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Archive for August, 2011

Identify This (Seven) Treasure…

Posted in Design Motif, Furniture, Identify This, Shrine Sales, tagged , , on August 28, 2011 | 26 Comments »

Ironic, isn’t it? Japan is supposed to be the dangerous place to be, but in the days since I left New Jersey, the East Coast has had an earthquake and is now facing a major hurricane. To escape my Irene worries, I did the one thing that can take my mind off anything – I went to a shrine sale – and a fabulous one at that. It was an extremely hot and steamy day at Kawagoe today, but my favorite form of retail therapy did its magic. I have a proper post on the day coming, but in the meantime, I am throwing out a challenge to my readers. Can you guess what this object is?

The pattern is the well known shippou-tsunagi (seven treasures pattern), decorating Japanese textiles, porcelain, furniture and just about anything.

And while we are at it, in an incredibly modern form – digital furniture design – on this walnut desk by Laszlo Beckett. I have been drooling over this for a while!

 

But what do you use the object for?  Leave your guess in the comments. The correct answer wins a small prize! Here’s a hint of the prize to get your brain going…

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Feeling Blue…Opaline Glass Sets the Mood

Posted in Color, Glass, tagged , , , , , on August 22, 2011 | 1 Comment »

I saw a lot of blue opaline glass on my antique travels this summer. I’ll use the term lightly, as much of it was not “officially” the rare French glass produced from the late 18th century through about 1890. Real opaline is a richly saturated cerulean-meets-turquoise type blue, quite different from the watery blue-green glass I am often writing about (here and here). Sometimes it has hand painting or gilding. Much of the glass I saw was in the opaline “style,” but it still packed a colorful punch, reminding me of one of my favorite interiors, the living room of Christy Ford, featured in Southern Living. Ford and her mother Jan Roden (whose house featured years ago in House Beautiful remains one of my inspiration interiors) have what looks to be a fabulous shop called And George in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Here you can see a bit of the chandelier peeking out in her entryway.

And designer Suzanne Kasler loves to use it too. The key to using is successfully is to group a series of objects in a mostly neutral toned and simple space, perhaps picking up the color for another accent elsewhere. Here Suzanne uses it on the ottoman to great effect. Christy Ford used similarly colored candles in her living room above.

Here’s a close-up…

I think I must be feeling a bit blue myself. Leaving the US tomorrow morning after 10 wonderful weeks, going home to Tokyo. Bittersweet as always…

Image credits: 1-3. me, 4-5. Southern Living, photo credit William Waldron, 6-7. both rooms designed by Suzanne Kasler, mea culpa, I don’t have the credits on them, but perhaps they are from her book Suzanne Kasler: Inspired Interiors.

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More Real Locations in New Jersey…Antiquing Along the Northern Shore

Posted in Shop Talk, tagged , , , on August 20, 2011 | 2 Comments »

For so long, antiquing along the Jersey Shore has been my well-kept secret, or so I like to believe. Numerous shops, particularly a few large group ones, sell the contents of homes in the most densely populated state in the country, so you name it and it can be found. Being far from New York City has kept them more insulated than Westchester or Connecticut, where you might add hundreds to the prices and certainly Manhattan, where you would need to add an entire digit. More recently a few television shows on HGTV have highlighted some, resulting in greater traffic and its incumbent increased business. In this post, I am going to mention of few more of my favorites, knowing that it will be a double-edged sword. I want exposure for these great people and places, but worry that exposure will cause the supply of items to go down while the prices go up. But I honestly can’t resist singing their praises. So over the last few days I have been making my final visits in anticipation of my departure for Japan on Monday.

I started at the very north end of the “shore” in Red Bank, NJ. Along with numerous individual shops, there are two major antique centers, the Antique Center of Red Bank which has more than 100 dealers and the 40 dealer Monmouth Antique Shoppes across the street. Both are excellent, but for me the latter edges out the former in the way in which the dealers curate their stalls and the outstanding service the salespeople provide. Yesterday was no exception and we had a grand afternoon perusing everything from architectural remnants to fine linens.

Our haul included all the small decorative items below plus a wicker chair and amazing foldable Moroccan carved coffee table.

You can see the top of the table in this photo, with its lovely copper inlay, but it doesn’t begin to do it justice. I have always had a predilection for this style furniture and I hope its current uber-trendiness doesn’t spoil it for me. This one is actually for a project in Brooklyn, but I have a gorgeous brass tray table version as the coffee table in the beach house. Stumbling across these locally yields huge bargains as they really do get pricey as they move up the antiques food chain – just check out 1stdibs and you’ll see.

Directly across Front Street is the larger and better of the two buildings of the Antique Center of Red Bank. While definitely more of a mish-mash than the Monmouth Shoppes, it is a wonderful place to scour. Earlier purchases this summer include the gorgeous dresser I found at half price (plus even more discount for cash) for my bedroom.

I forgot to photograph yesterday’s treasures, but they included a small painted French bench with a kilim covered seat and a wicker plant stand. I had been hoping to check out a fabulous set of framed Vogue covers from around 1915 seen earlier this summer, but they had sold. No surprise there…

Heading south to Allenhurst, a small hamlet just north of Asbury Park, you come to my absolute favorite haunt, Shore Antique Center, run by lovely proprietors Chris and Rose. I haven’t walked out of there all summer without buying something for myself, whether big (think china cabinet) or small (think galvanized RR bucket) or something for someone else.

My girls had scored there too, including this mismatched pair of Maund prints we are calling their sister prints, each just the right color for their bedrooms.

Today was lucky for them too – a vintage straw hat for one daughter (just right for displaying on the hat racks bought the day before) and a hat box for the other (just right for organizing storage). I am sure those who know us personally can guess which one was which! Those items came from a shop within the larger center called “Time Was Antique Clothing” which happens to be the nicest vintage clothing shop I have visited in years. Nineteenth century wedding dresses, 1940s men’s bathing suits and 1970s platform boots all co-mingle in the artful displays.

Also still available at Shore Antiques Center are these fabulous green painted shutters. Try as I might, I can’t come up with a use for them. There are six of them…Somebody please buy them!

Heading 20 minutes further south, having passed the Antique Emporium of Asbury Park which I wrote about here the other day, brings you to Point Pleasant, another town chock full of antique and housewares dealers. My long time haunt Point Pleasant Antique Emporium is just off the main drag of town, although I have made finds like this and this at many of the other stores nearby. I honestly think I have been shopping there for 20 years! Unfortunately, this is the first year I have not had much luck in Point Pleasant, so other than the glass insulator photos taken earlier this summer, I don’t have photos to post. But I recommend it as highly as the others mentioned…

To simplify matters, here is a map showing the relationship of all the locations. With basic 10am-5pm opening times, it is impossible to visit these all in a day, even though the total distance from A to D is just 21 miles. But it would be well worth a long weekend visit…

A.
Monmouth Antique Shoppes
217 West Front Street
Red Bank, NJ 07701
732.842.7377

Antique Center of Red Bank
226 West Front Street
Red Bank NJ 07701
732-842-4336

B.
Shore Antique Center
413 Allen Avenue
Allenhurst, NJ 07711
(732) 531-4466

C.
Antique Emporium of Asbury Park
646 Cookman Avenue
Asbury Park, NJ 07712
(732) 774-8230

D.
Point Pleasant Antique Emporium
622 Trenton Avenue (At the corner of Bay Ave. and Trenton Ave.)
Point Pleasant Beach, NJ 08742
(732) 892-2222

A little postscript…As I was getting ready to publish this post a neighbor brought by the recent “The Best Of” issue of NJMonthly magazine. Listed for “Best Antiques” are Antique Center of Red Bank, followed by runners-up Point Pleasant Antique Emporium and Antique Emporium of Asbury Park. I guess they are not actually such a well-kept secret after all. The final runner-up was Kanibal Home in Jersey City which I have never heard of. Makes me want to check it out…

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Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing Baby…Katagami Go Mainstream at Crate & Barrel

Posted in Artist Spotlight, tagged , , on August 17, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Thanks to K, I can report that others out there besides myself and my readers are katagami (rice paste stencils) crazy. None other than Crate & Barrel is working with artist Robin Bradford to produce a series of five new stylized framed katagami.

Interesting, but not the same at all. Don’t you agree?

For more on this topic, see my previous post Katagami…Perfect Thank You Present Found. And feel free to contact me if you want assistance in purchasing some antique originals…

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Summer Simple…Vignettes and the Art of Arranging

Posted in Interior Design, tagged on August 15, 2011 | 4 Comments »

I picked up the August issue of Real Simple and was delighted by these two artfully arranged vignettes.

This lovely mantle reminded me of another I had recently seen…

…Joan’s beautiful summer mantle from for the love of a house…

and this one I had recently posted, belonging to Jocie Sinauer of Red Chair Antiques. Both houses are well worth looking at in their entirety.

From there I immediately thought of two of my favorite inspiration photos from Ben Pentreath‘s shop and website.

And I couldn’t resist adding a few more photos saved over the years, posted by others…

…and…

…and this one.

A vintage print, bit of coral or old silver, some white ironstone, softly colored candles and flowers…the subtle glow of light. All speak to me in the bittersweet language of the coming end of summer…

Image credits: 1-2. Real Simple August 2011, photo credit: David Prince, 3. via for the love of a house, 4. Jocie Sinauer of Red Chair Antiques via Design*Sponge, 5-6. via Ben Pentreath, 7. via The City Sage, 8. via French Home, 9. via Habitually Chic.

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Painting the Town Green…Home by Novogratz Visits the Antique Emporium of Asbury Park

Posted in Color, Furniture, Interior Design, Lighting, Shop Talk, tagged , , , , , on August 10, 2011 | 5 Comments »

So it turns out that Design Star wasn’t the only show to visit Asbury Park in the past weeks. Another HGTV show, Home by Novogratz, stopped by one of my mainstays, the Antique Emporium of Asbury Park, and picked up a number of items for the third episode of their new series. In it, Cortney and Robert Novogratz, married NYC designers with 7 kids and a take no prisoners design style, completely overhaul a 3 bedroom condo for friend and real estate developer Dave Barry and his family in Long Branch, NJ.

While I don’t see any “beachy” aspect to what they have done (a term they keep using), they have utterly transformed a boring and bland apartment with their trademark bright color and bold wallpaper, much in evidence here. I am not going to talk much about their design (but would loooove to know what you all think of it!) as I am more interested in their deployment of the antique and vintage pieces they find in Asbury Park. I tend to be a bit of a purist, so their devil-may-care approach is fascinating.

Just down the street from Shelter Home, which I wrote about in my last post, the Emporium is a huge group shop of all that New Jersey antiquing has to offer, from mid-century modern to country cottage to high Victorian. I have years of shopping history here, making finds for myself and my projects for others.

The designing duo find many items for their own project including a pair of yellow lamps and an easy to use as-is chandelier, which I had seen hanging there for sometime.

Without any changes, it becomes a funky but elegant focal point here in the daughter’s pepto-pink room.

Much less obvious is the way in which they use this gold ormolu and cherub mounted marble-topped table. For me, the storyline around this piece was the best part of the entire show.  Cortney sees it at the Emporium and has an immediate vision for it, at least in the way they have edited the show. He does not (he hates it actually) but she convinces him and they take it, planning to transform it with paint. Now I don’t remember ever looking at this table myself as it certainly is way too fancy for my humble cottage, so I cannot tell if it is even valuable (i.e. old and truly antique) or more likely in the “antique style,” but either way it is ugly in its excessiveness.

If it was a serious French antique, what a shame to paint it (I guess), but as I think it more likely is not, what a crazy and perhaps brilliant conversion. I am still not sure I agree with the tag line on the screen below. Maybe use high gloss paints to repurpose ugly and non-valuable antiques would be better?

Here it is almost finished and starting to make a believer out of me.

In situ, it looks better than I could have imagined.

Here is the rest of the room…

And the other end here (photo color a bit off – but both photos via HGTV)

Light fixtures and lamps tend to be one of the Emporium’s specialties. Any visit includes at least one pass through looking up at the ceiling and high shelves filled with 100 years or so of lighting options. This amazing mid-century Murano bubble glass cage lantern was a purchase this summer and went to light an entryway in Indianapolis.

There is a similar beauty available in Manhattan right now at the Las Venus boutique within ABC Carpet and Home or on 1stdibs…but add you need to add a fourth digit to the price of the Asbury one.

You should see the gorgeous blue and white ribbon glass version I got for myself for the upstairs hall. Unfortunately I am away from home, so no photo at this moment, but check back if you are interested as I will pop it in here when I get home. [Here it is!]

Each week I am waiting for someone to buy this bargain – a David Hicks style X stool. I can’t find anywhere to fit it in to my own place.

Just next door and attached to the Emporium is filled with garden statuary, urns and perfectly rusted wrought iron.

As for the Novogratz’s, my favorite take-away actually comes from an earlier episode. In my never-ending quest to figure out my staircase, here is another contender…

Antique Emporium of Asbury Park
46 Cookman Avenue, Asbury Park NJ 07712
Phone: 732.774.8230

Home by Novogratz airs at 10pm on Saturdays on HGTV

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Greetings From Asbury Park…HGTV’s Design Star Episode 4 Comes to Shelter Home

Posted in Furniture, Housewares, Interior Design, Lighting, Metals, Porcelain and Pottery, Rugs and Carpets, Shop Talk, Textiles, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 7, 2011 | 1 Comment »

American reality shows other than Idol don’t translate well in Japan, so I have been missing the proliferation of design content on HGTV and other networks. No Design Star or Million Dollar Decorators have been able to tempt me to watch them. That is, until they all started to visit my decorating backyard, better known as Asbury Park, New Jersey. Asbury has many famous associations, perhaps Bruce Springsteen and The Stone Pony being the most obvious to my generation, but it is also a historic beach community that has been riding a roller coaster of redevelopment as of late. The boardwalk and the downtown area along Cookman Avenue are in an upswing of renewal, filled with delicious restaurants and design shops joining long-standing antique stores (more on those in my next post). By far the best of these new shops is Gene Mignola and Scott Hamm’s Shelter Home, as the three lucky episode winners on HGTV’s Design Star discovered.

Design Star has a basic Project Runway type format. Each week a challenge is offered up and the designers compete to impress judges. One participant wins, one loses and leaves the show and the rest remain to compete the following week. Last week’s episode had the designers redecorating a bed and breakfast in nearby Spring Lake, NJ, either paired up or in one case, tripled up. While the pairs got regular bedrooms to work with, the trio of Meg, Mark and Karl got a suite. They had a slow start in making a cohesive plan, but got off and rolling as the show progressed.

Here’s the before photo of the winning room. Not much to work with, other than the expansive layout of the larger suite.

And here is the winning after view. Almost everything of note in the room is from Shelter Home – the couch, Buttercup chair, throw pillows, print, rug and more. You see now why I called the winners lucky. They were the only ones to shop at Shelter Home and the room would be nothing without it. Karl did do a beautiful job with his free form painted “paneled” walls, subtly evoking the beach and skyline. And I also enjoyed the very Tom Scheerer-like rope sculpture and arrangement Mark put together.

Here is a photo of the winning trio. Ironically, the thing I liked least was the favorite of the judges, the sleeping area designed by Meg, using fabric from Designer Fabrics on Route 35 in Ocean, an unassuming but great fabric store I use all the time.

Currently, Shelter Home has the same couch as the one featured above, a queen size sleeper called “One Night Stand” in the shop in grey.

Meg, Mark and Karl used the octopus print in green and it is also available in red. Not shown in any of the photos above is their use of the Algues wall sculpture, designed by the Bouroullec brothers, and here hanging on the wall of the store.

In addition to the items used on the TV show, Shelter Home has so much more to offer. They have a sample of every Dash & Albert pattern, which is lovely as the colors are so hard to judge on the website, as well as many of the rugs for sale in the smaller sizes.

There is also lots of John Derian decoupage, hard to find outside of his eponymous store in NYC.

Every color Point A La Ligne candle.

 

The largest selection of Alessi in the state.

The Chin Family of timers and salt shakers, designed by Stefano Giovannoni and Rumiko Takeda, is the result of a collaboration between Alessi and the National Palace Museum of Taiwan. While these little fellas are Chinese…

Don’t they remind you of modern Japanese kokeshi dolls?

Shelter Home is also stocking a shin-hanga inspired line of cards, like this one, by Ryo Takagi, particularly at their secondary location, a seasonal kiosk shop in the grand arcade of Convention Hall along the Asbury boardwalk.

If you can’t visit, take a look at their website as many of the items mentioned above are available for sale.

Shelter Home
704 Cookman Avenue
Asbury Park, NJ 07712
Phone: 732.774.7790
Fax: 732.774.7799
info@shelterhome.com

Watch for my next post as Design Star isn’t the only HGTV show to visit Cookman Avenue recently…

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Living Large in Small Spaces…FDR, Home Relief and Cream Cheese Boxes at the Tenement Museum of New York

Posted in Expat Life, History, Interior Design, tagged , on August 3, 2011 | 8 Comments »

The current issue of House Beautiful proclaims the charm of “Living Large in Small Spaces.” Apartments and houses ranging from a 295 square foot studio to a 1400 square foot cottage grace the pages, all ingeniously designed. This tends to be a semi-annual issue and I always devour it, as I am the queen of small spaces. Living in NYC, Tokyo and an 1880s beach cottage will do that to you. As a result, I find efficiently used tiny spaces to be some of my absolute favorites. Stop by their website and take a video tour of the smallest space, freshly designed by Nick Olsen.

This past weekend I visited some very small apartments in person and found them utterly fascinating. The Tenement Museum of New York, housed at 97 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, is a living testament to the history of immigrant families in NYC. According to our tour guide and their website, within #97, its 20 three-room apartments, typical of their kinds, were arranged four to a floor, two in front and two in the rear. They were reached by an unlighted, ventilated wooden staircase that ran through the center of the building. The largest room (11′ x 12’6″) was referred to in plans as the living room or parlor, but residents called it the “front room.” Behind it came the kitchen and one tiny bedroom. The entire flat, which often contained households of seven or more people, totaled about 325 square feet. House Beautiful has an article on idealized spaces under 1000 square feet, including Sausalito boathouses and Cape Cod dune shacks, but nowhere do they mention tenements…

So I know visitors are supposed to be aghast at the tenement conditions – miniscule spaces with windows only in the front room and no bathrooms or indoor plumbing – but typically, I found it all kind of charming. This kitchen, belonging to Natalie Gumpertz and styled to 1878, was adorable to look at. Realistically, it would have been dark, with scary night visits to the outhouses in the backyard and all water lugged up from an exterior pump.

Across the hall, the mirror image apartment was restored and refurbished to look as it did in 1935 when the Baldizzi family lived there. Adolfo Baldizzi was a skilled cabinetmaker, out of work for much of the time they lived in the apartment, so he made improvements, like the built-in china cabinet. I’d like him to come and build me kitchen cabinets like that one! Other improvements by 1935 include running water, a toilet in the hall and interior windows.

What looks like counter to the right of the sink in the photo above is actually the bathtub with a removable cover. In addition to layers of paint and peeling linoleum, that is the quintessential mark of a tenement to me. Remember the scene in Married to the Mob when Michelle Pfieffer walks up to her new apartment, “the only thing she can afford”? The bathtub is smack center in the middle of the kitchen. I think the location scout did a particularly good job with this one.

Luckily the museum was able to find and interview Josephine Baldizzi, who lived in the apartment at 97 Orchard Street as a child. She recounts how her parents never lowered their standards and kept everything clean and tidy. “Her parents made the apartment as comfortable as possible, with lacy curtains, fabric drapings everywhere, pretty bedcovers, tablecloths, built-in shelving and trim, etc.”  The urge to prettify and improve ones surroundings and living condition is universal and at the heart of why I and many others like me, blog.

Nonetheless, with Adolfo out of work and her mother Rosario only able to pick up small wages here and there, the family needed to get on to NYS Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s new Home Relief program which provide{d} for needy families, domiciled attached men and women, and homeless men and women. More on the Home Relief program here.

One of the most common goods provided through home relief was government-issued cheese, which came in small wooden boxes.  Josephine remembers that her father used the empty boxes to plant morning glories, making something beautiful out of a symbol of hard times.  Children also used the boxes to store marbles, toys, or other treasures.
In taking Josephine’s oral history, she said she never ate cream cheese again.

The cream cheese boxes really caught my attention because I had been wondering why I was seeing so many of them at different antique stores all over the tri-state area. Did people really eat so much cream cheese? Turns out they did! Shore Antiques Center near my house is full of vintage food and sundry boxes, but the cream cheese ones tend to be particularly prevalent.

I had recently bought one and am using it to hold teabags although I can imagine 101 uses for it. Loving the morning glories idea too!

Conditions in the apartments at the Tenement Museum are perhaps a little glorified, but one thing that wasn’t was the lack of air conditioning. On an almost 100 degree day, we were as hot as the residents 100 years ago would have been. In general, I have been hot this summer. Not only because of the soaring temperatures outside, but because I haven’t really been running the air conditioning. I think subconsciously I am trying to show my solidarity with Japan. Even with “super cool biz” and all, everyone I know over there is struggling to deal with the heat this summer.

Image credits: 1. House Beautiful, July 2011, 2-3 & 5. via The Tenement Museum flickr photostream, 4. Married to the Mob, directed by Jonathan Demme, 5-7. me.

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