Not Your Garden Variety Accessories

I knew that Lunt was creating a line for the New York Botanical Garden, but I did not know how great the pieces were going to be. Most of the items are silver-plated, and many of them have a Chinoiserie theme- how apropos! More importantly though, many of the designs were inspired by drawings and prints found in the Rare Book Collection of the Garden's LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

And what's even better is that many of the items are quite affordable. So... what will you be buying?





The silver plated Garden Pagoda teapot and cream and sugar make me want to host a tea party. The inspiration for these pieces came from architectural designs found in William Halfpenny's 1752 publication "Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste".


Feather Shot Glass and Cocktail Picks. Inspired by the feathers of a bird. And after seeing the shot glass, I think I'm liking flame-stitch again.


Pomegranate Paperweight, based on an illustration by Georg Dionysius Ehret in "Plantae Selectae" (1750-73).


Cocktail Shaker with a head of a Bahamian Titmouse, a bird documented by Mark Catesby in his legendary book "Natural History of the Carolinas, Florida, and the Bahama Islands" (1754).


Isn't this lacquer and silver plate tray beautiful? The garden design featured on the tray was drawn by Georges-Louis le Rouge in "Détail des Nouveaux Jardins à la mode" (1776).


And I had to include these Umbrella Cocktail Picks as they look a bit like my logo at top, don't you think? This particular umbrella design came from a drawing of a garden folly found in Charles Over's "Ornamental Architecture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern Taste" (1758).

Image at top: A view of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden