Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2025 i MILIEU

Back Row Home Sees The Silver Lining Despite the size of the space (16,000 square feet) that houses Houston’s Back Row Home, as well as the vast array of treasures within, there is a portion of the store that takes on a certain gleam. In an area the staff refers to as “Kitchenland,” one can see the shining silver-plated pieces that have been collected by co-owners Kelly O’Donnell (seen here on left) and Tracey Shingledecker (on right) from their many travels to France. Most of the utensils, teapots, serving trays, bowls, gravy boats, Champagne buckets, plates, and pitchers that the two dealers feature are former hotel silver pieces, often engraved with the name of a given establishment. “We do buy a lot of hotel silver, and we emphasize that many…

The Big Red Barn, also known as The Original Round Top Antiques Fair, hosted its inaugural “Designer Day” as part of the Spring Show 2025. Event patrons enjoyed exclusive early shopping and a design panel presentation followed by a reception with a book signing. MILIEU’s Editor-at-Large, Shannon Bowers, moderated a spirited discussion with three rising design stars—Becca Casey of Becca Interiors, Kirsten Blazek of A1000XBetter, and Molly Kidd of Molly Kidd Studio—each of whom was featured in MILIEU’s Spring 2025 New Guard of Design. The presentation stage décor was curated from Bevolo Gas & Electric Lights, Carol Piper Rugs (both Contributing Sponsors), and antiques dealers Circa Antiques, Kristin Mullen Designs, and Side Door Antiques, who are all part of The Original Round Top Antiques Fair.…

Situated on 50 acres in California’s Riverside County, a sprawling, renovated country home has become the gathering place for four generations of the Patels—a large extended family whose farming roots extend deep into the soil of Gujarat on India’s western coast. While not their ancestral home, the sensitive, collaborative decoration of its interiors by Los Angeles–based designer Meghan Eisenberg evokes the family’s agricultural heritage with an elevated informality. Weaving a narrative of the family’s history and culture through textiles, artifacts, and antiques, Eisenberg helped create a home which honors the grandparents’ journey from India in the 1960s and serves the Patel’s growing legacy here in America. The daughter of an interior designer and granddaughter of a notable mid-century architect, Eisenberg grew up steeped in—and surrounded by—design. She views her role…

When a dynamic Knoxville-based entrepreneur commissioned interior designer Beth Webb and architect D. Stanley Dixon to renovate her newly acquired home, she had, as Webb recalls, just two words for them: “Light and bright.” However, the five-bedroom dwelling could hardly have been further from that vision. Built in the early 2000s in a Normandy–inspired style, the outside of the house, says Dixon, “was composed of a mash-mash of high-contrast materials—timber, slate, brick, stone—and contained a chopped-up layout of small, gloomy rooms inside.” But he and Webb are seasoned pros who have teamed up on many projects throughout the course of their careers, and they rose to the challenge, beginning with a few bold architectural strokes that deftly infused the dwelling with new life. While the house itself wasn’t particularly distinctive,…

“Whenever you do an ocean-facing home, the focus will typically go toward the view. But in this case, there was so much about the house that was interesting, you didn’t want to ignore it.”— WENDI YOUNG “On the Rocks” p. 88 “The family, the story, and the meaning this place has for all of them made this a super special project.”— MEGHAN EISENBERG “The Family Farm” p. 100 “This project was very much an education on how to furnish a space and not fill a space.”— BRANDON FONTENOT “Calm, Cool, and Collected” p. 110 “We put the rooms together like it was a giant jigsaw puzzle, with each piece fitting perfectly.”— JULIETTE BYRNE “Over Time” p. 122 “A home should engage the senses on every level.”— BETH WEBB “Riverside Refuge”…

Verellen has long been a designer’s destination in High Point, North Carolina, and now the luxury furniture brand has opened its newest showroom in the heart of the Dallas Design District. “We are thrilled to bring Verellen to Dallas, a city with such a dynamic design community,” says founder Tom Verellen. “This new space allows us to deepen our connection with designers and clients, offering a curated environment where they can engage with our collections in a meaningful way.” On April 1st, MILIEU joined the celebration for the grand opening of Verellen Atelier DFW, where guests experienced the signature craftsmanship, attention to detail, and refined European aesthetic that define Verellen.…

When you step inside this house in Houston’s Boulevard Oaks neighborhood, the first thing you notice is a painting by Dan Christensen. At first glance, the canvas appears to be blank. But closer inspection reveals the eruptions of color and complexity lurking just beneath the surface. Like the painting, the home’s interior appears deceptively simple at first glance: a synthesis of spare spaces, sepia colors, and natural materials. But the calming countenance belies a rigorous design process that harnessed centuries of patina and works by some of the 20th century’s greatest design talents. “A lot of the creators that are now in this house—especially a lot of the Italian ones—are people that I’ve studied my whole life,” says the Houston-based interior designer Brandon Fontenot of his work. The owner, a…

WRAPPED UP IN NATURE Pages 62-70: Photography courtesy of Freddie Ellams, Sussie Bell, Maureen Evans, Rich Stapleton, and Katrina Lawson Johnson. THE MASTER OF REMASTERING Written by: Patti Zielinski Page 72 Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes & Pies, 1994-1995, oil on canvas, 72 x 64 in, Collection of the Kemper Museum of COntemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, 1995.100.01. Page 74 Wayne Thiebaud, Three Machines, 1963, oil on canvas, 30 x 36 1/2 in, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Walter H. and Phyllis J. Shorenstein Foundation Fund, the Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Income Fund, with additional funds from Claire E. Flagg, the Museum Society Auxiliary, Mr. and Mrs. George R. Roberts, Mr. and Mrs. John N. Rosekrans,…

By Hand Josie Cross proudly admits that she is not a perfectionist. As the Brooklyn-based ceramicist says, “A lot of my work is about the imperfections. Where I once used to be obsessed about covering up the cracks and crevices that resulted, I now embrace all those imperfections because they add character to each piece.” Cross is careful to point out that she is more of “a hand-builder than a wheel-thrower,” meaning that she works decidedly with her hands and fingers to sculpt every lamp, mug, and household object that comes out of her studio/workshop, rather than negotiating a spinning potter’s wheel. “When you work with your hands, there’s so much freedom in what you can make.” Among the objects for which Cross has become increasingly known are her lamp…

Rose Tarlow, the interior design icon and namesake founder of Rose Tarlow Melrose House, hosted an intimate evening event in early March at her Los Angeles showroom to welcome designers and the guest of honor, MILIEU Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Pamela Pierce. The elegant and convivial dinner celebrated the MILIEU Spring 2025 feature home designed by Michael Aiduss for his client, Alice Ryan Miller, the noted publicist. The story, featured on the cover of the issue, focused on Alice’s girlhood home in London and Michael’s extraordinary work restoring it in such a sensitive way. His designs, from room to room in the Edwardian-era home, reflect the past while transforming the residence into a house of today.…

Once a refuge for Hollywood stars like Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, and Lionel Barrymore, the Laguna Beach cottage had seen better days by the time David Braff and Niko Christou encountered it seven years ago. Originally built in the late 1920s and early ’30s by film director Edward H. Griffith and his wife, actress America Chedister, the home’s glory faded after their deaths in the 1970s. Gradually, age and neglect took their toll, and in recent years the property languished on the market like some Zillow-era Norma Desmond. That didn’t deter Braff and Christou. Veteran home restorers from New York City who were looking to retire in California, the pair was smitten with the secluded waterfront property, which boasted its own replica lighthouse and views of Catalina Island. But the…

There are certain things that remind an interior designer that she has been successful with a project for a client. “I’m really proud of the fact that the children who have grown up in this house return to it most weekends and for long holiday stays,” says the London-based designer Juliette Byrne. “The whole house is a very happy place for the family when they’re together. They congregate here. That gives me a sense of achievement.” Byrne is aware of this family dynamic because she has been working on the house with Annoushka Ducas, who resides there with her husband, John Ayton, for decades. Ducas and Byrne are longtime friends, and the house has continued to mature just as their friendship has. So close are the two women that Byrne…

In the 1950s, well before “reinventing oneself” surfaced as a concept bandied about in pop-culture parlance, William Haines—a box office sensation who gave up motion pictures and became a stellar presence in the firmament of American interior design luminaries—mastered the art of starting (and succeeding) again. Born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1900, Haines was discovered in 1922 by a Goldwyn Pictures scout in New York City looking for new faces. Once in Hollywood, Haines evolved quickly into a magnet for movie house audiences and, over time, starred alongside the likes of Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and Marion Davies. After shunning silver screen notoriety in 1933, because of an unwillingness to give up his male companion and conform to expectations of MGM principals, Haines found himself drawing upon his longstanding interest…