A Thing of the Past?

Last week, The New York Times Dining section had an interesting article on the venerable Philadelphia restaurant Le Bec-Fin and the retirement of its star chef Georges Perrier. For forty two years, Perrier, who some deem to be America's version of Paul Bocuse, has been responsible for making Le Bec-Fin one of this country's most esteemed restaurants. But what has not boded well for Le Bec-Fin nor Perrier is its formal, elegant atmosphere and its lauded menu of classic French cuisine. It seems that few people feel comfortable dining in a formal restaurant anymore, and that's truly a shame.

The article quotes a Philadelphia restaurant critic as saying that it's difficult to entice customers to dine in a restaurant that "looks like Louis XIV's boudoir." Dining room photos show a space that is exquisitely sumptuous, and who wouldn't want to get dressed up and dine in such a room, especially on special occasions? But the kicker, for me at least, was this statement that described the restaurant's stodgy ways: "Le Bec-Fin was still presenting butter under little silver domes." Well, what is wrong with that? I serve butter under a little silver dome at my dinner parties, and I don't consider that to be stuffy at all. It's an attractive and easy way to serve butter, and it obviously beats serving your "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" from its plastic tub.

Unfortunately, fine dining is becoming something of a relic, and no where is that more true than in Atlanta. While I may not have many formal restaurants to support in my area, I can do my part by continuing to serve my butter from its silver domed dish.


Image at top: My Ercuis silver butter dish at the ready in my kitchen cabinet.



Christofle silverplated butter dish, designed by Andree Putman, available at Michael C. Fina.




Canard butter dish from Lauret Studio




Hammered silver butter dish from Orfevra




Buis Butter Dish by Ercuis




Ceramic and pewter butter dish by Match, available through Michael C. Fina.

A New Project from Christopher Leach

Back in 2010, I was wowed by a World of Interiors article (August, 2010) that featured the London apartment of designer Christopher Leach. The term "jewel box" is becoming overused when describing small apartments and homes, but Leach's flat really was like a jewel box, and a very elegantly appointed one at that. For the past few years, I've been hoping to find other magazine articles in which his work appears, and now my wait is over thanks to the March issue of British House & Garden.

This time, the featured project is a London townhouse decorated by Leach for his client, a Texan currently living in London. The client wanted "the feeling of a country house in London-English without the chintz." I think that Leach succeeded as the home has a strong British flavor to it, one that is masculine and dignified as well. But what really struck me is how the home's interior looks as though it was decorated over many years when in fact that's not the case. Somehow, Leach managed to design rooms that appear to have patina and age to them, and yet they're clean and crisp-looking too. That's a difficult balance to strike.

In a world where so many homes are "all hat and no cattle" (to borrow the old Texas phrase), it's nice to see a home that has both flair and substance.












All photos from British House & Garden, March 2012, Simon Brown photographer.

Let's Wing It

I absolutely love a classic wing chair, so much so that I have not one but two in my apartment. It would be nice, of course, to have them flanking a roaring fireplace, but alas this fantasy will have remain just that. My faux fireplace might be chic, but it's not very toasty.

The wing chair that has been on my mind over the past few weeks, though, is the one featured above, part of the Coup Studio Collection. (You can read my blog post about it here.) I love the eccentric shape of it, especially the wings that seem to flare back and that notched top. (Probably not the correct technical terms, but that's the way it looks to me.) Although this particular chair is new, its shape isn't. As I wasn't familiar with this style of wing chair, I consulted Barry Hutner of Parc Monceau Antiques. Barry informed me that this wing chair is William and Mary style with overscroll cresting and overscrolled arms.

It's not a wing chair that you see very often, something that made finding examples of it rather difficult. I was able to find two photos of a William and Mary wing chair in situ. (And honestly, I can't tell if the chair in the Castle Howard image is a William and Mary chair or not, but the shape does look similar.) In the photo immediately following the text, the bright red chair stole the show. At Castle Howard, well, not so much so, but the chair did have major competition from the room's architecture. Anyway, it's a chair that I personally would like to see more of. In fact, I'm even hoping that it supplants the now ubiquitous porters chair as the new "it" chair.




Now, who wouldn't want to cozy up to this chair? I believe that this chair might be the same reproduction piece as that below, only upholstered in a different fabric.



A 1950s reproduction wing chair upholstered in copper colored leather on the front with copper metallic chenille on the back. Available through Modlife.



A c. 1690 English Wing Chair, part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art



An antique wing chair of some type at Castle Howard.




Barry does not currently have any William and Mary style wing chairs in his inventory, but he does have these two wing chairs that I think are fetching. The leather one is an antique that he just purchased (gorgeous!) The other chair is part of Barry's custom furniture line. Based on a 19th c. English wing chair, this chair has such nice, clean lines, not to mention those terrific casters for feet. For information, email info@parcmonceau.com


Castle Howard photo from "The Great Houses and Finest Rooms of England" by Robert Harling; the photo of the red wing chair is from a 1970 issue House & Garden.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Haven't you noticed that if there is something that really strikes your fancy, you find yourself using it throughout your entire house? For me, it's the color blue that makes appearances in every room in my home. For others, it might be Chinoiserie, porcelain vegetables, black and white photography, or...mirror. Yes, mirror.

My friend Jean loaned me her copy of The House and Garden Book of Classic Rooms last weekend, and while looking through the book I noticed several photos of the Paris apartment of designer Claude Vicario de la Iglesia. I like the apartment's high style look, but what really caught my eye was the designer's use of mirror throughout much of the apartment! (By the way, I think that exclamation point is warranted as it's not often that you see a home with this much mirror.) Even the bedroom was treated to it, though thankfully not on the ceiling.

I'm not sure what the explanation was for this copious use of mirror. The rooms seem spacious enough, so I don't think mirror was used to make the rooms appear larger. Then again, the rooms' perceived sizes might be the mirrors working their magic. I don't have an answer, but I do think it's interesting. See for yourself:




In the dining room/library, seen both above and at the top of the post, mirror lines the wall behind the sideboard as well as the wall that runs perpendicular to the bookshelves. Note too the mirrored panels on the doors.






The living room has all kinds of mirror, including a framed one over the fireplace as well as a mirrored wall along one side of the room. Even the door frame is surrounded by mirror.




Not to be denied, the bedroom too has mirrored walls both behind the bed and along the side wall, though that wall is curtained.

All photos from The House and Garden Book of Classic Rooms by Robert Harling.

Tom Britt the Mix Master

One thing that I admire about designer Tom Britt's work is that it is usually loaded with personality. No where is this more true than in this Long Island home that Britt decorated back in the late 1960s, a house that in fact possessed many different personalities. Ignoring the generally held belief that a house should be a sum of like-minded rooms, Britt gave each room its own arresting color palette. Bright yellows, pinks, blues, and greens were used throughout. What unified the home and kept it from seeming schizophrenic were the red painted floors and white walls that were found throughout the house.

The most interesting twist to this house, though, is that Britt employed the same three fabrics throughout the house, though he used them in different colorways for each room: in the living room, a palm tree and animal motif print appears in both a pink and white colorway as well as in a stronger pink and yellow version; in the master bedroom, a punchy floral print was used in what appears to be a warm orange color, while in the guest bedroom, it shows up in yellow; in two guest rooms, the same plaid fabric was used in both a green and a blue colorway.

If you want to do as Britt did and use the same fabrics multiple times but in different colors, you might want to consider using some of Quadrille's prints for a similar effect. But, I do think that giving each room its own unique look is something that should be done with caution. I personally think it's easier to decorate your home's rooms so that they're all on the same page, but then, I'm not Tom Britt.





The Master Bedroom




A Guest Bedroom which had the same fabric as that in the master bedroom, though here it was used in the yellow version.




A Guest Bedroom with a green and white plaid print...




...and another Guest Bedroom with the blue and white version.



All photos from House Beautiful, July 1968, Faulconer-Fenn photographers.

High Style High Rise Tour

Atlantans, mark your calendars. Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles High Style High Rise Tour kicks off this Thursday, March 8. Taking place at The Residences at W Atlanta-Downtown, the tour (which, by the way, benefits the High Museum of Art) features six apartments that have been decorated by a talented pool of Atlanta designers: Amy Morris; Susan Ferrier; Bill Peace; Barbara Westbrook; Kerry Howard; and Michel Boyd. And to make the tour even more interesting, each designer collaborated with a particular retailer to help furnish their respective apartments. Retail partners include R Hughes, The Mercantile, Redefined Home Boutique, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, Bradley-Hughes, and Room and Board.

I got a preview of the apartments yesterday, and I must commend all of the designers for their efforts. Both the designers and retailers made each apartment feel warm and comfortable, not always an easy task in a contemporary high rise building. Go see it for yourself and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

The tour runs through April 1. For more information, visit the tour's website or that of Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles.



The bedroom above plus the living room banquette at the top are part of Amy Morris' show house apartment, designed in conjunction with The Mercantile.





Susan Ferrier and her retail collaborator R Hughes are responsible for this chic unit.



Designer Michel Boyd, working with Bradley-Hughes, gave his unit an eclectic yet sleek look.




Bill Peace worked with Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams on this masculine, contemporary unit that is filled with amazing art. You can see two works by Louise Nevelson above the credenza. (Art from Alan Avery Art.)




Being a good Southern boy, Kerry Howard designed his apartment for a modern day Scarlett O'Hara- hence the pink accents. Redefined Home Boutique was Howard's design partner.


Not pictured: the unit designed by Barbara Westbrook and Room & Board.

All photos by Jennifer Boles for The Peak of Chic

Thomas Hamel Residence

Even before seeing the work of designer Thomas Hamel, I was intrigued by his background. Both a Virginia native and a Parish-Hadley alum, Hamel moved around the world to Australia in 1990 where he started his own design firm. Twenty some odd years later, Hamel is still entrenched in Australia and doing quite well. I find that not just impressive, but brave too.

I recently finished reading a monograph of Hamel's work titled Residence. It's an interesting book that captures the range of the designer's work. In the introduction, Hamel writes that "In America, for example, where the market is huge, interior designers tend to be known for one look, and offer up that one particular style of design or point of view." It's something that Hamel believes doesn't work in Australia where the market is much smaller. And based on the book's photos, it seems that his Australian clients have given him free rein to work in a multitude of styles. (You can see for yourself in the photos below.)

While I can see the influence that Hamel's adopted country has had on him, his Southern roots are still very much in evidence. Even in the most contemporary of his interiors, there is a comfort and a graciousness to the homes that I suspect can be traced back to his Virginia upbringing. And one more thing that I think is worth noting: Hamel mentions in the book that his favorite book as a child was one about the Thorne miniature rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. I'm sure there are those people who might find that a strange choice for a child, but if anyone can understand his childhood fascination with that book, it is definitely you and me!























All photos from "Residence", Hardie Grant Books publisher, 2011, Matt Lowden photographer.