Getting Ready!

I know you’re probably sick of hearing about the Portobello Pop Up, but it’s coming up quickly, and it’s been all-consuming of my time for the past few weeks.

Over the weekend, my friends Stiles and Jonathan, who own Halcyon House Antiques, worked to make my inventory look amazing. Both of them have an incredible ability to stage and style. While I was unpacking some things, Jonathan set up this vignette in about two minutes! When you dissect the photo, you can see the red from the plates playing off of the red in the curtains, and the symmetry, with the central focus on the Queen’s plate and the lamp behind it.

There are more than 200 items in the sale, and it was like a puzzle finding the best place for everything.

This combination of blue and white evolved into centering this huge ironstone basin under the table, to balance the white tray.

While I love my friend Sam Robinson’s painting above the fireplace, we replaced it with an extraordinary embroidered image of numerous British flags, all executed in fine silks. The three plates are reproductions of the famous Wedgwood “Frog Service” originally made for Cathering the Great.

Another quandry was finding a place and a way to display all of the mother of pearl cutlery that I’ve collected over the past few months. We laid some of it out on linen trays, and bundled them with ribbons, courtesy of my friend, Andrea at Bosom Buddy Bags, and placed the lots in mini silver buckets.

One of my favorite vignettes is this corner display of a set of silver, along with three classic prints, in incredible frames. I picked these up at a recent auction and found that they’re actually quite good prints and frames. Score!

As we headed out after a full day of staging and styling, we saw some members of the local deer population grazing in the meadow in front of Halcyon House.

The Portobello Pop Up opens on Friday, September 16 and rund through the 24th. Hope to see you there!