Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2020 från MILIEU

During the nearly seven years that MILIEU has been publishing, I’ve written often in these letters to you about the meaning of home and family. None of what I have said before about the vital importance of those matters in our lives has changed. What has changed, though, is the recognition of the fragility of life and how we need to show love and gratitude all of the time, whenever we can—not only within our family, but outside of it, too. For most of us, for these past months, our homes became our only refuges from the world. The very rooms we occupied for those weeks of sequestering, staying-in-place, quarantining, became comforting places to be, but also, on occasion, confining ones. We had to learn to love all the time…

A CLIENT REMEMBERS Annette Schatte was able to envision the Houston house she and her husband wanted to build. Years earlier, she had stayed at a boutique hotel in Avignon, a place so evocative for her that she wanted to recreate the mood and feel of it. She commissioned the prolific—and, as she would learn, patient—Houston architect Reagan Miller to design the dwelling for the site that she and her husband had purchased in the city’s Museum District. “I had in mind what I wanted, but I had trouble explaining it to Reagan,” Schatte recalls. “He kept drawing versions of a house. However, every time I expressed to him that it still wasn’t what I was seeing in my head, he would very patiently tear up the sketch and start…

HAVING LIVED SEVERAL STATES apart during their courtship, Ann and Ed Beddow, newlyweds in their 60s, wanted to merge their lives into a single new home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In planning a primary residence that would be theirs together, they envisioned a home properly sized for just the two of them, while allowing for gracious entertaining. Ann Beddow had long admired the work of architect Jonathan Foote, associated with the preservation movement in America, particularly his penchant for vernacular architecture. Revered in the Northwest for projects integrating stone with indigenous hand-hewn timbers, Foote is also noted for siting buildings carefully in their natural environment. Though Foote retired in 2000, the Beddows were thrilled when he agreed to take on the project; Foote’s respect for the regional forms weaves its…

The sorbet of colors drenching Rachel Siegfried’s floristry studio reflects the gamut of her creative and practical talents. A knowledgeable plantswoman and garden designer, Siegfried learned to grow fruit, vegetables, and cut-flowers for the owners of a two-acre, walled kitchen garden on a private estate in Oxfordshire. “Inspired by Sarah Ravens’s course on cut-flowers, I feverishly grew masses of quintessential English country garden blooms, scented, nostalgic, wild and exciting flowers which celebrated the seasons,” says Siegfried, referencing the popular English garden columnist and television presenter. Siegfried, meanwhile, does all she can to counter the charmless, uniform, and rigid stems proffered by supermarkets and flower shops. In 2008, with the increasing trend towards “slow food” and farmers’ markets, Siegfried and her business and life partner, Ashley Pearson, decided to bring their…

WHEN SERGE CASTELLA and Jason Flinn took on the project to renovate, restore, and reinvent this house on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, they did something few might think possible: They turned the house upside down. The interiors of the 1920s residence were filled with so much gilt and trompe l’oeil effects, painted finishes and shadowy patinas that had developed over nearly a century that Castella admits, “We’d never before seen so much stuff like that. We weren’t accustomed to working in such environments.” So, as Flinn, Castella’s partner in life and in profession, remarks, “We tipped the house upside down—metaphorically, of course—to see which physical decorations would fall out.” What resulted from the big shakeout was the structure’s most powerful design element, something not found in any of the rooms or…

COVER Photography: Clive Nichols, clivenichols.com FROM THE DESK OF… Pages 20-21 (Clockwise from top left) 6373-01 occasional chair in Nolan Rose Petal, LEE INDUSTRIES, leeindustries.com. Runway bench, BAA3216, BAKER LUXE, bakerfurniture.com. Jardin chest, BAA3229, BAKER LUXE, bakerfurniture.com. 2293-01SW club chair in Chamois linen, LEE INDUSTRIES, leeindustries.com. Page 22 Marcel chair, BUNGALOW CLASSIC, bungalowclassic.com. Jasper sofa, BUNGALOW CLASSIC, bungalowclassic.com. Page 23 Cube console, JULIAN CHICHESTER, julianchichester.com. Haslev bedside table, JULIAN CHICHESTER, julianchichester.com. PUTTING IT TOGETHER Photography: Simon Brown, simonbrown.london Produced by: Katrin Cargill, katrincargill.com Artwork by: Tabby Riley, tabbyriley.co.uk Page 28 C1103-01 swivel chair, Fabric: Moselle Mist, LEE INDUSTRIES, leeindustries.com. Flat Weave Rug EF1562, MATT CAMRON RUGS & TAPESTRIES, mattcamron.com. Curtains: Kelly Stripe, Violet-Natural 2034/06, KERRY JOYCE TEXTILES, kerryjoyce.com. Pablo Wall Sconce, Gesso, JULIAN CHICHESTER, julianchichester.com. Page 30 Fabric: Hermitage cotton-linen, Color: Greystone,…

Serge Castella Serge Castella is known as a prolific and original interior designer, product designer, and antiques dealer. Castella and his partner, Jason Flinn, are based in Spain, and they have completed numerous residential and commercial projects around the world. Castella created the Port Lligat Collection for the Spanish company Gancedo. Over the years, MILIEU has featured numerous projects by Castella and Flinn. Jane Schwab A native of South Carolina, Jane Schwab launched her namesake Charlottebased interior design firm in 2015, after more than thirty years in the design and retail business. Schwab has designed and renovated projects locally, as well as throughout the United States, especially in Jackson, Wyoming, where she and her family spend most of each summer. She co-authored the best-selling The Welcoming House (Rizzoli). Warm and…

Like all artists, Adam Turoni has his tools and techniques. Fine brushes for applying a golden dust. Torches whose flames render delicate surfaces ever so slightly brûlé. Molds that replicate bees amid honeycombs. Piping bags to trace out hearts and blossoms. Turoni is a culinary artist, a young entrepreneur who makes some of the most coveted chocolates to be found—and tasted—anywhere on the market. “An artist’s job is to tell the truth, and the artist’s role is to capture your attention for as long as he’s asked for it,” says the thirty-one-year-old chocolatier from one of two Savannah boutique stores that he established with his business partner, Alexandra Trujillo de Taylor. With his chocolate creations and the novel atmospheres created by Trujillo de Taylor in which they are sold, the…

Still a vital force at the age of 90, Jasper Johns has produced a body of work that continues to confound critics and historians, while also engaging the public. An Art of Changes: Jasper Johns Prints, 1960-2018, which will run at the Walker Art Center until September 20, 2020, examines recurring motifs in Johns’s art, catalyzed by his protean engagement with printmaking. Organized by guest curator Joan Rothfuss, the exhibition—which debuted at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art in October 2019—culls some ninety prints from the Walker’s complete collection of the artist’s printed oeuvre and will travel to three other museum venues through 2022: Grand Rapids Art Museum, Tampa Art Museum, and Long Island’s Parrish Art Museum. Johns is perhaps best remembered for his paintings of American flags, remarkable meditations on…

WHEN SUSAN AND PETER TORTORICI’S third child prepared to depart for college, they decided to move from Los Angeles and make a new life—and new home—in Montecito, a tucked-away, seaside haven just east of Santa Barbara. They purchased a plot of land comprised of a little more than an acre, and, during the conceptual phase of design, Susan Tortorici, an accomplished painter and sculptor, came across Leonard Koren’s 1994 book, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi reflects an embrace of imperfection and transience. It’s a design philosophy that stresses asymmetry, simplicity, and an appreciation of rough, natural materials as a means to create a feeling of comfort and warmth. “That book,” says Tortorici, “supplied my mission statement for building the house.” The couple engaged…

NESTOR SANTA-CRUZ SHARES his onebedroom apartment with all of his favorite teachers. They live with him on a daily basis. From every vantage point within his home in Washington, D.C., he can consult with those who taught him how to be both a trained architect and a practicing interior designer. “As a Cuban exile, I was always encouraged by my parents to know how to educate myself.” says Santa-Cruz from the balcony of his apartment that overlooks the U.S. Capitol and the spires of the National Cathedral. “A person can pursue an education as much as one can have it given to you.” Santa-Cruz pulls out volumes of books from his freestanding shelves—oversized tomes by and about the likes of Billy Baldwin, Jacques Grange, Jean-Michel Frank, Cecil Beaton, David Hicks,…