Innholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2023 i MILIEU

Welcome to our Fall 2023 issue and MILIEU’s 10th Anniversary Year! We are excited to celebrate this milestone with our readers through special features in this Fall issue, as well as in the upcoming Winter, Spring and Summer editions. Each of these 10th Anniversary Editions will include a look back at some of our most memorable features. It has been a rewarding journey, and as were visit our past issues, it fills me with gratitude for all those who have been a part of MILIEU throughout the years. The most important message I wish to convey is a heartfelt “thank you” to you, our readers, whose support has been essential. I want to thank our scores of loyal advertisers, whose exceptional products and goods are the best in the industry.…

The French translation of Toile de Jouy is “linen cloth,” and traditional toile designs depict scenes of provincial life: stories of farmers and hunters, of shepherds driving sheep, of lovers meeting beneath trees, or of dandily dressed ladies and gentlemen riding in horse-drawn carriages. And when the hot-air balloon was introduced in France in 1783, textiles and wallcoverings with scenes depicting balloons became extremely popular. So, toile is both storytelling and historical documentation. Disappointed by its narrow themes, but inspired by the narrative possibilities, designer Sheila Bridges embraced toile and made it her own. “I didn’t especially want to look at the milk maid on my walls the way she’s usually depicted, so I began creating my own scenes.” Bridges’s Harlem Toile design lampoons some of the stereotypes commonly associated…

Lynn Muir likes it when it storms. When the gales are strong and the tides are high near her home and studio in the tiny North Cornwall village of Marhamchurch, she knows that the raw materials for her sculptures will be more available. She, sometimes accompanied by her husband, drives down to the nearby beaches to collect driftwood that washes ashore—planks, branches, fence posts, broken-off pieces of ships. “I only use reclaimed wood, since it has a nice soft texture and feel to it, whatever shapes take my fancy,” says Muir, who has a worldwide following for her expressive figurative sculptures. While her carved, sanded, glued, and painted people wear expressions, as well as colorful frocks and fanciful hats, she considers them akin to three-dimensional illustrations. “I like to think…

In the first major retrospective of the work of artist Matthew Wong (1984–2019), his large, colorful canvases express his tremendous talents, desires, fears, and delights. “It’s been a joy getting to know Matthew through his paintings,” says Vivian Li, the Dallas Museum of Art’s Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, who produced the exhibition that celebrates the six-year career of the prodigy, with a focus on Wong’s journey as artist rather than as a traumatic figure who died young. The show, which includes works in oil, ink, watercolor, and gouache, has traveled from Dallas and is now on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (running through February 18, 2024). The rich, saturated colors of Wong’s paintings burst from his canvases. With painterly magic, his combinations of shapes and…

"OUR HOMES DEFINE US,” says architect Jeremy Corkern. “They are our day’s beginning and its end, our place of sanctuary, and our face to the world.” The newly constructed Louisiana home that Corkern developed with interior designer Suzanne Kasler is a sanctuary indeed, reflecting its owner’s love of art and antiques—and the combined talents of the two highly respected design professionals who helped realize his vision. Corkern and Kasler’s client is an attorney whom Kasler had worked with on a previous design commission. “He’s a voracious collector with a great eye,” says Kasler, whose firm is headquartered in Atlanta. “He’s very knowledgeable about the worlds of architecture and design and loves everything about this domain. His appreciation for the design world is really what makes the house so unique and…

“Rooms aren’t complete until there are people living in them.”—DARRYL CARTER “Leaving A Mark” p. 120 “It’s such a unique situation to work with someone who’s really collected amazing art.”—SUZANNE KASLER, with JEREMY CORKERN “Collector’s Item” p. 134 “I wanted this house to be fun—fun getting it ready, fun living here, fun for my family to visit.”—BETSY BROWN “Reclaiming the Past” p. 148 “My favorite detail of every design project is the client.”—ROZANNE JACKSON “A Natural Palette” p. 156 “Stan and I both love a classical approach to design, but we also like to push it a little and not be so serious about it, and play with it.”—JACKYE LANHAM, with STAN DIXON “Nothing Could Be Finer” p. 164 “I have a MINI Cooper in California, a Volkswagen in London,…

A Roaring Success Josh Gluckstein lives with lions and giraffes, tortoises and camels, and, soon, a woolly mammoth. His living room is also his studio space, where the sculptor fashions life-sized, semi-three-dimensional animals out of cardboard. “Living in London, the only wildlife you see are dogs, cats and pigeons,” he says, “and, so, I get a sense of wanderlust seeing documentaries about Borneo, the Amazon, and Africa. I’ve been obsessed with animals since I was kid, and I loved going to the zoo and the natural history museum to see them. I’ve now thankfully managed to visit many of the places where they live in their natural habitats.” The young artist fashions his animals out of recycled cardboard, cutting out hundreds of individual segments. He begins each by erecting a…

When Karina Puente installs one of her papel picados (from the Spanish for “perforated paper”) in front of a window, everything in the room changes. The patterns, which she cuts by hand or laser into delicate but durable translucent fabrics, capture the light coming through to create bright and shadowy effects. Puente’s art draws upon ancient traditions that harken back to the Aztecs, who, as she explains from her home and workshop in the Pennsylvania Poconos, would cut elaborate patterns into leaves. Puente, who grew up in Central California, proudly references her Mexican ancestors who were talented seamstresses. What Puente calls her “window works” are the direct product descendants of such traditions. “My art form celebrates the circle of life,” she says. While papel picados have been used to mark…

Newell Turner has been consumed by an obsession that he has finally addressed in his new book, Mexican: A Journey Through Design (Vendome). As the veteran magazine editor and publisher (who is still in the editorial trenches) admits, “I have devoted myself to American interior design, always trying to answer the question, What is American style?” While he largely defined that style for himself and the millions of readers of the magazines he edited, he has been asking himself yet another question. What actually is Mexican style?” He has been traveling to Mexico since the early 1990s, increasingly obsessed with its aesthetics, architecture, interior design, history, and very ethos. His subsequent examination of and immersion in all things Mexican is so detailed that upon sitting in a Maya hammock, his…

WHEREVER BETSY BROWN goes, she imagines the past. Whether she is in her hometown neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, or in front of her new/old second home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she thinks about the people who once lived there. “I’m fascinated when standing on any street, particularly a historic one, and start imagining all those who had been here and how recently the whole population was a different population. None of the people walking by were alive a hundred years go,” she says, as she pauses in front of her circa-1910 Victorian-style bungalow she purchased in the St. Elmo neighborhood of Chattanooga. But just as Brown is as respectful of the past as she is, so, too is the designer all about living now. The reason she purchased the two-bedroom home,…

THE TOWNHOUSE IN LONDON where Kathryn Ireland now lives most of the time wasn’t originally part of her plan. “My sister and I were renovating my mother’s London home, which we’d recently inherited,” says the peripatetic designer. “But then my childhood sweetheart reappeared in my life and asked, ‘Why are you thinking about that house when you could be working on mine?’” So, as she often does, Ireland embraced the detour, curbed the momentum on her mother’s home, and smoothly turned her new old mate’s 19th-century townhouse into a cozy dwelling that the two of them now share when she isn’t spending time at her farmhouse in France or her residence in Los Angeles. “It’s like a country house with Hyde Park as your garden,” says Ireland of the charming…

COVER Produced by: Katrin Cargill Photography by: Simon Brown, simonbrown.london Flowers by: Harald Altmaier, haraldaltmaierphotography.com Wire gown and lanterns painted by: Melanie Williams Tent painted by: Tabby Riley LOOKING BACK Page 15 Fall 2013, Interior design: Mary Jane Ryburn, Photography: Peter Vitale. Page 16 Fall 2013, Interior design: Walda Pairon, Photography: Claude Smekens. Page 17 Fall 2015, Interior design: Elizabeth Royer, Photography: Jean-François Jaussaud. Interior design: Darryl Carter, Photography: Miguel Flores-Vianna; Fall 2014, Interior design: Serge Castella, Photography: Mark Gregory Peters. Fall 2017, Interior design: Penny Morrison, Photography: Miguel Flores-Vianna. Page 18 Fall 2019, Photography: Tim Beddow. Fall 2018, Interior design: Gil Schafer, Photography: Simon Upton. Interior design: Isabel López-Quesada, Photography: Miguel Flores-Vianna. Page 19 Fall 2022, Interior design: Studio Gusto, Photography: Charles Peed. Page 20 Fall 2020, Interior design:…

Page 58 Rainforest grove table, Cox London. Moss “X” and flower chandelier, Harald Altmaier. Page 59 Coat dress in Rigoletto velvet, Olive, Kerry Joyce; purple braid is French grosgrain ribbon, Heather; Le Jardin silk tufts, Chartreuse and Slate Blue, all Samuel & Sons; blue braid is Raya Trim, Deep Blue, Jim Thompson; silk leaves are Faille Hamilton, Chartreuse, Claremont Furnishing Fabrics; hat in Tuscany II, Lime, Sanderson. Pages 60-61 Sash on wire gown, Velvet Border, Chartreuse, Jim Thompson. Masks clockwise from left: Georgina, Mauve, Otis Textiles, trim, Cable Cord, Sable, Perennials, handle, Oberon gimp, Antique Gold, Samuel & Sons; Prima Alpaca, Chartreuse, Sandra Jordan, trim, Velvet Cord On Tape, Teal, Jim Thompson, handle, Faille Hamilton, Chartreuse, Claremont Furnishing Fabrics, Le Jardin Silk Tufts, Chartreuse, Samuel & Sons; Prima Alpaca, Chocolate,…

For Davinia Tomas, her mother really is the light of her life. As the creative force behind Peralta Vidavi, a Spanish company devoted to the manufacture and design of handmade lamps and lampshades, Tomas says, “Since I was very little, I have been closely linked to the world of lamps and lampshades, traveling the world with my aunt and my mother to many lighting and decorating fairs and learning about the crafts and manufacture of lamps through the experience they have transmitted to me.” In 2011, Tomas founded her custom lighting and lampshade business in Valencia, along with business partners David Escudero and Vicente Tomas, emphasizing that “I’ve had the unconditional support of my mother since starting my own company.” Using only local artisans and suppliers for her seemingly infinite…

Gathering the entire Newsom clan for a family adventure across the Aegean Sea seemed like a Herculean feat, but channeling the wisdom of Athena, my mother and family matriarch, Lisa Newsom, made myth a reality. While hilltop towns and turquoise waters are enticing, it was a loftier goal fueling Lisa’s efforts. She was determined to expose our family to the birthplace of democracy, and in many ways, culture and religion, all percolating in the caldera surrounding the Aegean: Greece and Turkey. As if by an act of Zeus himself, we gathered 17 of us from ages 10 to 86, for 10 days of exploring, learning, and family bonding. We traveled on the Seabourn Encore, a small and luxurious ship with excellent crew and well-designed cabins. The meticulously planned excursions by…

UPON WALKING INTO THIS home in suburban Washington, D.C., it might be hard to believe that a family with young children and pets actually lives in the rooms. Minimalist artworks on plinths and objects on surfaces are positioned for full effect, while a calm natural palette flows through the rooms. Yet, following an extensive two-year renovation, the interiors of this home are actually as family-friendly as they are beautiful. “Most of my clients have children,” explains designer Darryl Carter, owner of Washington-based Darryl Carter, Inc. “This project was for a couple with active young children and extraordinarily demanding schedules and careers, and their mandates to me were to be both eco- and kid-friendly.” Carter met both directives, creating memorable, even moody, interiors populated with continental antiques, modern art, and volumes…

CREATIVE PEOPLE, LIKE interior designer Rozanne Jackson, are often baffled by their own abilities to create. When the Nashville-based Jackson, who is also the founder of The Iron Gate home décor stores, fashioned the interiors for a client’s new home in Brentwood, Tennessee, she says, “I know this sounds a bit crazy, but sometimes I don’t know how I get there, how I arrive at a finished design. It’s usually just a feeling I have, but in this case, the client has such great style herself and an understanding of design, that, likely, that’s what made it all happen so easily.” Years earlier, her client, Kym Hall, had been living in Atlanta, but had been making regular trips to the Iron Gate store in Franklin, Tennessee, to snap up everything…

1. Little Greene Paint’s Hopper, a color handcrafted in the UK, works everywhere in the home. The vibrant hue references the very shade of green that was used to paint playwright George Bernard Shaw’s famous residence, Shaw’s Corner. littlegreene.com 2. Interior designer Robin Rains always finds treasures on her many European travels, including this lovely vintage Italian Empoli-style green vase (24” h. x 7 ½” w. x 7 ½” d.), in her inventory of antiques. robinrains.com 3. Create an instant centerpiece for your dining or kitchen table with the Green Leaf Vase from Chelsea House. The glossy green container (12” h. x 14 ½” w. x 14 ½” d.) resembles an artichoke with leaves ready to be picked and sampled. chelseahouseinc.com 4. This newly made three-drawer chest (42” h. x…