Pin Up Board: 03

Week's Worth

Hello y’all.

Here is the week.

Back East Again

It is an undeniable treat to have a way to escape the oppressive city heat for a sea breeze and central AC. Our dear friends Darsi Monaco and Jake Mueser were our shepherds this past heatwave, lending their pool house in Southampton as refuge. Jake’s fish dinners and Darsi’s blooming yard have been a fixture of every summer since I moved to New York. It is where we sit with a drink in an adirondack chair and play with the growing babies in the pool. It isn’t summer yet until we are there.

We really milked their generosity by staying far into the week as the city continued to boil. Walked on the beach, went to an amazing dive bar, and scored at the charity thrift stores.

Silver and Glass Picture Frame

The picture frames designed to be rested on a custom stand which was not found in the basement. I improvised with my music stand I’ve had for years that I use as a chrome easle. In the frame is a photo take of Matthew Woodruff by Chase from a night at Lucien a bajillion years BLH (Before Lanier Hicks.)

Hamptons Thrift Store Score #1 was found in a bargain basement. It is such a fabulous frame where you just shimmy a small photo in between the pieces of glass lined with silver, revealing the lattice pattern on the backside. After some research, I found that these frames are still made in Bushwick. Click around on their website - this would make for a thoughtful anniversary or wedding gift. Support an old school local craftsperson. (Also, look at this insane business card box they make.)

Tiffany Table Settings (1960)

The cover table setting might be one of my favorites in the whole book.

Hamptons Thrift Store Score #2 was found with a few other art books but this one took the cake. The book is a collection of tables designed by the premiere hostesses and decorators of the time for a showing at Tiffany’s on 5th Ave. The tables are a magical mix of archaic rigidity and playful absurdism by the greats such as Sister Parish, Billy Balwin, Babe Paley, McMillen, and Andy Warhol. These peculiar tables are graced with crystal clocks, cigarette boxes, marble bunnies, and silver temples. The china and silverware are divine but it is these little choices made to show the decorators’ panache. The table settings for a theater set designer or breakfast in bed or a decorator and client meeting or a children’s birthday party- they all are these magical vignettes of pure fantasy. This is what I love about setting a table.

Tete-a-tete Breakfast by McMillen so you don't have to look at your partner in the morning or Technicolor Pin the Tail on the Donkey party by Warhol?! Sophie's Choice!

While researching my book, I came across a follow up, The New Tiffany Table Settings (1981), if 80’s excess is a bit more your speed but I have a feeling it might be silk flower heavy for my own. Also found was Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teen-Agers (1961) with brilliant illustrations and type- a perfect gift for a misunderstood youth.

Nine Orchard Martini Service

Not much will make you want to go back to your poorly air conditioned loft other than the promise of a Martini Service prepared in adorable picnic baskets outside at Nine Orchard. With a jazz band playing for the party, we packed the table with friends and doled out the slow-to-pour, ice cold martinis. With that much ceremony and celebration, it felt like it should have been someone’s birthday rather than a common Thursday.

Gingham check baskets and potato chips to accompany. Flynn McGarry and Tim Booth approved.

Renderings for CeCe Barfield Inc.

A week and a half ago I got a ping from my former boss, CeCe Barfield Thompson, interior design luminary and table top connoisseur, to see if I wanted to drop into the office to help with a project. Luckily, this idea didn’t cause full body rash as it could for others and their previous employers. After a year of my absence, the visit felt like rolling up to your alma mater: a few changes in office decor, hugs for your previous deskmates, the passage of time feeling present. After catching up, CeCe revealed her fabulous new project - a perfect neoclassical pool house in Texas that was to be given the finest Serge Roche treatment and I was to prepare the meeting sketches.

The pool house was to be the ideal folly as CeCe brought it back to its Hollywood Regency potential. On the exterior, umbrellas with crinilation and deco loungers flanking the pool. The plan for the interior, Bonacina furniture, reupholstery of the original banquets, a murano chandelier, all wrapped in a grasscloth with the Roche palms hugging the arched window. MAGIC!

It is a treat to get a glimpse of these amazing projects before they are actualized and grace the pages of a magazine. Something I loved about working with CeCe and her team was the ability to really get excited about her client’s historic spaces, to geek out over a frieze or original bar or broken pediment. These places are so personal and private, it is always a privilege to peek in and appreciate these magical homes.

Have a fab week.

xx

Lanier