How can it be …

… with all the time in the world, I cannot write as often as I would like? –  is a question I often asked myself and until a couple of days ago had few ideas about how to solve my problem. It then occurred to me to ask another question: if I can Instagram as often I do, could I write shorter posts for the blog with similar frequency as I post on Instagram. Not that the two media are comparable, really, but … why not give it a go?

As the parent of any eight-month-old whippet will attest "time for oneself" is a much-cherished delusion – a fantasy as hard to relinquish as is the idea that living rooms are anything other than canine playrooms  …

… that whippets allow one time for breakfast 

… do not sulk if you tidy away their toys and do not complain vociferously if one looks at them 

…or even that privacy any longer is an option. My clever, beloved Barnaby Warboys has learned to open doors and I have photographs to prove it. Publish and be damned, he says. 

Barny is the reason I have little time and there is no-one more amazed at it than I: to a great degree our life is changing in ways we hadn't thought of before he became our family. For example, neither of us want to leave him for weeks on end whilst we go to Europe so we have decided that vacations in this country are going to be more the norm and we are looking either to build or buy a second place where he can run and explore like the whippet he is and we can spend weekends as a family together and with friends.

Our taste runs more to the contemporary and something as starkly rectilinear as above and below from Rocio Romero in a wooded setting seems perfection to both of us, especially if more softly nestled in grasses and shrubs. 

Inside, I would like to see something as comfortable and contemporary as the room below by Thomas Hamel. There would be nothing by Eames, nothing mid-century-modern, none of the so-called "design classics" and certainly nothing from IKEA (how the hell it became so popular in blogland beats me). In other words, the formulaic way of furnishing modern architecture as boring as a trawl through a DWR showroom, is not for us. 

A cabin in the woods? Possible, but without any rural references in the decor – neither of us are farmers, cowpokes, or blacksmiths and take the lead from Henrietta-Lucy Dillon de la Tour du Pin Governed who, in her Memoirs of Madame de la Tour du Pin: Laughing and Dancing Our Way to the Precipice I am sure does not mention furnishing her log cabin during her exile in America with any reference to the forest or its denizens surrounding her.  I know, I know, a complete non sequitur.

I want to mention again how we both feel that after all these our living room – in fact, the whole place – needs refreshing and seeing how our floors look without the carpets and rugs which are at the cleaners having whippet tracks removed, I'm leaning very strongly towards the idea of having our wooden floor stenciled. The one advantage of bare floors in warm months is that they are cool to bare feet but, if plain wood, they are visually boring. The stenciled floors in The Parish-Hadley Tree of Life: An Intimate History of the Legendary Design Firm have examples that awoke my interest anew. 

So, my attempt at writing quickly was interrupted by nibbled toes, nibbled fingers, outraged barking when I refused to play, but as persistent as my pup is, I have my Instagram-ish post for the day. 

Maybe, till tomorrow? 

Photograph of Thomas Hamel's room by Matt Lowden 

Photograph of Bunny Williams's room by Scott Frances

Both photographs from The Parish-Hadley Tree of Life: An Intimate History of the Legendary Design Firm 

Sunday morning, a butler's pantry, and scenes from family life

"We can’t all live a life that affords us the luxury of having a butler, but a luxury you CAN afford is a butler’s pantry. Historically, a butler’s pantry is where a butler made quick meals and sandwiches, cleaned silver, and sometimes even slept .... "  

I'm not given to criticizing other bloggers but when I come across such a piece of fatuity as this I really do wonder … well, I didn't have to watch and listen but I couldn't resist, especially when I saw that the author had no idea of what a butler actually did and its so wrong on many levels – not just historically but also about the utter meaningless of the term "butler" in the modern world outside of the houses of the rich, aristocratic or TV soap opera. 

Before Barny was awake I read chewable paper

What the blog author describes, of course, is an aspirational daydream and begins " … even in homes without a butler … " and explains that a butler's pantry is a transitional space between kitchen and dining room which must mean, I suppose, she's talking to people who don't have one, and would like one – look for yourselves, if you have the time. As Dorothy Draper said Decorating is Fun! and the complete antithesis of the book I mention below. 

This morning's tablescape

Can anyone who has watched Downton Abbey imagine Carson making sandwiches and Mrs Patmore allowing him to do it? "What's a sandwich?" I can hear it now in Lady Violet's best Maggie Smith imitation. In the end, it all became clearer as I watched the video and my sense of equilibrium began to recover – shocked as I had been to discover that there are people in the provinces, still, living lives without the luxury of butlers and are wise enough to take advice – and sage counsel is rare –  to build a cabinet and shelf or two in tiny corners of their kitchens and feign the presence of such a servant in their lives by characterizing those moving little works of carpentry as butler's pantries. Oh, plucky people! 

"Are we creating a stage set? Or are we creating a home? To this day, I am creating homes for families to live in. I want dogs and children and all the family stuff in them." The second quotation of the day, I came across as I sat reading Bunny Williams's chapter in what is, so far, the best book of the year. I say "best book" in the sense that I exclude so-called decorator monographs because Parish-Hadley Tree of Life: An Intimate History of the Legendary Design Firm does not fit within the category of monograph.

Though, inevitably, there is some repetition where one has so many designers and decorators contributing to a book about a firm, perhaps the premier American interior design firm of the twentieth-century, where they began their careers, the text alone is a lesson in how to design rooms and houses and how to provide the means by which the houses can be turned into homes by the families or individuals who inhabit them – they are designed for them from the lifestyle outwards, as it were, and not just by the application of a decorative theory or fad. 

The photographs are terrific, some already known from previous publications, some not, and the most striking thing to me is how important the floors were to Parish-Hadley, its designers and clients. There are some beautiful floors, stenciled, carpeted and be-rugged, throughout the book and what I see makes me wish to have my basic wood floors stenciled as the basis of the beautiful room I have in my head and, I hope, in my designer's too. Anyone with an eye to design can learn a lot from the photographs but the text alone is worth the price of the book. 

Watering the trees

I think why I react so badly to counterfeit names such as that with which I begin, and why much of what I see in magazines and "monographs" is that, as Bunny Williams alludes to, it is the creation of a stage set and has nothing to do with real life. Building some extra cabinets and shelves at the end of the dining room or in the kitchen is not a romantic or easy fun project as the blogger implies. It's hard work and costly. The whole concept of a "butler's pantry" in a suburban house is so out of sync with modern times – it came along with the bonus spaces that developers attached to the MacMansions of the 1980s and 1990s and which now are as devalued as the structures and prices they helped to bloat. 

Barny snuggling

If there ain't a butler there cain't be a butler's pantry – simple as that.  I wonder if anyone knows what a pantry is. Oh, if I not being too dogmatic, it's not a library without at least one wall of books in the language of the people living in the house, with all book spines facing the viewer without too many vahzes or pieces of fruit stuck in between. And a neighborhood does not consist of homes; rather it consists of houses because a home is what the inhabitants make of a house by living in it. AND … oh, don't get me started!

My old prof and Rory at brunch 

So … deep breath … and now, to family matters: every week we lunch at the same Italian restaurant, my old prof and I, sharing food, dire warnings about the fall of civilization, reminiscences about riding to school on a horse, history (this week, the time she and a friend had tickets to Dior and Fath), the Colosseum in a time of few tourists, the differences between American and English pronunciation (one word per Friday)  – really, just the two of us rabbiting on enjoying ourselves over a glass of wine, a glass of bourbon and food we can share. In many ways an unvarying routine that is a pleasure to both of us and one that has been minimally impacted by Barny.

Barny after breakfast on the sofa 

A little later

Until two days, that is, when I arrived home to find our front door wide open, debris in the foyer and living room, and Barny gone. My clever whippet, almost eight-months old, has learned how to open doors with lever handles. I was late coming home and, I think, grabbing his harness, which is missing, Barny went looking for me. He got to the floor below, with no access other than elevator (our elevators do, at times, have a life of their own so may've invited him in) where seemingly a neighbor found him, took him to the lobby from where, on receiving my panicked phone call, the office manager took him to her office. 

Barny and Rory

I won't go into the state I was in … had I a butler and he a pantry I'm sure Barny this evening would be securely locked up behind a door with a knob handle and I would be out with my husband eating dinner instead of watching my whippet sleep the sleep of the innocent by my side on the sofa as if he hadn't a care in the world, which I hope he hasn't. 

The Tale of Two Men and Their Whippet – this is family life, indeed.

By the way, I bought my copy of this book here. I make book recommendations because I like to and for no other reason. 

So, we went to Maine

"Barny, I'm trying to write"

  "I help" he said

Morse-Libby House, Portland ME

Italianate Style, 1860 

Architect Henry Austin

To have license, as an individual member of a group at a reception, to roam around an historic house without benefit of docents is a real privilege, believe me, for not to have to listen to the irrelevant and worthless tales of the lives of original and subsequent homeowners is a blessing. Some like to listen to that, I find it a waste of time – give me a caption, a QR code or the like, dump the docents and I'd be happy as a pig in muck, as it were. 

The Turkish smoking room has been fully restored and like all restorations cannot avoid a feeling of inaction – it is as if it awaits a layer of nicotine (many layers of which were removed in the restoration), an echo of male laughter, a glint of polished leather on a footstool, the glow of a cigar and the blue smoke layer swirling around the gasolier.  So brightly lit was the electrified gasolier that evening it seemed someone really was trying to keep a ghost or two at bay. Romance aside, I was reminded that with gas lighting, the fire of diamonds was dulled and only returned with candlelight and, eventually, with electricity. I was glad I left mine in the vault. 

Museum managers need to attract visitors to places and buildings so much in need of upkeep and repair that, inevitably, a decision has been made to attract income from anyone who will pay the entrance fee (I know I'm being simplistic but for the sake of argument, etc) but for those of us who know something of the interiors, furnishings and styles, and do not wish to listen to the kind of populist crap soliciting "oohs" and "ahas" from the gum-masticating congregation with which one finds oneself, the problem is avoiding it. I do tend to wander off and risk being taken to task for stepping out of line (always infuriating to someone) rather than not visiting the places. 

The small dark rectangle towards the top of the left-hand panted panel is not a shadow but a remainder of the original scheme darkened by nicotine, dirt and time

The Pompeiian bathroom (restored) with its rebuilt "thunderbox" water closet and beautiful oilcloth (?) floor

I remarked to some people that much of what I saw in the house – the smoking room and the Pompeiian bathroom especially – brought to mind an English decorator called Geoffrey Bennison and was shocked to find no-one had heard of him. Tail between my legs, I went in search of Rory, found a discussion about religion instead, downed half a glass of white whine and was out of the door, husband on my arm, texting the dog-sitter, and headed to dinner.  Over a glass of bourbon I nattered on, eventually reaching the conclusion that we all have our specialties and … faced with a plate of lobster and gnocchi none of it mattered anyway.  

An effect of light I find so attractive and which the camera lens always resolves more clearly than my eyes allow 

On my Instagram I remark that it took two World Wars and a Modernist coup in schools of architecture to almost wipe out this type of decoration – a gross oversimplification, I know, but Instagram is not a place for essays, blogs are. 

I have used Instagram for itself and as a reservoir for ideas for essays for the blog and now that my whippet Barny is settling down to a less-demanding, if still-exhausting, teenagerdom (at 7 months old) I shall write about what interests me – and it's not always interior design – if spottily.

A lovely trompe-l'œil cartouche, one of many, which I hope will be left in its faded, unrestored state

In Maine

    Rory and I are in Maine for a few days with the Decorative Arts Trust

It had to happen

Oh, someone is being waggish, I thought, on seeing shelves of books, spines to the wall! But it seems not – shaming books has made the big time if only around here. First it was karate-chapping pillows into submission, now it's books being given time-out– we've been 'ere before, thought I. 

But no, for it seems in my rush to find fault I misunderstood the purpose behind what I saw. The writer of the magazine article explains that "The massive Donald Sultan painting commands attention in the family room, where bookshelves provide an architectural and decorative frame to the impactful piece." Though the books themselves are not mentioned, it is clear their role is nothing more than filler in a larger and admittedly beautiful scheme by a good decorator. In fact, they are nothing more than accessories – frankly, white boxes would have done the job just as well. As an aside, I wish people might see the symbolism in what they create for there is a subtext to be understood, be it intentionally written or not.

What one might consider "accessories" have personal significance. The clock. bought as a souvenir of our time in Amsterdam, and the candlesticks were resoluut afgeprijsd in a small shop in the Kerkstraat behind where we lived. The bottle, by Janet Darnell Leach, wife of Bernard has long been treasured

It is hard to say what personal significance a Yaruba crown has for a white northern European beyond the play of light when it seems to emerge from its background. I like it and, believe me, if it were merely a filler of space, I would not have got through the door. 

For me, even the term "accessories" in the context of interior decoration is laughably wrong even though we all use it – it grates in the way "disinterested" is used when "uninterested" would have been correct. Decorators talk about the final layer that pulls it all together or the jewelry of a room, decorette/bloggers take up the refrain and before we know it, there are whole industries geared to producing objets each lacking any charm beyond the glamour loaned by the designer/celebrity name attached to it. Without that borrowed glamour, resin or faux-shagreen is just plastic.

If one looks at synonyms for "accessories," perhaps the most positive is "adornments," with "embellishments" a close second with negativity already implicit. "Doodads" and "trimmings" take it downhill and at "bells and whistles" the bottom is reached. Nonetheless, "accessory" is accepted and you'd think we all know what we mean by it – but I'm not sure we do. Not being one to give in to my feelings of distaste, let me just say that if the equating of decoration with fashion is not as glib as it might seem, then the advice, allegedly given by Coco Chanel “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off" applies equally well to accessorizing a room. Mind you, taking something off, in today's fashion world, might mean … well, it hardly bears thinking about.  

The marble bowls were bought thirty years ago in de Bijenkorf, Amsterdam. The shallow, wider one meant for fruit, the other for bulbs, they have stayed the way they were packed to cross the Atlantic. They look better on the carpet which will return from the cleaner when Barny is full-grown and the room is re-done.

The Indian coverlet is, I hope, a temporary catch-all for dog, dog toys, dog hair, chewing-thingies, and anything that Barny seems to like to accessorize with - socks, shoes, coat hangers, and me.

On any given day our living room floor, now bare of its carpet, is strewn with Barny's things. I won't call them accessories (even though they are temporary) because they are necessary to his mental survival, the continued health of his new teeth and the delicacy of my toes. The latter, because he announces his desire to play by nibbling my toes and if I'm not quick enough off the sofa … you get the picture. The piece of antler apparently is kinder to teeth than rawhide yet to me it feels like stone and is often to be found in one of the Indian marble bowls we bought thirty-odd years ago in Amsterdam. The green velvet dinosaur is used (Barny marches it around in his mouth rhythmically hitting the floor with the squeaker) to announce we've spent too long at dinner and evening playtime should commence. Tennis balls, for my sanity and for the sake of the objects which are personal and, perhaps in more ways than one, valuable, are now inaccessible under cabinets – the image of a whippet flinging itself into the air to catch a ball but inches from candlesticks was not to be borne.

I see, dad, I get, I see, I want, I want, I want,  

It was William Morris who said "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful" – a piece of advice much quoted in Blurbville and as little honored as that quoted earlier from Coco Chanel. The concept of beauty is too diffuse to contend with, and utility is but a matter of fad and poor manufacture (or built-in obsolescence, if you will) so, really, all one is left with is Morris's weasel word "believe." I would only add "believe to have some real meaning for you."

Beautiful, probably not, but significant, certainly, to us. They stood on the cake at the party our friends gave us after we got married.  

The red pot we bought impulsively. Inexpensive and perfectly placed, to my eye, lighting up an alcove – complementary color highlighted with gold, mirror and lucite, glowing most days in the full light of the rising sun.  I notice, as I look at the photograph, its lines echo those of the table beneath it, whilst the legs of the table mirror the legs of the Meiji bronze crab (my zodiac is Cancer) in the foreground, which in their turn referred to in the cabriole legs of the chair – the whole summarized by the exuberant 1940s rococo framed mural. But it would be altogether too designerish to point out that completely fortuitous juxtaposition, don't you think?  

This is about as near as I've come to creating a "tablescape." On the drinks table in the dining room, it was short-lived for once Barny took to investigating it all had to be put away. Lovely idea, tablescaping, if you have time, money and fatuity for it but it does rather beg the question of why you would do it. (I'm still working on that one with Macbeth's "…it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" hovering over my shoulder).  The Royal Copenhagen leaping frog, "found" one day in a closet with a "Oh, I'd forgotten about this" is a delight  (the Celt has always loved frogs).

The best accessories for a room are temporary, should have a scent and likely do not come from a supermarket. Grow your own, or steal from a churchyard, if you have to. 

After ten years of compromise and a lot of use, the room is in need of rethinking, reupholstering, repainting, etc. It's tired and all three of us finally accept it. The significant objects will be included –  the bronze Thai pilgrim will probably stand on a plinth somewhere but the framed map (a copy) in the hall is likely to go.

A dog's life

A surprising (to me) forty seven days ago, I wrote "back soon" at the head of the blog and here I am at the end of summer, after a four-week bout of bronchitis and an outbreak of shingles that I, at first, thought were multiple spider bites from walking Barny in the trees surrounding the duckpond. There's been a lot of time to give thought to … well, just stuff like a new bathroom, redecorating the living room, sending the carpet to be cleaned of whippet tracks, life, love and happiness, and what seems to be the senescence of blogging and the success of its peregrinating and bewitching kin, Instagram.

As I coughed my way through the awful humidity and the noise of construction seemingly as endemic and unceasing as that of insects and traffic, Barny chomped on dried duck poop (not eaten in this family, as I reminded him, for generations), and held relentlessly, if variably, to his food-in-food-out regime every couple of hours, drivers halted for ducks at crossings, some lowering their windows to remark "what a pretty pup," or "what kind of dog is that?" joggers ran, friends died or got sick, dogs and their owners said hello, and, one day, the heron, often to be seen at the pond, took magnificent flight, circled and landed high atop the trees over the crossroads.

Out of sorts and worn out during those weeks, I had plenty of time to read and it quickly became clear I was wasting my time with most interior decorating blogs – unless, that is, I was looking for the same sort of information available to me more quickly and interestingly elsewhere. Magazines advertorial does a better job than ever a blog could, whatever the aspirations the blogger may have. 

Whereas the overriding tenor of interior design blogland is breathlessly sycophantic, in my opinion, the aesthetic is even worse. Who any longer has any taste other than to endorse  a celebrity "design" collaboration? Frankly, if I were to judge by many of the blogs I read, I would say that fashion plays an exclusionary role and conformity rules the day. Some of us rue the day because the implications of this for design, decoration and the environment are appalling.  

I'm so bored with what is happening in American interior decoration as portrayed in the magazines and decorator monographs. As I've said before, it is always the same two variations on themes –  traditional and modern – with one swinging in color between allowed and not allowed and the other never budging from neutrals with a primary color and black.

We do not own any mid-century-modern furniture except a Paul Dunbar bench in the hall and, given the ridiculous prices ($65,000 to-the-trade for a high-backed winged-chair, 1939), its fashionability and copious quantity, it is unlikely we shall have any more of it. It is not just mid-century-modern's popularity that puts me off it – so contrary I'm not – but the rage for it makes me think of a bubble, given that there must have been so much of it manufactured.

Haute couture has its original designers but American (perhaps also European) interior decoration design has been usurped by salesmen and the auction houses. I am of the opinion that whatever the PR people might like us to believe haute décoration, or the knowledge of what residential interior design actually is, has been reduced to nothing more than the marketing of personalities and their wares. Never mind the quality, feel the width.

With all that in mind, I'm turning for a while to Europe to see what is going on there. I have a feeling, and it might be nothing more than bias, that the situation there is a little more loose, more original, less hidebound. As I say, I might be biased but, either way, I could learn a lot – I'm so over being bored.

I've already mentioned architect/interior designer Chester Jones five times and he remains my favorite of the designers working in Britain today, thus I do not intend to exclude him in future. Geoffrey Bennison, though long-dead, is also a firm favorite and his work remains utterly up-to-date and is for all to see in Gillian Newberry's excellent book Geoffrey Bennison: Master Decorator (in its second printing). The work of Mlinaric Henry & Zervudachi is pretty terrific as is the work of Tino Zervudachi in his own right. Jean-Louis Denoit, Alberto Pinto, Christian Liagre come to mind but they are all the subject of monographs – it may be that I'm limited to those books alone. We'll see.

You may wonder why these other photographs are here. The display of blue-and-white is composed of gifts: the tulip pot from employees, the rest from family. Placed on our drinks table, for a while the ensemble cheered the dining room until it became clear Barny (Sleeping Beauty, below), started taking notice and it had to be cleared away. The point of it really is to remind me to write about one day about accessories, memorably compared by one blogger/decorator to the finishing touches to an outfit – in her case an exhortation to buy her trinkets – but, in my opinion, accessories are simply those things which have some meaning to one's life and are not there to glamorize an empty space. But, that is for another day – maybe next time.

The photograph of Barnaby Warboys asleep against my leg as I rest my back on the sofa is about the way a four-month-old whippet pup erupted into my life our lives bringing a complete change. I've had to send the living-room carpet to be washed and stored; the floor is littered with his toys; whoever said whippets don't shed, lied, because the floor … OMG, the floor; I cover the sofa with an old quilt that matches nothing else; Barny's hand-crocheted acrylic yellow-and-white afghan lies in a sunny spot waiting for him to rearrange and snooze on it; we take off our shoes, Barny triumphantly runs with one daring us to come and get it; odd socks are usually found in his bed; my almost-as-expensive-as-my-replacement-MacBook-Air distance glasses made a lovely crunching sound when they were the only thing he found to chew when teething (oh, did I mention the watering can spout?); the maid is staying a lot longer (she'll be coming daily if I get my way. None of this matters for, in the loving, funny, nibbling, happy, bellyrub-loving dog's life that I lead, I would not have it any other way. A dog's life, indeed.

This photograph and accessories are the subject of the next post – unless the creek rises, that is.