Indholdsfortegnelse for Mar/Apr 2020 i Veranda

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.” THE WORDS OF JOHN BURROUGHS, a prolific naturalist writer from the turn of the 20th century, likely would have struck a chord with author and amateur garden aficionado Edith Wharton 1, who traveled to Italy in 1903 to survey its villas and gardens. “The old Italian garden was meant to be lived in,” she writes in her 1904 book Italian Villas and Their Gardens. As such, its design was engineered to effect a transition from domestic life to the wilderness. “Each step away from architecture was a nearer approach to nature.” The promise of respite tendered by cool pockets of green has appealed to our senses since the beginning of time—gardens,…

SHALINI KASLIWAL IS A MODERN-DAY ALCHEMIST. “I consider myself a classic experimenter, mixing elements of different cultures and generations,” says Kasliwal of her jewelry. As the global ambassador of her family’s storied jewelry house The Gem Palace (and CEO of Sanjay Kasliwal USA), Kasliwal, who was raised in Bologna, Italy, and Jaipur, India, by her Italian mother and Indian father, draws from her heritage to concoct bewitching amalgams of gem-studded flora and fauna with gold filigree and pavé techniques. “I’m also inspired by listening to my clients on what keeps them on the hunt.” Here are nine other secrets to her irresistible charm. 1. Visit my home, and you can definitely tell there is India in my blood. I love to decorate with exotic motifs, like Iksel Decorative Arts wallpapers.…

Bunny Williams “I always look for a strong design plan, and each of these gardens had a beautiful architecture to it,” says the legendary interior designer, who’s been tending her own Connecticut garden for nearly 40 years. “Some are very formal, some looser, but they all take your breath away.” Peter Lyden “It is so important that a garden embrace the natural characteristics of its environment, and I really admire the way these projects did just that,” says Lyden, president of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA). Their new Bunny Mellon Curricula aims to help young designers approach exterior spaces in a more holistic manner. METHODOLOGY VERANDA editors chose the top 55 entries for blind judging by Williams and Lyden. For information and submission guidelines for the 2021…

“It’s beautiful how they’ve kept the focus on the trees and the containers. It’s very edited and has a lovely charm to it.”—BUNNY WILLIAMS LESS IS MORE. The adage quickly came to mind for landscape and garden designer Herbert Pickworth when considering a 1920s home in need of a strong landscape revision. The simple beauty of the French-inspired house, designed by acclaimed Houston architect William Ward Watkins, and its gardens was lost behind a messy web of plantings. “The crepe myrtles had become overgrown, and the vegetation around them was too complicated,” he recalls. “So we set out to complement the structure of these beautiful trees and better highlight the architecture.” This meant reducing the plant palette to a small selection of evergreens (primarily camellias, boxwood, and variegated pittosporum), reimagining…

BEFORE THE CATASTROPHIC Montecito mudflows of 2018, everything that grew on this two-acre property in Southern California was “magic,” says landscape designer Margie Grace. Roses would bloom in the shade; hydrangeas relished the blazing sun. A grassy, serene pond drew ducks and quail and owls, all against an extraordinary backdrop of towering palms and live oaks belonging to a neighboring estate, like a regal army watching over it. Then came the mud. “Everything was wiped out…plants, fences, animals. It was biblical,” recalls Grace. “We learned the absolute power of nature.” In the eight months that followed, another lesson emerged for Grace and the homeowner, designer Penelope Bianchi of McCormick Interiors: The magic hadn’t been swept away with the sludge. If anything, it had strengthened tenfold. As they washed two feet…

CURTAIN CALL Page 14 Woven basket: Shoppe; shoppebham.com. French terra-cotta flooring: Architectural Heritage; architecturalheritage.com. A PLACE IN THE SUN Page 56 Lani tablecoth and dinner napkins: Molly Mahon; mollymahon.com. Bamboo serving bowl: Juliska; juliska.com. Pouring bowl: Heath Ceramics; heathceramics.com. All-purpose pitcher: Crate & Barrel; crateandbarrel.com. Laurel glasses: Carolina Irving; 646-688-3365. Lines salad plate: Canvas Home; canvashomestore.com. OUTDOOR LIVING AWARDS Page 59 Mirror: Formations; formationsusa.com. Dining chairs: Walters Wicker; walterswicker.com. Chaises and drinks tables: Amalfi Living; amalfiliving.net. Elephant bronze chandelier: Dan Ostermiller through Nedra Matteucci Galleries; matteucci.com. Chandelier: Marjorie Skouras Design; marjorieskourasdesign.com. Dining table, alligator, stone obelisks, and leopards: Bonhams; bonhams.com. Peacock chairs: John Salterini through Joan Bogart Antiques; joanbogart.com. Chaise fabric: Perennials; perennialsfabric.com. Page 70 Painted rattan furniture: Bamboo & Rattan; vintagebamboorattan.com. Furniture paint color: Sangria by Benjamin Moore; benjaminmoore.com.…

INSTANT HEIRLOOM RETURN TO THE SHORE THOMAS O’BRIEN’S LATEST FURNITURE COLLECTION IS AN ELEMENTAL, NOSTALGIC SALUTE TO THE SEA, AS PURE AND MAGNETIC AS THE TIDE. MEET THE ARTIST• Prolific decorator and lighting, textiles, and accessories artist Thomas O’Brien is drawn to the relaxed elegance of the shoreline. “There’s an ease to places you return to, that you know and love through the seasons and years,” says O’Brien, whose own home on Great South Bay in Long Island helped inspire a new furnishings collection with Century Furniture, which feels like a celebration of the simple beauty of what we see and use daily in homes by the water. THE COLLECTION• Beach-house essentials reminiscent of pieces found in the designer’s travels, ranging from textural seating to cozy, low-slung upholstery THE BACKSTORY•…

AWAY WITH EASEL-pictures! Away with that unnecessary piece of furniture! The work of the painter begins where that of the architect is finished. Hence let us have walls, that we may paint them over…. There are no paintings, but only decorations.” In a passage from his 1930s memoirs, the late Dutch artist Jan Verkade feverishly advocates for the return of paintings of the grandest scale—and even grander ambition. An informal member of a group of turn-of-the-century artists known as the Nabis (from the Hebrew word for “prophet”), he and fellow vanguards of the day advanced the concept of decoration by its purist French meaning: a revered, and often historic, form of artistic expression. It was not, in other words, defined by collections intended to move in and out of rooms,…

After landing in Dublin, rest up at The Shelbourne, the meticulously chic early-1800s hotel where Ireland's first constitution was drafted. It’s in the heart of the city’s Georgian neighborhood, and its 2019 renovation by Guy Oliver is a lesson in the range of modern classical design. Rates start at $360; theshelbourne.com. An hour and a half west of Dublin, find Ballyfin, the five-star 1820s estate in County Laois that stands as a grand example of Ireland’s classical architecture. And today, it’s the most luxurious: The 614-acre estate offers just 21 guest rooms, leaving plenty of space for exquisite studies in Regency design. Rates start at $690; ballyfin.com.…

WHAT A FARMER DOES IS never wrong.” Such is the premise Connecticut-based landscape architect Janice Parker relied upon in resurrecting an abandoned Christmas tree farm in the Hudson Valley. The more than 40-acre property was in a state of disarray, its gently sloping grounds dotted with derelict farm buildings and runaway irrigation ditches. But Parker and the property’s owners, designer Darren Henault and his husband, attorney Michael Bassett, didn’t simply see the gentleman’s farm it could be, they saw shadows of what had arisen there over half a decade. “This had been a farm for a long time, and in trying to figure out what to do with hundreds of Christmas trees, we began looking more deeply at the survey and trying to imagine what the property would have looked…

CHINOISERIE MADE ITS DECOR DEBUT in the 1670s, most notably at the Trianon de porcelaine, a petite palace at Versailles erected by order of Louis XIV for a mistress. Some 350 years later, Southern California artist Allison Cosmos invigorates the now-familiar motif—“a modern chinoiserie,” she calls it—in fine-art interpretations painstakingly constructed with six layers of color and finish details that feel as astutely crafted as their 17th-century inspiration. The result is a tiny palace of her own, one that barely contains its rare birds and blooms.…

I OFTEN REFER to this property as king of the mountain,” says Steve Gierke of Hoerr Schaudt, who led the redesign of a three-acre garden overlooking the Pacific and butting up against the Santa Ynez mountains. “It’s the last residence before the wilderness, so it feels immersed in the wooded landscape, yet it has these wideopen views of the ocean and Montecito.” The garden revision, prompted by new owners with children, came at the height of an eight-year drought. “The property had great bones, but much of the original design hinged on plants that wanted more water and had failed, so we needed a more realistic plan,” says Gierke, who also sought to create continuity with the architecture and interior design (by Bob Easton and Christina Rottman, respectively), both in…

Every child knows the power of a playhouse or tree house, or even a fort hastily assembled with blanket and table. Climb inside, and you immediately become something new, a creature transformed by your habitation. Few of us manage to re-create such spaces in our adult lives. But Marco Bay has. An Italian landscape architect based in Milan with projects ranging from exclusive villas to public squares, Bay has spent the past decade escaping city life—and the urban persona that comes with it—to live close to the land with his wife and daughters in a 19th-century farmhouse on the bluffs overlooking Portofino, Italy. “Here, I can lose myself and become a little wild,” he says. Bay stumbled upon the property while walking mountain trails he had once hiked as a…