spring color III (john robshaw for duralee)

john robshaw with alissa from "the goods" and myself

snagged from duralee's facebook page...

spring color II (more westweek picks)

more color and pattern picks from our westweek adventure (pardon the blurry iphone pix. i tried):

we were blown away by this watercolor stripe from harlequin, available through nancy corzine.

comes in a fabric as well.

we also loved this print on dupioni, again from harlequin, available through nancy corzine.

chic chinoiserie print, dara, from manuel canovas. crap blurry iphone photo, i know

a detail from the canovas website, so you can actually see how pretty is is. 

christian lacroix for designers guild at osborne & little. how pretty would this be in a ladies dressing room, or even a sophisticated nursery for a little girl?

here is is from the designer's guild website, so you can see how beautiful it is in its entirety. this is the sort of fabric you can't just see a swatch of, you need to see it on a wing. 

another favorite was this inkblot ikat, again by christian lacroix for designers guild at osborne & little. 

so painterly pretty, yet modern and edgy. loves it, i does.

more to come kids!

spring color! (quadrille)

this display of new outdoor fabrics certainly caught my eye at quadrille during westweek:

and i wanted to shove all these little cut up swatches into my bag and have them all sewn together- would a quadrille patchwork blazer be too much? will someone go back with me to the showroom to create a distraction while i clean off the sample table? ;-)

i dunno what it is, but i LIKE it (westweek pick from espasso)

it's billed as a "coat hanger", but it's really just a phenomenal piece of large scale sculpture (which would look TERRIFIC in my entry btw- i have the height!). currently on display in the espasso showroom, "mandacaru" was designed by carlos motta, a brazilian designer who has designed many other chic (and slightly more functional) furniture pieces for the espasso line. there is a floorlamp by motta in a similar vein that i am currently jonesing for as well.

i think it might be my favorite thing on display at the PDC during westweek. crazy cool, and i was told it might soon be auctioned at phillips-de pury so i better start saving my sheckels!

how do i feel about blogs copying other blogs? (w/ fort street studio)

sometimes, i LIKE it!

my new bff, tula, of whorange, looking ever so adorbs in front of a beautiful fort street studio rug.

me, blatantly copying, two days later.

thanks to vinh deep of fort street studio, makers of exquisite rugs, for playing along with me. btw, LOVE the two colorful abstract watercolor-esque rugs, tula & i posed in front of, but the rug below was the number that got me all hot 'n bothered. i fell for its totally modern in your face pattern, but it's so reminiscent of traditional rug patterns, i can totally see it working with antiques and transitional pieces as well as more modern pieces. try not to freak out about the intense, near op art effect of the overall pattern, because remember, when in a room, rugs have furniture over two thirds of the exposed area so the intensity would be dialed way back. i mean a big, traditional chesterfield and some club chairs on top- too chic!

more westweek market pics to come!

maison21, pressing onward... (& expressing gratitude)

we've had quite teh week here at m21, and we'd like to take a minute to say thanks to some of the people who made it awesome, including these very special thanks to a couple of press pieces that warmed the cockles of our designery heart...

first, a big old thank you to ryan jones and frontiers magazine for including both brian patrick flynn (decor demon) and myself in his fantastic article on modernism, as part of frontier's annual "home design guide" issue. ryan asked us as experts in our field (who me?) to provide 3 of our go-to pieces for recreating a modernist "mad men" sort of vibe in one's home, and we had a blast doing so.  if you live here in LA, you can go to pretty much any retailer or bar in west hollywood and pick up a copy of frontiers for free (and if you wanna swing by the atelier, we'll totes autograph it for you as it's guaranteed to be a highly prized collectible one day... um, not).  for those of you in far-flung spots, you can just click and read it online here.

we'd also like to thank houzz.com for including us in their "2012 ‘Best Of Remodeling’ Winners". we were honored to selected for the "los angeles living room category", and to make things even sweeter, we were in the company of our lovely friend, lisa borgnes giramonti, whom y'all know from a bloomsbury life.  good to be a "winner", but nicer to be surrounded by friends!

we also played at being press a bit ourselves this week, as we covered westweek, the spring market at teh PDC, and we'll be sharing some of our favorite market picks in coming posts (and a shout out to crestron to being our host); but you know us- our favorite part of events like westweek is the social aspect, and we had an absolute blast mingling with the  design glitterati (ie, our friends) at all the panels and parties.

graffiti sets a slightly edgy mood at restoration home, the finale party of westweek. this party was EVERYTHING that design parties never are:  loud, raucous, with a live band (the pierces), and plenty of hipster pretty boys and girls to offset us more geriatric designers, and even a movie star or two...

in contrast, the veranda party at dennis and leen, one of the chicest showrooms in LA, was everything you'd imagine a design industry party to be: an elegant space, filled with industry insiders enjoying chic cocktails, and some seriously delicious catering. we had a wonderful time here catching up with old friends in the refined atmosphere- all that was missing was a harpist in the courtyard!

stay tuned for our westweek market picks!

architectural digest westweek kickoff @ jasper

westweek kicked off last night as margaret russell and architectural digest hosted a packed house at michael smith's beautiful jasper showroom:

naturally the party was a who's who of the LA design scene, and i attended with my LA partner in crime, jill seidner of the material girls blog (middle) and jill's good friend, morgan lund yen of m-l design:

 jasper carries one of my favorite lighting lines, vaughn:

though i have to say, the highlight of my evening was meeting the fabulous tula jeng, author of one of my favorite blogs, the equally fabulous, whorange. tula and i have been planning an in person meeting for, like, ever, and our dreams finally came true last night at jasper:

this morning,  i'm off to a client meeting, then heading over to the PDC, to cover the real westweek madness! hope to see you locals there, and for those of you out of town, be sure to follow along on twitter!

maison21 does westweek!

on wednesday, march 21st & thursday march 22nd, please join me in the shadow of this (the blue building of the pacific design center actually, but the red building is new, and thus exciting):

to attend cool panels like this:

one of the great keynotes during westweek- for a complete list, click here. everyone is invited, btw, so come on down!

m21'll be there of course, as the PDC invited me as part of the “best design voices in LA”, a group of LA's top social media supahstars, including these lovely ladies:

Vanessa of Turquoise

Tamara of House of Honey

Alissa of The Goods Design

Jill of the Material Girls, Los Angeles!
(who i stole all these logos from- thx jill!)

if you're gonna be at teh PDC, please say hello- i'll be the super-duper handsome, bearded, gentleman with a glass in my hand, and a smile on my face (and if you don't see me, trust, you'll hear me- imma loud one!):

remember, if you can't attend westweek in person to suck down a plastic cup of cheap fine wine with me, you can still be part of the highlights if you follow along on twitter & facebook- we'll do our best to put down our glass every once in a while, and tweet out a picture or two! ;-)

congrats VBD! (& a little behind the scenes footage)

just wanted to congratulate my former boss, vance burke, on his design of an amazing condominium in the wilshire corridor of los angeles, featured in this month's LA times magazine (story by mayer rus, and photos by richard powers).  so beautiful! vance is an amazing talent, and i am thrilled to have learned my craft from him.

but of course, since this blog is about me, i also wanted to pat myself on the back for the small role i played in the project (it's always about me, isn't it?), and since this blog is also about you, i wanted to give y'all a few extra behind the scenes details to the project that you won't get from the article (though do read the article, lots more pretty pictures!)

first the back story... even though i left vance's firm many years ago to go out on my own, we still maintain a great relationship, and since we worked so well together, vance still rings me up every now and again to help visualize his designs.  i was thrilled to be involved even in a tiny way on this project like this as it is the kind of magical collaboration between client, designer, and architect that just doesn't happen every day. or at least, doesn't happen every day for me!  so it was loads of fun to be involved in something so luxe...

my role was to help vance visualize his concepts for some of the custom pieces for the project with a series of drawings to refine ideas and proportions.  above is a photo of the dining room and below, my rendering how we wanted the finished furnishings to look- always so gratifying when the actualized product is as pretty or prettier than the drawings! it's hard to tell from either the photo or the drawing, but the supporting pillars of the table are actually vintage la verne bronze pedestals vance found and had the idea of using as supports for the table. we went through several variations to get the design of table top and base just right to compliment them:

i also helped with most of the custom upholstered pieces in the home, including the sofas in the living room, and a credenza for the dining room to compliment the table:

when i say this job was the kind of dream job that doesn't come along every day, i wasn't exaggerating- even the waste baskets were custom:

now if that kind of attention to detail is given to something like a wastebasket, you know that the architecture was exquisite as well, and i gotta say that the architect, robert crockett, did a masterful job- his interior finishing is some of the most beautiful i have ever seen in a private residence.  the article speaks of the aluminum detailing and cutaways throughout the apartment, but it's the type of detail you have to see in person to understand how beautiful it is. it's hard to explain, but you enter the space through an matte aluminum clad entry, and then the matte aluminum continues throughout the public spaces, and all walls seemingly float on top of it, with sort of a picture frame/tray edge protruding to form the  actual walls itself.  the protruding aluminum "trays" for lack of a better word,  were then painstakingly filled with hand-polished matte plaster, and the color of the walls comes from milky plaster not paint; it has an unbelievable depth and richness that a photo just can't capture. totes chic, and an exquisite backdrop for the client's incredible art collection (yup, that's a big ol' twombly on the wall in the first two photos). i'm sure my description of how the walls were formed is as clear as mud, so here's a close-up photo of the detail:

and the how amazing are the floors? wire-brushed oak, reclaimed from 18th century french chateaux; you can see them clearly in the below pic i snapped of the empty shell of the living/dining room, and if you click to enlarge, you can also see a bit better how the walls all cut away to reveal the aluminum framework below. just stunning.

the powder room of the home is one of the coolest i've ever been in- matte aluminum floors, with a solid block of corian for a sink. vance selected a beautiful ornate venetian mirror as a counterpoint to all the minimalism, and then had it mounted and backlit for extra drama. you can't tell it's backlit from teh times photo, so i included an in-process photo i took. you can also tell a bit better from my photo how cool the solid block of the sink is, with just the one depressed corner for drainage. again, so chic!

 

when i first saw the walls of the powder room, i thought they were a mosaic of tiny tiles of mother of pearl, but they are actually sheets of this crazy manmade material called "scintilla" which channels light so that movement of light and shadow results in an animated pixelated effect. it's not electronic, though you'd think is was. here's a close up, and if you click thru to the sensitile website they have a video of how it looks with movement passing over it, though again, the effect is waaaaay cooler in person...

congrats vance- the project turned out just beautifully! and thanks for allowing me in on a little bit of the fun!

there are more pictures of the home- including one the prettiest master bathrooms ever- in the LA times magazine, so be sure to click through to see them all.  i'm going to leave you with a behind the scenes photo not shown in the article, but nonetheless one of the loveliest features of the home, the birds eye view of LA stretching from the pacific all the way to to downtown- just awesome!