In their introduction to The Decoration of Houses, Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman, Jr., write, “In the middle ages, when warfare and brigandage shaped the…
View More The Fabric of DesignCategory: DesignLabs
I spend a tremendous amount of time surveying the interior design and architecture industries as I create DesignLabs pieces, practicing journalism and content creation for clients so when I can spin what is going on in these closely related worlds into a deeper story, I’m quite happy.
In my diary entry Taking a Page or Two from Eudora Welty’s Books, I highlight a chair that industrial artist Pryor Calloway and I created for the New York Cith Take a Seat auction one year, We covered the chair in pages from Welty’s books and I quoted Welty’s lectures given at Harvard University in 1983, which were collected between the covers of One Writer’s Beginnings. Pryor, one of Welty’s fellow Mississippians, gave me a poignant answer to how Eudora had inspired her so click through to the post if you’d like a feel-good moment.
In The Sense of Beauty, I write about what it means to have had a long journalism career involving aesthetics. Plotinus gets it, his Enneads, which he wrote in the third century AD, is devoted to the subject of beauty. Ezra Pound was so struck by a comment Aubrey Beardsley made, “Beauty is difficult,” he included it in his Cantos. Being a lover of books and a fan of brilliant design made featuring Max Gunawan’s Lumio—a true book of light—a no brainer for me.
My first trip to the Beinecke Library at Yale University was a revelation! I delved into Edmund Wilson’s papers, seeing the famous editor’s travel journals when he was a boy, his letters to other writers on stationary from The New Yorker, and his notebooks during the time he was an editor at Vanity Fair. I went through Henry Miller’s papers, holding his Paris diaries and going through his letters. If that’s not mind blowing enough, I held parchments containing Petrarch’s sonnets in my very own hands! This made for a DesignLabs post for the ages!
Madame Récamier and the Art of Reclining
Jeanne-Françoise Julie Adélaïde Bernard, known after her marriage as Juliette Récamier, was born on December 4, 1777—240 years ago yesterday. Had she lived during modern…
View More Madame Récamier and the Art of RecliningA Conversation on Trends in Textiles
I’m thrilled to announce that I am producing the first in my Modern Salonnière series of events during High Point Market next month. With this…
View More A Conversation on Trends in TextilesPeggy Guggenheim Visits Oculus Gallery
In 2009, I trekked to Venice with my dear friend JoAnn Locktov, the founder of Bella Figura Publications whose newest book Dream of Venice Architecture…
View More Peggy Guggenheim Visits Oculus GalleryIt Is Time to Experience More
Experience more. It sounds like a simple directive but how many of us really take the time to savor what is happening right in front…
View More It Is Time to Experience MoreReading Dante in Milan
“I’d like that sunny table near the windows under the beautiful mirror,” he says to the hostess at Le Vrai, pointing to the niche set…
View More Reading Dante in MilanThreads With a Soul
A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people —Mahatma Gandhi Soul is one of those words with as many…
View More Threads With a SoulA Book of Light
To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to…
View More A Book of LightMichele De Lucchi: A Conversation of Soul
The Greek philosopher Plato likened thought to “a conversation of the soul with itself—a philosophical communication.” It isn’t unusual for me to attend thought-provoking events…
View More Michele De Lucchi: A Conversation of SoulHarlow at Bergdorfs!
I stood for a while admiring the chandelier in the window at Bergdorf Goodman. There was something about its icy lozenges of light telescoping out…
View More Harlow at Bergdorfs!