This essay exploring the literary world of Ottoline Morrell is included in my most recent book The Modern Salonnière. The 34 other essays in the book…
View More Ottoline Morrell Gets LitCategory: Philanthropy
There are ample opportunities to write about philanthropy undertaken by the design industry and I like to highlight these efforts when I can because it’s an opportunity to talk about an industry doing good in the world.
I met one of the most inspiring women I’ve come across in the design arena during a lunch put on by Welspun USA, the presentation that took place during the meal the company’s founder’s wife Dipali Goenka. She has been (and is) instrumental in championing women’s rights in India, and ensuring that Welspun maintains one of the most serious corporate social responsibility (CSR) models I’ve ever come across.
This model for philanthropy also happens to produce stylishly comfortable textiles for the home. To present how deep my respect for the effort in my diary entry Threads With a Soul, I delved into James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, as he references Plato’s Myth of Er, which defines the soul as encompassing a person’s entire destiny.
One of New York City’s most well-known models of philanthropy is the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club Decorator Show House, which I look forward to attending each year. I’ve featured a number of designer’s spaces paired with literature here on The Diary of an Improvateur, including Darryl Carter’s, which I paired with Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space; and Garrow Kedigian’s, which I paired with Evangeline Bruce’s Napoléon & Joséphine: An Improbable Marriage.
Threads 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 SoulAlly 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 SalonKips 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 HouseTaking a Page (or Two) from Eudora Welty Books
Taking a Page (or Two) from Eudora Welty Books “Why don’t you design a chair, Saxon?” My normal response to the question, posed by the…
View More Taking a Page (or Two) from Eudora Welty Books