Anglophilia

Shall we have a bit of Anglophilia this Monday morning? For all their lording and looting and plundering and enslaving, I must say, begrudgingly, the Brits knew how to spend their ill-gotten gains. (Now we know they are not so good with the spending these days, but in the 18th and 19th century...well).  Why just look at the splendid décor given birth by Robert Adam. The Scottish architect and designer created ostentatious homes and made ceiling moldings his calling card---with not a little thought given over to details. Check out these moldings!

 

Also the architecture was brilliant too.

Adams also dabbled in furniture design.

 The style is neo-classical. Every single bit of it looks like monuments to wealth, power and excess. You will have seen many rooms like Adam's in Architectural Digest, House and Garden and Traditional Home. It just goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun. You know what I mean: plunder lands near and far, build ginormous, ostentatious houses in the neo-classical style, lather, rinse, repeat!

 

 

Pictures from Pinterest

 

I promise, my cynicism will give way to lighter fare tomorrow. At least, I hope.

Beyond The Fashion

All Images of Balenciaga and Janet's work from Pinterest

Janine Janet was a favourite of  the Balenciaga design house. She did a lot of their window displays. She seemed to love working with pearls, corals, shells, wood and other natural elements, merging them to form fantastical sculptures that took on a lot of biblical or mythical imagery. She yielded store front and window displays for, not just Balenciaga, but also Nina Ricci, Balmain and Hubert de Givenchy.

 

I love it and I wish the fashion houses would return to a time when the arts really melded and kept good company with fashion.

 

Janet's work is now displayed in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs .

 

A great hostess gift for an art and fashion lover:  Métamorphose, Janine Janet

Red, Holly and Tears

 

 All Pictures from Pinterest

Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans! I have nothing but love for the Holiday and Christmas season. And like yesterday's post suggested, I start early. You see that plaid coat. It's by JCREW and I must have it. I feel no guilt about buying it because I bought a coat 10 years ago from JCREW and it is still going strong today. The classic lines of the JCREW coat means it will never look dated...it's only ever a question of whether my body has expanded horizontally.

I am every single holiday cliché you've ever heard about. I decorate and I wear red or green and glitter or sequin and I eat puddings and then I cry about having eaten the pudding and then I drink mulled wine to stay hydrated--- because, all the tears. And I absolutely must have some mistletoe-- some holly too---hanging around, but no one ever notices and I never get kissed. So pudding. Must have pudding.

What are you looking forward to this Christmas?

Food and Party Envy

 

Who wants to go out? Stay in.

 

It's really cold outside, and in Brussels, it's really windy and rainy. Feather the nest and have your friends over, starting Friday. Plus, it's hosting season. It kicks off at Thanksgiving for the Americans, and funnily enough, because of the internet, we over here in Europe get food and party envy. 

 

I am not a savvy entertainer so I have no Martha Stewart-like tips to give.

 

But I do know that every dinner party goes down better when the guests are relaxed--that is to say, tipsy, get them tipsy!

 

So make your first drink the strongest of the night. I like to serve cinnamon, star anise-spiced rum and Jamaican ginger beer at this time of the year. It's sparkly and fizzy but warms the inside. And I think that when I serve drinks from a decanter it instantly puts everyone on their best behavior--sort of like they think the appearance of glass and crystal demands more adult manners. That decanter above is from John Lewis and they ship to the Continent.

 

You can also head over to A Cup of Joe's for some good dinner hosting tips.

Designer Love: Dan Carithers

I can look at a single room and know I will love the designer's other work simply because of the addition of one or two design elements that comprise his signature look.

Dan Carither's, I think, is a designer that likes grand scale. He always tries to draw the eye up and up, emphasizing the expanse and grandeur of a space. Curtains go to the ceiling, so does art and bookcases.

He also loves softness set against edgy luxury---in evidence, the leopard prints, velvety sofas and the chinoiserie wallpaper.

 

The now retired designer

I also love that his rooms are layered. Layered rooms always have a homey feel to me. Carither's rooms all look like they have been given the professional design treatment but I love that the rooms still look lived in.

Breakfast in Bed

As you may know, we are on the lock down here in BRU since Saturday. My little one and I are staying put. Snuggly, in bed, put! Massive prayers for our security services. Keep all of us in Brussels in your thoughts and prayers, please.

Plaid, Throw Pillows and GeeJam

 

These are all the things I discovered this week. Some wicked art by Njideka Aunyili Crosby. These handkerchief-inspired throw pillows by RB Manville. Why is everything plaid this fall/winter? Soap and perfume that are affordable and luxurious enough to give this Christmas. And Oh! GeeJam! Yeah: there. Who wouldn't want there, right? I bid you go forth and have a happy weekend.

Syrian Artist: Sara Shamma

 

Having lost my focus this week, mostly because I am royally pissed off at feeling afraid and feeling helpless---a feeling many Europeans may have-- and also feeling very angry and frustrated at the passive, disinterest and massive incompetence of the Belgian government, I decided to examine my circumstances. Far better than most, obviously. And, as though an external force wanted me to direct my narrow-eyed self-interestedness outward, and direct it to those who have it far, far worse, I found the work of the Artist Sara Shamma while browsing Harpaar's Bazaar, Arabia.  

 

 

 

Pensive faces, babies, lots of babies, adults curled into the fetal position, the ravage of distress embedded into the lines of the cheek, forehead and a wry, angry curl of the lip and sinister characters lurking in the background, are common features of Sara Shamma's oil on canvas paintings. You can actually track the evolution of her work from around 2007 to now and see how the subject of her work has evolved--it gets more distressing, calamitous and jarring the more you approach 2015. Sara painted through some of the nights in Damascus when the bombs rocked her, and her child's small frame. She has managed to find refuge in Lebanon. And one can only hope that she and her daughter remain safe-- though they certainly would not have escaped the mental anguish and terror of war.

 

An artist has painted her distress and the fear she holds for her child for all to see. A most poignant and honest display of her feelings on the subject of the conflict in her homeland.

 Share the work of Sara Shamma with your pals. Hit the tweet button below.

Tweet

Electrifying Bugs

 

I'd like to borrow the electrifying power and colour from these bugs because, today, I've got no/low energy. The weather, empathy with Paris, moody Brussels, pathetic fallacy? Not sure. This is the rooftop bar at Virgin Hotel in Chicago. The bugs are from mambo-unlimited.

Price on Request

Apparently, you can take silicone, put it in a container, add mineral spirits, stir it up until it turns into a "slurry" to form a not-so-runny liquid-like substance. You can then paint the liquid onto nylon with a brush to get a taut outcome.  I suppose prior to the drying of the nylon it is pliable enough for an artist to massage, mold and form into something mesmerizing. I think this is what the artist Michael Eden has done.

I went on the hunt over the weekend to find some unusual contemporary art.  I like that the works that I found used unusual methods---that is to say, science was used to create art.

I do love collecting vessels. I have said so on the blog before. I also love ceramics. 

But I simply dread them breaking. And so I think that the artist Hiroshi Suzuki seems to have proffered a scientific solution to my problem while maintaining the necessary textural, pretty, sinuous, curvaceousness you would want in a good contemporary piece of pottery.

Suzuki's method is to hammer-raise and chase enameled silver. 

You love it don't you? Clever, yes? The question is what does it cost? Do you get the feeling that when the sticker reads "price upon request" what the seller really wants to tell you is "don't worry you can't afford it"?

All these beautiful vessels and vessel-like objects are at Adrian Sassoon.

Kit Kemp's Barbados

I'm pretty sure you know of Kit Kemp's work. She operates, together with her husband, Firmdale Hotels, in London and New York. They are a bunch of boutique hotels that have been decorated with vivid colour and patterns and every inch of the hotel rooms, designed by Kemp, including the furniture, upholstery, drapery and art, is suffused with ethnic imagery and graphics. The room above is one of my favourites and once you have seen one of her rooms you are able to identify her signature style going forward.

 

So when I was browsing through Vogue Living I saw a home in Barbados that clearly had to belong to Kemp.

 

 

 

Kemp and her husband recently did a re-do of the property they've had in Barbados for the past decade.

 

 

 

Kemp brought her love for colour and splashes of graphic geometry and mingled it with walls made from the island's limestone.

 

 

 

In a way, the property's architecture is typical of what you would see in hotels like Sandy Lane or even places where locals live, like Millenium Heights. But Kemp brought to her property her interior design savvy. Like, look at this ceiling below. Normally a home like this in St. James, Barbados, would have the same ceiling, except the clapboards would be painted a sandy cream or white. But look at Kemp's design eye on display. BAM! A burgundy ceiling. BOOM! A turquoise ceiling. Not genius but definitely extraordinary.

 

 

 

From what I can tell this is no ordinary house designed for tourists. It looks --well, what shall I say-- it looks illustrious and yet homey.

 

 

All Images via Vogue Living

 

Still, in all of this, having lived in Barbados for four years, I still do get depressed when I think about the number of expat-owned properties on the island. This is only because the locals can hardly afford to buy property in their homeland because the foreigners have driven up the cost of real estate on the island. The investment is needed but the price is high to the Bajans.