Design on a Dime
[Originally published February 2007]
Staying at Louisville's Seelbach Hotel last weekend put mom and me in the mood for antiquing. We took a day trip about 30 miles out of town to Shelbyville, known for the spectacular Wakefield-Scearce antique gallery, which features Georgian and Victorian treasures displayed in beautifully decorated rooms. Afterwards, we had lunch at the adjoining Science Hill Inn. I ordered a scrumptious salad of Bibb lettuce, old Kentucky ham, turkey, Swiss cheese, and a killer house dressing with blue cheese. It was all very “ladies who lunch,” and, combined with the Wakefield-Scearce displays, put me in a domestic mood.
When I returned home I was inspired to leaf through a couple of my favorite decorating books. An out-of-print one I love is Diana Phipps’s Affordable Splendor. Phipps was born a Czech countess, but her family, the Sternbergs, lost their castles and all of their possessions in 1948. Phipps then made her living in Britain and the US as a decorator, and the book outlines her creative approach to transforming spaces using inexpensive materials. Some of it is dated—the pink gingham bedroom is terribly early Laura Ashley–but the London living room detailed in the first chapter is still stunning. Reading the book is even more fun now since Phipps’s story has a fairy tale ending that she could not have guessed while writing it; in 1992 she regained ownership of the main family castle, which is now redecorated by the countess herself and open to the public.
In a previous post I mentioned The Paris Apartment: Romantic Decor on a Flea Market Budget. Aside from being very pretty, the book is quite inspiring: Claudia Strasser uses a series of examples to illustrate how flea market finds can be combined to create elegant interiors. She advocates many of Diana Phipps’s shortcuts: using hot glue guns, draping walls with fabric, and renewing old materials by dying or painting them. Be sure to check out the Paris Apartment website and blog to see more of Claudia's magic.
A new publication that caught my eye is Creole Thrift, which celebrates sumptuous New Orleans decor. This style is a bit rich for my blood, and I’m not certain the emphasis here is truly on thrift, though the book did give me some ideas for how to recover and modernize a neglected antique divan. But the best part for me is just curling up with one of these books and dreaming of the perfect home, had I but world enough and time.
Staying at Louisville's Seelbach Hotel last weekend put mom and me in the mood for antiquing. We took a day trip about 30 miles out of town to Shelbyville, known for the spectacular Wakefield-Scearce antique gallery, which features Georgian and Victorian treasures displayed in beautifully decorated rooms. Afterwards, we had lunch at the adjoining Science Hill Inn. I ordered a scrumptious salad of Bibb lettuce, old Kentucky ham, turkey, Swiss cheese, and a killer house dressing with blue cheese. It was all very “ladies who lunch,” and, combined with the Wakefield-Scearce displays, put me in a domestic mood.
When I returned home I was inspired to leaf through a couple of my favorite decorating books. An out-of-print one I love is Diana Phipps’s Affordable Splendor. Phipps was born a Czech countess, but her family, the Sternbergs, lost their castles and all of their possessions in 1948. Phipps then made her living in Britain and the US as a decorator, and the book outlines her creative approach to transforming spaces using inexpensive materials. Some of it is dated—the pink gingham bedroom is terribly early Laura Ashley–but the London living room detailed in the first chapter is still stunning. Reading the book is even more fun now since Phipps’s story has a fairy tale ending that she could not have guessed while writing it; in 1992 she regained ownership of the main family castle, which is now redecorated by the countess herself and open to the public.
In a previous post I mentioned The Paris Apartment: Romantic Decor on a Flea Market Budget. Aside from being very pretty, the book is quite inspiring: Claudia Strasser uses a series of examples to illustrate how flea market finds can be combined to create elegant interiors. She advocates many of Diana Phipps’s shortcuts: using hot glue guns, draping walls with fabric, and renewing old materials by dying or painting them. Be sure to check out the Paris Apartment website and blog to see more of Claudia's magic.
A new publication that caught my eye is Creole Thrift, which celebrates sumptuous New Orleans decor. This style is a bit rich for my blood, and I’m not certain the emphasis here is truly on thrift, though the book did give me some ideas for how to recover and modernize a neglected antique divan. But the best part for me is just curling up with one of these books and dreaming of the perfect home, had I but world enough and time.
posted by The Tailored Woman at Saturday, September 19, 2009
2 Comments:
Hi! I just stumbled onto your blog and love it. Thank you for the compliment on my book. But I had to laugh! How did you know judith insisted on the picture? That's classified info! haha!!
love claudia
Thanks for your comment, Claudia! I am dying to get to your store the next I'm in New York. Just found the Paris Apartment website and blog; I'll update my post to link to them.
Anyway, my favorite part about that photo is that there is no caption, so readers are left wondering who the vamp lady is. (Don't worry--I never thought it was the author!) It wasn't until years later, when I read an article about Regan in Vanity Fair, that I learned it was she in the picture. And suddenly it all made sense.
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