Mr. Wilson sees India.

Snow Day 1 of 3

January 7, 2010UncategorizedDesigners, Vintage DesignMrs. Blandings

The boys went back to school on Tuesday then were home yesterday for inclement weather. The snow did not start in earnest until afternoon, but the temperatures were (and are) in the single digits. Frankly, I’d rather be inside anyway. And likely will be for the next two days. Say hello to school in June.

We did go to the Nelson-Atkins in the morning and sort of kicked around. The youngest Blandings had made a poor choice for breakfast and was “starving” but has somewhere gotten the idea that one has to whisper in the museum, so with the large rooms and high ceilings it was hard to hear the complaining.

When we arrived home, peeling off coats and hats and gloves, my eldest asked me why I don’t like to play Wii with them and I said, “You know, I don’t really like to mess around with electronics.” He responded with a bug-eyed double take.

It’s true that toward the end of Christmas break I was clicking around on the computer every now and again. I forget about things for a while then they occur to me and I will go on an interested but half-hearted quest.

One day started with a quick look for sconces to flank the portrait of Mr. Blandings, Jr., then morphed into a peek into painted French dining chairs and landed squarely with a perusal of Gio Ponti.

I blame Thomas O’Brien for my Ponti pining as the pottery in his apartment was my first glimpse of such treasures. Though I hear he is a nice guy, and not at all a cad, I don’t think he feels a bit of responsibility for introducing me to this wickedly enchanting substance. As if I needed another inky black something to covet.

There is a wonderful, wonderful vase (top) on 1st dibs, the perfect piece to begin any collection. Delightful, indeed, is Ponti’s porcelain for Robert Ginori as well, but these tiles! Oh, how they sing.

All images courtesy of 1st dibs; Gio Ponti pieces seen here can be seen here.

Find Your Marbles

January 5, 2010UncategorizedDesigners, Mrs. B DIYMrs. Blandings

Courtney Barnes at Style Court did an entertaining series on magazine and tear sheet storage a while back. Yep, about six months ago. Or so I thought. It was actually a year and a half ago. Yes, a year and a half ago I read Courtney’s posts and thought, “I need to get on that.”

My magazines were stacked on shelves and as I pulled and replaced them they were all a jumble. The tear sheets are in horribly mismanaged files. Some are actually in folders by the subject that inspired the ripping, “Curtains,” “Product,” “Fabric” and the like. There is a broadly named and useless file brimming with treasure entitled, “Whole Rooms.” Another over-full and wobbly folder contains dozens of vintage features. Nonsense.

So I used a little of my Christmas money to buy lucite magazine holders from CB2 for the current magazines, which has left just the tear sheets to corral.

Thomas Britt covered many books on his Chinoiserie bookcases with cream-colored paper and gilt-edges stickers, but it was his engaging story of learning to marbleize paper as a teenager that has been bouncing around in my head for weeks.

Then I saw this. Stumbling upon things that have not caught your eye before is one of the advantages of poor organization. This charming shelf belonged (and may still belong) to Hitch Lyman, a garden designer and artist, who covered “treasured garden volumes with marbleized paper.” This image appeared in House Beautiful in February of 1998; the shelf may look the same today, though I have no way of knowing. Regardless, I don’t think I have seen anything as charming in months.

But. I’m not a girl with a lot of time on my hands. I can’t go around willy-nilly covering books in my office. And yet. I do need binders. Binders to hold the tear sheets. In fact, I need several, which is why the lovely but somewhat pricey linen ones have never hit my shelves. Last week I picked up several of these cardboard binders and plan to cover the spines with wonderful paper.

I do. I plan to. Stay tuned.

For more information on marbleized paper, check Courtney’s posts here which includes a link to a post by Janet Blyberg on the same. Google turned up several how-to’s on marbleizing paper; Martha shows you how here.

Images of Tom Britt’s home via New York Social Diary, photography by Jeffery Hirsch. House Beautiful image by Richard Felber. Click on the image to see the books, and the “cat scratching post disguised as a chair,” bigger. It’s delightful. Top five paper images from Paper Mojo; bottom two from Paper Source.