The convenience of online shopping sometimes makes it possible for one to purchase an item for which they have no immediate need. The thought of a candelier (a chandelier using candles rather than electric bulbs) has always appealed to me. When I found one online it was purchased with the thought that a use for it would develop over time. Until then, it remained in the box behind a door in the studio.
Stopping by the local bookstore to pick up a book one afternoon recently I was struck by the crowds of people gathered in the stacks; young parents with babies in
The essence of an object well aged brings character to a room. The same can be said for a garden. Deep rusty orange terra cotta pots and planters are ubiquitous in the Texas Hill Country. Eventually over time terra cotta pots will develop a whitened and greenish coloration on top of the natural rusty orange color. Not having the patience to wait for the patina to appear on my terra cotta pots spawned a search for a way to hasten the aging process.
Friends tell me there is a story behind everything in our house. The story or provenance is the history of an object. My fascination with glass globes and garden cloches began with these flowers from my sister’s wedding cake. She was married in a garden in Fredericksburg, Texas in the Hill Country and after the wedding the flowers traveled with me in a box on the back seat of the car.
My fascination with espalier, or training plants to grow on walls harks back to childhood when we had a yellow flowered, heavily scented Carolina Jasmine vine growing on the fence. Later, when married with dogs, we were probably the only couple who had a vine covered dog run. Here, in this photo taken during a two-week summer tour of Italy with my sister, ivy growing on wires strung between posts to create a living fence could be seen outside more than one villa in Montecatini Terme, Italy.
Fresh flowers are a lifelong passion of mine. Reflecting on flowers and flower arrangements calls to mind so many moments of my life… heather and baby’s breath in a porcelain vase shaped as a woman in a long dress, the flowers filling the back of her skirt; a birthday gift from my father. Standing in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. thunderstruck by the tall glass cylinders placed on a round mahogany table and filled with twisted grapevine stems and orange lilies.
A plinth is a support or base for a column made of a thick block of stone. The contemporary meaning for plinths used in interior design includes bases made of various materials for sculpture, decorative vases, altar candles, and other objects of interest.
We often open the double doors onto the terrace and those at the opposite end of the house leading to a walled garden to let the canyon breezes flow through the house, bringing in the scent of ash juniper, rosemary, and sage. When the doors are closed some of this freshness remains, augmented with other scents to create a unique and personal olfactory experience.
When the Milieu Magazine comes in the mail it’s time to stop everything and take a first look, wandering through the images and previewing the text. The 19th century Japanese folding screen covered in painted leather in the bedroom of Didier Gomez and Jean-Pierre Tortil’s Paris apartment made my heart pound.
A newly discovered passion is making table linens. My most recent venture combines an interest in printmaking with an inspiration from Fortuny.