Social Diary• July 3, 2022

Remembering the Fourth way back when …

Blueberry pie and the Fourth of July, brings back memories of another time and another Dave Columbia, of all people, in LIFE magazine...

Ralph Rucci

House• December 9, 2011.

At one point in our interview with fashion designer Ralph Rucci, we exclaimed that his story “was like the fashion version of Rocky” – at which he ruefully shook his head and muttered something about both stories even happening in Philadelphia, where he did indeed grow up and where he began making clothes. At his first show, […]... READ MORE

Friday, December 2, 2011

Muriel Brandolini

House• December 2, 2011.

Interior designer Muriel Brandolini doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She leads her life as she pleases, taking on assignments that work for her daring creativity. As a result she has an air of authority that can be intimidating. Born to a French-Venezuelan mother and a Vietnamese father, Muriel was first raised in Saigon during the height of the [&... READ MORE

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Palm Beach Social Diary Civic Virtue

Palm Beach• November 29, 2011.

Every year when Palm Beach becomes the ultimate destination for the ominum gatherum socialitum to revel within the seasonal spin of black-tie balls and gilded pleasures, it is easy to overlook the just as many whose social life revolves around the pursuit of civic concerns and local issues. As much as the goings-on at exclusive clubs and [&hellip... READ MORE

Friday, November 18, 2011

Edwina Sandys

House• November 18, 2011.

Artist and sculptor Edwina Sandys has led a very full life. Growing up as the granddaughter of Winston Churchill she was surrounded by the wealthy, famous and the very smart. Edwina herself never went to college. She married young, bore two sons, and for the first three and a half decades did what she was supposed […]... READ MORE

Friday, November 11, 2011

Joe Biunno

House• November 11, 2011.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Joe Biunno has spent his life repairing, and restoring furniture. In his 9000-square foot showroom and workshop in Long Island City his staff has the ability to design, carve, gilt, and polish projects from start to finish. Biunno has also developed a specialty business in curtain hardware that […]... READ MORE

Monday, November 7, 2011

Palm Beach Social Diary Autumn on Palm Beach

Palm Beach• November 7, 2011.

Palm Beach’s uneventful storm season has passed as the resort’s social-and-sport playlists get underway. The King Library’s annual benefit at the Four Arts attracted several hundred patrons. The Palm Beach Civic Association might not be holding its “Welcome Home Party” until November 30 but the group recently hosted it... READ MORE

Friday, October 28, 2011

Penny Drue Baird

House• October 28, 2011.

Penny Drue Baird is a seasoned, pragmatic, and extremely hard-working designer who seems to know herself and her own thinking very well indeed. “What I think my job is, is to make people happy,” she said—and most of the successful designers we have interviewed are similarly clear-eyed about accepting that this is a service industry. At [&hel... READ MORE

Friday, October 21, 2011

Marcy Masterson

House• October 21, 2011.

Poor Marcy Masterson had a bad throat when we interviewed her and a lesser soul would have canceled on us—she bravely croaked her way through. She lives in an apartment full of lovely antiques—we are still championing brown furniture at the HOUSE column. We’re also championing dogs—in fact we could probably do a companion column called DO... READ MORE

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Daheim, Part II

House• October 20, 2011.

Here are the Daheim barns, seen from the air in 1982. 25 years after I snapped this picture from a friend’s plane, a catastrophic fire destroyed 60% of the complex. A remarkable reconstruction project has ensued. It was the subject of a luncheon lecture delivered last week by yours truly to 300 guests at the 20th […]... READ MORE

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Daheim, Part I

House• October 19, 2011.

Here’s Daheim, my home in Millbrook for thirty years, in a photo taken 2 weeks ago. It’s a complicated looking house by any measure, and if it isn’t huge, considering others I’ve blogged about, it ain’t small either. Daheim was in ruins when I signed my first lease in December of 1981. It’s taken a lot […... READ MORE

Friday, October 14, 2011

Pintura Studio

House• October 14, 2011.

While wandering around the East Village after another HOUSE interview, I chanced upon what looked like an intriguing storefront but was, in fact, the fabric design workshop of Pintura Studio. I contacted the owners, Chris Isles and Ed Rollins and JH and I wound up paying a second, rather lengthy visit to the workshop, the factory in Red Hoo... READ MORE

Friday, October 7, 2011

Maureen Footer

House• October 7, 2011.

“I guess at the end of the day, I’m a romantic,” is how the poised interior designer, Maureen Footer describes herself – a romantic with an MBA, that is, hard won she admits for someone who naturally gravitates towards the arts. “It took some naïveté out of my view of the world,” she says. She once wanted […]... READ MORE

Friday, September 30, 2011

The Frick

House• September 30, 2011.

I first found the Frick when I was young in New York, just out of college in the early 1960s. Someone must have told me about it. I did not have a refined sense of art appreciation or history. I had a passing curiosity. The first time was a Saturday. There were very few visitors; you […]... READ MORE

Friday, September 23, 2011

Martha Glass

House• September 23, 2011.

Reggie Darling Interviews Martha Glass Ceramics Collector Back in July I had the pleasure of sitting down with Martha Glass, whose photograph regularly appears here in New York Social Diary, to discuss her passion for collecting ceramics. David Patrick Columbia introduced me to her and suggested that I interview her for NYSD about her ceramic... READ MORE

Friday, September 16, 2011

Oberto Gili

House• September 16, 2011.

Photographer Oberto Gili is a charming, if restless, man. During our interview at his wonderfully quirky West Village brownstone he smoked incessantly, picked at a loaf of crusty Italian bread and hopped around as we bantered about everything from the importance of curiosity to his Italian mother. His current project, “Home Sweet Home” (Rizzo... READ MORE

Friday, September 9, 2011

Ultra Violet

House• September 9, 2011.

12.10.01: We went over to visit Ultra Violet at her penthouse on the Upper East Side. As you can see, her front lawn is the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, and she looks across to Central Park West, and north to the New Jersey Palisades, and south to all the rest of Manhattan and Staten Island […]... READ MORE

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Philadelphia in Palm Beach, Part I

Palm Beach• September 3, 2011.

We are taking today off to continue to optimize the back end of the new site. In the meantime, please enjoy Part 1 of Augustus Mayhew’s series on Philadelphian Ellen Glendinning (first published on these pages in 2011), who kept an extensive diary where she recorded and photographed the life around her family and friends; a chronological scrapboo... READ MORE

Friday, September 2, 2011

Philip Hewat-Jaboor

House• September 2, 2011.

Sometimes here at the HOUSE column, we feel we’re interviewing the last of an exquisite kind and Philip Hewat-Jaboor, an independent art consultant might well be one of those. We did keep accusing him of being an aesthete and he didn’t seem to mind at all. If he did, it would be hard to tell because he […]... READ MORE

Friday, August 19, 2011

Resort Life between the Wars: Part VII, 1940

Social History• August 19, 2011.

Resort Life between the Wars: Part VII, 1940 Chestnut Hill – Long Island – Lake Bluff – Saratoga By the spring of 1940 the nation was on edge as the war in Europe rapidly disintegrated any hope for peace. This segment of Ellen Glendinning Frazer’s social chronicle records pleasures and pursuits far removed from the everyday world... READ MORE

Friday, August 12, 2011

Sarah Story

House• August 12, 2011.

And so to designer Sarah Story, Texan by way of Japan, Singapore and California, and living proof of all the contradictions therein. Much of her design work is by inspired by the aesthetic of the Far East but her laugh … oh the laugh, it stopped us in our tracks … is it inspired by […]... READ MORE

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