Innehållsförteckning för Nov/Dec 2020 från Veranda

“Luxury today is surrounding ourselves with the people and things that mean the most to us. Those are the true comforts of home.” I RECENTLY CAUGHT UP WITH LEE Industries Vice President of Marketing Bondi Coley while doing research for “Artisans and Crafts,” our guide to shopping top-quality home furnishings made in the United States 1 (pg. 15). The Conover, North Carolina–based furniture company has been manufacturing upholstery in the United States for more than 50 years—no small feat when you consider the price pressure from overseas competitors coupled with the investment required to cultivate and support a local workforce. By resisting those market forces, Lee has been able support the Conover community with jobs (the firm has hired 30 people during the pandemic to meet increased demand) and revitalize…

It’s a marriage of two American institutions: the performance fabric brand Sunbrella and Jack Lenor Larsen, the venerable designer, author, and collector. Drawing on his seven decades of pioneering design, the new Larsen Performance Collection offers a veritable tour of textile’s classic motifs—floral, palm, stripes, basketry, jacquard, and damask—in modern tones that feel as timeless as the man himself.…

With so many daily distractions, downshifting into sleep mode seems tougher than ever. If your bedroom isn't set up to soothe, it's hard to get the quality rest you crave. But, thanks to a few design-driven choices, you can get more shut-eye. “An ideal bedroom provides an environment for rest, positivity, and relaxation,” says interior designer Natalie Kraiem. From going all-in on a Stearns & Foster mattress to ditching the screens, here are four easy ways to make your space more serene. THE REST IS EASY Follow these simple principles to prep your room for maximum zzz's. 1 INVEST IN A QUALITY MATTRESS When it comes to getting a good night's sleep, “the mattress is the most important element,” says Kraiem. “My key recommendation is to source one from a…

Like William Blake, who saw a world in a grain of sand, designer Mark D. Sikes finds a universe in the color blue. “Blue has the most beautiful range,” he says, “from robin’s egg to cobalt, from sky to indigo.” Evoking everything from celestial daydreams to the most grounded certainties, blue is also the symbol of the deepest friendships. How fitting, then, that Sikes’s latest project for fashion designer Karen Kane and her family would be an homage to this color. The two met six years ago, when Kane hired him to design a weekend house near Santa Barbara, and have remained friends and collaborators since. “We have a common language,” says Sikes, who featured his initial project for Kane in his first book, Beautiful, and has included the newest…

MARTHA WASHINGTON could scarcely imagine that the square scarf she commissioned for her husband in 1776 (portraying him commandingly astride a rearing horse) would not only cheer him on the battlefield but launch a distinctly American textile. Two hundred forty-four years later, that plain-cloth, purpose-printed bandanna prompted Ojai, California–based painter Rebekah Miles to summon folk art (and equine) inspiration for a revival designed exclusively for Veranda. “I love a bandanna,” says Miles, whose hand-painted ceramics feature similarly vivid natural motifs (she is releasing holiday bud vases with Nickey Kehoe this season). “If it speaks to me, I’ll wear it adoringly!” As did George.…

NOVEMBER + DECEMBER 2020 MODERN GLASSBLOWING, MARBLED FABRICS, THE RISE OF BESPOKE WALLPAPERS & MORE UPHOLSTERY MAGNIFICENT STITCHES Step into Grant Trick’s wondrous workroom (and wild leap of faith) IT’S CINEMATIC: Having left New York’s fashion industry and moved to San Francisco, Grant Trick was on a walk when he spotted a sign that read “Tricky Studio.” “My name was practically on the sign,” he says. “I had to go in!” What he found was an upholstery business, and he asked for work. “They hired me,” he recounts, “to pull staples and sweep the floors.” But what Trick got with that job (besides $7.50 an hour) was intimate exposure to master upholsterers and the techniques of their undervalued, artistic trade. Trick fell in love with soft goods’ amalgam of tailoring…

THE IDEA WAS PARIS ON THE prairie: a luminous white city that would set Chicago’s south lakefront aglow in neoclassical magic. The ivory, ornamental buildings of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition were sculpted and embellished out of a centuries-old mixture of plaster and fiber that was, at the time, roundly embraced by European architects, as were the artistic reliefs and entablatures that arose from it. But it wasn’t quite as familiar in the lexicon of American building materials. Without a glut of artisans skilled in plaster’s use, most had to be shipped in from overseas to complete the project. As relatively foreign as the concept seemed, skeptics wondered if Chicago (viewed then as an emerging center of New World modernity) shouldn’t put forth something more au courant than this Romanesque…

JOY MOYLER: I remember when you took the helm in 2017. It felt like such lovely “Black girl magic” because it was so wonderful to see you in this role. And of course, I knew you’d worked with Peter Marino; what a perfectionist he is. Are you a perfectionist? SYLVIE JOHNSON: I am! And they will tell you this in Fall River, Massachusetts, where our factory is. JM: Do you drive them crazy a little bit? SJ: No, I’m just a hard worker, and if it can be better, why shouldn’t it be? When young people come to Merida, I say to them, “Look out to the stars as far as the galaxy can see. Strive for this; then you can live your dreams and be yourself.” JM: Yes—be yourself,…

DESIGNER GO-TO GEOMETRIC CARPETS The long and winding road to the 21st century’s favorite style, a look that sits quite comfortably between traditional and modern, was paved in many ways by London designer David Hicks (1929–1998). Take, for instance, his collection of carpets adapted from tilework he photographed during his travels. While their shocking colors and groovy geometric shapes were perfectly in step with the 1960s era of youthful revolt, the patterns’ small scale and tightly defined palettes (often featuring multiple shades of a single hue) reflected his disciplined approach and set a surprisingly neutral foundation for antiques and contemporary furnishings alike. Hicks’s legacy lives on in a new crop of geometric carpets, some of which riff on his signature shapes and some that make bold forays into old-world Ottoman…

WITH ORIGINS IN Europe’s Middle Ages, the easy-to-build ladder-back found a champion in post-Reformation Protestants, who rejected the baroque excesses of the Roman Catholic church. From England, the chairs traveled in the holds of ships and were embraced by early Americans, from Philadelphia makers to frontier farmers. Today’s artful updates (including decorative curves on the rungs) reveal an enduring respect for the seat’s simple, nostalgic form. THE WINDSOR CHAIR was likely an innovation of wheelwrights in 18thcentury Britain, who sculpted seats from solid wood and turned legs and spindles much like the spokes of their trade. The chair is thought to have reached North America in 1725, and within a few years, canny colonial makers were creating lively variations on the quickly popular form that’s never left the scene—and today…

NO ONE KNOWS the magic of the four-poster bed better than Andrew Reid. He is the third generation at his family’s company, Reid Classics, to specialize in handcrafted reproductions of the lithe, statuesque forms that have stood as cornerstones of the American bedroom since Colonial days. Spool posts and Sheratons, plain pencil forms and Gothics, each is crafted of genuine mahogany (or other sturdy, long-lasting woods like walnut, cherry, or maple) in the Dothan, Alabama, workshop where his own children are “always exploring, tinkering, and building things,” says Reid. “It’s a family heritage, and we’re proud of it.” POSH BEDFELLOWS It’s an American dream: Luxury linens from stateside studios dressing upholstered beds made here at home…

THEY SPARKLED, THOSE GLAMOROUS upstarts who refused to accept their generation as lost. Their collective light glinted like the sun on the Seine, sparked like a cigarette lighter reflected in an icy cocktail. Theirs was the flash of diamonds and ideas. They were known as café society. Anointed in 1919 by New York American society columnist Maury Henry Biddle Paul—he of the superb nom de plume Cholly Knickerbocker—the high-flying social set owed its name and provenance to Europe’s café culture already in full expression by the 1890s and driven by artists, writers, and intellectuals. As America erupted into its roaring twenties with a post-war prosperity boom, a seismic loosening of social mores, and the peaking tide of women claiming their right to vote (not to mention the propulsive backbeat of…

ONE EVENING, OUT OF THE great many that we spent locked down, I ironed the linen napkins, spread out the tablecloth, lit the candles, and arranged some flowers. My third child (and there are five of them) had decided to cook cheese soufflés for the first time, in fact it was the first time he had ever cooked anything, and that deserved candles and flowers. As I sat around the table, I realized that ironing the napkins and arranging the flowers was equally important for my family as it would have been for friends and guests. They are, after all, the heart and soul of my life. Amongst the chaos around us, my children reminded me the future was full of possibilities. And cheese soufflés. Incidentally, the kid used milk…

THERE’S A GRACEFUL 1920s GEORGIAN-style brick house in Greenwich, Connecticut, where the trees are always bursting with summery foliage. Indoors. To walk through the home’s limestone-trimmed front door is to step into a woodland fantasia, punctuated by romantic garden statuary and neoclassical follies. The idyllic panorama spans the walls of the entrance hall and envelops the serpentine main staircase, the verdant canopy soaring up to the second-floor landing and giving new meaning to the phrase “lush life.” The profusion of greenery, courtesy of a customprinted wallpaper by Iksel, was installed by designer Miles Redd, never one to shy away from a theatrical flourish. Riffing on a rotating cast of decorating legends, Redd is a master of his own brand of cheeky traditionalism, leavening formality with whimsy to keep things fresh.…

EDITOR’S LETTER Page 12 Console table: Chelsea Antiques; chelseaantiques1.com Norton Conyers Diamond wallpaper: Adelphi Paper Hangings; adelphipaperhangings.com Vase Aerin; aerin.com Chair: The Nest; 205-870-1264. THE V LIST Page 20 Ladder and columns: Chelsea Antiques; chelseaantiques1.com Page 30 Woven background: CMO Paris; cmoparis.com Page 34 Brushes: CB Fine Painting; @cbfinepainting. MILES REDD’S MAGICAL FOREST Interior Design: Miles Redd; reddkaihoi.com Architectural Design: Charles Hilton Architects; hiltonarchitects.com Throughout Various antiques: Doyle; doyle.com Page 68 Carpet: Bazar Oriental Rugs; metropolitancarpet.com Table: English Georgian America; englishgeorgianamerica.com Chair fabric: Saisilks; saisilksny.com Napkins: Matouk; matouk.com Page 69 Trim paint (Palladian Blue) and under-stairwell paint (Breath of Fresh Air) by Benjamin Moore; benjaminmoore.com Vase: English Georgian America. Pillow fabric: Clarence House; clarencehouse.com Page 70 Drapery: David Haag; davidhaag.com Drapery and pelmet fabric: Saisilks. Trim paint: Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore. Page 71 Trim and cocktail table…