The Perfect Vignette

By Elizabeth Prata

I like design shows and tips for upcycling and home decorating. I like to make my place look nice, be functional, and have pleasant surprises for the eye. I'ts hard to do on a budget and within 410 square feet, but I manage. I like the challenge, too!

There are free short videos to watch on the new Design Network. (https://www.tdn.tv/) This is an online channel started by Jason Harris, CEO of Furnitureland South, which is "located in High Point, NC, Furnitureland South is the world’s largest furniture store, with 1.3 million square feet for home furnishings showrooms. Recognized in 2018 as America’s Best Large Independent Furniture Retailer, Furnitureland South represents over 1,000 of the finest brands and offers nationwide white glove delivery," according to the company's blurb.

TDN features lots and lots of channels of short videos offering tips on most any style of design you enjoy. By short, I mean about 7-20 minutes. Some of the titles of TDN's videos I've enjoyed include

• Commissioned, Follow talented artists as they tackle a commissioned artwork piece with design in mind.
• Design(ish) with Genevieve Gorder, who is always a delight to watch
• Dressing Rooms with Carson Kressley and Gina Alem, who take a client's outfit and bring elements of their outfit into the room. It's interesting.
• Design Smackdown with Thom Felicia
• MidMod Then & Now, I really enjoyed. Two designers go through a Palm Beach luxury home and demonstrate how the actual mid-century modern has been updated and referenced in today's designs Fascinating.

There are tons of other videos, too.

I also watch AMB Design Inc. which is Utah designer Ann-Marie Barton on youtube. Her channel has a lot of different videos but I like the channel Gracious Living. She has a quiet and relaxing way about her, and she explains why this element or that element works in the room she is designing for her client. She speaks well and not a word is wasted in her short videos.

Finally I also enjoy CoralTV, again, on Youtube. They will produce short videos on 'How to Style Your Bed' or '1 Couch Two Ways'.

These are free and since they are pretty and short, sometimes enjoy watching one before bed. The tv-host professionalism varies from designer to designer, and some have a voice for the shower only and not TV, lo, but all in all these ate cute videos and helpful too. If you enjoy home design.

There are spots on my apartment I enjoy, that are just perfect for me. The designers are always talking about 'this moment in the room' meaning this little vignette or spot where something surprising or cute is happening. I like how my teacups are arranged on my kitchen counter. I like the art hanging over my desk in the bedroom. And I like this:

I had found that little stand at a resale store. It's not meant to be a bookcase per se, but I needed something small to go in a narrow spot, so I turned it into one. I like that there is space underneath to put my slippers. My bookcases, all 7 of them, are arranged thematically. This one holds my Puritan library. I am proud of my library. It's taken a long time to accumulate exactly the books I want. I'm happy that I have them and that I've made a way to store them conveniently and in a pretty way despite having so little room.

On top I especially love this vignette:

These three items are some I enjoy. I bought the painting a few years ago at the High School art show. It's done by a student. The style reminded me of Maine artist Marsden Hartley. His work hangs in the Smithsonian and Museum of Modern art, among other museums. Here's Marsden-

I like being able to support a budding artist. I also enjoy the scene itself. The turtle in the bowl was a gift from a friend who'd visited the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador and brought that back for me. Finally the bowl is mid-century modern and I think it's cool. I like to look at it.

Anyway, today was change the sheets day. Not that I have a particular day, it's just when I feel like it. My bed doesn't move so in order to get the fitted sheet on that back corner I have to fling myself toward the spot and wrestle it under the mattress while I am laying on it. Quite a feat. What is it about making up a bed with fresh sheets that makes you want to lay on them right away? At least this time Murray was snoozing in his little bed in the kitchen and didn't try to scoot under the sheets AS I was putting them on the bed!

He figured out where I  was soon enough and came to check it out. His favorite spot. He enjoys watching the many birds in the yard from the window there. And this morning somehow a moth had gotten in and he woke me up by chasing it all over the bed. Murray is a good watch-cat. He saved me from the moth. All is well now.

When I make the bed up for the first time with fresh sheets, I like to make everything symmetrical. The medallion on the bed centered, and the fringe hanging just to the bottom of the bed rail and as straight as I can make it. I know, it might be obsessive, but when I walk into the room, MY vignette, MY 'moment', is seeing everything in order, straight and neat. Who doesn't like that? Here it is-

My plans for the rest of the day is to feed the cat, who is bugging me even as I write this. He has dry food. But he knows the wet, delicious, terrific food is coming. So pretty much after noon time he is relentless. he stares at me from 4 inches away. He puts a paw on my arm. He winds around my feet. Sigh, cats, you know?

Then I'll probably head to the library to pick up a book on hold. It's about the Titanic. Maybe head to The Special Store after that to see anything new that has come in. I binged on a bunch of TDN/Gracious Living/Coral design videos and now I'm fired up. Of course, on the videos, they are busy gutting the 50 foot kitchen in their vacation home in Cabo San Lucas, while for me fired up is buying a saucer. Different strokes! I hope you have a great day and a nice holiday weekend!

A Very Brady Renovation: 70s design

By Elizabeth Prata

A very Brady Renovation is a new show on HGTV. Apparently the home in Los Angeles used for exterior shots-only for the 5-season TV show went on sale for the first time in 45 years. Amazingly, there was a great deal of intense interest in the home, and a huge bidding war ensued. HGTV got it.

The Brady Bunch TV show is celebrating its 50th year since its debut season in 1969. Can you believe it? I can't. I was 8 1/2 when the show first aired, and it's weird to think I can remember things that happened half a century ago.

I liked the show well enough, as a child it captured my interest because of the storylines involving issues of interest to kids: sibling rivalry, character building, and responsibility within the family.

When HGTV heard "The Brady House" was for sale, they decided to buy the home and renovate it. The interior we all saw on TV was simply a set that a set designer dreamed up, and bears no resemblance to the actual home's insides. The set was a two story home, with the famous floating staircase joining the lower and upper floor. The actual home has no second story! So the HGTV folks had to build one. Further, the home isn't large, not for all the rooms that the Brady set designer dreamed up, so HGTV constructed an addition in the back (so as to keep the front exterior aspect the same.)

The episodes I've seen so far focus on scrounging, making, or crowd-sourcing exact replicas of everything in the home, down to the glass cluster of grapes on the living room coffee table and the fluffy giraffe in the girls' room. In that way, they focus some on design of the era.

Now. The design. Sigh.

I'm not a fan of 70s design. I much more enjoy seeing the sleek, linear, and symmetrical lines of mid-century modern. That era extended from 1933 to 1965, though some say the design height of that period was confined to 1947 to 1957.

The clunky, chunky 70s design era was filled with barrel shaped end tables, lots of paneling, heavy stonework (usually on chimneys), and gasp! avocado and burnt orange kitchens. I wonder who thought up the avocado trend...

My first home was a raised ranch with a modern contemporary design inside, sprinkled with a few antiques. The antiques I had were sleeker with no fru-fru scrollwork, so they fit in with the modern design. Then when I got married we lived in a 'camp'. This was a seasonal cabin or small home n a lake. It's what we called these seasonal homes in Maine. We winterized it and moved in.

The cabin was built in 1953. When I moved in during the late 1990s the interior still sported the original kitchen clock, the propane, rounded top fridge, knotty pine paneling on the walls (which didn't make the room dark because the three walls facing the lake sported bay windows) and the overstuffed puffy couch with huge pattern. We even had a 1950s Electrolux vacuum, lol. It weighed a ton.

I liked the 1950s style. The style I'm living in now is kind of an eclectic Boho. A mishmash that kind of works. Mainly because this furniture is what I've ended up with or been given, so that's what I have, lol.

I lived through the 70s and I wasn't a fan of the design then and I'm not now. But it's nostalgic for me and I'll tell you why.

When I was born me and my parents lived in an apartment above the family business in the city of Providence. My parents' goal was to buy a home in the suburbs. They found a 100 year old Cape Cod-style farmhouse (1860s) in a nice town and 4 acres came with it. Perfect. Also a chicken barn in the back. The farmhouse was typical of the 1800s construction, small, lots of smaller rooms, a fireplace in each room, and an add-on of a kitchen in the back that was so small only 1 person could work in there at a time. Upstairs was two large bedrooms rooms with sharply sloping ceilings typical of the Cape Cod style, a bathroom and a small closet that was turned into a nursery when my sister came along.

It was fine for a while, with a small child and a baby (my brother that came soon after). However when I was 10 years old they decided to renovate the chicken barn out back, move into it, and rent the house. This was in about 1970.

The chicken barn was 90 feet long. My father designed the home to his aesthetic which meant the living room and dining area comprised the main part of the home, and was all open. The room was about 50 feet long. Red brick adorned the back wall, and along the two sides were sliding glass doors and huge windows. The ceiling was rustic, rough-hewn cedar beams along cathedral ceilings. The ceiling hung with black wrought iron chandeliers with light bulbs that looked like candles. There was a five foot wide fireplace with concrete floating hearth, and massive stones lining the chimney up to the chalet-like ceiling. Since the room was so big the massive concrete and stone fireplace didn't overwhelm the room.

Red shag carpeting. An octagonal dinging table with swivel barrel chairs. A galley bar with high barrel stools matching the dining table. It looked like a ski lodge and was dark, despite the windows all along the side.

I liked the openness of the plan and I love the cedar, stone, and brick. I do like natural materials. I even loved the concrete hearth. I wish I had polished concrete floors or a concrete kitchen counter. I like the look of polished concrete.

Anyway, "The Barn" (what we called our home forever after)  was a unique design but was totally unworkable for a family. There was no tub. The kitchen had a stove and fridge but no sink, the only sink was in the galley kitchen-bar. And it was small. It's also where the dishwasher was. Not enough bedrooms for the sisters and brother, the brother slept in the attic (which he loved). But he had to go through the sisters' room to get to the attic ladder, which they hated. A Jack-and-Jill bathroom connecting the living room and the sisters' bedroom. Awkward. Dark, heavy, very male design which the wife disliked. She always said it was like living in a chalet. It was really suitable for a bachelor and indeed that is who my father sold the home to 40 years later.

Anyway, as I watch the Brady House renovation and they design the stone walls inside the home and add the paneling and the brick, install shag rugs, and place barrel-shaped end tables adorned with clunky lamps, it is all very familiar to me because I lived in that aesthetic from age 10 to 14. Also included in the 70s aesthetic were bold prints of flowers in bright colors, yellow (The Brady House has yellow tile backsplash in the bathroom), macrame plant holders (Macrame is just a dust catcher to me), rattan, and disco-glitz.

If I was forced to choose a 70s design it would me Mary Tyler Moore's apartment, with the gold velour couch, stained glass kitchen over hang, beige shag rug, and cream tulip table with rattan chair by the sliding glass doors.

The renovation show does bring back a lot of memories, both of my own life in living that design era and the Brady Bunch show itself. Can you believe The Brady Bunch is 50 years old? The lead actors who played the mom and dad (Florence Henderson and Robert Reed) have passed away. The maid, Ann B. Davis, has also passed on. But all 6 actors who played the kids are alive and all 6 participated in the reno show.

As the Baby Boomer generation ages, nostalgia has become a big business. The ratings for A Very Brady Renovation are through the roof. As an aging Boomer, I know I'm interested. Apparently there will be a Christmas Special, too. LOL. Now, if only the actual design of the era was palatable, we'd be all set.

------------------------------------
More on 70s design:

This Decade Is Slowly Taking the Design World by Storm

American Style Through the Decades: The Seventies

Seventies design trends and ideas

Living (and eating) tiny and in interesting spaces: Old London dairy, Silo, Model Market Street Feast

One thing I love about school breaks is that I can let loose on the internet. I can spend time just browsing, and I'm so glad I do. I found some very interesting new things to learn about and love.

There is a British channel on Youtube called Gardens & Homes. Update: I thought it was the official channel. It wasn't. It's been deleted. But the show is called Grand Designs and it can be found online here.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/episode-guide

I watched several of the full length videos and enjoyed them all. They feature home makeovers and renovations, but of the uniquely British kind. Renovating an 18th century Shropshire farmer's cottage, or renovating an East London 1900s dairy, or an ancient Welsh chapel into a living space. The British Isles are dotted with crumbling farmer's crofts, castles, estates and other historical buildings we just hate to let dissolve into the ground. People do buy them and the channel follows their journey into either sanity or insanity in attempting to make habitable, compliant living spaces out of them. The writing is good and the photography is beautiful too. Check them out. I especially loved the east London Dairy renovation I posted below.

The couple featured in this episode spent an inordinate amount of money for a small space are interior and graphic designers who are mightily attracted to the aesthetic concepts of rough spaces, industrial grunge, and the like. I love industrial also, and I enjoyed watching the host's amusement as he drew out of the couple their plans for a tasteful reno that included keeping or reusing the peeling paint and rusty metal joists. In the end, the space turned out spectacular as the show astutely depicted their aesthetic sojourn from hopefulness butting up against code enforcement reality and achieved a delicate balance of honoring the space's history, usability, and beauty.



For inspiration at one point in the show, the wife went to a place called Model Market. I was immediately in love with this new approach to using abandoned cityscapes. The developer uses spaces that have been bought and are awaiting development into offices or apartments, and instead creates a family friendly, open air pop up food market featuring lights, music, and a plethora of different restaurants.

Wow, talk about creative.

Traveler photo submitted by KateL1710 (Jan 2016)

Here is an article about it

Street Feast London - Model Market
Last summer Street Feast London took a disused 1950s indoor and outdoor market in Lewisham and transformed it into a weekend street eating destination, breathing new life into the local community.

The other photos at the link above are equally enchanting, beautiful, and cool!

Whatever you want to call it, micro-diners, street food, or pop up restaurants, the business model is one I love. The concept showcases chefs, their dishes, and their restaurants. The venue brings in customers to unloved city areas. It's a safe and clean business, family friendly (as long as the ratio of bars vs. diners stays appropriate). It helps turn negative reviews of a disused area of the city into one with possibilities and hope. It gets chefs out of the basement or the rear of the restaurant, slaving away in anonymity, to interact with customers and into the fresh air and not last, showcases their talents. It provides a free spot for families or anyne to congregate to on a Friday or Saturday evening in the warm season.

Recently London celebrity chefs Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver teamed up with other chefs to invest in the model, which is the brainchild of Street Feast owners-developers Jonathan Downey and Henry Dimbleby of Street Feast. The new company is called London Union.

What Street Feast did next: Henry Dimbleby and Jonathan Downey on crowdfunding, London Union and breaking Berlin

The aim of London Union is to find areas across the capital that are economically inactive – often waiting for planning permission or for work to start on a new development – and build pop-up markets that create local jobs and provide opportunities for new, up-and-coming street food traders to establish themselves without requiring large amounts of capital.

I've always been a fan of creative ideas for using space in a city. The 1994 Greg Brown song Boomtown and Robert Putnam's 2000 book Bowling Alone have stayed with me all this time.

On another topic, still on Youtube though, I like to watch videos of tours of tiny houses. I have been ahead of the curve with this tiny house movement. I owned a new 2500 sf three bedroom raised ranch in the excessive and consumerism 1980s. The culture taught me to acquire, live high, and show it off. That approach to life turned out to be expensive and enslaving. I dumped the house, met and married a man who was about to embark on his own tiny house approach, and we were off. We moved into a 900 sf homne, then a 37 foot sailboat, then a pop up WV camper van. I did draw the line at the camper van, lol, that was as small as I wanted to go. To this day I live in a 425 sf apartment and I love it.

But the tiny houses all seem to me to lack one thing: comfort. I've been watching a lot of tiny house tours on Youtube, and they just do not appeal to me. If you're a starry eyed 20 year old, maybe you don't mind sitting on a box. But I don't want to do that. Tiny houses just don't have couches. (OK, I know some do, but then again, I don't want to haul my tired carcass up a ladder to go to bed, either).

I love the idea of cities allowing zoning for this kind of alternate living, it makes sense and it's eco-friendly as well as budget friendly. I read that one northwestern city has 0% unemployment but homelessness is skyrocketing. Why? People work there but can't afford the housing prices.

Anyway, in my week-off Youtube browsing bonanza I found this video of a tiny home the man built in a silo. It's a little over 300 sf and it's contemporary, stylish, functional, and adheres to the tiny home notion. It should be noted that the couple who own and live in it abide in Phoenix and they do make use of the outdoors for much of their living space. The shower is outside as is a lounge area. But I did spot a daybed in the circular home and the bedroom is aloft but accessed by a circular staircase, not a ladder.

Which reminds me, my first apartment in University was a small place that had a galley kitchen, tiny living room, and a loft bedroom accessed by a circular staircase. I guess I've always liked living tiny.

Here is an article about the silo tiny home, and a short video.

Tomorrow I plan to head into the city of Athens to Small Business Saturday at Avid Bookshop for their Book Swap. From 2-3 pm, if you bring a bag of books and have $3, (which puts you into a raffle for a prize) you can browse others' books and they can browse yours. You can take back home any books that aren't chosen or leave them for a donation to a charity they fund. Win-win!

So that has been my week of aesthetic pursuits- renovations of alternate living spaces, alternate and creative land use, and design!

Luxe living on a budget

I have champagne tastes on a beer budget, as they say. I like the finer things, but can hardly afford expensive furniture, art, or food. So I improvise!

I have all that I need and more than I could want. But I still like the prettiness, craftsmanship, and feeling of fine materials. So what to do?

I seed my living space with luxe things. Instead of worrying about an entire living space filled with fine furnishings, art, or style items like throws & pillows, I seed it with a few good pieces here and there.

For example: I found this table at a yard sale for $2. It is hand-made and of a good wood. But there is a gaping hole in the top! It was obviously used to hold a bowl of some kind so a person could wash up. Unless the owner of the yard sale didn't have plumbing recently (unlikely) I surmised that the table was also old. But how to use with a hole in the top?

Elsewhere in the yard sale they were selling a thick and heavy polished marble slab as a cutting board for $2. Hmmm. I put it on top of the table, and voila!

Now it makes a nice end table in the living room-

Some years ago a friend made and gave me a Raku vase. Raku is a complicated and unique pottery method which results in the item having a patina that's rich and glossy, and changes over time. If I were to search for a similar kind of vase to buy they would cost between $75 to $150. Because it is a hand made and a unique item, I display it in the living room. There, I can enjoy it and also add to the seeds of luxury and fineness I'm building.

Below, one side of the Raku vase is glossy copper.

The other side is a muted gray.

I was shopping at a vintage estate sale store recently. Often you can find good items for a decent price there. When you shop at flea markets or tag sales or anywhere, if an item is on sale look at it and think about how to use it. Here is a hand painted tray for $2. Don't need a tray? How about using it for a frame, glue a mirror on it or a picture and hang it up? Here is a coat rack. Don't need a coat rack? How about using it for a towel hanger in the bathroom? Find some milk glass but don't need glassware? How about using them on your mantel with a votive candle inside?

I found this essential oil dispenser for $1. I don't use essential oils. Hmmm. I liked the item though. It was unique, priced well, heavy, and hand carved out of some kind of material that's probably soapstone. A similar one is selling for $20 or more online.

When you're shopping, look for things that are hand made, of an expensive or unique material, and/or priced well below what the market is bearing (or is what you can afford). I decided to use this as a pencil cup! I took the tape off, and if the hole on one side gets to be a problem with pencils or pens sliding out I'll just tape a small piece of cardboard inside and make sure that side faces the back.

If you can't buy a $1,000 leather couch, then put a couple of expensive leather pillows on it. Or a hand made quilt, or vintage throw of excellent quality. Luxe it up!

Tips:

• At tag sales, flea markets, consignment stores...look carefully at everything, Take your time. Half of finding good stuff is going slowly and carefully, the other half is thinking, as in the next tip-
• Don't disregard an item just because you can't use it for its original purpose. You can re-purpose it with a little imagination. Think of what else it could become.
• Look for things that are unique, hand made, and beautiful.
• Place them around your living space so when your eye rests on various areas, you will see or handle fine things strews around artfully.

Here is a tour of my luxuriously thrifty, or frugally luxe, living room:

Below, an art glass lamp I found at the dump. (Back in the day, you could dump pick. Townspeople would place their "good things" in what came to be known as "The Good Pile"). I found the lampshade the next week. Cost: $0.

Below, a dead space into which I put a plant stand I'd found at the dump and used it to display a vintage camera I found at the second hand store. Cost $7.

Below, a vignette of my reading spot. When I'm not using my vintage lace curtain tie-back I put it around the lamp. An old coaster, and an old book complete the spot. Cost, $2.

Below, a coffee table tablescape. This could be prettier or more imaginative, but I like books, so that is what is on the table. Also, Murray uses the coffee table as part of his "Manic Moment" running around the apartment, so I won't place a tray with glass items or flowers on it. Here, a vintage antique magazine and a hardback book with an interesting cover are currently on display. Cost, 50 cents for the magazine, and $10 for the book.

Below, the couch with the aforementioned small end table with marble top. The table, buffet the lamp is on, lamps, chair, couch, and rugs are all second hand. End table cost, $4. Along the back of the couch is a vintage hand-crocheted throw my great-aunt made me 35 years ago. PS- Why is there tape on the couch and pillows all across? Cats.

Below, wall art and the Raku vase atop the heater. I found the photo of the Colosseum at a yard sale for $4, it is from the early 1900s. The piece of art on top I found at a consignment store for $10. It is a piece of wood with a photo reproduction of a classic piece of art. When looking at art, turn it over and find a signature or ID somewhere. In this case, a sticker affixed to the back said "Fratelli Alinari, Via Condotti, Roma." I knew fratelli meant brothers, and Via Condotti is Rome's most fashionable street. It's like saying Rodeo Drive, or Madison Avenue. The sticker looked old.

The advantage of thrift shopping for luxe items in this day and age is that you can google. If you have a phone you can google right then. I didn't but I knew the quality of the piece was good and the vintage sticker on the back was significant. I bought it and when I got home I got online and I discovered according to Wikipedia:

Fratelli Alinari is the world's oldest photographic firm, founded in Florence, Italy in 1852. Its archives contains 5.5 million photographs, ranging from daguerreotypes to modern digital photos from around the world.

Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert commissioned the Alinari brothers to reproduce Raphael's designs, according to the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Cool. I have two Alinari pieces. Fratelli Alinari pieces are are not hugely expensive because they are not exceedingly rare, but are part of a photography history that I am pleased to be part of and display. And the pieces of art that are reproduced on the Alinari prints are beautiful.

A great throw, nice material like art glass and marble, unique art, and hand made pieces complete the seeds. So that's it! Lifestyles of the not so rich and totally obscure!

Kinfolk Aesthetic: Hipster overkill? Bland Monotony? Pure Genius?

I finally clued in to the Kinfolk movement. This is a design aesthetic that has saturated and influenced interior design and photography for the last 7 years. It's spare, it's minimalist. It's full of lattes with creamy swirls, dreamy young women wearing calico, knit berets and bearded hipsters. If you see one photo of a Kinfolk aesthetic, you'll know immediately what I'm talking about. More on that in a minute.

But first, its history. Wikipedia:

Kinfolk was created by Nathan Williams, his wife Katie Searle-Williams and their friends Doug and Paige Bischoff in July 2011. Primarily a lifestyle magazine aimed at young professionals, it focuses on home, work, play, food and community through photo essays, recipes, interviews, profiles, personal stories and practical tips. The writers, photographers, designers and chefs who contribute to Kinfolk are drawn from a largely international pool of creative people, often featuring more than 50 individual contributors an issue.

They started the magazine in Portland, OR because it was easy and cheap to do so there. Now spanning several countries, annexes located in Copenhagen Denmark and translated into four languages, Kinfolk would seem to have a large circulation commensurate with their breadth and influence. But no. It currently has a circulation of about 86,000, which seems like a lot but then not so much when comparing to Architectural Digest, of 818,000.

Kinfolk aesthetic seems to inspire heated opinions on both sides. Some love it, some hate it, hence my title. Summer Allen writes in her article Wood, Citrus, Lattes, Feet, Twine, Repeat: The Kinfolk Kinspiracy Code:

Every account cultivating that Kinfolk look seemed to follow a specific formula. Every account had a photo (or several) of the following: A latte with a foam leaf design, a fresh piece or two of citrus, a glimpse of a pair of small feet—often in a well-worn pair of boots—an ice cream cone, weather permitting, some glasses here and there, twine, the occasional fixed-gear bike. 

See:

Latte, usually on reclaimed wood but this one on blue tiles:

Source

I like minimalist, vaguely Scandinavian design. In the 1960s when I grew up Scandinavian style and Danish were popular. Despite the neon colored psychedelic fonts and wild flowers you remember from concert posters, there was also a movement toward minimalism.

Kinfolk's trademark wildflowers artfully arranged to look casual on a spare table here is preceded by House Beautiful's 1962 kitchen.

A spare table setting in 1961 House Beautiful featuring interesting cutlery (Danish-inspired wood handles) with citrus is decades older than Kinfolk's arrangements.

From The Art Story

Minimalism emerged in New York in the early 1960s among artists who were self-consciously renouncing recent art they thought had become stale and academic. A wave of new influences and rediscovered styles led younger artists to question conventional boundaries between various media. The new art favored the cool over the "dramatic": their sculptures were frequently fabricated from industrial materials and emphasized anonymity over the expressive excess of Abstract Expressionism. Painters and sculptors avoided overt symbolism and emotional content, but instead called attention to the materiality of the works. By the end of the 1970s, Minimalism had triumphed in America and Europe through a combination of forces including museum curators, art dealers, and publications, plus new systems of private and government patronage. And members of a new movement, Post-Minimalism, were already challenging its authority and were thus a testament to how important Minimalism itself became.

Where art went, design and photography followed.

Minimalism was preceded by Mid-century modern which was preceded by Bauhaus ...Here is a cool guideand description of various design trends of the last century. There is nothing new under the sun.

So what makes Kinfolk so identifiable, so immediately arresting, so opinion-splitting? Why has Kinfolk and its imitators spurred a visual conformity rampant among photographers and bloggers? The IF:Gathering blog ladies' photos are obviously inspired by Kinfolk. Any blogger older that 20 and younger than 40 tends to the style. Perhaps the negative criticism is a backlash on the conformity and ubiquitousness of the design. Overdone, minimalism can tend to be bland. But with a good eye for composition, isn't it also beautiful? Kinfolk's photos are beautiful. And beauty is never overdone, it's never out of style. Rough wood is beautiful. Flowers are beautiful. Flannel and calico and other fabrics are beautiful. Serenity captured in photography is beautiful.

Perhaps they are a victim of their own success. The Magazine was launched just months after Instagram, and the two are blended into one seamless, long-lasting design trend. Still, the question remains,

Kinfolk: A Magazine for the Ages or a Passing Hipster Fad?

Kinfolk is perhaps one of the most divisive magazines on the market right now: while it obviously has a devoted fanbase who love it for its beautiful imagery and dedication to promoting a wholesome, aesthetically pleasing lifestyle, there are others who find it pretentious and smug, outraged that for all its emphasis on living a simple life, the magazine has no problem shilling pricy artisanal goods.

Architectural Digest was founded in 1920, almost 100 years ago. Kinfolk is a mere 6 years old. A bit too soon, methinks, to be mentioning a magazine for the ages. Not to mention Vogue, founded in 1892. Kinfolk has a ways to go. Meanwhile, all those farm food shots and reclaimed wood tablescapes are continuing to charm and delight, and outrage and offend others.

The real question is, have I been influenced by the particular minimalism Kinfolk presents? Or was I already ahead of the curve loving what is obviously beautiful anyway?

Dinghy, bike, logs, car...

Also these-

Oh, well, pretty is pretty!

What do you think of the Kinfolk phenomenon movement?

My weird fascination with TV sitcom apartment sets

I posted before about Mary Tyler Moore's 1970s studio apartment. In her show her character was "Mary Richards". I used to love looking at the apartment set and re-arranging the furniture in my mind, and picture myself living there. It had a huge attraction to a teenager yearning to live on her own, lol. The apartment is one of the most famous sets of sit-com era. It was almost a character itself.

Looking at mine or other people's or television furniture arrangements is a fun pasttime. Be aware whenever I go into any apartment or house I immediately re-arrange everything in my mind according to my own strict and usually invisible criteria. Yeah, I know. More on that at the bottom.

When I lived in the college dorms I enjoyed walking up and down the hallways looking at how people outfitted rooms that were the same size and dimension, and had the exact same furniture to begin with. Design creativity showed through. It's endlessly fascinating how, given the same materials, personal creativity shines in myriad ways. That is why I was sad when HGTV stopped the show Design Star, a contestant show where candidates compete to be the next star on the channel to host their own show. In one certain competition the contestants were given a white room and a certain budget and told to decorate it. Or sometimes they were given weird instructions, like, "Use only tomatoes!" Not really, but almost.

It's called, creatively, the White Room Challenge. Here is a link to the Best of the White Room Challenges, with two of my faves. Of course, in the first one, I'd have to center that couch...

Hooked on Houses is a site I enjoy. The site offers photos and discussions of Top 20, Celeb Houses, TV/Movie Houses, My House, Cottages, Bad MLS Photos, Before & After, HGTV. If you enjoy design, beauty, and creativity, the site offers enough to get lost in for quite some time! Tie a rope around me, I might get lost in there!

When I used to watch the Mary Tyler Moore Show, it took me a good while to understand that there was not a bedroom through the closet, it really was just a closet. I guess I missed the episodes where Mary pulls out the fold-away bed from the couch. If I had the apartment I'd put a full size bed up on the upper step to the left, next to the window.

Nevertheless, the apartment was decorated in graceful style with items of beauty yet matched the type of apartment it was. I can learn by looking at such set designs to see how an item makes or breaks the flow, or why it doesn't match, or how come there is such harmony throughout the space.

Very cool brown velvet couch with graphic throw pillow.

In their essay about the MTM apartment we learn many insider things. For example, the site reveals that the owners of the actual house where the crew filmed the exterior shots got so tired of constant gawkers that they put up an "Impeach Nixon" sign so they would not film there anymore. The sign was the reason they moved Mary to a high rise apartment in later seasons, lol.

Speaking of Mary Tyler Moore, she first appeared on the Dick Van Dyke Show, which ran from 1961-1966. The show's set can be called Mid-Century Modern, because, well, it  was mid-century. The set differed from Mad Men's Don Draper apartment which was also set in the mid 1960s (I never saw that show, only the set photos) in a charmingly subtle way, Draper's apartment was urban chic mid-century modern and the DVD Show set had touches of traditional. That is only fair, the Van Dykes lived in a house in the modern American suburbs, not a tony high rise apartment in the city.Kudos to the Van Dyke Show set designer for pulling off that thin line.

The living room/dining room/den (by the firestove) were all part of an open flow, something that I believe was more common in the 70s and 80s. I've always liked and open flow. Here are a couple of rare color photos from the Dick Van Dyke Show set. In this first one, we can see the two chairs are definitely Mid-Century modern. However the heavy circular coffee table is traditional!

Source

I don't know what to call the couch! The chair in the background is more traditional than modern. One thing I notice is that there is no light near that chair, no pendant nor floor lamp. This is what marks a set from real life. Boy, this living room has a lot of different areas, doesn't it.

Source

One show I did not like was Friends. I must be the only person on the planet, but I thought the show was too soap opera-y, had too loose morals (everyone slept with everyone, come on!) and I didn't like the lesbian or transsexual aspect. I only watched occasionally and only at the beginning.

I did however, love that apartment. Who wouldn't love such a spacious, funky, gorgeous balcony view rent controlled apartment in the West Village?! I thought her place was cluttered and I would change the wall color from purple to ivory, and get rid of the huge curtains but otherwise I loved the couch, rug, chair, ottoman, and the ever-changing, never-matching kitchen table dinette chairs. What can we call this one? Vintage Chic? Shabby Chic? Compare the open shelving in this set to the one above in the Dick Van Dyke Show. I prefer the DVD kitchen open shelving to the one on the set of Friends.

Especially love the couch and the TV-bureau.

Now, Sherlock, THAT'S an apartment! Of course it has the advantage of being in London, but Manhattan's pretty nice too. I loved how the set designers made it look both Victorian and modern day. A wonderful creative genius, there. (It's similar to the fine line being pulled off in When Calls The Heart's clothing designer in season 1, genius). I picture myself there cozied up with a book by the fire every time I watch the show.

Of course I'd brighten it up a bit and get rid of the skulls on the mantel and the heads in the fridge, but...overall it's a cool spot to pretend to hang your hat.

A new design theme: Victorian Modern!

I've always loved the London Club decorating scheme. In Providence RI there is a book and cultural center called the Athenaeum. It's an independent, member-supported library open to the public. The library was founded in 1753 and the current building was built in 1838. The downstairs has a kind of London Men's Club feel with thick Turkish looking rugs, rounded comfy Club Chairs in leather with rivets, heavy oak Victorian tables adorned with antique globes, and movable bookshelves housing all manner of tomes from every era, with the wooden ladders on rollers to aid the reader in reaching them.

Yummy looking isn't it! That is what the Sherlock apartment reminds me of. Out of all the apartments (or houses) I like looking at online or on the TV show, Sherlock is the one I think I'd best like to live in. Aside from my own, which I love.

I always wondered why I like to stare at my empty apartment, decide where everything goes for maximum ease, aesthetic pleasure, and function- and then never move anything again. I mean, once it is set, and works, why change it? I do not like changing my apartment configuration. I enjoyed the explanation on The Big Bang Theory about Sheldon's spot. Of course wherever I go, I have a spot. At church, in Sunday School, at work, and at home. When you find a configuration that works you stay with it. Sheldon explains why:



Autism Speaks, man. Autism speaks.

Today is cooler

Whenever I slip on my scrubby sandals to go outside and bring the trash or hang the laundry, I walk across the grass. I don't know what is out there the cat likes so much, but when I come in, he goes bonkers. As I slip the sandals off and go to fold the laundry, I always look back to see him writing over the sandals like they had just been dipped in catnip.

The neat thing is that Luke will do his ecstatic rolling around, and Bert will wait nearby. Then Bert will take a turn on the sandal, smelling it and rolling all over it. Maybe there is some catnip out there, or catnip-like plants they like so much.

It has been cloudy all day and last night we got some rain. Right now it is only 80 degrees, the coolest it has been in some time. What a relief. I haven't even turned on the air conditioner today, another relief. That thing is loud.

I have a poll training coming up. I am working the polls at the end of July so I go through the training every time. I work at a station that the roosters and cows are more familiar with than the voters, lol. It is surely a little, out of the way station, but it is just my speed, this being only the second time I've worked. If there was a crush and a bunch of questions I am sure I would be clueless. I'm also glad that there will be several veteran workers with me. All in all it is a pretty quiet day and a way to make some money in the summer. I'm not a huge fan of training sessions but I know I need it and I want to do the best job I can on behalf of the people who come to vote. This is a photo of the place at dawn, just before we opened the polls:

See? I told you it was pretty. And rural.

I was looking for the wallpaper design I'd had in my childhood bedroom online the other night. It was of daisies and sunflowers, yellow and orange. It probably would seem garish now but I had loved it then. In my search I'd found this lady on Pinterest who had a gorgeous array of vintage 1960s wallpapers and the design was really beautiful. Sure, some of the psychedelic design back then was garish, but I found this array to be refined and interesting.

Here are just a few of her pins:

Here is a shot of me on Christmas when I was 1-year old. I like the design of the wrapping papers.

Everything old is new again, and these look retro modern.

Have a good day everyone, and take a moment to enjoy the view or admire some design. Or, just take a nap. ZZZ...zzz...