Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Palm Beach Social Diary Hearts, Flowers & True Love: A Palm Beach Wedding Diary

Palm Beach• February 15, 2011.

Palm Beach divorces make for breathless headlines, their every detail etched into the public record by vigilant court stenographers. The town’s weddings don’t attract the same spotlight. By the time […]... READ MORE

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Trouble With Footmen: Servant Problems in Old Bar Harbor

Social History• February 9, 2011.

In 1941, Chicago heiress and philanthropist Louise de Koven Bowen, the major patron of Jane Addams’s Hull House settlement, made a difficult decision: She must sell her beloved summer home, Baymeath, at Hull’s Cove near […]... READ MORE

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Palm Beach Social Diary

Palm Beach• February 8, 2011.

Finally at long last the temperature in Palm Beach is seasonally warm, 70 degrees or more … and all I can say is whoopee! In fact it is just perfect down […]... READ MORE

Friday, February 4, 2011

Shamir Shah

House• February 4, 2011.

We wanted to describe architect and designer Shamir Shah’s work as ‘precise’ but it’s a difficult word because it so easily denotes chilly calculation and that would be a disservice to such […]... READ MORE

Friday, January 28, 2011

James Andrew

House• January 28, 2011.

We confess that we thought James Andrew, interior designer and dandified blogger of the “What is James wearing?” site, was going to be insufferably self-promoting but we couldn’t have been more wrong […]... READ MORE

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Pinafore Sails Down East

Social History• January 25, 2011.

Prelude: Pinafore makes the Dilettante long for Cosi I should like Gilbert and Sullivan better than I do. But I don’t. I’m fairly well rounded musically, but I need only […]... READ MORE

Friday, January 21, 2011

Florence de Dampierre

House• January 21, 2011.

We arrived before Ms. de Dampierre and when she whirled in from Litchfield County where her ‘serious’ house is, she was loaded with orchids, sugar cookies and carrying a large fur purse […]... READ MORE

Friday, January 14, 2011

Palm Beach Social Diary

Palm Beach• January 14, 2011.

The Campus on the Lake program at The Society of The Four Arts is celebrating Palm Beach’s Centennial and The Four Arts’ 75th Anniversary with a four-part lecture series, “The […]... READ MORE

Pauline C. Metcalf

House• January 14, 2011.

Pauline C. Metcalf, historian and author of a recently published book on Syrie Maugham (Syrie Maugham, Acanthus Press 2010) lives in a Carnegie Hill building where she has an office just a […]... READ MORE

Friday, January 7, 2011

Jennifer Post

House• January 7, 2011.

Like all interesting people, designer Jennifer Post is full of contradiction: she lives what she calls an “elegantly minimalist” life with a ferociously efficient intensity and yet there’s also something, dare we […]... READ MORE

Friday, December 17, 2010

Bielecky Brothers

House• December 17, 2010.

Bielecky Brothers Inc. produces handcrafted custom, wicker, rattan and cane furniture in a huge family-owned factory in Woodside, Queens. The firm has been in business since the late 19th century when Andrew and […]... READ MORE

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Palm Beach Social Diary The Great, the Grand & the Great-Grands

Palm Beach• December 14, 2010.

With real estate sales of note appearing to be on a holiday hiatus, I wandered over to Bradley Park Saturday morning for the momentous kickoff of the Centennial Commission’s marathon […]... READ MORE

Friday, December 10, 2010

Arthur Dunnam

House• December 10, 2010.

Arthur Dunnam is the design director of Jed Johnson Associates, the design firm founded by the late Jed Johnson who famously started his interior design business in the fourth floor bedroom […]... READ MORE

Friday, December 3, 2010

Campion Platt

House• December 3, 2010.

At first the architect and designer, Campion Platt seemed to want to hide behind long, brainy answers to our questions (we cut quite a lot of them) but he loosened […]... READ MORE

Friday, November 19, 2010

Darren Henault

House• November 19, 2010.

How entertaining to interview interior designer Darren Henault! He’s chatty and open (though admits to a ‘melodramatic’ side, which, alas, we didn’t see). Henault lives with Michael Bassett, a corporate attorney, and […]... READ MORE

Friday, November 12, 2010

Alexa Hampton

House• November 12, 2010.

Alexa Hampton’s new book, Alexa Hampton: The Language of Interior Design (Clarkson Potter) makes no bones about the fact that, in Ms. Hampton’s view, interior design follows rules, has its own grammar and […]... READ MORE

Friday, November 5, 2010

RoseLee Goldberg

House• November 5, 2010.

Art historian RoseLee Goldberg is the founder of Performa, a performance art biennial that takes place in New York, although she herself tries to avoid the words ‘performance art’ and prefers ‘new […]... READ MORE

Friday, October 29, 2010

Tony Baratta

House• October 29, 2010.

Tony Baratta of Diamond Baratta design is a conundrum: we had real fun interviewing him because he’s given to loud bursts of infectious laughter, giving us the kind of un-canned answers […]... READ MORE

Friday, October 22, 2010

Alexandra Champalimaud

House• October 22, 2010.

Designer Alexandra Champalimaud has no limits when it comes to flurries of adverbs, adjectives and enthusiastic qualifiers: her husband, banker Bruce Schnitzer, is an ‘phenomenally, fabulously, wonderfully crazy’; summers in Litchfield county […]... READ MORE

Monday, October 18, 2010

Washington Social Diary – Katherine And David Bradley: A Cut Above

Across the Nation• October 18, 2010.

When I look back over the archives of three years of writing the Washington Social Diary there are two names that stand out: Katherine Brittain Bradley and David G. Bradley. Not only […]... READ MORE

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