Design Public

For a lot of designers, writing is a lost art. People have become lost in archispeak and are unable to describe a room or tell a story. This week I’ve been thoroughly enjoying a delicious memoir written by one of the best known decorators of this century: Billy Baldwin Remembers. I’m kind of kicking myself right now because it starts on amazon for about $10, and I paid $45 at that unfriendly Savannah book store, but it was worth it. You are a fool if you don’t hop over there (the title’s the link) and scoop this one up right now.

The book starts with some of Baldwin’s early inspirations and experiences. He describes the “stars in his crown;” iconic ladies of style like Nan Kempner, Babe Paley, Diana Vreeland, Jackie O. and even Garbo. Even better, he dishes the dirt about clients from hell, their peculiar habits, bad taste, lack of manners, bizarre requests and overinflated self importance. (more…)

Just checking in with a little vintage inspiration. I’ve had this issue of H&G sitting out in my guestroom for awhile. The cover is so fantastic. It reminds me so much of Dorothy Draper and Kate Spade style. This issue is from May 1965. I am having deja-blog because I feel sure I must have shared this one with you before, but I just did a search and don’t see it in the archives.

There is another great article in here called “Same Space: Two Kitchens.” I should totally cut it out and send it to Susan Serra, I know she’d get a kick out of the kitchen organization and spatial issues and how they were addressed in 1965. My favorite part are the following two images. I will always be a sucker for a black and white checkerboard floor; it will NEVER go out of style with me. Neither will pop floral prints. Also, these colored square-ish cabinets are so fantastic. With a few tweaks, the blue kitchen could be a wonderful IKEA display room today.

Last Thursday I was out at one of my favorite shops, Armour and Co., and my parents very generously bought me Albert Hadley: The Story of America’s Preeminent Designer by Adam Lewis.  This book is pricey (though you can pick it up at amazon for about $40 right now), but it is one every interior design book collection must have.  The sketches, prints, and photographs are absolutely amazing, and the stories told by Hadley to Lewis are charming.  One of the most amazing things about Hadley’s work is that it is so classic and timeless.  The only giveaways that date the photos of the older rooms are a grainy quality of print or an outdated television set.   The man does love to throw in a zebra rug wherever possible, but he makes it work!

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I could not help but pick up yet another vintage issue of H&G from Victory Vintage last weekend. This image jumped right off the page at me. I don’t know what else to say about it except that I find it to be a rather artful way of staying organized and I wanted to share it with you:

images scanned from House & Garden magazine, July 1966 issue.

I was reading my Domino, and for the third time, I noticed how familiar two of the images in this mod inspiration board looked. I whipped open the 1964 House and Garden issue I have had sitting by the scanner for months, and sure enough, I had these two images marked for scanning and sharing as Vintage Inspiration: The Cover (hey, it’s got that log stack thing going on):

The pictures that looked so familiar:

I usually let those posts sit and sit, because I don’t feel anyone will “beat me” to the images. However, someone over at Domino obviously shares my passion for vintage home design magazines! Here are some more great images from the issue I’ve been meaning to share with you for awhile. A “blur the lines between inside and out” Miami pad:

A feature on modern houses. This one was in New Canaan, designed by architect Hugh Smallen, who lived here with his family. I wonder if the house still exists. Perhaps my pal Tom knows:I was also loving this feature on needlepoint rugs. The paisley one screams Pucci to me, while the one you can barely see on the right looks like the grandfather of a present-day Jonathan Adler design:This storage hiding solution reminded me of the feature in the same issue of Domino about Rashida Jones’ studio apartment:Finally, I chuckled as this feature reminded me of my favorite line of The Graduate:Domino photos from the February 2008 issue, and Paul Costello respectively.

When you need an item for your house, do you search and search non-stop until you find it?  Or do you simply keep an eye open, knowing that the right thing will cross your path eventually but you can’t push it?  I’m in the latter group.  Two days ago, I splurged on some tulips at the grocery.  The only vase they really fit in was this old metal coffeepot with a wooden handle.  A few hours later, my new dining room chairs arrived.  They are even better in person, and I love the way they look with the wood table my great great grandfather made.  It was like the coffee pot and the tulips knew they were coming and urged me to put them on top before they arrived.

oops, obviously I got too excited about taking the picture and missed a tag - tacky!

I have to give major props to decorators who can throw a room together in a short time frame.  I have to be patient - my dining room has been without proper chairs for almost two years, but it was worth the wait!  Now if I could just find the perfect light fixture (over the tulips, wires have been hanging from the ceiling for 2 years)…do you guys have any suggestions?  I don’t want a drum shade or a chandelier.  Perhaps a lantern, or ideally, one of those amazing fixtures from South of Market, you know, where they turn a French trash can or basket into some awesome and unique light fixture and charge $2,000 for it?  I need the cheap version of that!

I love it when I get good information from the comments y’all leave me.  Yesterday’s was a goldmine.  First, Nicole from Making It Lovely (one of my favorite blogs) let me know about eBay seller U-Turn Vintage Wallpaper.  Thanks Nicole, and congratulations on your one-year blog anniversery!  This cuts out a lot of sorting through the horrid ’80’s wallpaper (the kind that scared me away from wallpaper for the last decade or so) when doing an eBay search.   The selection they have in their eBay store includes the following:

The other comment came from Melissa.  Of course I clicked on her URL as I always do when reading comments, and I came across her blog, The Inspired Room, where I found a few kitchen pictures that are T.D.F.: (more…)

Briefly, I just wanted to go over just a few of the design styles and designers who had a great influence the past year. We love to track trends and trendsetters, and this group of both kept coming up over and over again whenever I was trying to post. Yes, we are leaving out a ridiculous number of hits and hitmakers, but hey, I want to get this out before 2008, so this is it. As I started to try and name trends and think of style names, I realized that it seems like we are almost running out of catchy combinations to characterize design. As a matter of fact…I’m back in love with The New York Times again, just a week after they annoyed me. Julie Scelfo’s article last week called “Marketing Decor for a Conflicted Era” really nails everything that’s going on in design, by simply discussing the problem of trying to find nomenclature for styles that are designed to defy tradition. Scelfo asks the question of “how to stand out when rebellion has become the rule?”

How indeed. This year was ruled by eclecticism. When everyone is eclectic, is it still eclectic? Or does that make the thing that used to be banal and traditional the new eclectic, since it stands out in a quirky way from all of the formerly quirky eclectic stuff. It’s kind of like going to the bike messenger bar 97 Estoria, where every girl there has the same shade of fakey maroonish-auburn hair I have personally dubbed “alternachick red.” Is it alternative if everyone you know has the same color? Have we overused different adjectives put together with “classicism” or “traditional” or “modern” so much that it’s been done to death? (more…)

I’m sitting here suffering through Factory Girl. It’s kind of boring. The only excitement I get is when the phone rings on screen, because it sounds just like my cell and I wonder if I’m getting a call. I remember reading an Edie biography when I was about 14 and finding it equally boring. If she’s the most interesting person Andy Warhol ever met, I don’t think anyone has done a good job of capturing her allure.

Anyway, we’ve all seen the factory recreated in so many other movies, so it’s not all that exciting. I find myself wondering where to buy those silver balloons and whether they found all those old Brillo boxes or made their own props. Hayden Christiansen, I can’t think of him as any other character except… (more…)

It’s a really bad thing that I live so close to Victory Vintage, because I get these very tempting emails from them all the time and then I can hop in the car and be there in about 12 minutes flat. Then on the way home I get tempted by the Decatur Chik-fil-A drive through and the next thing I know I’ve cheated on my budget and my diet. Oh well, I just wanted to share these lovely lamps. They have repurposed a variety of old lab glass in turned them into lamps.

To me, this is classic vintage modern, but it’s still a term I can’t quite define!

Have you turned anything cool into a lamp lately? Currently, Victory Vintage is turning a ceramic faux bamboo umbrella stand I found at the junk store for $11 into a lamp for me. They always do a great job.