I'd like to form a club just for fathers. Specifically, fathers of daughters. There would be lots of overstuffed leather chairs, wood paneling, dim lights. The works.
The library would've cheered me up, most days. I loved the heavy oaken tables, the high walls stacked with books to the ceiling, the musty smell of old pages and the heavy brass fixtures that had gone dark with age and wear.
My desk is an antique with bookshelves built into the side. I've turned the drawer over to hold a keyboard. We live in a 100-year-old house, and I work in an apartment above the carriage house.
If you go to old houses on Long Island you will see painted Chinese wallpaper, which was big in the 18th century. Throughout history, notable, established families have always tried to link to the 18th century.
I'm never going to be a modern gal. I love colonial. I love early American. I love a big rectangular piece of brown furniture on a hardwood floor.
Despite loving England and loving English gardens, I'm not a chintz person, never was. It's too cute.
People expect me to live in a picture-perfect Pottery Barn kind of place, but I don't like anything traditional.
My house is modern, but I like my writing room to be old fashioned. I write on a little wooden secretary desk.
My mom and dad got divorced, so it was one of those things where Sundays I'd go to Dad's apartment, and this was, say, 1970-whatever, and it had a pool table on the top floor in a very traditional kind of divorced-dad apartment building.
He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions.
My house is very serious. It's a lot of antiques, and the way I decided to liven it up is, I paired it very vibrant colors and - bugs... I think that they're pretty. And I think that they're fascinating and they're natural.
The beauty of a Moroccan riad is undeniable, but even the most die-hard fan may find herself growing a little weary of what can come to feel like a one-size-fits-all aesthetic: tilework, white Berber rugs, woolen tribal throw pillows in reds and ochers, cut-metal lanterns.
I think that the essence of a Christmas wreath - of all Christmas vegetative decoration - has to be green and, if possible, living. So the basis of a wreath is ideally holly, laurel, ivy, rosemary, larch, fir or whatever is to hand.
I like everything to be dependable, heavy, English furniture.
Any sizeable Portuguese town looks like a superstitious bride's finery - something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
I hate the word "eclectic" .I'm a classicist, and I like comfort. Lots of books, lots of artwork, pieces of family furniture, and newer upholstery.
