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Musing Through Classical Mythology
A bronze statue of Mercury atop a fountain in the rotunda of the National Gallery of Art, after Giovanni Bologna. Image © Saxon Henry. As I was strolling through the National Gallery of Art a week and...
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Decorating Hampton Court Palace
The West (Medieval) Front of Hampton Court Palace. The premise of this article and the next one I’ll post here on Improvateur (next week) began with a rather capricious question: how would it feel to...
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Furnishing Pastimes of Henry VIII
The West (Medieval) Front of Hampton Court Palace. As I mentioned in my last Improvateur article presenting a brief history of Hampton Court Palace, I launched into a furnishings fantasy when I heard...
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We’ll Never Be Royals
…but we can serve dinner as if we are, thanks to Bernardaud! Nest Nest Nest features the Alliage pattern. As I write this, I can feel the design energy draining from the Americas as the...
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Timothy Oulton Design Adventurer
W.E. Johns penned more than 100 books featuring adventures by Biggles. “As the momentous words ‘England is now, therefore, in a state of war with Germany’ came somberly over the radio, Major James...
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One Special Summer with Jackie O
Jacqueline Kennedy poses in front of the Taj Mahal. Photo courtesy JFK Library. Hegel’s caveat “history teaches us nothing” may be relevant in cultural and philosophical realities but in the design...
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An Unsung Hero of Modern Design
A “Playboy” magazine cover from 1961 featuring modernism’s great designers. Edward Wormley is second from the left. Resurrecting pivotal eras in design is irresistible to vanguards who understand that...
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The Red Carpet Treatment
The entry of The National Arts Club, nestled at the edge of Gramercy Park. Image copyright Dmadeo, courtesy Wikimedia. There is a momentum to writing that, once interrupted, is challenging to reboot....
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Narratives That Illuminate Design
A picture of Edith Wharton on the terrace of Castel Sainte-Claire, which I found during a trip to the Beinecke Library at Yale to comb through their archives. If you believe that design-centric coffee...
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Dining with History
A square cachepot in the Marie Antoinette pattern produced by Bernardaud. A month from Sunday, I’ll be winging my way to Paris to attend Maison & Objet, and I’m thrilled to say I’ve been invited to...
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God’s Articulate Finger
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel vaulted ceiling and Altar Wall depicting “The Last Judgement.” Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel In this last entry of the year, I wanted to share a piece of my own...
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Through the Looking Glass into Devon
A mad tea party, illustrated by Charles Robinson: “What day of the month is it?” he said, turning to Alice. Image courtesy WikiMedia. “‘What is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or...
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What Is Art?
The Fen chandelier in the new Currey & Company product introductions. “It is assumed that everyone knows and understands what is meant by the word beauty,” Leo Tolstoy wrote. “And yet not only is...
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Renovating During the Tudor Era
Armored horses and riders in The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Arms and Armor Court, in the John Pierpont Morgan Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image © Saxon Henry. Hindsight is 20/20, as they...
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The Age of Genius
Bruno Schulz self portrait, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. “Ordinary facts are arranged within time, strung along its length as on a thread,” writes Bruno Schulz in his short story The Age of Genius....
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Harlow at Bergdorfs!
The Harlow chandelier in a Bergdorf’s window display. I stood for a while admiring the chandelier in the window at Bergdorf Goodman. There was something about its icy lozenges of light telescoping out...
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Michele De Lucchi: A Conversation of Soul
Michele De Lucchi speaking at an iSaloni press conference. The Greek philosopher Plato likened thought to “a conversation of the soul with itself—a philosophical communication.” It isn’t unusual for me...
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Snow White Meets Settenani
A beguiling Snow White in the forest-glen. “Oh, mirror, mirror on the wall, am I most beautiful of all?” Snow White’s mother, the envious Queen, would ask her looking glass each evening, soothed by the...
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A Book of Light
To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and...
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Threads With a Soul
A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people —Mahatma Gandhi Welspun’s SPUN collection is indeed made from threads with soul. Soul is one of those words with as many...
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