michael smith

(Fabric) Bordering on Obsession

Friday’s Wall Street Journal brought a wonderful article by one of my favorite bloggers, Style Court‘s Courtney Barnes on the charm of self bordered textiles. I have long been obsessed with traditional Indian fabrics which routinely use borders as integral parts of their design as well as modern renderings by many of my favorite textile designers, including those of Zak+ Fox , Peter Dunham and Parlor Textiles, whose fabrics are illustrated in the article. Using the auction of a pair of armchairs, covered by designer Michael Smith in a bordered textile reprinted from an antique one in his own collection as the starting point of her musings, she pulls us into the intimate story of her own passion for the fabrics. As luck and serendipity would have it, this was the very topic on my mind exactly as I was reading it.

My own Michael Smith bordered fabric illumination occurred years ago with this Santa Barbara guest house in which he used a myriad of inexpensive Urban Outfitters Indian bedspreads to upholster the walls, the furniture and make the draperies. His masterful manipulation of the borders really demonstrated the punctuation they can provide, in this case both as a fillet and curtain edge and trim. His use of these simple artisanal fabrics turned me on to the idea of their flexibility. You know I love good repurposing!

The serendipity part comes in because I have been working on and off all fall and in particular this past week for my most exacting client to date – my 14-year-old daughter. When moving a young teenager halfway round the world to a new school, it’s good to have a bribe, in this case a big new bedroom and entirely new decor as she had outgrown the furniture and color scheme of her old space. Add an en suite bathroom – about the size of her old Tokyo bedroom – and the potential for happiness goes way up. While her younger sister’s room is basically finished, progress on her’s had stalled. Her request for soft blues and a bit of Indian block print had resulted in this dreamy Instagram palette, but other than actually ordering the Parlor Textiles French Ikat in blue for her headboard and bedskirt, nothing had been done.

For that “bit of Indian block print” I had turned to my favorite source, Aleta Bartel-Orton (also mentioned by Courtney in the article), whose online shop sells both her’s and Brigitte Singh‘s beautiful fabrics. The bedroom plan calls for Roman shades, ideally to be made in a blue and white print, highlighted by some sort of decorative edge. In addition to yardage, Aleta has tablecloths and other finished pieces available which I thought might be perfect as they tend to have borders. But while I was scrolling around the website I realized that what I really wanted was my favorite old standby, Hibiscus Branch. Of course, the print run is finished and there is basically none left – why is it I only manage to figure out that I need a particular fabric from her only after she is out of it? Luckily Aleta was willing to search for any remaining pieces of the Hibiscus Branch (and it seems like there may be just enough)…

…and also came up with this cotton panel, mainly white and unprinted but with the loveliest borders which will be added to the Roman shades to create the effect of a single fabric. The flowered portion won’t go to waste either – I’ll use it to make throw pillows. It’s good to note here that complimentary fabrics can be combined to create the bordered look.

This brings me back to Michael Smith’s bargain trick with bedspreads that I find works even better with tablecloths. Different projects need different sizes and tablecloths are available small to large. Both can be counted on the have the quality Courtney refers to her in her article, the constrained “frames, along with symmetry, to bring order to a profusion of ornament.” So in addition to Aleta’s offerings, other resources I have been exploring include Priya Raj’s beautiful block prints at Peacocks and Paisleys. I almost grabbed this Exotic Mint Sprigs tablecloth in the sale this weekend with an eye towards using it to make a shade for the guest room.

And instead of ho-hum shower curtains, it’s not that hard to put 12 button holes in a tablecloth or bed sheet, which is exactly what I am planning on doing in my daughter’s bedroom with the block printed bed sheet I bought this summer from Jaypore. And for purpose made shower curtains in block print patterns, take a look at Saffron Marigold. I recently recommended their Wedding Day pattern for an impossibly boring yellowy-beige bathroom.

I have also given up on trying to get permission to change the ugly tiles in our kitchen here and am going for a new approach which involves distraction. In searching for fabrics for the French chairs, I had an epiphany and realized Mally Skok‘s Rohet Multi on Oyster might be just the thing to link the disparate elements in the kitchen together. More on that later in the week but be sure to notice that it too has a border.

I’ll be putting it to good use.

Image credits: First two photos Michael Smith via 1. The Wall Street Journal, 2. Cote de Texas. Other photos mine or as linked.

Jan 19, 2014 By tokyojinja in Doha Move, Interior Design, Kids, Textiles Tags: Aleta Online, borders, Brigitte Singh, Courtney Barnes, fabric borders, Indian block prints, Mally Skok, michael smith, Parlor Textiles, Peacocks and Paisleys, Peter Dunham, Saffron Marigold, Style Court, ZAK + FOX

Michael Smith Has One Too!

So you all know by now how obsessed I am with my new but old byobu (Japanese screen) and I promise to stop talking about it soon (maybe) but it really is inspiring changes to my interiors in Doha. After 9 years in Japan, I’m ready for a bit of change, but at the same time I am excited that the change is being driven by something Japanese!

Thanks so much to Mark Sikes for posting Michael Smith’s Holmby Hills house this week as the photos of his bedroom with its similar 18th century silver and green screen have really got me pumped. The motif looks to be pine or more possibly bamboo, but I just can’t quite tell. There is also a great article and additional slide show photographed by François Halard on the house in the Wall Street Journal last year.

There is something about the bedrooms he designs that I just adore – posted recently about another one here and you can see another favorite here – as they are so serene.

I didn’t need any validation on my excitement really, but it sure is nice to have it…

I’m still thinking the Balboa Mist will be spot on – paint should be going on the walls tomorrow, so I’ll let you know!

Jul 14, 2013 By tokyojinja in Artist Spotlight, Interior Design Tags: byobu, Holmby Hills, Japanese screens, michael smith

A Little Black and White to Cut the Sweetness

You know that feeling when you have a vision of something in your mind’s eye, but you could not describe exactly what it is you want and then you magically stumble upon it, just when you least expect it? Well it happened to me a few weeks ago when I went to Yoseido Gallery to see Toshihisa Fudezuka‘s exhibition. For some time now I have been craving a piece of artwork with dense black strokes and no other color as a counterpoint to my tendency to lean towards prettiness in interiors. My best approximation of my thought process would have been Franz Kline meets traditional Asian black and white landscape painting. And now I have just that!

Undoubtably, the room that has been influencing me for years is this Michael Smith designed bedroom, one of my favorite bedrooms ever. There is so much perfection and a kind of sweetness to it which is then neatly cut by those two extraordinary brushwork paintings.

The bedroom is just one in the incredible Malibu house which is chronicled in Michael Smith’s new book Building Beauty: The Alchemy of Design, which details the step by step process through which he, the architect and craftsmen travelled to create an American dwelling at its purest. I’ve featured other favorite rooms from it here and here before and never cease to find new details in the spaces.

Michael Smith has also had some major success using Franz Kline’s paintings too – who could forget this cover from AD? I think both he and Miles Redd have sparked a Kline craze in fact. Or perhaps it was Martha Stewart Editor Kevin Sharkey’s Kline-like paintings that started the ball rolling? Personally, I’ve had a few others images in my inspiration folders for some time, like this Kline with very formal blue and white porcelain…

…and this one (via Mark Sikes) with the sparest lined antiques.

But the Kline fascination has gone truly viral, with even mass-retailers like West Elm featuring abstract paintings in his exact style.

They are showing up everywhere, but in particular over at designer and stylist Emily Henderson‘s projects, here reflected in a mirror in a boldly papered dining room…

…and here as part of an art wall installation in her assistant’s living room. His whole apartment is quite fun (there’s a Japanese screen over his bed) and well worth scrolling through.

It’s not that I’m against these works – basically nobody can afford to own a real Kline – it’s just that I believe there is so much amazing original artwork out there that it isn’t necessary to buy these replicas. Which brings me right back around to my extraordinary monoprint by Naoto Okuyama. His work on paper is unusual in that he creates monoprints – which means a single edition, much like a painting – as opposed to multiple copies which is more common for prints. I had not really been familiar with his work until last year when he was featured in the CWAJ Print Show‘s Associate Show. But as I walked in the door of the gallery, this work – entitled Blood #393 – just caught me, hook, line and sinker. It was everything I had been imagining, plus a little bit of nostalgia even (does anyone else imagine Mt. Fuji when they look at it?)

The title put me off at first, but after a bit of conversation with Sue Abe and later answers from the artist himself, it made me feel even more connected to it:

The title of my carborundum works are all entitled ‘Blood’. The ‘Blood’ in the title incurs the image of something which continues and circulates endlessly. The lines and shapes are abstract and organic, and the materialistic textural expression is created by [the] technique. With all of these elements, I am trying to express the energy underlying and inherent in all phenomena. I would like the viewer to project my images on his/her experience and knowledge and have a feel of the ‘movements’ of something which endlessly drives everything forward, even though their perception may be different from my intention.

It also has a tactile textured quality – impossible to photograph – which involves mixing grainy material into his ink on his printing plate. As Okuyama explains:

The grainy substance is Carborundum powder. Carborundum is the name of an abrasive compound whose main component is silicon carbide. Print artists began using it as a printmaking medium in late 1960s. Miró and Tàpies made carborundum pieces, and also today there are artists who use this technique throughout the world though the number may be smaller compared to other printmaking techniques. I use aluminum plates. After drawing freely with resin and glue on the plate, I spray carborundum powder and let it stick. This way I intentionally make an unstable surface. So carborundum powder move to paper with ink when I print it with a press machine. A complicated, three-dimensional expression is made in this way.

But the most special part of all about my new acquisition is that my girlfriends all got together and purchased it for me as a going away present!!!! I still tear up when I think about it and think about leaving them all! This post is really a shout out thank you to my darling friends!

And in case you were worried that I’d lost all my proclivity for sweetness, I also got this amazing peony by Shinji Ando. Although, maybe not so sweet as the peony is overblown and almost ready to rot and the lace leaves have a bit of a punk feel…

Friendship is the sweetest!

To see more of these artists’ work, visit Yoseido Gallery.

May 27, 2013 By tokyojinja in Artist Spotlight, Books, Movies & TV, Expat Life, Interior Design Tags: brushstroke painting, Franz Kline, michael smith, Naoto Okuyama, Shinji Ando

New Sayonara Series…Mixing In Asian Pieces

This time of year, like always, is bittersweet. It is sayonara season in Tokyo as the school year comes to a close and people get ready to leave, some just for the summer but others forever. Jobs get reassigned back in the US or other home countries, or sometimes there are new assignments, new adventures in store for folks. I have had a flurry of new clients recently who want help sorting out what else they should rush to purchase and pack into their containers and more importantly, how to deploy it all when they get home. Many have entire households of furniture back in the States in a totally different style while others have filled their homes here with tons of Japanese and Chinese pieces that need some space inserted between them to feel fresh. I wonder if the word fusion is too trite to use these days – it is actually quite apropos – and honestly what this blog is so often about, but there is truly a need to fuse their items together to make a cohesive decorative whole.

As a result I am launching a new regular sayonara series, not meant to be comprehensive, but instead to a focus on an idea, a decorative item or answer a question from a reader specifically about integrating their old life into their new one. Since I attended a sayonara party last night – a “college graduation” party – that required me to dress as I did in college, which for me was an Indian print skirt (who else remembers Putumayo?) and Birkenstocks (which I have had to borrow as I forced my self to graduate from them years ago), I decided to focus on the mix of Chinese and Japanese antiques with Indian block prints and other South East Asian textiles to lighten them up. It doesn’t hurt that I have some of this mix going on in my TV room project at the beach house too.

This Chinese cabinet in an older version of Windsor Smith‘s bedroom is just the kind of piece that people living in Asia have purchased. Functional in any room, I love it in the bedroom where all the soft furnishings and fabrics can lighten its dark heaviness. The ruffled bed valence and mix of Indian block print textiles – in indigo no less – link through their shared exoticism to form a pleasing contrast. Vintage luggage junkie me loves the travel reference too that all the Louis Vuitton makes piled on top of the armoire. The graphic modern rug, which looks to be Madeline Weinrib, keeps the space grounded but is much fresher than a Persian.

Here’s the mix again in bedroom designed by Amelia T. Handegan for her South Carolina bungalow. The Chinese table (doesn’t everyone here have one?) and mirror play off the soft paisley of the bedding. The graphic black and white striped rug keeps the space modern and casual. Actually, Handegan’s entire cottage is an exercise in just the kind of mixing I adore and well worth scrolling through on the great new Architectural Digest website. She even repurposes an old Chinese table as a bathroom vanity.

For me personally, I have just scooped up a nice sized remnant of Michael Smith’s Devonshire for Jasper fabric, thinking the tiny print and deeply stained background will make nice pillows to add to the textile mix in the back TV room.

So send me your conundrums – include photos is if you can – and let’s start a conversation about how to integrate our wonderful finds into our larger decorative life. Cheers!

May 27, 2012 By tokyojinja in Expat Life, Furniture, Interior Design, Textiles Tags: Amelia Handegan, bedrooms, Chinese antiques, Indian block prints, japanese antiques, michael smith, Windsor Smith

Transformed Transoms…Decorating With Ranma and Other Fretwork Screens

Ranma, the pierced or open-work transom panels found in almost all traditional dwellings are a staple of classical Japanese architecture. Placed above shoji or fusuma sliding doors and used to allow light and air to move between rooms when the doors were closed, they also became a place for designers to exercise their decorative imagination.

Like the sake jugs of my last post, Japanese ranma can be found with a bit of searching at most shrine sales here in Japan. In general there are two types, pictorial and geometric, as shown below. The pictorial ranma can be highly carved and detailed, and sometimes even lacquered or gilded. The geometric ranma are comprised of oft repeated Japanese motifs or employ balanced openwork compositions.

Pictorial ranma are almost always oriented horizontally, which would follow naturally based on their form.

The level of open-work in any design varies with the function of the panel – some are almost completely open, while others, like the one below, have very little piercing.

Published examples of ranma screens used in interior design are slim, although I did find this interior featuring a ranma in an overlayed circle pattern called shippou-tsunagi (seven treasures pattern). On the other hand, there are many similar items such as Chinese fretwork and Indonesian transoms out there, which I am going to use to illustrate my post as they perform the same decorate function. And as always I wonder why Japanese antiques continue to be under used by designers, while doing my darndest to remedy that.

One of the most obvious placements for a long horizontally oriented ranma (besides actually building it into construction as an actual transom) is over a bed or even turned into a headboard. Designer Jonathan Pierce has hung what looks to be a Chinese screen over the bed in this apartment…

…and a pair of Asian panels here. He also has a show Interiors, Inc. on HGTV that I am curious to watch this summer. Has anyone out there seen it?

Vincente Wolf is a master at weaving in global wooden screens, such as these Indonesian transoms hung above the fireplace. Note the Chinese fretwork screen just off to the left of the fireplace as well.

Here’s the same room from another angle – you can see the Chinese fretwork screen better here.

Long ranma panels with non-directional designs can easily be hinged together to make standing screens too.

Another great idea courtesy of Mr. Wolf is backing a screen with a mirrored panel, adding a whole new element to the composition and helping to brighten a darker space.

This ornate and gilded ranma in a similarly colored space has quite a similar effect. (And be sure to note the pillow on the chair, won in my ZAK + FOX giveaway!)

Panels can also be propped instead of hung, such as in this Rosemary Beach home by Tracery Interiors.

Their firm also seems to love using open-work panels as both their portfolio and referential company name and logo would imply. Note the small green transom in this project – Indonesian again I believe – in the corner beside the fireplace.

And I am not sure what kind of panel is featured here, but I had to include it if for no other reason than the amazing glass bottle display!

Michael Smith has propped and old wooden panel – this one looks Indian to my eye – along with some other mounted objects on this Malibu home’s mantle.

Ranma in the bathroom? Why not? I love the use of these fretwork panels in this cool and spare Manhattan bathroom…

…and I also love the way these Chinese fretwork pieces cozy up this warm London bathroom.

And let’s not leave out the kitchen – shown here with a stack of small Chinese fretwork doors on the wall.

Image credits: 1. Japan Style by Geeta Mehta and Kimie Tada, photo credit: Noboru Murata, 2-4 & 10. me, 5. D Home March/April 2007, photo credit: Danny Piassick, via My Notting Hill, 6-7 & 18. Pierce & Co., 8. House Beautiful May 2010, photo credit: Eric Piasecki, 9 & 11. via Vincente Wolf Blog, 12. via A. Ridge, 13-15. Tracery Interiors, 16. Elle Decor October 2009, photo credit: Henry Bourne, 17.Elle Decor November 2009, photo credit: Pieter Estersohn, 18. World of Interiors July 2010, photo credit: Bob Smith.

May 6, 2012 By tokyojinja in Design Motif, Interior Design, Shrine Sales and Flea Markets Tags: Chinese fretwork, japanese antiques, michael smith, Pierce & Co., ranma, screens, shrine sale, Tracery Interiors, transom, Vincente Wolf

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