In the first grade at Nankin Mills elementary my teacher assigned us pen pals from a school in England. Freckled and red-headed, I remember staring at Penny’s photo for hours thinking she might be a fairy. We would not continue our epistolary exchange without a teachers prodding, but throughout all these years I have imagined Penny, my real imaginary friend…
And so when I became aware of British textile designer Penny Morrison, and realized we are about the same age, well…I conjured up all sorts of imagined trips back and forth, even touring India together. She is warm, generous and funny, and we are the best friends you could possibly imagine! I do so love our visits…
“To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.” – Phyllis Theroux
Fellow anglophile Katie Rosenfeld takes us on a tour of her renovated Tudor in the suburbs of Boston. We don’t have any true Tudor homes in the U.S. of course; technically they are Tudor Revival. Early in my married life in the northern suburbs of Detroit we owned a Tudor built in 1926 (which I maintain was the best decade of home construction in this country.) How often have I rued the day I sold that…it was one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever lived in.
More slowly than Katie, I took to a bit of renovation. It began with ripping out carpet and having the old white oak floors refinished. And then I painted the dark woodwork. I would do that again today. Design rules are made to be broken, but not my first two: unless you’re living in a castle, paint the woodwork. Nothing brightens and updates a space more quickly. My second design rule, as my niece will attest, is this: no overhead lighting! (My niece says I’m like Mommy Dearest about this.) Yes, okay, sometimes it’s necessary. I do have ceiling fixtures (because already existing here) but I provide plenty of lamp lighting as alternative.
At the risk of losing you all here, let me take a moment to illustrate my obsession with the proper use of English. You might as well get used to it. If the lamp is hard wired in to the ceiling or wall it is a FIXTURE. LIGHT is the energy that is PROVIDED. I’m yelling now: IT IS NOT – I REPEAT NOT! A F&$!#**}! LIGHT!!!! Oh my gawd. LIGHT is what comes OUT of a LAMP or FIXTURE. Phew….moving on…breathe, Susan…
And as long as we’re talking obsession, the wallpaper in her dining room makes the room. It is gorgeous. Please use wallpaper in your home whenever and wherever budget allows. Personally most of it has become unaffordable to me at this time – which is why years ago I began to cut stencils out and paint pattern on walls. That is both easy to do and completely affordable to anyone.
The other easiest way to bring your house up to date and looking fresh is to mix the match. Don’t let things get too matchy-matchy. Katie explains this well here with the example of her dining room lamps. This is one of those British design elements that is not obvious, but effective. If you’re wondering why the British can overfill a space with a riot of colors and styles and you want to plop down with a book and never leave, this is the why and how.
Then she does just the opposite in her primary bedroom. Here she chooses exactly the right word: camouflage. Uneven or wonky doors, walls, and windows can be blended to a calm and pleasing end by blanketing every possible surface in the same color or pattern. The bedroom is the best place for this effect as it subconsciously relaxes the nervous system.
There are dozens of other design elements I see here, but that’s enough for now. Just paint the woodwork already and we’ll go from there. Thank you, Katie Rosenfeld.
“…on the page you’re exploring a part of yourself that you wouldn’t really let out, and things start happening on the page which you can never get to in your logical brain.” You are my witness, here, but I still write “morning pages.” Morning pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling as recommended by Julia Cameron is her series The Artist’s Way. It is no exaggeration that this practice has saved my life. More than once.
There are websites dedicated to this practice. Two I use are Write Honey (free) and 750 Words (nominal fee) but Cameron suggests we write longhand in a notebook if possible. I use them all. I purchase composition books in bulk and a box of inexpensive pens that I like, and I’m set, internet service or not. Small price to pay for sanity. I paint sometimes, less consistently than I care to admit. If I run out of tubes of artists colors I use leftover house paint. If I run out of canvas I use cardboard or walls. Don’t stand still around me too long lest I decorate you.
Over the decades I’ve had to learn to let go of the finished outcome. It truly is the process that does the healing. “And then you have a conversation with what you don’t know you don’t know about your own anxiety,” she reports. So find yourself old magazines to tear apart and glue together differently, bake, sew, knit, SING, dance, rhyme your sentences for a day, follow a bird through the woods, skip rocks on water…laugh.
“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong,” my Mother said. It’s never wrong coming from your true heart. Trust yourself.
“…in time you will move mountains, and it will come through your hands.” – John Hiatt
the chairs she named after her Grandmother’s sisters. We wish they could talk, too, Monique. In this exuberant home we see fearless use of color. Again, a theme I call “follow your heart” decorating. Buy what you love – unapologetically. Your home IS your altar, the proclamation of your tenacity and of true faith – in life. Was it Picasso who said “artists live out loud?” Live like you mean it.
I was as glad for a new year as anyone. But I experienced a weird phenomenon: there was a deep sadness, too. I felt like I was leaving someone behind. My younger brother died unexpectedly in his sleep eight months ago. Somehow acknowledging the passing of the year felt as though I was abandoning him. I had to say goodbye all over again. Yet I had not thought of that or felt that way on the new year following either of my parents deaths; had not felt like I was leaving them…what was that? I dreamt of Ward on New Years eve, we said goodbye with love and affection, and some type of awareness that this was it for us. I don’t feel his spirit around me anymore.
I have come to appreciate the gift of grief, not to recoil from it. I appreciate my anger. Surely any healing requires acceptance of the full range of our emotion. Gratitude waits on the other side of allowing for it all. I’m so grateful he was my brother.
What has this got to do with decoration? If you haven’t gleaned a theme in this blog yet, it is the fact that I do not know how to separate interior design from interior experience…it’s all the same for me, as within, so without…I FEEL colors. I feel everything. I absolutely GIVE UP trying not to. Because at nearly 70 years of age, I utterly and completely give up trying to be anything other than who I am.
AND – here’s the thing: I just want to grow up. I want to mature spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I want to heal this year, finally, from a lifetime in survival mode. From multi-generational abuse and mental illness, and from living defensively. I’m finally willing to be vulnerable. And the fact is, probably much like you, I have been on a lifelong search for truth, for the cure for this human condition, for “enlightenment” (deliver me.) I want nothing to do with that quest any longer. It holds no value. We both know it’s an INTERIOR issue.
Instead I will seek joy. In every little nook and cranny. I will sing at the top of my lungs off key! I will paint anything that stands still long enough – any color I feel. I might even name my furniture. I want to be warm and cozy and fat and sassy (so far, so good…) I will not abide beige.
My sweet brother never had a chance at any quality of life or happiness. But that’s a story for another time and place. Meanwhile I will not back down from living my life as an artist, in full living color.
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” – May Sarton
Okay you – yes, you. Here’s a bandwagon I can jump on! Wendy Knox is on a campaign to re-brand aging. She’s turning muck into magic. Let’s support her any way we can. For starters, let’s subscribe to her YouTube channel and like her videos and let her know we are listening:
…is a quote often credited to Einstein. He was on to something. Neuroscience has now been able to map the brain and observe the neurons firing, the brain lighting up, when certain functions occur. Thanks to this we now know that intuition and imagination are the same neurological function. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t manifest it (the old red car theory.) What if earth is God’s playground?
Take the issue of intuition, then. Without it, we literally would not have survived as a species. Your gut tightens and your thoughts prompt you in a different direction: don’t take off when the light turns green, that kind of thing. I’ll bet we don’t know how many times our intuition has saved our life. I can think of a few that I know of, but how many more am I not so aware of?
As it happens the way to develop a strong trust in our intuition is to play with our imagination. To play at creativity. That does not necessarily require making art – baking bread for a neighbor is creative. Have you ever read to a child and made up voices? How do we literally “come unto him as little children?” Open-hearted, empty-minded, both sides of the brain engaged? The answer is: WE PLAY.
The woman in this film actually looks a lot like the younger me. Oh how I miss her. She’s still inside of the wrinkled old me and I’m going to let her play today. I will simply follow her lead. Won’t you join me?
Always Maira. She will show us the way to the absurd and glorious in life. She reminds us to revel in our inconsistencies. She is my pastor this Sunday morning. Welcome to my church:
Jenny Jackson is my superhero. She is “four years away from ninety.” She has a red refrigerator. She is an expert at making wrong moves in life. She sews buttons on her shoes. She lives on the edge of terror. And she is grateful. I love her. I love you, too. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
“I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I’ve wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keefe
At 240 square feet – you read that right, 240 – this space holds everything this designer needs. Here we see a great example of how a space must provide not only physical comfort, but visual comfort as well. What would you need to feel comfortable here?
“A house is made with walls and beams, a home is made with love and dreams.” – Emerson
This friendly young designer is just delightful, as is his home. He has nailed the attention to detail. Here in his small 2 bedroom bungalow he demonstrates maximalist style exquisitely.
I do love black walls. Pair them with natural textures like rattan, greenery, and velvet (oh, my!) and you have just created warmth and drama. Trust me, you’ll love living with this classic design. Put some pattern on your fifth wall and we are talkin’…
Javier’s bathroom is my favorite of all time. I’m planning to steal this idea and paint a mural in mine. If you’re curious, it shows much better in the original tour a year ago (link below video.)
Grab a cup of your favorite holiday beverage and take a little break…XOXO
“Good artists copy; great atrists steal.” – Pablo Picasso
The original tour. Check out the mural walls in the primary bathroom.
A Painterly Home 