Guest Diary• September 29, 2023

Revenge, Redemption, and Refuge

Lee Fryd takes in the last couple events of the season out east, including a small dinner party for a new docu about a 20-something phenomenon; and a luncheon and lecture on Black female ornamental horticulturists. A fascinating history of style, color and beauty...

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 a humane man. He has a born elegance. His work has a sure, quiet feel to it, infused by a deep feeling for the natural […]... 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 for he is a tender, thoughtful soul who served us pastel-colored macaroons from Payard, specially bought for us. He was disarmingly, sweetly h... 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 to hear the opening strains of “I Am The Captain of The Pinafore,” or “Three Little Maids Are We” (am I the only one reminded […]... 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 that looked alive. Oh, and she was wearing a huge Davy-Crockett-meets-Prada fur hat, high fur-and-suede boots laced with fur pom-poms and a bright orange pais... 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 Shaping of Palm Beach,” generously sponsored by The Private Client Reserve of U. S. Bank. Each lecture is $20 and will be held at 3 […]... 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 few flights down from her apartment. We got into a back-and-forth about her subject, the renowned interior designer and wife of novelist Somerset Maugham. Famo... 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 say, kooky about her too: witness the skinny and unexpected Christmas tree with a few lights slung upon it or the fact that she l... 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 Conrad Bielecky emigrated from Poland and starting weaving baskets on a Lower East Side corner. Despite the fact that nearly all ratt... 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 of events commemorating the Town of Palm Beach’s 100th anniversary. There is nothing like a tent in Bradley Park to draw a crowd. And though […]... 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 of Andy Warhol’s house. Arthur has taken the company forward and we chatted to him in his Sutton area apartment, which took ten months to […]... 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 up and he’s such a nice man—has an endearing love of dark chocolate and thriller movies, created the most gorgeous non-saccharine pink bedroom in New […]... 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 their gorgeous two-year-old twins, Bunny and Lulu. The family recently moved from a Soho loft into a grand 19th-century Fif... 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 is something that, if worked at with sufficient diligence, can be learned. She herself, not always a willing pupil, was “dragged” by h... 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 visual art performance’. It’s a subject about which she is passionate not least because of her belief that performance art is a prism through... 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 that we love. The hilarious pictures in their book, “All-American, The Exhuberant Style of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta,” of he and his long-t... 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 where she has not one but two country houses, can be ‘abysmally hot’ and her earlier life in Port... 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 have I written a lot of stories that centered on one or another of their cocktail and dinner parties, but with each story there’s a […]... READ MORE

Friday, October 15, 2010

Dick Ridge and Rod Denault

House• October 15, 2010.

How touching to interview Dick Ridge and Rod Denault, designers both, known, amongst many other design projects, for their rooms at Kips Bay. There is a gentleness to their devotion to each other that left us feeling quite moved. Their apartment, though formal and filled with good antiques and paintings, is also full of images of the animals, d... READ MORE

Friday, October 8, 2010

Nick Olsen

House• October 8, 2010.

Nick Olsen, who was once wrote the Deal Hunter column for the sadly missed Domino magazine, has become known for being able to design truly stylish rooms on a budget. Although he did tell us that he would not object to working in an 17th century palace with little else but a few museum quality antiques, […]... READ MORE

Friday, October 1, 2010

Clare Potter

House• October 1, 2010.

Sculptor and ceramic artist Clare Potter makes pieces that are so deeply felt and painstakingly detailed that they almost seem to be a form of nature worship. When we asked her how long each piece takes, she sighed and said a little sadly “People always ask me that” and we realized that for her putting in the […]... READ MORE

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