MADE: In America

For the past several months, I have been working on a project called the All-American House, sponsored by MADE: In America which works to promote American made goods. This year’s All-American House was the Carroll Museums in Baltimore, a 18th century townhouse once owned by the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The rooms of the Carroll Mansion were redesigned and furnished with iconic pieces from MADE: In America award-winning companies to showcase the new look in American design. Each piece will carry a Certificate of Authenticity verifying that it was featured in theAll American House 2016.

Now that the three month All-American House exhibition is coming to an end, many of the selected pieces are being offered to the public at greatly-reduced prices. The sale will benefit the programs at the Carroll Museums and MADE: In America.

Interested buyers are invited to the Carroll Mansion at 800 E. Lombard Street during regular open hours starting Friday, July 1 at 2pm through Sunday, July 10, 2016 to view and purchase pieces, which will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

A complete list of items with prices is available on-site or for PDF download. Admission fees will be deducted from any purchase made from July 1 to July 10.

This has been a great project and I’ve been delighted to be a part of it. Hope you can come and get a great bargain!

Flying the Flags

I might be slightly biased, but I think that Maryland has the best flag of all of the 50 states. It is the only one of the state flags to be based on English heraldry. The design comes from the Calvert and Crossland families who settled Maryland in the early 1600’s. It is only one of four state flags not to include the colour blue. The black and gold represent the Calvert family and the red and white, the Crosslands.

We love our flag and use it everywhere including the UnderArmour-designed lacrosse and football uniforms for the University of Maryland’s teams. However, I think that many of the pieces are completely hideous. But there are some not-so-hideous renditions of the flag, although its use in clothing is still dubious, fashion-wise.

It’s not unusual to see cars sporting Maryland flag stickers in the shape of crabs,

labs,

horses,

and everything between.

A month or so ago, I needed to whip up some decorations for a friend whose step-brother was graduating from school here in Maryland. I played around with making some paper banners which worked out really well. I printed them out on 11x17 paper, cut them out, folded them in half, ran a jute string between them and applied a dab of glue to keep them from sliding.

I decided to play around with the flag on fabric and designed some pennants at Spoonflower. I started out with the second iteration of the paper design, and had it printed. But once I had gotten the sample, I made a few changes.

I changed the size of the flags to 11x14 inches and got rid of the white space. I designed the fabric with very light cut lines, so people can make their own flags. And then I made the fabric available for sale, here. Each yard makes about 16 flags. You can play with the layout of the flags, too.

They make a great host/hostess gift if you’re visiting friends for dinner at home or at their farm.

I’ve been making cheerful pennants for years, and often have them on my Etsy site, including some I just made with a great Lilly Pulitzer print. And of course, the dozens of pennants I made for the Cirque Balle event about two months ago which have already been borrowed by friends! Since I have access to great fabrics from some of the top houses, including Schumacher, Victoria Hagen, Colefax & Fowler, Designers Guild and others, the pennants I make are pretty extravagant!

Although we don’t use pennants as much as in the UK, I’ve been noticing them in stores more and more, and even saw some burlap pennants at World Market. So cheap and cheezy… and Chinese-made.

Dollhouses & Murder

About a year or so ago, I had the chance to visit the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore and see their fascinating collection of dollhouses… of a sort. Actually what I got to see were the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of 19 small dioramas handmade in the 1940’s in 1:12 inch scale.

The detail in these houses is extraordinary, and their creator, International Harvester heiress Francis Glessner Lee, handmade many of the pieces herself, having been taught the womanly arts of sewing, knitting and decoration as a young women. Pieces were knitted on straight pins, fabric was washed and dried dozens of times to creat the wear patterns, drawers open, cabinets are filled, and calendar pages are not only correct, but show the subsequent months.

All of this is a way of letting you know that my office is hosting a lecture on Wednesday, July 13 in Baltimore on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Tickets are $5.00 per person and can be ordered here. Although the Nutshells won’t be there because they’re part of a permanent exhibition at the Medical Examiner’s office, there will be plenty of fascinating information and amazing images of them. For more information on the lecture, please check my MedChi Archives blog, here.

The Tivoli Tea House at Ladew Gardens

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know that one of my favourite places is Ladew Gardens, a spectacular topiary garden about 20 miles north of Baltimore. I generally get up there several times a year, usually once a season.
I headed up there this week for the opening of the Tivoli Teahouse. There’s a funny history behind this little space. It used to be, or was modeled on the ticket office at the Tivoli Theatre in the Strand in London.
It sits at the far end of the gardens, secluded in its own little world. It was a place where Ladew’s owner, bon vivant Harvey Ladew could take some time to himself, away from his numerous and constant guests. He could sit in an easy chair in front of the fireplace and make notes to himself about what he’d noticed in the garden. And because he was Harvey, there was a secret bar for tête–à–tête cocktails!
I decided to walk down to the tea house via the garden paths, rather than through the big bowl.
Many of the gardens are planted according to colour or variety, so I started out in the pink garden,
headed through the rose garden,
stopped to chat with a frog,
checked on the bees,
watched the late afternoon sun in the yellow garden,
and finally spotted the cocktail tent.
Ladew was serving some of the 1950’s food that they found in some of Harvey’s cookbooks, and the cocktails were from the same era. One of the best hors d’oeuvres was a butter cracker, some parmesan cheese on top and a piece of bacon wrapped around it and baked. YUM! The cocktails were served in glasses with a fun pink elephant copied from those that they had found in the secret bar.
The flowers on the tables all came from the gardens, and since Ladew is north of Baltimore and on a windy hill, they’re about a week later in flowering than in the city.
I LOVE pink peonies!
After a few words and some of the history of the Tivoli Teahouse, it was opened!
Harvey had a great and sly sense of humour and the teahouse reflects some of that. The window on the rear of the house looks out over some spectacular rolling hills, so he framed the view.
He was an amateur artist, so he painted the walls in a pale pink with a chinoiserie theme. The staff knew that he had some china for tea, and spent ages looking for it, until they realized that it was the china they used for their lunches every day!
During an earlier renovation, the original walnut floors were removed, but someone on the staff had the foresight to keep them, and they were refinished and reinstalled!

Harvey had cleverly hidden a bar behind a mirror, and my friend, Emily, who’s the Executive Director at the Gardens, was equally clever and had a picture of Harvey printed out at 50% halftone and adhered to the mirror. I might have to do that with a picture of our ghost!
As I wandered back to the car, I noticed the amazing detail in the garden,
how beautifully everything is situated,
and how incredibly lucky we are to have Ladew Gardens in our back yard!
And I took time to smell the rosed. Literally.

Gardenia Season

On Facebook, you can see what you posted on this day in years past, and it seems that just about this time each year, I am celebrating my gardenia blooming. I have had this plant for about 20 years. It was originally a cutting from a plant that my parents have had for about 50 years.

It has its ups and downs, mostly relating to where it is. Over the summer, I put the plant on my front porch where it gets the afternoon sun. In the winters, I bring the plant inside and place it in a south-facing window where I hope that it can absorb as much light as possible.

A few weeks after I bring it in, usually around Thanksgiving, the plant rebels and starts throwing its leaves on the floor. But once I put it outside, usually in late April or at Easter, but this year not until mid-May, it starts getting healthy again. When I open the windows and the plant is blooming, the scent is glorious. It’s sweet and peppery at the same time.

The blooms are small, only about two or three inches across. So that poses a dilemma of what to put the buds in. Earlier this year in England, I bought several salt & pepper shakers, but the salt had corroded the top of one of them. Viola! A perfect bud vase.

In my office, I keep a small Chinoiserie vase on my desk and when the gardenia’s blooming, I bring blossoms in every few days.

I also have some small Wedgwood vases which work perfectly.

Having fresh flowers around is very important to me, and I love to photograph them for my Instagram account in their various vases.