A month from Sunday, I’ll be winging my way to Paris to attend Maison & Objet, and I’m thrilled to say I’ve been invited to Limoges to visit the Bernardaud factory while I’m in France. This invitation from the porcelain manufacturer means so much to me because I will be able to see, in person, […]
Category: Historical Design
Historical design research and historical design movements are the foundation of all design, and they are subjects I write about often. I adore certain periods of history but rarely come across a design movement I don’t enjoy.
One of my heroines of historical design is Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis. She had such an eye for great design, which reflected her classic fashion sensibilities and she wasn’t afraid to stand up and say when an interior or a piece of architecture deserved preservation—two of her greatest achievements along these lines the White House and Grand Central Terminal. I go on an excursion with her and her sister Lee, which they illustrated in a beautiful slim, large format book titled One Special Summer.
In my post A Backward Glance on Rue de Varenne, I fantasize about actually getting into Edith Wharton’s apartment on that storied street rather than standing in the rain as I have on two trips to Paris—longing to see what’s behind that statuesque door in terms of the buildings historical design. So far, no success, but I’ll keep trying! In my piece, Courtesan Style Counts, I look at a gorgeous chair called the Courtesan through the eyes of the English Demi-Monde in their heyday. And in Henry VIII’s Cult of Cloth, I look at how the Tudor king used textiles to make like more sumptuous.
The Red Carpet Treatment
There is a momentum to writing that, once interrupted, is challenging to reboot. I’ve experienced this first-hand during the past two months as I have made some significant life changes, the most chaotic being a relocation of sorts. I’m no longer a full-time New Yorker, as I will now be splitting my time between New […]
One Special Summer with Jackie O
Hegel’s caveat “history teaches us nothing” may be relevant in cultural and philosophical realities but in the design world the statement is far from succinct. No one knew this more resolutely than Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, or as we have come to affectionately call her Jackie O. One Special Summer with Jackie […]
We’ll Never Be Royals
Nest Nest Nest features the Alliage pattern.As I write this, I can feel the design energy draining from the Americas as the movers-and-shakers in our industry trek across the Atlantic to Paris for Maison & Objet. During the last iteration of the French fair, I followed the savvy coverage by Tamara Matthews Stephenson, and […]
Furnishing Pastimes of Henry VIII
As I mentioned in my last Improvateur article presenting a brief history of Hampton Court Palace, I launched into a furnishings fantasy when I heard the narrators and experts interviewed in the PBS documentary Secrets of Henry VIII’s Palace reveal anecdotes illustrating life within the palace walls during the Tudor king’s reign, which included […]
Cinderella in the South of France
Cinderella in the South of France “From morning until night, Cinderella worked very hard. She carried water, got the fire going, cooked, cleaned, and washed. The girl never had a moment’s rest. Her evil stepmother and stepsisters wouldn’t even let her sleep in her own bed at night. Instead, they made her lie down […]
Horace Walpole Shops The Decorative Fair
The books I’ve been reading about Horace Walpole since I returned from my trip to London to attend The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in late April proves there was more than a smidge of tragicomedy in the eighteenth-century writer. Not entirely comfortably, I’m also finding that I have more in common with the […]
Poetry and Ceramics in Savona
The 16th-century poetry that sprung from Savona made a strong impression on Thomas William Parsons when he found verses inscribed on a statue of the Madonna near the town’s lighthouse during a tour of Italy in the 19th century. He was so moved, the American poet penned the sonnet “Savona: Vespers on the Shore of the Mediterranean” […]
Jane Austen Era Silver
If you are a fan of movies inspired by the novels of Jane Austen but you haven’t read her books, you may be surprised to know that the beautiful period backdrops achieved in films like Emma are not the work of the novelist herself. Though highly emotional in a way that brings all of her characters […]
Rococo Style in Italy
If I told you the most surprising thing I found in Parma, Italy, was France, would you think I’d lost my mind? I’m not speaking in concrete terms, of course; I know my European geography. I’m referring to a remnant of the French aristocracy tucked into the Riserva Palace on Strada Melloni, one of […]