Showing posts with label interior design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interior design. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

How to Cultivate A Garden Lifestyle: Homegrown Taste, Garden-To-Glass Style ~ Highlights from My Talk at NKBA

                
                                

Few things can equal the joy of talking to a group of hard-working, artful professionals about how to live a Garden Lifestyle ~ while enjoying the journey along the garden path. 

Recently I had that distinct honor and pleasure; speaking to the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA) Manhattan members in the delicious Sub Zero/Wolf/Cove Gotham showroom. 

As an “expert” on the NYC food and drink world, I was asked to share my “secrets” about my farm-to-table and garden-to-glass life ~ brimming with plants, pollinators, style and love.  

Here’s a snapshot of that “ground-breaking” talk. 


Saturday, September 9, 2017

See You at NYDC "What's New, What's Next" Finishing Touches Design Presentation at In House

2016-05-25 20.06.17.jpg
Garden To Glass Couture Cocktail from Finishing Touches: The Art of Garnishing the Cocktail - Homage to Hacienda Cusin Hummingbirds 

Next week, the glitterati from the worlds of design will gather for the annual “What’s New, What’s Next” event to kick off the fall design season at the New York Design Center (NYDC.)

I’ve attended this decor limned gathering to learn and report on the many showroom brand introductions, talks, and the inspired, creative juggernaut of materials and products, as well as design concepts and trends.

So you can imagine how thrilled I am this year to be co-hosting an event at the In House Kitchen, Bath, Home showroom!

I’m over the moon to work with the creative forces that make up the In House team of Dave, Leah, and Mary and to share top billing with the extraordinary interior design talent of Toni Sabatino - who recently launched her own Retro Collection line of vanities to great success with the Italian design brand, Baden Haus.

In House’s Dave Burcher told me he’d been waiting for my book, Finishing Touches: The Art of Garnishing the Cocktail to work together again. (We collaborated on the Food of the Future NKBA talk, where I was honored to be a featured speaker).

I am honored to work with this extraordinary team again -- everything they do is top-drawer (had to go for the pun -- In House showcases closets, drawers and cabinets!), quality, and well, just so artful and glamorous.

With those qualities in mind, I choose two cocktails and their food pairings that I think are especially suited to the design motif:
  • Heart of Gold


  • And Sweater Weather cocktail, created by mixologist Jessica Wohlers.




We’re having lots of synergistic fun tying in the twin themes of ingredients, design, and finishing touches embellishments!

I look forward to seeing you September 14, at In House. Thank you In House and Wood-Mode.

2017 WNWN Evite.jpg

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Private Edens, Landscape Design, & Edible Gardens at NYDC "What's New, What's Next"


Private Edens, Jack Staub


Oh, it was glorious – perfect sneak peek to fall weather, eager design mavens streaming into the New York Design Center (NYDC) building for a day that is so chock-a-bloc with activities that it is surely some design alchemy that renders it possible in a domino or Dwell magazine kind of sleek package.

Kiss, kiss.
Everyone is happy to meet up with their design friends at the sixth annual “What’s New, What’s Next” at 200 Lexington.  
Even the elevators are like a moving salon – with design bonhomie and professional exchanges on what to see and visit. Or not…

There are seminars, book signings, lectures, food and drink, and lots of new product introductions. Every showroom offers a special surprise and artful fetes.

I was there to see and support my garden friend, Virginia Newman from the “creators of distinctive garden pots” company, Pennoyer Newman  


The company – run by two great women: Cecily Pennoyer and Virginia Newman Yocum -- makes extraordinary garden art inspired by and cast from pedigreed estate and court urns and planters.


This year, Virginia really outdid herself!












The theme was a Kentucky-Derby, southern/horsey one (Virginia is a great horsewoman)  – complete with too-delicious mint juleps,
cuisine,
and even a Dixie band.
When I got to the Pennoyer Newman showroom door, greeted by the effervescent Virginia, I laughed gleefully, saying, “A funeral dirge, Virginia??” 
She laughed too, admonishing me to just wait (the music did pick up), while ushering me in for an introduction to author and gardener, Jack Staub.



Staub was there signing his exquisite book, Private Edens Beautiful Country Gardens with photography by the esteemed, recognized garden photographer, Rob Cardillo

So it turned into a kind of “old home week” or a “garden network,” if you will.
 
See, I know Rob from my work at the Botanical Gardens where he does so much of the artful garden photography for the cultural institutions' calendars, books, and annual reports. 
Jack has known Rob “For a long time.  He came out to Hortulus about 20 years ago to photograph,” Staub explained.

I learned Virginia is on the Hortulus board.

And upon learning that Jack’s 100-acre Hortulus Farm in Bucks County (where I once lived) is the inspiration for Pennoyer Newman’s new Hortulus Farm Vessel 

and the company’s series of Hortulus Farm XL Vessels, I made the connection to Jack’s partner, Renny Reynolds, who is a landscape designer and a Gotham-based floral designer and entertainment guru.
I adore his artful, fanciful, floral streetscapes and I know Reynolds from his work as a Brooklyn Botanic Garden board member. 


Jack was billed as an author, gardener and philanthropist.
When they told me that part of the proceeds from the book sales will go to provide coats for the homeless in Bucks County, I cheekily teased Jack that we know there are no homeless there…
Bucks County is decidedly a more wealthy country house kind of place.

And in fact, the Private Edens coffee table book is resplendent with its subtitle “Beautiful Country Gardens.”


The tome is a hefty, “Look Book” -- its more than 250 pages imbued with 27 breathtaking, classically beautiful gardens of the Mid-Atlantic: Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Think of Jack as a private tour guide, leading you through these grand gardens. 
His text is a profile of the homeowner and their passion for designing their Eden, their special, personal arcadia. 

You can also read about the abundant plant palette, hardscape, and architecture.
From an overview or 35,000-foot perspective.

What’s so special about the manuscript is how it is written.
It’s presented in a way you would hear if sitting across from the landscape maestros, sipping a glass of champagne while learning about their garden’s history, design challenges, and triumphs. 

This is not a DIY or How-To book.

It’s an artful, poetic discovery of a garden-infused lifestyle and the dreamers who created their private paradise.  
Private Edens garden

Jack makes us see and feel their emotional, visceral attachment to their home and their connection to nature.
The gorgeous, picture-postcard images will have you leafing through the book over and again for inspiration or aspiration. Or both.  
Private Eden gardens


In the book’s overleaf is written what I assume to be Jack’s insight into his philosophy about the gardens featured in the book.
In part it reads, “In the end, what I discovered was that despite their considered differences… three things seemed to define them all …the essential H’s of Eden making: Heart, Home, Horticulture…”

He could’ve easily added, Hortulus…

I asked Jack if he had a favorite garden in the book.  While he looked a tad uncomfortable naming just one, he did finally cite the Cockeysville, Maryland garden as “Just fantastic – a revelation.” 
Referred to as “Harmonious Convergence” in the book’s chapter heading, I can see why he’d choose this one, as I perused and reflected on this East meets West, four-season utopia. 
Abundant in its presentation is a reverence for the land, the spirit of the place touches you; the pages seem to whisper an invitation to look, to walk among the thousands of trees and along the ponds and admire the Asian artifacts.
Jack writes, “Island beds adhere to the Japanese philosophy of dry garden making, “ creating a garden” being actually couched in Japanese as “Setting stones upright.”

Enjoy this armchair “garden stroll” through Private Edens.

Jack is also the author of the “75” series of edible gardening books, including 75 Exceptional Herbs for Your Garden and 75 Remarkable Fruits for Your Garden. 

When I asked him which of his “75” books was his favorite, he answered this query right away with no hesitation.
His favorite is his first “75” book: 75 Exciting Vegetables for Your Garden.

He said the books were out of print but that this one is probably available on eBay for $125.00!  I gasped.  How could this be?
We threw around how rare books fetch high prices...
However, I did find the book on Amazon – the Kindle edition – for $7.99. 
Much better for my wallet.

In fact, all of the “75” series are available via the Kindle edition. 

In a follow up email, I asked Jack why 75? Was there some significance or magic associated with the number 75?

Turns out, 75 was more of a “Goldilocks” kind of metric – arrived at because: “100 seemed too many and 50 too few, and 75 was just idiosyncratic enough.”  
Ahhh, just right.

Furthermore, Jack wrote, “The whole idea was to produce a set of very old fashioned looking and reading books, based on a number of English Arts and Crafts models. The books are small volumes with beautiful illustrations, typeset, covers and endpapers, readable prose, and old-fashioned titles.”

Love that attention to detail.
 
Design Detours

Seduced by the Kravet fabrics I could see inside their glass showroom – looking like a dreamscape inside a snow globe, and a talk that looked like it was just getting underway, 


I took an empty seat and was delighted to learn about West Coast designer Jeffrey Alan Marks, his design projects, and his new line of ocean and water inspired licensed collection for Kravet. 

Not a fan of reality TV, I didn’t recognize the handsome designer (is that redundant?  All designers seem to have the beauty gene imbedded in their DNA. Like architects who all wear those heavy black eyeglass frames. It’s a sign of their tribe.)
Ha.

Marks is a designer from “Bravo’s popular series, Million Dollar Decorators.  

 
I don’t know anything about the show.
Marks and the Kravet executive peppered their collection intro with talk of Kathryn Ireland, no-named clients (Lindsay Lohan?) and the Hamptons, so I learned a little.
Enough to know I don’t like this kind of television entertainment so very much.


However, I very much do like Marks’ collection for Kravet. 
The watery-inspired fabrics are dreamy, glamorous and mostly in serene-looking shades of Marks’ favorite color: blue. 




Later, at the suggestion of my multi-talented, Homegrown Cookbook interior designer/kitchen designer and decorator friend, Toni Sabatino I headed up to InHouse Kitchen Bath Home.  

I know Toni is super successful because when she finishes a client’s kitchen project, she presents my autographed book, The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook perched on the new kitchen counter or island, to her happy clients.
Trust me when I say she buys a lot of books from me.  Hats in the air to Toni!

Here I not only met up with Toni and her Area Aesthetics design friend, Peggy Berk, but she also introduced me to a new design friend, Dave Burcher, Certified Kitchen Designer with InHouse Kitchen Bath Home
According to the company’s literature, InHouse was showcasing their “new designer color program with 31 exciting new designer colors in solid opaque and distinctive glazed vintage finishes.” 
I could see the beautiful cabinets and armoires boasting detailed craftsmanship.


Burcher and his team were serving lovely platters of hors d’ouevres and wines from his Williamsburg neighborhood, Brooklyn Winery
I like very much that Burcher pursues all things local and homegrown. 
We’re gonna talk…

It was a Garden Glamour kind of afternoon. 


Then it was on to the Metrohort meeting at the Central Park Amory for a talk on what else: more gardens!

Friday, June 8, 2012

Home Renovation Diary Update


The calendar for home renovation seems to be in a similar class as that of dog years. 
Or a space-time continuum.  
It’s just that things go slow, then swoosh along, only to hit a pothole, before racing full steam ahead.  It’s like a motorcar that stops and stalls – but the driver knows he’ll push the throttle and get this baby home!

The Home Renovation Diary Update marks the successful completion of the painting in the home’s addition, and on to the delivery of the reupholstered living room furniture that is styling new shades of a cadet or sea blue for the slipper chair  

and the kitchen island stools, and a softer shaded trompe l’oeil of subtle cornflower to sky blue set off with marquis patterned top-stitching with yellow to gold dot joints (that pick up the kitchen and fireplace and fireplace wall of creamy yellow and gold, respectively, for the two love seat couches – to accessorize the blue bay beyond the living room’s composition  window view perch.



I ordered the kitchen stools online from Ballard Designs.  They are the nicest, most helpful team of decorating professionals. 
The only slight snafu is that I ordered the custom fabric from the local upholstery pro in order to match the living room slipper chair – and he recommended some yards less than Ballard suggested.  He said he only used a little under five yards for the entire chair so couldn’t imagine that they would need near eight for the back and seat cushion.  So I urged Ballard to talk to their outsourced upholstery professional and get them to be more realistic – especially at more than $45 a yard. 
It all worked out and in less than a month or so, the completed stools arrived.

Of course the delivery had to be the morning I was racing to catch the ferry back into town.  And I was waiting for the decorative painter, Stacey, who was designing and completing the wall art, transitioning the loft room color to the garden dining room color.  More on that in a second.

UPS must have smelled my urgency, waiting like a cunning cat till I was at the point of departure, when he knocked the door and fled like a schoolboy prankster.
Now I had to bring in those four huge boxes because my fairy housemothers, aka Mother and Aunt Margaret, wouldn’t have been able to quickly maneuver them inside nor would that be fair to them…  So like a longshoreman, I hauled them in and raced down to the ferry dock – but not before ripping open a box top to peek inside and enjoy my first looks at the lovely new blue counter stools, complete with metal foot kicker, dark brown wood legs and base and silver grommets to match the kitchen appliances.
All the better to sit and enjoy the sky-like blue - complete with clouds - of the marble kitchen island, the cook in the kitchen, and the New York skyline on the other side. 
Yes, the stools turn and spring back to crisp attention.

Blue upholstered stools highlight the blue marble of the kitchen island


I didn’t leave the starting line in my race to catch the ferry before wishing Stacey well on her redo of the wall art transition. 

The wall art started off as a brilliant design concept – dreamed up by me J 
I thought I could capture the extraordinary color transitions from the sunrises and sunsets that we bask in at our home on the water. 
Sunrise from the right and the sunsets from the left are both dazzling, shimmering performance art -- and the color transitions embrace the rainbow spectrum.
I especially wanted to capture that blue to orange syncopation.  

The loft room is Benjamin Moore Dix Blue – mirroring the blue-green water beyond and the patina of the copper I left on the fireplace that was the outside but is now the inside wall. 

The Garden Dining Room is the Martha Stewart Sherbet/Gold shimmering color and texture described in the Garden Glamour Home Renovation Diary Update April

With the two rich colors and the bay view beyond, combined with all the sensual elements in between, I dreamed up an ombre color transition between the two spaces.
 
I tried it out with the wall paints on a spare sheetrock sample. 
It came out good, if I do say so myself! (I also do watercolors and I’ve been told that my final colored landscape design “blueprints” are like works of art.  Some of my clients frame them.)
Everyone liked my ombre.
I couldn’t wait to add my personal Georgia O’Keefe artwork to our home and join the lads painting away on other parts of the addition. Ha!
Alas, it was not meant to be. 
Shockingly, I discovered I have a kind of vertigo.  I’m afraid of few things, and this was most embarrassing to learn that without a railing up (too early for that), I couldn’t lean over, or even get close to the edge of the loft in order to render my ombre… Even if Bill held my waist, which is really no pose for a working artist, anyway. 
This was a big setback in more ways than one.

But Roy, the painter was magnanimous, saying no harm in the vertigo admission. In fact he knew of someone who he thought could do the job. 
Crunch to the budget. I hadn’t planned on this expense…

Soon enough, we were working with Stacey.   
She seemed confident, talented, possessed a great online portfolio – and most important, was not afraid of heights.

She saw my painted design sample and said no problem.  We exchanged some emails during the week about the design.  We wanted a small footprint between the rooms, as there is nothing separating the rooms.
I didn’t want someone to walk into the room and exclaim about wall art – as divine as it could be in it’s own right – but rather to admire the soaring ceilings, the sunlight or moonlight streaming in – and that glamorous Martha precious metals sherbet wall color we’d worked so hard to achieve.

Not to diminish the decorative art, but we didn’t want a mural.
I realize ombre takes space, but thought we could modify the process to suit our needs. 
PDF rendering of suggested ombre for wall scanned in on actual wall & colors. Declined. Too much!


By the end of the week, we thought we got it, despite some rather elemental pdf visuals where Stacey took the sunrise image and compressed it on the digital image of the wall. 
With fingers crossed, and hopes high, the following Saturday was art-in-the-addition day. 
We had agreed that an ombre like solution could be a series of the rooms’ colors: blue, peach, pinkish, and sherbet -- blending or morphing into one another – from the blue to the sherbet.  Nice, gentle transitions – like the horizon at sunrise…

I spent the time writing upstairs in the La Boheme-like garret that was and soon will be again: the guest room; while Bill worked putting on the door handles in the addition room below the loft where Stacey was creating. 

The art work didn’t start off too good. In fact, there was an initial whoopsie that took my breath away. 
As Stacey started up the ladder with paint can in one hand and brush in the other, the ladder started to slip away off the loft!  I was speechless, gesturing to Bill with my hands. Stacey had so much presence. Rather than go back down, which is natural I think, she scampered UP the ladder as it slipped away.  If this hadn't been so loaded with disaster, it would have been acrobatic entertainment.

With breathing restored and all precautions reviewed, we were back to our stations.
I never want to oversee or make the professional artisans or trades nervous with someone looking over their shoulder so if I’m home, I make sure to stay out of their way.
Later that afternoon, with the work finished, it was time for the look-see inspection.  I was filled with trepidation. Just like when Roy called me to see the finished sherbet painting.
Unlike that inspection that yielded heart-holding joy, this one was more of an “oh dear.” 
I was tilting my head. Looking at it from different sides.  But it was so much like a rainbow!  The colors were too distinct. Too obvious. No nuance.  With courtesy and caution, Stacey and I reviewed and she said she could remedy it. 

Back to the garret.  An hour or so later: another call to have a look-see.  My heart sank. Same reaction.  Instinctually, I didn’t like it.  Stacey knew it.  We couldn’t look at each other.  The deed was done. 
It was getting late – near cocktail hour.  We agreed we’d live with it a bit. 
We did. For less than a week. 
We asked Stacey to come up with some other solutions.  She did.  She sent us this. 
We agreed to do in our colors.

She returned the next week and redid the wall (for more guilders), after we had to have Roy come back and redo the primer.
The result is it is beautiful, original art and is a conversation piece – in a good way.




We love it.

You?

The “little things” make a BIG difference.










Monday, April 30, 2012

My Sheepskin from Benjamin Moore!



Certificate of Completion

Leeann Lavin
Has successfully completed the course listed below:

COURSE DETAILS

Title: Color Pulse
IDCEC Course Number: 40030 CEUs .1
AIA Course Number – BM40030 CEUs 1.0
Designation: General Knowledge
Instructor/Author: Andrea Magno


Date of Issue: April 26, 2012

Andrea Magno
Manager, Designer Segment
Benjamin Moore & Co.