The ‘Grand Design’…

I’ve been thinking about Edith Wharton; writer, observer, denizen of the social set. The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Also designer, decorator, and author of the treatise on interior design, ‘The Decoration of Houses’, an argument in favor of simplicity and balance… ⁣

Arrange the flowers, admire the horses, play with the dogs …

I was rearranging furniture, making final touches on a display of striped taper candles, and generally fussing over the look of the shop. I’d been open for two weeks when he walked in — tall, slim, a little bent, tweed sport coat, plaid tie, waxed wooden cane…

Scott and I met in an Introduction to Sociology class, when we were both still trying to navigate the vastness of the school and I was debating whether Foucault was really the right choice for me…

I wrote this a few years ago and it popped up in my ‘memories’ today. 

Have you ever jumped double dutch? When I was a kid we lived in the projects on the lower East side, near the Henry Street Settlement. The girls in the neighborhood who jumped double dutch were the cool girls, the ones to follow.

I got my love of modern art from my Grandmother, along with her art books on Henry Moore, the collection of gallery catalogs she carried home from her travels, and a few pieces of her work…

Perspective. 

I found myself at the hospital on Friday. The next time you are having one of those days where it seems everything is going wrong — the lid to the blender wasn’t securely in place, you left five minutes late after cleaning up the mess and then hit traffic, the guy in the Hummer (who still drives those?) cut you off, or whatever annoyances in your life decide to convene all at once on your day, go walk through a hospital lobby.

Someone asked me today if I was an artist, and my first inclination was to say ‘No’. These days I mostly arrange other people’s art, or help others choose art, and perhaps that in itself is an art,

Every now and then a visitor notices the chewed-up chair in my dining room. Tucked under the table, it isn’t obvious, but once spotted it is seemingly out of place. Some have even offered to fix it for me.

But I will never fix that chair.

Because not everything is perfect. 

Many of us are working from home these days, and it can be difficult to separate the work we do for a living from the work we do to live. The distractions of the house abound. That’s why we need to create a place just for work. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed the stream of pink couches and teal upholstered beds in your news feed. After years of greige, color is having a moment.

New clients often reach out when they don’t have a sense of what their own style is, or the confidence to carry it forward. Creating a living space that feels warm, welcoming, organized, and easy to be in involves a combination of figuring out the best use of the space, and filling it with the things (and only the things) you love, find useful, and reach for on a regular basis.