Indholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2021 i MILIEU

In the spirit of summer, we wanted to treat you, our readers, to another imaginative story produced by our European Style Editor, Katrin Cargill, and her creative team of Simon Brown, photographer, and Harald Altmaier, floral designer. The idea for this editorial shoot started with a classic tea towel and hand-painted dishes. From there it blossomed as Katrin selected tableware and tea towels from manufacturers, retailers, and antiques dealers all over the world. She and her team fabricated curtains, slipcovers, table skirts, and bedding using the various tea towels, yet she also kept the towels in the form intended for their original use: to dry washed dishes. Katrin shared a live video with us as her team feverishly transformed the original Plain English Kitchen studio, which is now their headquarters,…

The world has changed, and the way we travel has changed. After months of relative isolation, many of us are hungry for a change of scenery, trying to imagine a vacation that still allows for some social distance. What the options we’ve suggested here all have in common is the opportunity to experience the soothing beauty and tranquility of nature, with all its renewing and restorative power. These locales also offer the novelty of lodging in an unusual structure, each one integrated into an environment where you might not expect fine linens, Wi-Fi, and a minibar. These destinations offer a wholly different experience than perhaps any you’ve had before. And whichever option you choose—and whether you plan to travel with family or alone—this is definitely not your typical camping trip.…

Nicola Bertellotti could be accused of breaking and entering. But in his defense, rather than the act being a crime, he makes it instead into an art form. The Italian photographer is a chronicler of the abandoned and the forgotten—villas and hotels, palazzi and manor houses, many of which are in Italy, but also elsewhere in Europe. Through the lens of his digital camera, Bertellotti understands that ruins can be the most complete of structures, able in their partial states to evoke the full histories of their architecture and occupants who were once present. As he says of his work, “Houses have their soul.” In entering the neglected buildings, Bertellotti breaks all rules about photographing only perfect interiors. He lives in the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta, one of the many…

One of the freshest events of the spring season was the opening of Samuel & Sons’ new Dallas showroom (their fifth showroom worldwide). The intimate affair offered the Dallas design community an opportunity to tour the facility and meet the team of family-owned Samuel & Sons, including Cohen family members who continue their trimming legacy established more than seventy-five years ago. Milton DePaul, Creative Director at Samuel & Sons, fashioned décor to reflect MILIEU’s spring cover story featuring Samuel & Sons trim. Everything—from the botanical-infused beverages and cookies served, to the table décor, and even the gift bags—was about flowers and trim. For more images, visit milieu-mag.com…

AMONG THE MANY common interests interior designer Beth Webb shares with her husband, Chuck Hanavich, is a love of design and antiques. So, even though she finds designing for herself to be the ultimate challenge, when the two purchased a dated pied-à-terre in the Buckhead district of Atlanta a couple of years ago, they managed to transform it into a posh retreat with relative ease by working closely together. “It’s like our alter ego,” Webb says of the two-bedroom dwelling, which is situated in a coveted boutique condominium building known as 31 Muscogee, a residential structure that was designed by a protégé of Atlanta’s prominent Jazz Age architect Philip Trammell Shutze and built in 1962. “The building has an old world sensibility with classical scale and proportions. It contains only…

Fern Santini Fern Santini opened her namesake design firm in 1993 in Austin, Texas, specializing in residential interior design. In addition to projects she has completed across the country, she founded Fern Santini Collaborative three years ago, which focuses on building and completely furnishing custom-curated homes that are later put on the market. The first project, 3705 Meadowbank, in Austin, went on the market last April. Beth Webb Beth Webb is an internationally recognized designer admired for her tactile, serene, and dynamic spaces. Founder and creative director of Atlanta-based Beth Webb Interiors, her body of work is known for its sophisticated and inviting appeal, which is predicated foremost on the desire to foster a sense of well-being. Webb’s work reflects a worldly point of view informed by her wide travels.…

In this era of service jobs and office work, most of us have never been inside a factory. Several decades of global outsourcing and a flood of cheap imports have decimated American manufacturing and hollowed out once thriving communities. Today, we have little idea where, or how, the shirt on our back is made. As we become increasingly immersed in the digital realm, we further lose touch with our analog roots. Yet, we still live in a physical world and surround ourselves with material things. If you look hard enough, you’ll even find that some of these things still are made in America. In 2010, I discovered an old yarn mill in Maine that reminded me of places that I photographed for my book Asylum: Inside the Closed World of…

I know my younger sister, Inge, well. I know her style and she knows mine, which is why we get along well. So, not surprisingly, she entrusted me, along with my husband, to design the interiors and exterior of the garden house/pool house on her property outside Bruges, Belgium. What appears to be an old building is largely new. This garden building was completed in 2019, but it looks as if it has existed since the eighteenth century, which was the intention. In fact, many, but not all, of its architectural elements have been salvaged from old European buildings—the bricks, floor tiles, the orangery’s windows, the oak beams that course the ceiling, the roof tiles. The dwelling functions as its own residence, complete with a kitchenette, a bath, and a…

IT WAS WHEN the homeowners returned from a trip out of Austin and found a mushroom growing on their living room baseboard that they knew it was time to make a change. A house that the couple had lived in—and loved—for years had never been properly sited. Fern Santini, their Austinbased interior designer, who is also an old friend, recounts how the former house had been set on grade, askew, no less, which meant that when it rained, baseboards and walls were breeding grounds for mold and other inedible vegetation. The house was bulldozed, and a new residence was designed by Austin architect Mell Lawrence. “My husband, Jerre, worked as the builder of the house, and Mell was the architect, who has worked with us for twenty years,” says Santini.…

SYNERGY, WHICH DESCRIBES something greater than the sum of its parts, is a term often bundled into business jargon and rarely used in relation to interior design. But it seems just the right word to describe the process by which a beautiful and welcoming new Southern California home has come into being—a home combining the requirements and interests of its owners, paired with the talents and resources of Los Angeles–based designer Jeffrey Alan Marks. Just a half block from the ocean, this Manhattan Beach house was developed in a collaboration between Marks, architect Grant Kirkpatrick of KAA Design, and homeowners who took an unusually active role in every step of the undertaking. “These clients really did do their research,” says Marks. “They had worked with other designers before—and had done…

COVER Produced by: Katrin Cargill Photography by: Simon Brown, simonbrownphotography.com Flowers by: Harald Altmaier Floral Design, haraldaltmaier@mac.com Location: Plain English Design, Stowupland Hall, Suffolk, UK, plainenglishdesign.co.uk. All stitching by: Melanie Williams Antique sofa: Slipcovered in patchwork of tea towels. Large cushion on sofa: Made from patchwork of antique tea towels, and edged in Seychelles Wood Bead fringe, Beach Rose, 56852-08, SAMUEL & SONS, samuelandsons.com. Plates: Homer Laughlin Vintage Fiestaware dinner plates, Rose, REPLACEMENTS, replacements.com. Wooden Trefoil wall brackets, SIBYL COLEFAX & JOHN FOWLER, sibylcolefax.com, painted in Incarnadine, No. 248, FARROW & BALL, farrow-ball.com. Side table: MAX ROLLITT ANTIQUES, maxrollitt.com. Scalloped linen cloth: JJA CUSTOM LINENS, jennyjohnsonallen.com. Eighteenth century Faience Verrière, JULIA BOSTON ANTIQUES, juliaboston.com. Antique French Absinthe glasses, GUINEVERE ANTIQUES, guinevere.co.uk. Woven rush floor mat, RUSH MATTERS, rushmatters.co.uk. FROM THE…

Domenico (“Ico”) Parisi (1916–1996) was born in Palermo, Italy. By 1925, though, his family had moved to Como, where his father worked as an art teacher. Parisi studied construction, and he received a technical diploma in 1936. After completing his degree, Parisi apprenticed with the architect Giuseppe Terragni, who was a prominent representative of the Italian modernist movement. Together, they designed and built La Casa del Fascio, an administrative building in Como. With its strict rationalist design, the architecture is still considered one of the prime examples of the International Style. Despite the acclaim that he had received, Parisi experienced a significant lapse in his career as an architect because of the outbreak of World War II. Italy had entered WWII in 1940, and Parisi was deployed to the Russian…

WHAT IS A FAVORITE PROJECT YOU’VE WORKED ON TOGETHER? Glen: The next one. Don’t you hate when architects say that? We are currently working on two modern-style homes. Rozanne: I would have to say our own home in Alys Beach, Florida. It was such a rewarding and personal experience that we now are lucky enough to enjoy together. DO YOU EVER DISAGREE ABOUT STYLE AND, IF SO, HOW DO YOU RESOLVE THE PROBLEM? Glen: No, not really, since Rozanne lets me do my thing, and then she does hers. She, however, makes suggestions. Rozanne: Not usually, but I can remember when we first met, Glen had this black leather sofa and he loved me enough to let it go, thankfully. GLEN, WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PERIOD OF ARCHITECTURE? Mid-century Modern—1930s,…

The best kind of books about architecture are ones in which the language of architecture is left behind and the writers, instead, tell you a personal story about why they like certain buildings. Barrett Austin wins our attention—and respect—right away, not only because he is honest and passionate, but also because he writes well. In Of Common Origin: New Architecture of the American South (Wythe Press; $65), Austin tells the reader exactly what he admires—traditional residential architecture—and who is doing the best job at making it (many of these architects having appeared in the pages of MILIEU): Bill Ingram, Jeremy Corkern, Keith Summerour, Ken Pursley, Craig Dixon, Paul Bates, Ruard Veltman, Bobby McAlpine, Chris Tippett, John Sease, David Baker. Austin met with each of these professionals and relates the in-depth…

DISRUPTION IS A CONCEPT we’re all too familiar with lately. So when a Houston-based family began seeking a weekend home as a respite from their busy city lives, there was one primary goal: finding and furnishing the place had to cause as little disruption as possible. Eventually, the perfect property was found. A recently built contemporary ranch home outside of the purposefully unhip town of New Ulm, Texas, some eighty miles west of Houston, offered acres and acres of untouched land, no neighbors in sight, and, best of all, didn’t require any renovation. They found what they wanted. Now, it was time for the furnishings. That’s where Houston-based interior designer Meg Lonergan came in. Since this was her third project for the family, Lonergan was certain she understood what the…