Times change

"Blue, prepare to have your socks knocked off at Kips Bay ..." wrote a commenter last week about my misgivings after visiting the Atlanta Symphony Show House, and I must admit I went to the Kips Bay 41st Annual Decorator Show House with a certain anticipation which was, to a degree, repaid. 

There always is, or should be, excitement about seeing who is doing what in show houses, and from that point of view Kips Bay did not disappoint, though my socks were not, as threatened blown off. The kitchen was superb, but show house kitchens always are, and the dining room a marvel of art, decoration, atmosphere, and practicality. In place of an actual sideboard a deconstructing bronze sculpture based on the form of a sideboard, that made me wish it was a sideboard – a superb piece that I wish I could have photographed. Above the table hung a tree branch and writhing neon pendant that was the best of its kind. I'm not really sure how the room would work for a few old fogies who need more than atmosphere to light their ways to the cognac, but I'll forgive that.

High-gloss, saturated color was much in evidence, as was the ongoing love-affair with 50's and 60's Italian furniture, and the strained-thru-SoCal 70's flea-market upgrades, though there was, that I saw, thankfully nary a rumor of Eames. Yet the neutral room persists: white on cream, white on beige, white on white, white on wood, white on tedium. Really? Still? 

Photography was not permitted so in writing this I am working on what I remember four days afterwards. Robert Brown's room, the first (I am told) at Kips Bay by an Atlanta decorator and literally the first room which one saw – or rather could have seen had it not been used for ticket sales and queueing – sadly as a result doesn't stand out, as it should, in my memory. Brown is a excellent decorator who, in my opinion, was underserved by the show house for, clearly, if a decorator earns a place that place should be respected and not be screened from view by a queue of ticket buyers.

Two adjoining rooms upstairs, the connecting doors carefully kept closed, were, for me, the yin and yang of the show house – one, a bedroom, an anachronism, a throw-back even, (remember, personal opinions here) by the West coast decorator presently masquerading as Ingres' Grande Odalisque in a Bath Towel in advertisements for Scalamandré, and the other an appreciation of the cool, friends–with–benefits sophistication of modern life. This is not to say I disliked either room – quite the contrary, in fact – but their juxtaposition set me thinking about the modern producers of mass-taste, those connections between decorating, TV and licensing.

At the top of the house, opening on to a beautiful roof terrace and with carp-filled pool, a luminously spacious family room with its lavender and grey coloration, silver blown-glass logs in a steel and mirror firebox below a big-assed TV, was the favorite despite that most repellant of furnishing textiles, a hair-on-hide rug.

Licensing is a topic of significance that I shall wait to tackle more fully in another post – when I'm not sitting here, thoroughly bad-tempered, impatient, woozy, and hacking and wheezing from the worst airplane cold I've ever had. I will say, however, that a few years back I saw, and I wish I'd kept it, on the back of a very old Architectural Digest, a pattern that was at the time being marketed as a design, recolored for modern times, by a well-known interior decorator. Call me naive if you wish, but I was shocked at it. I remain shocked when I think of how fabric houses and furniture manufacturers are pushing out collections of quite ordinary and derivative collections distinguished only by the celebrity name on the label. How we got here is worth considering – some other time.  

No, I didn't come away de-socked from Kips Bay, was never breathless from excitement – from the stairs, yes, certainly – and to be candid was underwhelmed by a couple of big names. Subtlety to the point of tedium or invisibility is not for me. I thought, though, as also a friend texted me to say, that these are not the grand old days of Buatta, Hampton and Parish-Hadley. Perhaps that is not a bad thing. Times change. 

But not always for the good. Though it happened months ago, it was only this weekend that I learned, heartbreakingly, that Archivia Books has closed. It occurred to me as I stood there, amazed that this beautiful shop has gone, that I am part of the problem. How proud I have been of saving money by going to Amazon to buy books when clearly if I have the money to buy such books I could afford to pay full price. Why would I? Look at the desolation above and wonder if keeping a local business going is worth it. 

Times change, indeed.


For photographs of some of the rooms go here.