Celebrating Shakespeare The 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death is April 23rd, the date he passed in 1616 at the age of 52 believed to be his birthday. It’s a milestone for which the UK in particular has been prepping for quite some time so celebrating Shakespeare in England has never been easier. But […]
Tag: decorating history
There are so many pivotal figures that span decorating history who deserve attention. I count influencers spanning back into the mists of time who left decorative legacies.
You might be surprised that I include Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII in this group but one look at my diary entry Decorating Hampton Court Palace and you’ll see how the decorative elements in the castle deserve the nod. Decorative elements like eavesdroppers ornamenting the ceiling beams in the Great Hall and the tapestries hanging along the walls are colorful additions to the massive room. The castle contains the largest surviving Renaissance kitchens in Europe, and the intricacy of the vaulted ceiling in the Chapel Royal was installed by Henry VIII in 1535-6.
The chapel has been in continuous use for 450 years! And for those of you who have a sweet tooth, there is a Chocolate Room decorated with ceramics, copper cooking equipment, bespoke chocolate serving silverware and period glassware and linens. This is but one of the visionaries of the past who has impacted decorating history on my blog so stop by if you’d like to find out who else has caught my eye.
Find Your Red Carpet Style
“Find Your Red Carpet Style,” urged Currey & Company’s Brand Ambassador Denise McGaha during a presentation in the company’s Manhattan showroom last week. The point of her talk, When Worlds Collide, was to inspire her audience of design professionals to consider the attitudes that make the fashion industry so dynamic—a timely topic given New […]
Dining with History
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, […]
Narratives That Illuminate Design
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 your mind today by presenting my choices for narratives that illuminate design. What has prompted this quest? Two intelligently written books in Rizzoli’s holiday catalog—both of which were published […]
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 […]
An Unsung Hero of Modern Design
Resurrecting pivotal eras in design is irresistible to vanguards who understand that sometimes the best place to begin looking into the future is to take a glance back in time. The resurgence of the mid-century aesthetic, which defined the quietly sexy fifties and less subdued sixties, is proof that if vision and quality existed […]
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 […]
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: how would it feel to decorate Hampton Court Palace, a jewel in the Tudor King’s built crown, in a way that if the luminaries in Henry VIII’s court were […]