Save the Date: May 3 is the Ladew Garden Festival!

One of the high points on my spring schedule is the annual Ladew Garden Festival and this year, it takes place on Saturday, May 3 at the gorgeous Ladew Gardens just north of Baltimore.

This year’s honorary chair and lecturer is Barbara Israel, a leading authority on garden ornaments. She will illustrate the development of this functional and fanciful form of art, tracing it from the Victorian era through the first half of the twentieth century. She will draw examples from her book, Antique Garden Ornament, Two Centuries of American Taste.You can read more about Barbara and her garden antiques here.

In addition to the lecture, there’s an early-bird preview for those willing to get first dibs on the goodies! Tickets are $100 and include the lecture and a light breakfast. It’s well worth the effort to do this, as the show has been a sell out for the past few years! Otherwise, tickets are $15 per person.

With our very late spring this year, I am not sure what will be blooming in two weeks. We’re just getting tulips and daffodils now.

Unless we get a lot of warm weather, I don’t think that the azaleas will be blooming. In other years, they’ve been past their peak for the Festival.

Regardless of what’s in bloom, there are always amazing things to see in the garden… and in the house!

For more information on the Festival, please click here.

High Point: HGTV Home

The second of my two sponsors for the High Point Furniture Market was HGTV Home, the home products division of the television channel HGTV. They have taken their expertise in homes and gardens and have partnered with brands like Bassett Furniture, Sherwin-Williams Paints and Shaw Floors to bring their viewers a way to create their own style, based on what they’ve seen on HGTV.

For the first time, HGTV Home had a space at InterHall, the part of the Furniture Market which showcases up and coming furniture designers and brands. HGTV Home’s corner space proved to be an ideal location to showcase the new trends and products they are featuring this season.

One of the biggest trends they are seeing this year is “Heavy Metal” featuring lots of metallics, but as accents.

This lighting fixture is all-metal, but it’s also light and airy enough not to appear weighty.

The fabric on this bench features gold and silver metallic accents, but in a subtle way.

The nail-head trim on this dresser creates a dramatic accent, but again, in a subtle, yet metallic manner.

Even some of the fabrics and papers used discreet metallics, which add to the interest of the pieces.

Another story that HGTV is showing this season is BLUE! As I mentioned the other day, I saw a lot of blue at the Market, and HGVT was one of the first showrooms where I noticed it.

They are featuring blues in their Graphic Control fabric collection, available at Jo-Ann stores. They’ve taken some of their fabric patterns and re-coloured them in a range of blue shades and tones.

It’s all about updating to turquoise, navy and lapis. By simply updating the colours, you update the prints.

Sherwin-Williams is producing the paints and wallpapers for HGTV Home and they’ve created collections for American homes, ranging from Coastal Cool to Global Spice. The paints and papers in each collection are designed to work together to create a cohesive space. For the DIY home-owner, it takes a lot of the guess-work out of the decision-making process and eliminates the fear of having clashing shades.

One of the most eye-catching pieces in the showroom was a custom-created mosaic wall-hanging made up of more than 60 pieces from the HGTV Home collection, including flooring, fabrics, tiles, carpeting, wallpapers, paints and more.

The piece was massive, and the staffers at the showroom told me that it weighed a ton! Well, maybe not a ton, but it was very heavy. It really showcased the range of pieces that HGTV Home offers. They even had a card with each of the pieces numbered and sourced. So clever.

I will be back with a look at HGTV Homes’ furniture line with Bassett Furniture.

This post has been sponsored by HGTV Home who was one of my sponsors at High Point Furniture Market. All opinions are my own.

Happy Easter, Bunnies!

High Point: It’s the Blues!

It’s really amazing to see all of the gorgeous colours used at High Point. While I can usually count on seeing the early spring blooms at High Point in the spring, things were much later to bloom than usual, and Market was a little earlier. But it was still colourful!

My sponsor, HGTV Products had a beautiful display of every shade of blue. Their new range of furniture, wallpapers and paints showed the blues off to great effect.

Williamsburg, which used to be associated with flat and somewhat faded shades, has taken a turn for the modern. This pillow is a riff on one of the patterns they found in their archives.

These lamps take their shapes from gourds found in the gardens, and their colours from the newly discovered paint shades that have been found.

CRLaine always has the most gorgeous, saturated colours, like this blue leather chair with the terrific silver nail-head trim.

The detail work on their pieces is so beautifully executed, like these slipper chairs.

And blue was definitely everywhere, in every shade!

Wesley Hall always has some magic up their sleeves and does a spectacular job with their upholstered pieces.

Thibaut is another showroom that I can always count on for wonderful colours and prints. These are new to their line of fabrics and papers.

This piece takes advantage of the subtle pattern in the shagreen (in this case, faux), to make a striking chest at Jonathan Charles.

I hope that this post didn’t give you the blues!

High Point Highlights: Chinoiserie

With everything that happened in High Point, I’ve been tempted to put it all behind me, but I have an obligation and I really do want to share what I saw with you! So, let’s take a jaunt through High Point and see what I saw. Chinoiserie has always been “in” for me, but it was everywhere at this Market.

From Williamsburg: Look at this great mirror, in two sizes! Stunning

From CR Laine: Chinese Chippendale-style chairs

Pagoda mirror and lots of gorgeous blue and white, along with some Traci Zeller pillows.

From Thibaut: A pagoda-style headboard!

Beautiful orange and grey fabrics and papers, plus a pagoda sconce!

Lots of beautiful Chinoiserie-style fabrics.

From Lillian August: Always beautiful accessories in that showroom.

A pagoda style headboard.

I love Chinoiserie!

Henry Koehler: Equestrian Artist & Painter of Artichokes!

My friends at Halcyon House Antiques are having a show and sale of Henry Koehler’s paintings from April 18 to May 31, 2014. Mr. Koehler is a prolific painter of hunt and equestrian scenes, and is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest living sporting artists in the world. His long association with the sporting life began when his illustrations appeared in The New Yorker, Town & Country and Sports Illustrated.

His first exhibition was in 1961 and since that time he has shown 58 times in London, Paris, Dublin, Johannesburg and throughout the United States. His paintings have been collected by some of the biggest names in the art and equestrian worlds, including Paul Mellon and HM Queen Elizabeth II and her son, Prince Charles.

Mr.Koehler’s works reflect the myriad details of a race meet, and through his pictures, you can see the pieces that go into making the colourful races such a beloved pastime.

In addition to the racing images, Halcyon House Antiques also has some paintings of gardening tools,

including a set from Baltimore’s own Harvey Ladew of Ladew Gardens, about which I’ve written before.

The other main theme of Mr. Koehler’s paintings, and one which he’s been doing for many years, is artichokes!

This piece is/was in Lars Bolander’s home in Palm Beach.

He has a passion for artichokes and has a large collection of artichoke-themed items, including ties, cufflinks, doorknockers, and slippers and pieces made from gold, silver, wood and ivory!

There’s a marvelous story of one of Mr. Koehler’s early paintings which he did of Jack and Jackie Kennedy sailing. It’s told by the artist’s step-son, CBS newsman, Anthony Mason.

For more information on the show, please contact Eric at Halcyon House Antiques.