Elsie de wolfe autobiography of a flea

THE DOWN EAST DILETTANTE

Flipping through the 1920 edition of House & Garden’s Second Book of Interiors, I passed many handsome rooms, most of which betrayed their time and place—typical Long Island country house drawing rooms, all correctly Georgian, stockbroker Tudor libraries, and Colonial Dining rooms.   Suddenly, the room above jumped out at me, and demanded a closer look.  It was something more unusual, rich, yet looser and more imaginative after the acres of floral cretonne and hooked rugs of most of the book.  Here was something bolder—a bedroom with drawing room pretensions—the furniture well chosen, loose and sparely arranged in the vaulted ceilinged space, long French windows, curtains freely draped, facing each other on two sides.  Old black and white photograph is deceptive.  My first instinct was that the room was likely in traditional Chinese export color schemes—all celadon and rose.   The bold Tibetan tiger rug should have clued me otherwise.  The caption describes something far more dramatic for this room

Okay, that got my attention.  I googled Mr. Thomas—the house was called Huntland (click HERE and HERE for more), and he himself was prominent in the foxhunting world in the land of silver stirrup cups and good English furniture.  How he came to have interiors of such imagination, or who did them for him, eluded me, but clearly he was a guy with some dash.

The room seems to be missing from the history of Chinoiserie  in America in the 20th century, which includes the Chinese Room at Beauport, not published by House & Garden until eight years after the Thomas Room.

 Or Conde Nast’s ballroom, decorated by Elsie de Wolfe, with its famous set of Chinese papers from Beaudesert, an Anglesey family house in England

And of course, the Chinese drawing room of 1930 at Henry DuPont’s Winterthur House, whos

Star Spangled Decor

American Design

“People decorate three times in their lives: The first time is when they get married and get their own place. The second is when their children grow up and they redecorate with better things. Then after 60, they do it for the last time and they make their home look the way they have always dreamed.” — Mario Buatta

In 1814 Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) (who can count amongst his descendants avant-garde American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (1903-1989)) authored the now-famous words “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, which, since 1931, have been sung as the national anthem of the United States. In terms of art and design, however, the premise, increasingly, seems somewhat hazy as only last month the board of Tallahassee Classical School — a charter school in Florida’s state capital — pressured the principal Hope Carrasquilla to resign after three parents complained about a lesson that included a photo of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s (1475-1564) sculpture representing the Biblical hero of David; that being the humble shepherd boy who slayed the Philistines’ most formidable warrior, the giant Goliath, to later be crowned king of Israel. Ms Carrasquilla fell victim to the board’s wrath, apparently as parents weren’t given advance notification that their children would be exposed to a male nude, with one particularly disgruntled and outraged curmudgeon labelling Donatello’s magnum opus “pornographic”. Indisputably one of the most famous works in the canon of Western art history, the sculpture was originally intended for the roof space of Florence’s Opera del Duomo, but, on seeing the finished piece, the city council were so impressed that they chose instead to display it pride of place outside the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio on Piazza della Signoria (replacing Donatello’s (1386-1466) bronze sculpture of Judith and Holofernes (1457-1464), which, somewhat more macabre, depicts the Israelite heroine in the throws

  • Now this is a title

    • According to the writer of the mid-1970s Architectural Digest article about it, Amster Yard was rare if not unique for Midtown Manhattan because it was an L-shaped courtyard that had a number of brownstones surrounding and opening on to it. James Amster, beginning in 1946, reclaimed the buildings and restored them to a standard high enough for the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1964 to designate the complex a New York Landmark.

    The Landmark Preservation Commission described Amster Yard as being "of special historical and aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York City." However, this did not stop it being torn down earlier this century without the Commission's knowledge - the project manager of the development firm omitted to tell the Landmark Preservation Commission that he had deemed the buildings unsafe and irredeemable. As of 2008 it's been redeveloped and rebuilt.

    Seemingly Amster Yard had been the site of a terminal stop of the Boston to New York stage coach it and became under Mr Amster's hand "a series of shops, business offices and apartments grouped around a landscaped courtyard with brick walls and slate walks." James Amster's office and residence were located at one end of the courtyard.

    The article is short on description, three paragraphs only, and is really a list of the noted furnishings with which Mr Amster had appointed his apartment: "... a French iron mantle in the drawing room had been marbleized and was surmounted by an elegant Louis XVIth (sic) trumeau and delicately carved Venetian panels from the Cooper Hewitt mansion on Gramercy Park."

    The undoubtedly wonderful objects the reader was asked to admire seem so of their time: antique Venetian consoles in original white and gilt finish; a painting by Utrillo; a Ming Dynasty porcelain Buddha; Japanese porcelain; Directoire bronze doré lamps; Charles Xth (sic) chairs and trumeau; a small American Empire sofa; Ming

    French 18th-century Rococo, Sixties Space Age Modern, all the way to the decorative poetics of the Memphis group in the 1980s, are all combined in perfect harmony by the daring creativity of Sasha Bikoff. In a stylistic and aesthetic outburst of multiple creations – from her debut as an interior designer in an exclusive apartment in The Dakota in New York City to the orchestration of eclectic oases for affluent clients and the recent installation at Palazzo Versace during the latest Design Week in Milan – the young New Yorker reveals in-depth knowledge of design through striking patterns and bright tones that ‘dress up’ every detail. A dreamy, emotional world driven by haute couture opulence. Sasha talks it over with IFDM magazine.

    Sasha, how did you get interested in design?
    I have always been interested in design from a young age. I used to watch my grandmother decorate her homes, make flower arrangements, garden, cook beautiful meals, host elaborate parties. She was a true tastemaker. I always admired interiors but it was only until I moved to Paris in College that I became obsessed. I lived in a famous interior designers home on Rue de Lille behind the Musée d’Orsay where all the famous French antique dealers were that Yves Saint Laurent, Pierre Bergé, and Karl Lagerfeld used to shop at. I would go to the marché aux puces on the weekends teaching myself all about design. I had a British boyfriend at the time who’s mom was a famous decorator to all the London rock star scene and she got me into design in London. I would take pictures of all the furnishings and design I loved and make folders on my computer. Fast forward a few years later I started working in the Chelsea contemporary gallery world in NYC. I was a gallerist in the art world and everyone envied my job however for me it was all about the sale and the business and it inhibited my sense of creativity. It taught me a great deal, how to work with clients and how to have a regime

  • She can hardly wait, she says,
  • Each piece tells its own