curtain rods made out of pipe and other good ideas

understated but truly elegant curating on the part of a cobble hill couple... love love love love love the use of plumbing pipe and burlap for curtains in the living room.



images via nytimes.

great site: beauty is a thing of the past

I've been fascinated by a new blog discovery recently: Beauty is a Thing of the Past. All sorts of amazing images of hair "sculpting" from 1700s to the 70s. enjoy!

(this particular image taken from skaro, a site I found via b.i.a.t.o.t.p.)

silk felt soil dips its toe into the waters of midcentury modern....and finds the temperature quite lovely!

news:

i bought a loveseat!

I'm only going to post this teeny weeny pic of it because I don't want to BLIND you guys. I admit, it's not its most charming self at the moment. But doesn't it have potential...? soo many ways we could go with this little one.

mini-project: gilding large stones for table-top book weights

Grace's mini-guide to paperweights excited me way more than is probably normal and/or healthy.

This particular knobbly gold nugget paperweight, priced at around $140, got me thinking... how difficult would it be to apply gold leaf to stones? and how beautiful and easy wouldn't that be?

One could do big, melon-sized stones and place them on books on a coffee table...! definitely my next project: headed off to Michaels this week for some gold leaf.



[By the request of Ms. Johnson, the images of her gilded stones, which I had cropped in such a way as to conceal her cherry-on-top addition of opalescent snail shells, have been removed.]

why don't you... carve out a gallery space with painted stripes?

Spotting this image of built-in display shelves, (designed by Todd Romano, Jan '07 Elle Decor), I was suddenly inspired. One doesn't need built-ins to create a graphic display to showcase a collection -- probably not platters, but hats; mirrors; or prints/ photos.... It would be fairly simple to 1) put up some molding to frame a blank section of wall; 2) paint three wide stripes, and 3) display your pieces in 3 x 6 grid. Optional, 4) Take a cue from Romano, and center the largest pieces.

It would be really beautiful to paint light stripes on dark walls. . .

why don't you.... paint your floors white with black stripes, a la cecconis in london?

{s w o o n}.


see here for another take on black and white design with emerald accents.

our Twombly has arrived from Sotheby's! (kind of).

Back in December I mentioned that I was coveting a huge piece of slate to put up in the living room like a pseudo-painting. Well, we might be almost there!

Over the weekend, my mom and I took a roadtrip up to Maine, & on the way back home yesterday evening, we stopped in Kennebunk to check out Old House Parts, an architectural salvage shop, to see their inventory of vintage blackboards. Prices were a little bit prohibitive, but we still managed to bring back a decent sized piece of slate to hang up in living room over what will become a "games" table/ dining table. I figure it will look pretty all on its own, and when friends come over to play bridge (wink wink Roxy), we can use it to keep score.
Will post some pictures in August, when it's up!

(image of Mariette Himes-Gomez's kitchen blackboard via NYSD.)

over the desk

what's over your desk? a personal composition?


a blank slate?


monochromatic photos?


2 mirrors?


or "lamper fra ikea"?



image sources will be up this afternoon.

DIY art... black and white illustrations

this is one of the excellent illustrations by mary shepard from the dark classic by p.l. travers. (it feels Kate Spade-ish to me.. like an image from "Things We Love".) i like it a lot with the text hanging suggestively above, and am thinking of enlarging it massively and hanging up in our entry. . . or perhaps over our bed.



i have always adored this one too.

dong kingman, zao wou ki: mid-century poster art and illustration

Mid-century illustration and watercolor touch me on a very personal level because i grew up reading over and over again the picture books of my parents' generation (1940s-1960s), which they had saved, and loved to see me enjoying as they had. So the chaos of color and the shapes and typefaces and all of it is like coming home.

Dong Kingman is one of our great mid-century watercolorists. I hope these travel posters give you a surge of excitement as they do for me.

(The first for sale here, and the second here; or try this ebay print for a more wallet-friendly version of the 2nd.)


I love this one too, so so much, a 1968 lithograph by the abstract painter Zao Wou Ki.


DIY tip: if you enjoy this style of mid-century graphic design and illustration, try scanning an image from a children's book of the period and framing it (I'll be doing this in the next couple of weeks!). There are so many possibilities; try checking out the wonderful Flickr group, Retro Kid; or browse the Japanese site, CurioShop, for thumbnails of a truly stunning collection of mid-century illustrators and their work.





... et finalement, joyeux anniversaire à mon cher papa, et à la belle mathilde aujourd'hui!

kitchen reno: we're on Smallest Coolest AT:Kitchen!

some fun news today! our kitchen is up on AT:kitchen! it would be so great to hear from you all, in comments and.. of course... votes!

here is the link to "Phoebe's Crisp Organic Kitchen"

... update later today with some more details and so on....
x,
P

indoor pegboard garden

a modern alternative to the windowsill garden.

how cool! how counterintuitive!

i think i might make the hardware a bit more subtle, and consider color alternatives to the white background. how about celadon green with ferns for an early summer look? or if you live in LA, a shock of hot pink with aloe, cacti, and other desert plants? fun to think about the possibilities, and easy to implement....

thanks to misstana's flickr page for the image and the idea!

spring fever: stencil project

whew!!!

i've been really industrious at home, organizing and sorting like mad-- my version of spring cleaning. happily, i'm about ready to start one of the projects that i'm really excited about: stenciling a coffee table. I've never done this before, so it should be fun! Here are the components of the project that I've decided upon so far:

* white high gloss oil paint as background, black paint for image/letters.

* stencil will be hand-made by me, and extra large, by way of a projector.

* stenciled image will probably come from an antique book of mine from childhood, but could be something like this...



though i think i'm going to try for something a wee bit more simple. this ceramic jar from speller milner is inspiring me right now so much...:




i will update you-- should be done next weekend!

some of the stencil resources i've been using:
*how to make huge stencils using a projector
*AT's good question on stenciling
*craftster's comprehensive list of stenciling resources & info

(has anyone ever done a stencil project using a handmade stencil? would love to hear about it....)

recycled design DIY: affordable salvaged wood slabs in the rough

Continuing our look at recycled design, I couldn't pass this up. Urban Tree Salvage is a Canadian company that salvages trees from cities that would otherwise be put in the chipper or burnt. The good news: they sell their beautiful eco-furniture on Vivavi.....
And the better news?
you can buy their product unfinished for very affordable prices-- starting from around $200. And look of the size of them: do you see the cute little hands holding up this wooden slab? Most slabs are available with a "live" edge (with bark) and the smaller the slab, the better the chances that both sides can come with live sides. (I only wish there were more of these companies-- particularly ones in the Northeast!)

First image courtesy of BDDW.