Narratives That Illuminate Design If you believe that design-centric coffee table books contain nothing more than visual surveys of portfolios, I am out to change…
View More Narratives That Illuminate DesignCategory: Interior Design
Though you may think the category interior design doesn’t belong on a blog featuring creative writing, I beg to differ. What would a film be without a movie set?
I challenge you to find a story that doesn’t need a setting! I feel fortunate to be immersed in the interior design industry because my exposure to beautiful interiors gives me a backdrop in which to place the characters I enjoy writing about. In A Room with a View x 2, it was E.M. Forster’s novel hinted at in the title of the post, his characters Lucy Honeychurch and George Emerson the inspiration for Justin Shaulis’ bathroom vignettes he designed for the American Standard DXV Design Panel in 2015. When I saw the beautiful settings, I knew they would make a perfect pairing of design and literature for my diary.
In my escapade Reading Dante in Milan, I place Percy Bysshe Shelley in a sunny spot on a banquette a new restaurant in Milan, Le Vrai designed by Karine Lewkowicz, for a leisurely lunch and an afternoon of reading Dante! I think the famous poet would have enjoyed the heck out of the experience!
I had very little work to do to decide who would be the perfect historical figure to fit within Garrow Kedigian’s space in the 2016 Kips Bay Decorator Show House because he had chosen for me. His Napoléon’s Lounge was a stunning room with chalk tromp l’oeil architectural elements that knocked me out. I presented the new General of the French army and his soon-to-be wife Josephine through Evangeline Bruce’s Napoléon & Joséphine: An Improbable Marriage.
Decorating Hampton Court Palace
The premise of this article and the next one I’ll post here on The Diary of an Improvateur (next week) began with a rather capricious question:…
View More Decorating Hampton Court PalaceThe Peacock Room à la Whistler
The most recognizable painting by artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler might lead you to believe he was as Puritan as his upbringing. The fact he…
View More The Peacock Room à la WhistlerA Room with a View x 2
When I saw the expressive twin spaces Justin Shaulis created as one of American Standard’s 2015 DXV Design Panel participants, I knew I had to…
View More A Room with a View x 2The Old Familiar Faces
…I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces… These…
View More The Old Familiar FacesSnow White Meets Settenani
“Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall, am I most beautiful of all?” Snow White’s mother, the envious Queen, would ask her looking glass each evening,…
View More Snow White Meets SettenaniAlly Coulter and the Opulent Salon
Ally Coulter’s grand salon on the first floor of the Holiday House NYC took my breath away the minute I entered the room. It was…
View More Ally Coulter and the Opulent SalonHarmony and Proportion
Love of beauty is taste…the creation of beauty is art. -Emerson I’ve been a fan of Alexandra Stoddard since I came across the designer’s book Living…
View More Harmony and ProportionSummer Reading with Carmen Natschke
For those of you who think Carmen Natschke, of The Decorating Diva fame, is merely a glamorous gadabout holding court in the design stratosphere, there…
View More Summer Reading with Carmen NatschkeKips Bay Show House
“The house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind,” wrote Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of…
View More Kips Bay Show House