Chiang Mai Dragon Chair

My friend Janice who used to work for Schumacher, sent me this advertisement she created while she was on staff there. It’s the popular Chiang Mai Dragon pattern in Alabaster on a chair. What makes it so over-the-top is the gorgeous flamenco train lined in red (silk, I hope!) on the back of the chair. I can’t even imagine stunning this chair must have been.

I did play around with the background a tiny bit – just adding a Gaussian blur to make the chair pop!  Thanks for sending this, Janice!

Kung Hei Fat Choy–Year of the Dragon

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year – the year of the Dragon! Dragons are a classic design element and you see them everywhere!

You may have noticed my new header (if you get this via e-mail, click through to the blog). It’s the famous Scalamandré print Chi’En Dragon in coral. I swapped out the cream background for the grey that I use on the blog, so it would look seamless, but here it is in coral and cream.

There are lots of dragon fabrics that are very popular with the design crowd, the most popular being Chiang Mai Dragon by Schumacher. Funnily, it’s not one of my favourites, as I think it’s a very busy pattern. Even in a monochromatic colourway, it’s still too busy.One of the dragon motifs that I love is Tail Lights, a Lilly Pulitzer print. It’s a dragon with a traditional lantern at the end of its tail. I made up some pillows with this great fabric a last year.

I have a certain affinity for dragons, because the symbol for Wales is the Red Dragon. You see this on everything in Wales, from flags at rugby games to the local carpet cleaning company. The red dragon has its origins in Arthurian legends, but it still endures today, with Welsh people being known as dragon-hearted. Our local cricket club in the Vale of Glamorgan was called the Welsh Dragons.

At rugby games, they play Cwm Rhondda or Bread of Heaven or the Welsh Rugby Hymn, and change the words a bit from the classic hymn to “Can you hear the valleys ringing, Can you hear the dragons roar?”

But really, my favourite dragons are attending school in Oxford, England at the Dragon Pre-Preparatory School, following which, they attend the Dragon Preparatory School. Their motto is Strive Towards the Sun.

If I had children, I’d want them to attend this school and be little dragons.

All the very best to you in the Year of the Dragon. Kung Hei Fat Choy!

Flowers in the House!

On these grey winter days, there’s nothing better than fresh flowers in the house! I buy a dozen or so paper white narcissus (Narcissus papyraceus) bulbs in December and then plant them throughout the winter months. Their peppery sweet smell greets me as I walk into the house, and when the house is cool, they last for a few weeks. I took this picture on 9 January, and they’re still blooming.

For this set of bulbs, I put small pea gravel into silver-plated julep cups and put them on my windowsills. There’s just enough room, as the sills are about three inches deep. I also have some in my office and can’t wait for them to bloom.

I am adding this post to Small but Charming, a great blog about flowers and life in general.

Weekend Update: Part 58

Ugh. We lost. It was close, but the Ravens lost to the Patriots in the last two minutes of the game after being very close the whole game, and even leading. It was so nerve-wracking to watch. But we made it to the conference finals, which is better than 95% of the NFL teams.

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David’s Warehouse Sale was a lot of fun. At the last moment, I took a lot of my French Ivory cutlery, as well as some of the other old silverplate pieces I’ve unearthed from local thrift shops, including the silent butler I posted about the other day. I even had requests for more of my French Ivory pieces, especially the fun fish-eaters.

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It snowed here for the first time this season. Snow then ice over top of it, so it was a quiet weekend. I spent a lot of time reading and finally finished up Duchess: The Life of Wallis Warfield Windsor. No huge surprises, but I did learn that she “wallpapered” one room in yellow felt. I thought that sounded like it could be amazing… well, depending on the shade of yellow she used. And the old wool felts are really lovely and lush. Not like that cheap poly crap at JoAnn’s.

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I did venture out and went to the Book Thing, where I picked up a stack of vintage Martha Stewart Magazines from the1990’s. When I moved to the UK, one of the things I sold was my Vol. 1, No. 1 issue of Martha Stewart Living. I love this issue with the tartan cover, and no Martha.

I also picked up a copy of House & Home Magazine from Canada. It’s a great magazine, and easier to find than some of the great English interiors magazines.

I can’t wait for the next snowy day to curl up with the dozens of back issues of MSL and pull out and scan all of the pieces on Victorian Silver, English Hallmarks, Caring for your China, etc.

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I also took some time and made a huge batch of chicken stock. OK, I cheated and bought a roasted chicken for dinner earlier this week, but I did make the stock by hand. Chicken, water, celery, onion, peppercorns and about four hours of slow cooking. The house smelled amazing as I was cooking it. Once I finished, I let it cool, and then poured it into ice cube trays. I then put the frozen cubes into a ziplock bag for future use. I now have both veg and chicken stock on hand.

How was your weekend?

OKL Madness: Chairs

My friend Tish gave me the heads up on these old chairs on OKL. Anyone who has ever had a meeting in an old church basement is very familiar with chairs like these. They are rickety, uncomfortable and ancient. They’ve probably been set up for every church event since the 1940’s when they were brand-spanking new.

You could buy the chairs from OKL, or you could spend about five minutes looking on Etsy, and find these THREE chairs for a mere $112, a savings of $787. Pretty damn similar, I am thinking!

What is This?

I was talking to David Wiesand about his sale today, and he kindly agreed to let me try and sell some of my things there. So as I was looking for bits and bobs to sell, I came across this piece, which I’d found in some ghastly thrift shop a few weeks ago.

It was pitch black when I found it, and it took quite a lot of elbow grease to get it as clean as it is, but I am still not finished. The top opens up, and it looks like there might have been a glass insert inside, but that’s long gone!

It has a coat-of-arms on the lid, but it’s sort of generic, with a lion and griffon rampant and a suit of armor’s head, but there’s no wording on the banner where a motto would have been.

It has little paw feet,

and a gadrooned edge.

At first, I thought it was a cigarette butler, but it isn’t really the right style for that, and it’s a bit bigger than the ones I’ve seen. It’s about 8.5 inches from side to side, and 11 inches from the handle to the leading edge.

Any ideas?

Save the Date: FRIDAY!

You know that I am a huge fan of my friend, David Wiesand and his merry band of craftspeople, so I wanted to share the news about McLain-Wiesand’s annual Warehouse sale this Friday, January 20th at party central, a.k.a. the Showroom!One of the most fun things about this sale is seeing some of the prototypes that David has whipped up! At an auction last year, both he and I bid on an amazing turtle shell, but he won, and then made a casting of the shell and mounted it on a block of wood.David is now being represented by John Rosselli’s showroom in NYC, so his popularity is about to skyrocket! This is an excellent opportunity to get some of David’s pieces while he’s still a relative “unknown”.
Let me know if you’re coming and I will see you there!

McLain Wiesand          1013 Cathedral St.     Baltimore, MD 21201        Tel 410-539-4440

Room for London

With everything that’s happening in London this year, including the 2012 Summer Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee for HM Queen Elizabeth, II, you might have missed this little news nugget. A very small hotel has opened on the South Bank of the Thames.

How small, you might ask? One room.

And that’s not the most unusual thing about this hotel. It’s in a tiny tugboat structure that looks like a huge Thames tide might have thrown it on to the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre.In theory, anyone can book this room, which goes for a very reasonable London rate of £120 a night, but the first six months of bookings sold out in less than 12 minutes.

The three wind turbines on the spire over the tug help provide the power to the structure. And the spires echo those of the historic churches in London… St. Clements, St. Brides, St. Mary-le-Bow, St. Martins and others.The view from the bow pans from the Palace of Westminster to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It must be a great glittering sight at night.The interior is fitted out with boat-like components, the better to fit a lot into a very small space. The architect for the project, David Kohn, took elements from Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and applied them to this vessel, including naming it the same name as the boat that Conrad sailed up the River Congo, Roi des Belges. In addition, the map room has copies of antique maps of both the Congo and the Thames, tying them together as Conrad did in his books.

Reservations are again being accepted, as of Thursday, January 19th at 12:00 GMT, but if they sell like the last round, good luck in getting one!

Pigtown*Pinterest

Well, I finally capitulated and joined Pinterest. I had found an image that I loved, and then when I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it again. Additionally, I had noticed a lot of people pinning my images when I checked my stats, and it was always interesting to see which images were pinned. I’ve just started pinning within the last week or so, and have a couple of boards started – Things for the House, Good Ideas, Houses I Like in the UK, NYC and Baltimore. As I continue with the process, I know I will be adding more boards. I will also be adding images that didn’t always make it onto the blog, as well as things that I love. I hope you will join me over on Pinterest or click on the button on the sidebar to see what I’ve added.

PURPLE Friday!

The Fridays before Ravens games are designated as PURPLE FRIDAYS. This year, for the fourth year in a row, the Ravens are headed to the playoffs, and once again, residents of Baltimore are painting the town purple. Mostly with light, but some people do actually paint.

The College of Notre Dame in Maryland

University of Maryland, with historic Davidge Hall at the bottom.

Stencils on the sidewalks around the city.

Baltimore’s City Hall

I am furiously sewing some cashmere scarves with old black and purple sweaters to sell at a friend’s shop. I miss living downtown at times like this, when the whole city is lit up. Click here for pictures from two years ago, when some of the buildings around the harbour spelled out GO RAVENS. And if you look at the same date last year, I wrote about the EXACT.SAME.THING!

The game’s on Sunday and we’re all wishing for a huge Raven’s VICTORY!