Design Public

I came across this image from Cavern Home shortly after Becky posted last week on Black and White Bedding and I knew right away that this was something I had to share. This space may be a bit too “matchy matchy” for some, but visually I think this room is stunning! Can you imagine the room without the Blackbird Wallpaper? I surely can’t. I try to vision the wallpaper replaced with wall art and I think, “No, no, no.” It might work if the pieces were super simple and super white and super clean, like large white frames with white matting and a simple image in the center, but it wouldn’t have the same feel. I think Cavern Home hit the head on the nail with this place. Bravo Cavern Home! Bravo!

To recreate the look checkout the Cavern Home Blackbirds Wallpaper options on DP.

Another dream home on the market. Lately I’ve been using up a lot of my time perusing modern houses on the internet. This one is incredible. It belongs to Erik Johnson, one of my favorite photographers (I’ve swiped his work from magazines for posts in this blog quite a few times). I love that this home is clean and uncluttered, but not sparse. It reminds me a bit of the modern house with a soul I featured a month or so ago.

Back in the ’40’s, architect Charles Goodman and developer Robert Davenport came together to design and build the Hollin Hills neighborhood in Alexandria Virginia.  I thought I’d share some of Erik’s photos of his home with you.  For more information and more photos, please click here.

all photos by Erik Johnson

I really enjoyed the post over at Elements of Style about how to get the look of Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment renovation. I decided to chime in with a few products from the movie you can find right  here at Design Public! We spied this bedding from Dwell Studio in Mr. Big’s apartment and Charlotte’s apartment:

Click on the pics above to find out how to get your own Sex and the City sheets!

So I started to tell you about the Modern Atlanta Home Tour yesterday but I didn’t get very far! I wanted to show you more from my favorite home that I saw on the tour (stairs described yesterday are pictured above). By the way, I only made it to five. I’d say five to six is the maximum you can really see when driving from place to place in a five hour time limit. It’s exhilarating but also exhausting. Also, once in Decatur my car automatically drove me to Victory Vintage, and I stopped by my house for a snack before visiting the house down the street. That’s how I roll.

O.K. So first, the architects who live in the house with a soul also designed this house around the corner (photos immediately above and below). It’s absolutely gorgeous, and the inhabitants have a smart mix of high end items and art and IKEA. I just found myself wondering if all the stuff they usually keep out was smushed in the “not part of the tour” closed door rooms, or if they are really this strictly minimal. That’s cool if they are, I just know that I could not accomplish such discipline in a million years:

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So Saturday I went on the Modern Atlanta Homes Tour. I’ll tell you more about it after I edit my pictures (I’m SUCH and idiot; I forgot my camera so all my pictures are from my iPhone and thus they suck worse than usual). There was one house that stood out as not only being thoughtful and beautiful and modern, but it really, truly had a soul. For now, I want to share their dining room chandelier. It’s a bunch of twigs hanging from a wire. It’s a crap camera shot, but hopefully you’ll get the idea:

What was so great about this was also the thought of just “what the hell? Let’s give hanging some twigs from the ceiling a whirl! Who cares? If it looks stupid, we’ll take it down.” That was the attitude I got from this house with soul. Similarly, the stairs had a quote from the bride’s grandmother written on them on Sharpie, all the way up two stories. Apparently, they scribbled the quote there for a party before the stairs were finished, but when the time came, they could not bear to lose the quote, so it’s still there.

Lesson: Experiment with your home. Don’t be afraid to try things out.  Don’t even let that evil, soul-crushing word, “resale” enter your mind when you are planning out your home or decorating. That word is for dorks and greedy house flippers with no taste who watch too much HGTV and say things like “sizzle factors” about “custom kitchens” and think that means something special.   Just go for it. If something doesn’t work, you can eliminate it and move on, if it does work, it will probably be one of the best features of your home.

To continue the previous post, I found a few more examples of indigo and lime, including this Tricia Guild table arrangement from her book Flower Sense…

…and fashions from Aprils issue of Bazaar…

I was perusing the photos I’d marked as “faves” in flickr last night and came across this one from flickr member patia.  The color combination was fresh and at once familiar, so I started to flip through all of my sticky note-laden magazines to find more examples of deep indigo blue and bright lime green.  I thought I’d share them with you:

from House Beautiful (I love the unexpectected use of indigo grasscloth in a few of these):

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I rarely pick up Southern Accents magazine, but in an especially slow line at Publix the other day the March/April issue caught my eye. Usually I’d be scanning the tabloid headlines, but if I hear one more thing about Suri’s favorite restaurant or Britney’s meltdown I don’t know what I’ll do. So, I used to think of Southern Accents as froufy and matchy-matchy and full of doilies or pictures of Robert E. Lee. I was totally wrong. Well, almost totally, there are a few way over the top window treatments full of billowing pleats, trim, tassels, etc. but that’s about it. Of course, I have noticed lately that a lot of the most chic designers in all the glossies are coming out of Atlanta, Dallas, New Orleans and Alabama; these towns are not just about the Sugarbakers. While the magazine has roots in traditional looks, most of the homes featured are uncluttered, modern, have a great mix of styles and eras and were quite fresh. I especially enjoyed the feature on Madison Spencer’s Rabbit Run transformation which has a lot of TJ, Palladio, and on the back, perhaps a hint of Graves attitude thrown in? It’s brilliant - I love that he used triple-sash windows like TJ used at Monticello:

An Atlanta home by designer Betty Burgess. She has mad art and book arranging skillz, though she does do that backwards book thing, which I think is rather absurd unless you have a secret Dewey decimal system going on in invisible ink or something: (more…)

I shared the nature study aesthetic with you a few weeks ago, inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Since then, I’ve found a few more inspiring images that also fit the look. It’s amazing the range of looks this idea can inspire. Here are some that tickled my fancy:

From Amy Sedaris’ wacky Village pad, just one vignette of her collections:

from InStyle Home:

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I’ve been thinking about the relationship between interior design and fashion design for awhile now. I think my very favorite example is this:

For those of you too young to remember, this is from The Carol Burnett Show spoof skit, “Went with the Wind.” When Michael Kors references Scarlett O’Hara, Carol and curtains on Project Runway, this is what he’s talking about. God I miss that show. It was HILARIOUS!

Lately I look around at fashion and interior design and the trends are interchangable. Right now, exotic textiles seem to have spread from beds to bodies. It’s hard to know which design field started it first. Oscar de la Renta, who has home furnishing and fashion designs seems to be leading the suzani and ikat fads over to fashion:

For zebra, who knows? It’s been a staple at Dior for years:

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