Not satisfied ...

I'm trying to find a satisfactory chaise longue, daybed, fainting couch, chase lounge, recamier - call it what you will - for the living room. 

Undoubtedly, the best choice would be something like the one under Pauline Bonarparte, above: Empire, Roman in origin and made by the one of the best Ebénistes. However .... life and the wallet being what they are, I would settle for something equally well proportioned but perhaps with less reference to the Antique. 

Below are my choices so far - well, options more than choices. I'm not thrilled by any of them though I like the black and the wooden ones - third and second from the bottom - the others being so quotidian and, frankly, really rather boring.

 

Where to go from here? 

Any ideas? 

Suggestions? 

Our living room is undergoing a transformation from being the slightly fusty accretion of furniture to something more modern. When I say modern you will understand from the previous posts on favorite rooms that my taste runs to the classic (heck, Brooks Brothers is my ideal of one-stop-shopping and my shoes are made by Arden, so go figure) with a twist, but my partner's taste is much more adventurous. Whereas I am for classic grayed-down color, there isn't a strong bright color or quirky shape he doesn't like.

We've toyed with idea of the Barcelona daybed but both think the Barcelona coffee table is enough of 1920s Modernism for any room outside of a catalog. The Eileen Grey daybed above is from the 1920s but is less of a cliche and there are more beautiful pieces of sitting furniture by Eileen Grey that would fit better but would not offer reclining. 

Reclining is the point. I like to flop when I read but I also like to frequently change position and few of the options shown here allow that. Perhaps the sofa we have is after all the best choice for I can sprawl, one leg over the back and the other hooked over the front of the cushion. It ain't purty but its comfortable! 

The one above is my favorite so far. 

Blue

Morning on our balcony.

Favorites ...

... this time by Veere Grenney, a New Zealander living and working in London. The first photo, again from WOI,  is a view of his light suffused drawing room overlooking the Thames.  The room is centered on the large velvet covered ottoman that interestingly does not preclude using a coffee table in front of the sofa. The two chairs between the ottoman and the windows are by Robsjohn Gibbings and they stand either side of a wonderful Regency table.  Min Hogg, writer of this article and former editor of WOI says ... 

"This apartment, says Veere, is a culmination of his life so far, the expression of his vision, his colours, love of textiles and and importantly as a background for his growing painting collection, in particular his oils and drawings by late British artist Roger Hilton.

The building overlooks the Thames and was constructed originally in the 1880s as a town house for the countess of Wemyss by architect Richard Norman Shaw. It occupies a double plot, and having been converted into flats in the 1920s, its river frontage is as wide as an lateral conversion. Veere has an enfilade of three spacious rooms bathed in the sparkle and glitter of light reflected off the water."

Here, in this vignette of the bedroom, stands Mr. Grenney's desk, a beautiful Louis XV style, apparently made in the 1950s by Jansen for Billy Baldwin. This desk and the white chair, fittingly beautiful to my eyes, are examples of the two streams of design that made the the 20th century so fascinating - the white chair's construction using the latest technology of the 1950s , though in its buttoned back references the 19th century, and the desk reproduces a style of 18th century France. It is that dichotomy between using what is current technology and the nostalgia inherent in looking to history for prototypes that is well illustrated here. 

In fact it what I am talking about is the battle of two giants, Modernism and Tradition, and that battle continues. Sometimes as here in this flat there is a truce: no longer the need to be a hard-line polemicist, if its beautiful and it fits, why not use it? 

In honor of Janet who posted a beautiful photo of gooseberries on her blog JCB, this weeks cocktail ...

Elderflower and Gooseberry Martini

1 tablespoon Elderflower cordial

6 gooseberries

2 ounces gin.

Muddle gooseberries in shaker, add cordial and gin, shake over ice and pour. Elderflower cordial is available at IKEA.

Another favorite ...

... this time from the June 2008 edition of WOI. 

I don't normally like this kind of green/brown coloration - too autumnal perhaps - but this room meets the personal standards I set out in the previous post.  It is contemporary, tailored, spacious, sensual - almost purringly svelte.  The color palette is gratifyingly multi-tonal and I feel the room would look equally handsome photographed in black and white or in sepia.  I understand from the text that the designer chose 15 tones to use on the walls throughout the house - 15 out of a possible 250. In a world where one shade of white, or perhaps a "neutral" is the norm it is refreshing to see an such a cerebral response to color. This isn't the basic color theory! 

The rugs made by V'Soske and designed by Kay Hollar as was much of the furniture.  There are the present-day investment pieces, whether in terms of money, social standing or both: Robsjohn-Gibbings, Vladimir Kagan, Alvar Aalto.  The usual suspects you might say, but they work together beautifully with the artwork, the clean-lined large-scale upholstery and with the architecture. 

The photographer was Richard Powers. 

Favorites, the first of a series ...

... about rooms and decorators I like. 

The value of being a reader, even a collector, of interior design books is that one pretty quickly gets to know favorites - styles, furniture and decorators.  Chester Jones is a favorite of mine and first knew of him when he authored Colefax and Fowler: The Best in Interior Decoration. Quite what was his work in that book is hard to say but I suspect it was the less English Traditional towards the end.  I've learned over the years to appreciate his work from the pages of WOI, the magazine I have been collecting since 1983. 

He is not the only decorator that interests me and as the title says this is the first in a series of rooms I like. There is a similarity to them all which is not to say they are all the same style but they share qualities dear to my design principles, style, and my sense of history. Not one of the rooms is a historical recreation, neither are any contemporary in the narrow sense of being infested with catalogue versions of mid-century or early modernist icons, nor do they veer towards the minimal: yet they do share a certain tailored quality, an appreciation of negative space, an aversion to neutrality -  not talking about earth-tones and beiges here, as you will find them -  and a liking of intellectual juxtaposition enriched by shape, color, texture and tone.  All of them are places I could come home to but would not swap what I have for any of them. 

I love the way that the first photo shows the grid of the walls and its relation to the other objects on it and before it.  Oddly enough it reminds me of the Swiss Grid System used in typography during the 1960s - a structure based on the Golden Section that enabled graphic designers to lay out a page in a proportionate way. That is precisely what is happening here - look at the way that the sofa seam lines up with the grid and the way that the four artworks on it relate to it yet float as if not bound by it and all the other objects, including the sofa relate to the grid either by reinforcing it or breaking it. 

To me one of the most exciting combinations in that room is the 1950s coffee table with the Regence chair - a delicatesse of curve and rectangle.

The grid continues into the dining room where the the dining table and armless chairs were made to live with what the Brits call "carvers", the dining chairs with arms. The sculpture on the sideboard is by Paolozzi and stands in front of a Scandinavian weave. In this room the grid serves as a quiet, soft waxed background.

The room below, the study, has a combination of classically inspired fireplace, Kuba cloth, abstract painting and Fritz Henningsen armchair.  All the art and objects throughout the place are museum quality from various cultures and times and each item is the best of its kind. 

Despite, or because of, the quality of the objects, the overall design, the bespoke tailoring of it all, the place remains a haven of calm, comfort, quiet luxury, and of intellectual enjoyment. 

These photos are from the April 2009 issue of WOI and the photography is by Simon Upton.

Mrs. Gilbert Miller and ...

... the little boy in red, according to Mark Hampton in Legendary Decorators of the 20th Century.

"... for Mrs. Gilbert Miller, the famous Kitty Miller, who was eternally best dressed, very rich, a great, great hostess, and who conducted all of this busy, stylish life in rooms created for her by Billy Baldwin. Her apartment at 550 Park Avenue was enormous and pale and immaculate, exuding that instant sense of fantastic housekeeping which could be perceived the minute you stepped through the door. The big drawing room, which was really two rooms that had been thrown together by Billy, was renowned for the Goya portrait of the little boy in the red suit, which hung on the wall between the windows opposite the fireplace. For half of every year it hung at the Met. Mrs. Millers father, Jules Bache, had left it jointly to her and to the museum. As she grew older, it became annually more difficult for the Met to get the painting back. No wonder! The furniture was French and light in scale, covered in unobtrusive silks in soft tones. The curtains, equally light, were made of striped silk and, rather than having elaborate trims and valances, they were made in the simplest possible way, trimming with a self-stripe and hung from a very plain top molding covered in the same material as the curtains themselves."

Both photos from Billy Baldwin Remembers. 

Benjamin Smith Exhibition

An exhibition of Benjamin Smith's work entitled The Man Who Could Not Forget Mardi Gras  will open at The Twenty21 Collections/Gallery Rodin on Thursday June 4th. 

I have coveted Mr. Smith's drawings for a long time and I now own two - I feel proud to do so as the man draws like an angel, has the skills of a master and is possessed of a quirkily philosophical sense of humor that both entertains and intrigues. 

The gallery is located at 309 East Paces Ferry Road, Suite 110, Atlanta, GA 30305 and the opening reception beginning at 6 PM will last until 9 PM on the date mentioned above.  The exhibition continues through July.