Elevating Plinths

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.  

(Netto, D.: Stephen Sills: A Vision for Design)

This Victorian plant stand pedestal on which rests what looks like the nest of a large bird has fascinated me for years. It’s located in interior designer Stephen Sills home in Bedford, New York. In an interview with Town and Country magazine, Stephen Sills talks about the magic of objects, stating, “I think objects are the things in decoration that make a room…The funny thing with objects. If you’re really passionate and you really understand your sensibility and you’re patient they will come to you.” (Georgina Schaeffer, 2013)

Plinths are a way to elevate a treasured object. Interior design publications feature a plethora of plinths and pedestals used in intriguing ways.  Let’s have a look!

Above are several additional examples of plinths in Stephen Sills’ home and garden.

These photos are from interior designer Nancy Braithwaite’s book, Simplicity. The large urns on columns paired with a Willem de Kooning drawing in a velvety dark foyer create an immediate sense of scale and proportional elegance. The stone bust on a small plinth is a center of attention in this thoughtfully edited bedroom.

A new book on my shelves is At Home With Designers and Tastemekers: Creating Beautiful and Personal Interiors by Susanna Salk and Stacey Bewkes. Unique in that they actually visit the homes and spend time with the individuals featured, including details about what they had for lunch or the amenities in the guest room!

Michael Trapp, interior and landscape designer and antique dealer incorporates a number of plinths in a home where nature and thoughtful objects reign.

Pieter Estersohn is an internationally known interiors photographer and his home in the Hudson Valley is stunning in its clean lines and soulful arrangement of personal artifacts.

I am currently reading and studying the photographs in his new book about the region, Life Along the Hudson: The Historic Country Estates of the Livingston Family .

This unusual circular pine plinth with carvings at the top edge was featured in an article about Hanna Seabrook’s South Carolina home in Volume IX of Frederic magazine.

The article led me to a new book, A Sense of Place: Design Inspired by Where We Live. This book takes readers inside the homes of twenty-one individuals who have clearly been inspired and influenced by their locale in the design of their homes. Reading it heightens our sense of the environment and how we might consider where we live and make it an integral element of the interior and exterior spaces we create for ourselves.

Interior designer Athena Calderone’s townhouse in Brooklyn is one of the homes featured in her book, Live Beautiful. She has paired two different plinths, both topped with vessels in her drawing room. The bathroom features a fireplace and a sculpture on a stone plinth. Dramatic and finely edited, the home clearly reflects her own refined design sense.

Antiquarian Axel Vervoordt uses plinths in design as bases for personal and meaningful works of art and ancient relics.

These two photos from Volume XII of Frederic magazine show a rusty iron urn on a timeworn plinth that may be an architectural remnant. The photo features a wallpaper from Schumacher’s new collection, Le Max. The room itself is quite appealing to me with the tonal range of creams punctuated by cinnamon, olive, and black, colors we have in our own home.

Of course there are plinths aplenty in French Chateau Style: Inside France’s Most Exquisite Private Homes. Looking at these gives you many ideas about ways to situate and style plinths!

A recent advertisement photo for designer and antiquarian Tara Shaw shows how two very different plinths and objects can “converse” and create vibrancy in an entrance. The mix of old and new is appealing to me.

These photos of fashion designer Andrew Gn’s Paris flat in 1996 were featured in House and Garden. This ethereal, monochromatic space punctuated by plinths is a haven of peace in the sometimes frenetic world of a successful fashion designer.

The Fall 2024 collection will be the last in a decades long career which will come to a close with a retrospective exhibit of his work in the Asian Civilization Museum in his homeland of Singapore. Mr. Gn chose to call his final collection Roots in honor of his Asian homeland and because, as he stated in an interview featured on Vogue Runway (Tina Isaac-Goize),

“Today when you talk about roots, it’s not just about where you were born, it’s about where you have been in your life.”

Here is my own root, a treasured and magical object indicative of where we are our lives and in the Texas Hill Country. This is the root of an ash juniper or as we call them here  a cedar. The cedars are not natives but they have spread themselves across the rocky and calcareous land of this region.

This cedar root was tossed in a pile of abandoned cuttings and limestone rocks at the edge of a piece of land down the street from ours. One day after eying it for months, I decided to bring it home with me. My dear neighbor whose land adjoins this piece was outside walking his dog when I picked up the heavy root. He remarked “I thought it was dead.” I replied that it was indeed dead, but to me, it was a work of art.

My original intent was to clean it up, spray it with sealer, and place it somewhere in our garden. While working on it I grew more and more attached to the root.  The different widths of the root strands are fascinating as is the overall spherical shape of the root. Its demise was likely caused by constriction from the surrounding rock. This we conclude as we have often had to use a jackhammer to dig a hole which is more like a stone pot in the rock to plant something on our land.  This, of course, makes life and all that lives in the garden more precious. Thus, the root reflects where we have been and where we are going.

My husband built this plinth for the old root and we have placed it on the landing to the second floor where we have our studio. You can see it as you go up the two flights of stairs and it rests near a large window where the clear northern light comes across the hills and touches it gently.

 While out jogging the other day I shared the photos of the root on the plinth with my neighbor. He was amazed and asked to see them more than one time. We talked about how the root is indicative of where we are and the beauty that is around us if we take the time to look for it and to see old things in new ways.