pistachio ceilings soften an industrial-chic restaurant in melbourne

What I adore about TRUNK-- the melbourne restaurant that I just discovered from an astonishingly gorgeous blog with a pitch-perfect design sensibility that I also just discovered (lark about) -- is that it marries

THIS aesthetic (fundamentally, that of the 19th c. draftsman's study, an aesthetic vocabulary that we sons and daughters of architects, many of us anyway, speak fluently...)



with THIS...


or rather, a hint of this....



While Trunk is clearly leaning in the Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch direction, with those dark dark floors and lots of dark shelves and dark tables and industrial lines everywhere, that pistachio ceiling elevates the whole room into something beyond direct historical quotation.

The thing is that my design roots always take me in the direction of wonderful, pre-pre-war architectural bones, deep dark woods and slates and the rough, "quick, grab a pen-- let's sketch it out now" kind of feel. But I am also a girl who loves design elements that are a little (or a lot) more opulent, a little unabashedly pretty, a little delicate and delicious and dazzlingly chromatic.

dear Trunk, we tip our hat.

(& we may even get out our paint chips...I've got two mammoth bookshelves to paint and I'm thinking that a dull absinthe green on the wall, and glossy black for the shelves, might complement and punch up our foamy grey living room...)

watercolor silhouettes, in reverse

refreshing and beautiful pairing of the crisp, sharply defined letter and the playful fluidity of the stained, saturated paper. would be great for cards to friends, large posters, homemade book covers, numbers for tables at weddings...(no need to do the watercolors so brightly, right? could do them in soft pinks and navy, or as you like...)

or try an animal shape-- a flamingo, an elephant, a giraffe, and paint over them in a range of tones of the same color, for a series.


spotted on AT's children site...

this octo-marvellous print by little rock artist paul michael dellostritto is available here for $7. via sfgirlbybay.

summer over-brimming a pimm's cup

Pimm's Cup is my favorite summer cocktail.

It's not really a "thing" here, but in Britain, at summer garden parties or university parties down by the river for boating races, or in a thermos when you're going on a picnic, ideally by boat, and you've got a big hat and a couple of friends and a punnet or two of wild strawberries, it is most definitely a Thing.

yesterday, the New York Times published a recipe for "Pimm's Saigon," which has ginger in it & sounds super divine...


Pimm's Cup inspiration board (with classic recipe) by Polka Dot Bride; she has a good eye for color and her boards are lovely, great for weddings but also parties, and even rooms. check them out here..

film/reading inspiration:
- Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
- Iris (a memoir about Iris Murdoch written by her husband, John Bayley)
- Sylvia (about Plath, the best bits from which take place in Cambridge, UK..)
- and, far, far better than any of these is The Wind in the Willows, the ultimate tribute to "messing about in boats"

a man's watch on a woman's wrist

viva lauren hutton...



viva men's watches...





viva the two together.


love especially the buoy-hued first of these two men's watches from gnomen... the first, $580, here; the second, $360, here.

speaking of vats of flowers

nicolette camille is one to watch. her work is opulent yet wonderfully low-key, and her sense of color seems to be the real deal.

thanks to the-soon-to-be-san-diego-based joy for her post on nicolette...

naomi leff

ode to naomi leff...
ode to dark walls and creamy vaulted ceilings...
ode to great huge vats of flowers as a masculine room's feminine flounce...

lest we forget the rectangle

so you wish to ground and balance a feminine, slightly cluttered room? try layering rectangles, especially in dark colors.

the black door alone does so much, no?




kate spade, the maharani of rectangles... her website, her logo, her first bags from the early '90s....

thomas paul sale...

quick public service announcement....!

thomas paul pillows and totes and such will be on highly discounted sale on wednesday, 6/24 at the gilt groupe... (love that "e" on the end; a little ye olde shoppe, no?)

if you haven't yet heard, gilt is an addictive sample sale online; by invite only; feel free to use my link to join.


ps: unfortunately I don't know how to invite you without potentially benefiting financially if you join and then make a first purchase. (gilt uses a gift certificate thing to encourage people to invite others.) just wanted to let you know so as to keep silk felt soil 100% above board.

bare shoulders, white feathers, and french paste

best hat (excuse us: "fascinator") at ascot...

The coolest needlepoint project I've ever heard of

The coolest needlepoint project I've heard of was a designer's gift to her parents. She needlepointed on several pillows some of her family's random catch-phrases (in her case, clueless things her father had said that had become classics).

We all have these things that we say to each other -- private jokes with friends, punch lines to family stories, phrases that come out at holiday dinners year after year, ways that we speak with the closest people in our life when we're remembering and reaffirming our lives.

Wouldn't it be amazing to celebrate some of these phrases on pillows?

KNITPRO is a free online application that will make a needlepoint or a knitting pattern from anything you choose to upload.

Or if that's too much work, there always are the classics.........









(from the Well Appointed House)


update:

- a site to get started

- a site that sells audubon canvases and others, eg this fabulous bee one