Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2022 i MILIEU

When the MILIEU staff meets, something special happens every time: Ideas. Not one person on staff is short of inspiration or enthusiasm, curiosity or a willingness to explore. It is our mission to be engaged and proactive in meeting designers and artisans, discovering unique destinations to visit, finding new sources for decorative accessories, as well as rediscovering past artists and architects whose work lives on and continues to inspire. We have all been deeply affected by what has happened in the world over the last couple of years, but something that always prevails is the sense of joy. It’s that feeling in life that is the most reassuring and hopeful. And one of my favorite articulations of joy is a wedding. A year ago, I had a vision for a…

Outtakes…

For a museum curator, editing is one of the hardest jobs. When Frances Sands, the Sir John Soane’s Museum’s Curator of Drawings and Books, was commissioned to write a book about the architectural drawings in the London institution’s collection, she had to find eighty of the best examples from their holdings of more than 30,000. While Sands recognized the offer to write the book as an honor and scholarly thrill, she also experienced the task as being “truly painful and heartbreaking,” because every centuries-old drawing in the collection—in her opinion—is a masterpiece worthy of inclusion. And now, for a show she has entitled “Hidden Masterpieces” (March 9–June 5), she has had to winnow down the collection to only twenty-three drawings, making for more personal heartbreak. She went throughout the museum,…

THERE IS NOTHING bland about Kit Kemp. While many rooms and design schemes of our time are neutral to the point of blandness, the interiors of Kemp’s London home are welcoming and exuberant, filled with vivid color and texture and pattern, and yet nothing seems chaotic or overworked. As she emphasizes, “I like bold interiors, but not ones that are frantic. After all, you have to be able to live with it.” Kemp is creative director and—with husband, Tim—cofounder of Firmdale Hotels, with ten stylish properties in London and New York. The rooms in their home have been shaped by the same sure hand and eye responsible for the distinctive look of her many private design commissions and numerous unique hotel rooms—including the oversized headboards recognized as one of the…

Michael Del Piero Michael Del Piero is an interior designer known for her distinctive style and knack for curating the perfectly balanced space. With a fresh take on mixing modern with classical styles, her designs are always expertly edited—nothing is superfluous, yet everything is always intriguing and inviting. The firm that she established in 2007, Michael Del Piero Good Design, evolved from Del Piero’s early love of antiquities and years of collecting art and artifacts from around the world. Kit Kemp Over the years, interior designer Kit Kemp has been forging an internationally acclaimed reputation—not only for her unique hotel interiors as Founder and Creative Director of Firmdale Hotels and the Kit Kemp Design Studio, but also as a successful textiles, fragrance, and homewares designer, author, and champion of British…

Barbara Sallick remembers when bathrooms got no respect. Options were limited, and that forgotten space in the home was not equated with style—until she turned on the taps. Growing up well acquainted with the plumbing supply company her father founded in 1925 in Danbury, Connecticut, she always felt an affinity for any space with faucets. But Barbara and husband Robert (who joined her father in plumbing supply in 1962) saw baths from a different perspective. Fixtures that merely got the job done were never enough for them. Somehow, she always knew that baths could become beautiful rooms. However, there was no template to apply in the 1970s, when the Sallicks decided to create Waterworks. While maintaining the original showroom, Barbara came to realize that Danbury was not the place to…

It’s the flâneur, the wanderer, that is, who really sees Paris. Anyone visiting the capital can find their way to the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe, but it’s the casual observer of its urban life who finds the city’s other treasures. The Façades of Paris: Windows, Doors, and Balconies (Rizzoli; $55) reveals a different cityscape, one defined by sculpted arabesques, spirals, bows, curves, and interlacing forms, often of roses, acanthus leaves, and tendrils that decorate buildings. In between patient visits, illustrator Dominique Mathez, a French doctor, walked the boulevards of her city—watercolors, brushes, ink pens, and paper in hand—to document exterior ornamental architectural details (highlighting flourishes in cast iron). Most of the Paris we experience dates from 1853–1870, when Georges-Eugène Haussmann redeveloped the city, tearing down miles of picturesque,…

COVER Produced by: Katrin Cargill Photography by: Simon Brown, simonbrown.london All floral arrangements created and produced by Juliet Glaves Flowers, julietglaves.com Bride’s skirt and groom’s suit created and made by Couturier Sarah Ninot, sarahninot@gmail.com. Wallpaper: Toile de la Prairie, Color: Brown, 5011712, SCHUMACHER, fschumacher.com. Pair of Swedish 19th-century demi-lune tables, LORFORDS ANTIQUES, lorfordsantiques.com. Pair of antique metal urns, MAISON ARTEFACT, maisonartefact.com. Scalloped cloths: Hamlet’s Toile, Color: Cocoa, FABRICUT, fabricut.com. Groom’s suit: Ballon de Gonesse, Color: Chocolate, CHRISTOPHER MOORE LONDON FOR THE TOILE MAN, thetoileman.com. Bride’s skirt: Ondine on voile, Color: Chocolate, CHRISTOPHER MOORE LONDON FOR THE TOILE MAN, thetoileman.com. Bride’s velvet sash: VV ROULEAUX, vvrouleaux.com. Groom’s shoes: Mr. Casual in brown suede, PAOLO MOSCHINO, paolomoschino.com. Bride’s shoes: Lambskin band ballerina flats, THE ROW, therow.com. FROM THE DESK OF… Pages 20-21…

Chesterfield sofa, Obsolete, obsoleteinc.com…

When Alma Thomas (1891–1978) was just fifteen years old, she moved with her family from the Jim Crow South to Washington D.C., where she cultivated a life as an artist and educator. A traveling retrospective exhibition, “Alma W. Thomas: Everything Is Beautiful,” is touring the country, revealing the striking evolution of Thomas’s work throughout her career. The show was put together by cocurators Jonathan Frederick Walz, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of American Art at The Columbus Museum (Columbus, Georgia), and Seth Feman, Deputy Director for Art & Interpretation and Curator of Photography at Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum of Art. “We wanted this exhibit to expand people’s understanding of her life, her connection to community and artists, as well as her amazing work,” Walz says, who adds, “In Columbus, we…

NOTHING IS LOST or hidden in Michael Del Piero’s Chicago apartment. She knows every item she owns, from socks to forks, and she knows exactly in which drawer or cabinet something is to be found. All of her possessions are accessible, in sight, and used in her life. “People have a lot of stuff, it’s that simple,” says Del Piero, who maintains an active interior design business in Chicago, as well as from her other residence in East Hampton, close to her namesake décor shop in nearby Wainscott, New York. “Just as I did with myself when I purchased this apartment, the moment we start working with a client we try to help them figure out what it is they own, want to use, and just as importantly, what it…

KELLY HOPPEN admits that she has a difficult client, someone constantly repositioning the furniture and accessories that she’s already carefully put in place. The client comes up with completed design ideas that she insists take five minutes to draw on what Hoppen calls “loo paper” and then expects Hoppen’s staff to put everything in place right away. Also, the homeowner has so many existing pieces of furniture that she has trouble making choices. “I am that client from hell,” Hoppen admits, referencing the rebuilt and repurposed centuries-old lambing barn in the Cotswolds that she shares with her partner as a country home. Hoppen is one of Britain’s—if not the world’s—most well-known interior designers, having written nine books, appearing regularly on TV shows, designing accessories for companies, and earning the status…

Josef Franz Maria Hoffmann (1870–1956) was born in Pirnitz, Moravia (now Czech Republic), to Josef Franz Karl Hoffmann and Leopoldine Tuppy. His father was the town mayor as well as a successful businessman. Growing up in an affluent household, Hoffmann was keenly aware of the Biedermeier furnishings that filled his family home, a style that would later influence his development as an architect and designer. Though his father had encouraged the young Hoffmann to pursue a career as a lawyer, he was allowed to enroll in the school of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Upon his graduation in 1895, he co-founded the group known as the Vienna Secession. Composed of painters, architects, and designers, the Secessionists published their manifesto in the popular Art Nouveau journal, Ver Sacrum…