dinner at george smith...

last evening, jill seidner of the material girls blog, and i were fortunate enough to attend a glamorous sit-down dinner in the george smith showroom, complete with cocktails, a jazz singer, and multiple delish courses by chef keven lee of my world on a plate (the crab & the shortribs were particularly tasty) . now, if y'all don't know who george smith, llc is, they are *the* purveyors of fine english bespoke upholstered furniture, still bench made with traditional materials, like boar bristles and duck down; if you've ever oohed and aahed over an insanely beautiful tufted easy chair, chaise or chesterfield in house beautiful or elle decor, chances are it was made by the skilled craftsmen at george smith.

here's some pictures of our evening- don't be too jelly ;-)

since george smith offers bespoke furniture, most pieces in the showroom are in white muslin- so of course my eye was drawn to the one super colorful vignette featuring raoul textiles for george smith fabrics. juicy.

a selection of GS upholstered goods in front of backdrop by bennison, a line of chic english wallcoverings and textiles exclusively available through george smith. i know lots of you girls will be dying over those traditional english rose prints, right?

love this bubble glass chandelier by best & lloyd, yet another of the fab anglocentric lines GS carries. the best & lloyd line is kinda delicious, so be sure to click the link.

living in los angeles, i don't often get starstruck, after all you can find yourself at starbucks or teh gas station standing next to a oscar winner; but meeting pamela samshiri of commune design, one of my los angeles design crushes, left me a lil tongue-tied. damn, those kids from commune are cool...

GS made up 50 brand spanking new custom dining chairs, covered in their signature sumptuous velvets just for the party- kinda cool right? i asked to take home six of these chic 40's moderne inspired wooster chairs as part of my gift bag. they thought i was joking. i wasn't.

since i was talking home the wooster chairs, we decided jill could have a set of these glammy tufted "dominic" chairs. again, they laughed, but we weren't kidding- dining chairs make great party gifts, dontchathink?

we may not have got new dining chairs, but they were nice enough to send us home with fabulously functional sturdy canvas totes as gift bags (looks just like the tote i schlep my crap samples & stuff in every day to meetings). nice, right? though i'll gladly trade it for the dining chairs, since if i had guests over right now they'd have to sit on the floor as *my* last set of dining chairs are now in a client's home!

thanks george smith for the lovely evening! a pleasure getting to know you and your brand a bit better... and call me for the address to ship the chairs to, k? what the heck-  i'll even come pick 'em up!

whhhhhhhhhhhhy?

yo, pinterest, 1999 called and they'd like their website redesign back!

oy.

a massive fail for a site based on visual appeal. whatever were they thinking?

want (yago hortal painting)

one of these bright and fluid paintings by yago hortal paintings would look kamazing in the atelier. go to anthology magazine to see and read more...

mad for moroccans (beni ourain love)

we recently picked up this amazing custom beni ourain style rug from our friends over at decorative carpets and had it installed into a client's living room. gorj, right?

so soft & fluffy in person, we wish you could touch it!

our rug was custom made to fit the exact size our floor plan told us we needed to make our client's living room sing- it is shaggy, and fabulous, and with the mid-century pieces we also picked out, it makes for a fabulous mix. the rug was actually a bit of a splurge for our budget, so we saved some bucks elsewhere by buying a chic secondhand danish modern credenza on craigslist to serve as a media cabinet (i'm crafty like that); we also picked up an inexpensive reproduction knoll-esque sofa that we had reupholstered in a fabulous indoor-outdoor basketweave linen look-alike from kravet, so it didn't seem so retail-y.  both look *amazing* on our rug.

m21 floor plan- remember, it starts with a plan... (rug .jpg provided by decorative carpets so we could see exactly what our finished rug would look like in the size we needed, then i plugged it into the plan. perfect!).

though our rug was made in tibet, it is based on a centuries old tradition of rugs made by the nomadic beni ourain tribes of the atlas mountains in morocco. beni ourain rugs are wooly and shaggy, made of undyed sheep's wool with black/brown decoration added in, and undoubtedly kept the tribespeople's tents warm and cozy at night, but because they were made for tents, authentic beni ourain rugs tend to come in funky sizes, usually long and narrow, another reason we had ours custom made in the perfect square our floor plan called for.

a traditional beni ourain pattern

in our opinion, beni ourain rugs are one of the versatile styles of traditional rugs, as they compliment such a wide variety of looks. they lend a funky, ethnic edge to soften modern furnishings, and even though they've been around for centuries, they actually tend to modernize more traditional furnishings and antiques, because of the rugs' graphic patterns and deep pile.  this makes them ideal for decorators like moi who like to mix styles and periods. we also love beni ourains because though they read white, the undyed fibers from the sheep used to make them are a variegated mix of beiges, tans, off-whites and grays, so they are actually pretty  darn kid & pet friendly- you'd be surprised at how well they hold up! i wish i had a photo of the rug installed in my client's home to show y'all, as putting a bigass 10' x 10' rug into a small room was super effective for making the small room seem larger (and more cohesive), but alas, the room is only about 1/2 finished with just the rug, sofa and credenza installed. normally, we'd wait until it was finished, then (show and) tell all about it, but with my clients away on location, followed by the arrival of their first little bundle of joy (yay!), who knows when- or if- the room will be finished. sometimes life interferes with decorating, but in this case that's a good thing...

so until i can show you the room in it's finished state, let me dazzle you with a selection of  images featuring beni ourain rugs i've gathered one of my  pinterest boards, cleverly titled "beni ourain" (love that pinterest for organizing images! how did i ever live without it?)

jenna lyons in british vogue via a lovely being

elle decor via the city sage

neuvo estilo via desire to inspire

trina turk via matchbook magazine

via i suwanee

palmer-weiss

palmer-weiss

jackie astier in elle decor, via design-crisis

madeline stuart via live.like.you.

 

which came first, the chicken or the egg? (about a painting and a blank wall)

so i painted this picture for a client many years ago, and was recently reminded of it when it was featured on houzz.com:

painting by moi; brass elephants by god. ;-)

i swear when i painted it i was inspired by the work of stuart davis, one of my all time favorite artists, but not having his abilities, i simplified it a bit to black and white, with NO curves i couldn't properly execute. then, when i had even MORE technical problems painting it, i roughed it up a bit.

stuart davis, memo, 1956, one of my inspirations

since then, i've seen the chic home of reed and delphine krakoff, everywhere, with this fabulous wall sized painting by al held, an american abstract expressionist:

delphine krakoff in front of her amazing al held painting in teh november 2011 issue of harper's bazaar. (photo by the hot douglas friedman. google him if you don't believe me).

pretty similar to my painting, right? do you think he was influenced by stuart davis as well? maybe sol lewitt? i know he has now influenced me, and we've come full circle, 'cuz when i recently sold something to a client and was faced with a blank wall that needed something on it, asap (i abhor a blank wall), i decided to just copy pay homage directly to al held, and painted this:

painting by moi, 2012. deceptively simple looking, this sucker was actually pretty damn time consuming)

my painting is different enough that i don't really think it's an exact copy, but the influence is certainly there. of course, this raises all sorts of questions about artistic license, the time tested use of artistic appropriation as an art form, plagiarism, etc, etc. but really? (to quote myself from rue magazine) at the end of the day, i just want things to be pretty- is that so wrong?

and regardless of influence or origin,  i do think my new painting is prettier than a blank wall, don't you?

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