Our yard before

So, my friend leaving just happens to be at the same time my older daughter is returning to school. My daughter has all of a sudden become a young adult over the summer. It has been a learning experience for our whole family. But I am feeling it very acutely.

Our yard with it's new beginning

I have always loved the Fall. It is my favorite season. Not only because it is beautiful here in Sacramento in the Fall with the leaves changing and the air getting that crisp freshness, but because it seems like a time for new things, for possibilities.

Things are looking good

I am wishing my friend at work all good things in her future. I know she will be going places. She is so very talented and very sharp. I am sad to see her go. I will miss her for many reasons. She was always my sounding board for design and ideas. But I know this is good for her.

And for my daughter, I know this will be a year of challenges and opportunities. My hope is that she takes advantage of them with a cheerful and enthusiastic heart. It is all just beginning and I am so excited for her!

And as for me...well...we will see.

Susan Dickenson writing for Home Accents Today reported that the President and CEO of Martha Stewart Living, Susan Lyne, resigned and Mike followed up with some wall street takes on the resignation.

Bev & Mike
Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery

Posted by Lena

Volume Two of  "Lines & Shapes," a series of small books I co-curate with Maria Vettese, came out last week.

This book's theme is "block," and it's dedicated to projects created by our contributing artists. I find the projects so creative and absorbing, and hope that others will too.

But I'm especially fond of a section in the back of this book, where we show some of the artist's "favorite things." I thought I’d share images of these pages, which include favorite corners of the artist's homes and studios, and single objects which make them happy.

And here is one of my favorite things (not included in the book). It’s a framed bird print, purchased by my mom at Sears in the 1970s.

Have a voyeuristic itch to scratch? We do — peeking into homes far more luxe than ours is both a pleasure and tease. Happily, we found a new source on line for some mighty swanky kitchens. Over at epicurious.com, they’ve posted a few video tours of some famous kitchens of people we’d love to have dinner with (especially if they were cooking). Our favorite is Isaac Mizhari, who gushes about all of his kitchen accessories, including bowls from Target, a chic (Alessi?) bread box and his espresso machine. Click here to hang with Isaac and see more.

I was at the beach relaxing without surfing the internet this week, so I had time to soak in some articles and discuss a favorite book while my father was reading it. I thought I’d share. If you have not read The Devil in the White City yet, go order it now! It’s such a well-researched, fascinating look into the Chicago World’s Fair, and into the context of a turbulent and exciting time in American history. Skyscrapers were soaring, unions were forming, cross country and intercontinental travel had become a reality, Frederick Law Olmsted was turning flat abandoned sites into rambles and lagoons*, electricity was thrilling, Wild Bill Cody was performing his Wild West Show to record crowds, and well, I’ll save the rest as a surprise. I had studied the Columbian Exposition first in American Studies and again in architecture school, but I did not know a fraction of what this great book taught me. I can’t imagine such feats of engineering, construction and bureaucratic/political nightmare budget solutions could ever be repeated today.

**

The Wall Street Journal featured a scathing and really well-written review of the Jeff Koons retrospective at the The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. I just love this cynically bored bit from Tom J. Freudenheim:

But if, like me, you’ve wondered what all the Koons-fuss was about, MCA’s flashy and even sparkling retrospective won’t persuade you of his significance. Indeed, the wall text can only be described as a generic narrative: “[insert the artist of your choice] mirrors society’s obsession with popular culture and negates simple divisions between appearance and reality, surface and depth, and art and commodity.” That Koons’s work “blurs the distinction between art and commercial objects as well as high and low art” further places him in the category of the ordinary.

I loved this wacky “Funny Farm” feature from today’s New York Times. Roy McMakin’s work is kinda Rem Koolhaas meets Quaker? I’m not sure, but I like it.

This is the craziest rotating structure I’ve seen since Hank’s LookAround Cafe. OK, if you get that reference, I want to marry you. Anyway, on the flight home I caught this NYT article about Francois Massau, a Belgian builder who built this rotating house in the fifties, and seemed to have a bit of Howard Roark in him. Read the full article here.

I HAVE to include one blog post I just spied: So Sylvie’s sourcing for the Mama Mia set design look. I was DRAGGED to that movie; I find listening to people sing in movies incredibly uncomfortable. It’s all Edward Norton and Woody Allen’s fault. Anyway, check out this dreamy post from So Sylvie.

*(EVERY THING you see in the above photo was built, including the lagoons, the island, the buildings, and the trees were all planted for the exhibition, etc.)

** I’m not even going to try and mess with the copyright issues related to sharing photos from the Koons exhibition; click on the MCA link above to see them online. I would have used Michael Jackson and Bubbles if I could have.

• Columbian Exposition photo from either Shepp’s World’s Fair Photographed, Chicago and Philadelphia, 1893, and from Glimpses of the World’s Fair Through a Camera, Chicago, 1893; it’s not clear which, but go to Boston College’s website to see more mind-blowing photographs of the fair!

• funny farm photo by Jason Schmidt for The New York Times

• rotating house photo by Jock Fistick for The New York Times (or maybe the Wavre Journal?)
• Mama Mia photo from Cinema Blend via So Sylvie.

We will be seeing the famous Lone Cypress tree:

Visiting the Cannery in Monterey:

Shopping. Did you even doubt it?

Hitting the spectacular Monterey Bay Aquarium (I think there is an interiors color scheme here):

I love seeing the Carmel Mission:

And downtown Carmel is full of shopping: art, antiques, boutiques and restaurants (a little spendy all the way around, but sometimes you find a treasure you can't live without!):

Carmel is famous for it's artist colony, and there is no need to wonder why:

We plan to do some of this:

And visit Julia Pfeiffer State Beach in Big Sur (if there is time!):

So I wish you all a wonderful long Labor Day Weekend! I will be back on Monday....late.

BYE!

All photos from flickr

Have you ever noticed how Chinese ancestral portraits seem to grace many stylish interiors? Once I spotted them in one interior, it seemed that I started to see them everywhere. Of course, the paintings found in the interiors below were used strictly for decorative purposes, and I can certainly see why. There is something very dignified and regal about these portraits, and they also seem to add a little touch of Eastern exoticism to their surroundings. But what we shouldn't forget is that the purpose of these paintings was anything but decorative.

Ancestral portraits were long an important part of a Chinese culture which revered and worshipped family ancestry. From what I've read, it seems that these paintings were commissioned by family members not just out of respect for their forebears, but also out of fear. A disgruntled ancestor might be tempted to become a ghost and make life difficult for the living. In order to prevent this from happening, and to elicit good will and fortune, the portraits were worshipped by family members either in their homes or at family temples. Ceremonies, which at times included offerings to the ancestors as well as kowtowing, were often performed before these portraits.

So with this in mind, here are a few of the interiors that I have found which display these ancestral portraits. In a way, it seems that even today these portraits still command respect and awe, much as they did centuries ago.

(If any of you are experts on Asian art and wish to add to this, please do so by commenting- I would love to learn more about these portraits.)



Frances Elkins used them in a few of her projects, including one of her most famous: the library of Mr. and Mrs. Kersey Coates Reed. I think the portrait looks smashing against the Hermes goatskin paneled wall.


Jean-Michel Frank tried his hand at stage design in this set from "Les Fleurs des pois". The Chinese portrait rather dominates the set.


Yves Saint Laurent was obviously a fan.


Here are a pair of Chinese ancestral portraits in a contemporary setting- the living room of Liz and Steve Weinstein, decorated by Miles Redd (photo from Elle Decor; photographer Simon Upton)

Image at top: A pair of ancestor portraits, c. 1700-1800. From the collection of the Victoria and Albert