340: BOOKS as ROOMS
Cheaper than the $120,000 chairs within.
Rooms is Magasin’s interiors vertical featuring room-by-room shopping, furniture and decor wishlists, and renovation projects at home in Brooklyn.
One thing that becomes very clear very quickly when shopping for a new home is how poor we all are (yes all), a humbling that’s at least assuaged by the dotting of coffee table books that match one’s search term, flanked in a Google Shopping carousel by $65,000 chairs and $11,000 floor lamps.
I may not get a Pierre Chareau original if I plan on redoing the kitchen, but the swirl of figures from either prospect can make a $150 tome on the architect and designer seem cheap (even then, most “rare books” can be satisfied for a tenth that if you don’t mind a gently battered cover; I don’t).
The big update since the last ROOMS is that our collection of small planned updates to the house has snowballed into a gut renovation. And when that reality came into focus, things slowed down while we processed what that would mean practically. Like, having to move into a rental for a period. Suddenly not in a huge hurry to begin demolition, we got around to things we’d been putting off, like painting the dark teal living room (a temporary sanity fix) and unpacking a dozen boxes of books.
There are two ways to read a design book with the goal of getting inspired: setting out to solve a specific problem through examples, or by unhinging the jaw of your mind to swallow as much as possible and allowing the acids of your instinct and subconscious to digest it. Instead of making much real progress here, I’ve been busy doing a bit of each.
Living
Reading
As far as finished product goes, no collection of ideas has gripped me like Jacques Grange’s Recent Work. These are rooms I would live in with few changes (maybe only the art). His influences and inclusions have turned me onto so many names to chase and threads to pull and other books to order! (He’s the reason I own a Francis Bacon book I can only stomach a few pages at a time, and why I’m looking at patio furniture that could possibly stand in for Jean Royère armchairs.)
His method of alternating old and new brushstrokes, wild interspersed with restrained, grids in conversation with organics, within Haussmannian settings, has been a mental springboard for our Victorian, down to the imperfectly stained dark wood floors and warm-gray, daylight-informed walls.
Wishlisting
Most of my research lately has resulted in my adding yet another round of ambitiously priced seating to my web of wants. From Art Deco Furniture, I stumbled into this armchair by Jules Leleu, this Jean-Michel Frank day bed, an Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann sofa, an André Arbus dining set, and of course…Pierre Chareau club chairs.
On top of all that, I’m still thinking about the $85,000 Jean Royere “Baquet” chairs I saw in Paris.
Dining
Building
Got as far as priming all the walls and then abandoned the job after two failed attempts at off-white paint. The stark white of the primer itself seems to work best at brightening the closed-off inner room. It’s good enough for now!
Buying
A mounted bronze Buddha’s hand from an antiques store in Cold Spring.
Kitchen
Reading
The idea that stuck with me most after finally visiting Donald Judd’s Soho loft last year was how he arranged his cutlery—laid flat side by side on a skinny shelf—and I was curious if this was a feature replicated at his other properties. Was very satisfying to see this tender quirk crop up again in the Ayala de Chinati pages of Donald Judd Spaces.
Buying
Service Projects cutlery; while I’m devouring all of the sterling silver ideas in Christofle: A brilliant story, I’m devouring with this expectation-shattering 16-piece set designed in collaboration with Laura Bilde. It’s weighty, grooved, so pleasant to handle, and impressive for an incumbent Danish brand I’d previously relegated to the “aesthetics” realm.
Bed
Reading
The Decorative Arts in France, 1900-1942 chronicles the salons of the era, wherein designers like Eugène Printz and Etienne Kohlmann would stage concepts for “women’s bedrooms.” An idea! If an impractical one.
Instead, I’ve wound up with more actionable thoughts thumbing through Modern Architecture of Cadaques 1955-71, an Apartamento title I picked up because I thought I might draw some lines to the summer home my grandfather built my mother’s family in Mojácar. The region’s boxy plaster approach is closer to what we’re dealing with in our bedroom and helps me visualize window treatments, the windows themselves…
Wishlisting
I’ll be in Milan in less than two weeks and have made sure to book my tour at the typically very private Villa Borsani, which has been the central inspiration for the bedroom for months (we even got a room-sized rug that same shade of teal from Nordic Knots before our room even is that size…there’s still a wall that needs taking down for it to fit). I have a feeling I will leave there with…a book.
Hall
Reading
I found out about Secondhand Rose, an antique wallpaper dealer whose by-appointment showroom is housed in The Hotel Chelsea, from this book The Finer Things. It has a fantastic appendix of resources for everything from stone flooring to ceramic accessories and is New York-centric. Anyway, on the wallpaper front—it’s a great excuse to visit old Hotel Chelsea, but could be a very cool expression in a vestibule or powder room (how brownstone-y I know!!). I like the idea of grasscloth or raw silk.
Wishlisting
Dedar seems to offer really nice textured wallpapers of this ilk.
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It’s all about Francis Bacon
Just wow. I love the colors of the house in Milan .. just beautiful