Café Design

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Good morning, and happy Friday! I hope you’re doing well! It has been a very busy week on our end, with new projects seeding and older ones coming to a completion. I’ve been dreaming up color combinations and furniture layouts for a sweet client right here in Massachusetts and have been looking for inspiration in some great old books I am very much into right now and  thought it would be fun to share them with you. If you love the English Country Style with all that it entails – cozy living in country houses grand and small- then you will probably want to give these a glance. My latest discovery is an old print of House & Garden magazine’s “best of” collection from the late 90s –  The House & Garden Book of Country Chic, by Leonie Highton (1998).

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A precursor of modern day photography and plant illustration, the art of pressing plants dates back to the early scientific expeditions in which botanists would gather and collect plant specimens for later identification and study. The plant was removed from the ground with all of its parts intact, including stems, leaves, flowers and seed capsules, and pressed flat between sheets of paper or bark parchment for easy transportation. The pages of dried pressed plants were then organized in beautiful volumes called herbariums which recorded their scientific names and place of origin, and served as education guides for botanists and naturalists around the world. 

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Good morning! Memorial Day is just around the corner and with it comes one of the biggest opportunities to shop items you love at discounted prices. This year, retailers are extending their sale period to 06/01 therefore I switched Friday’s post with a post I usually assemble for Sunday mornings, to give you enough time to check these retailers out and see if the item you love happens to be on sale. Here are some of my favorite items, some of them (the club chairs and sofas especially) on massive discount : 

A thing of the past for many, scrapbooking in the old-fashioned way is becoming a lost art. Magazine cutouts have been replaced with digital images, which Pinterest makes incredibly easy to pin and store away for future reference. As convenient as that may be, the world’s largest digital scrapbook leaves something out, at least for the non-millennial brain that is so used to paperbacks and hardcopies, and wants to touch, feel, and collect “real” paper, “real” magazines and “real” books. (Yes, I’m a dinosaur 🙂 ) As much as I love pinning away (and I really, really do!) I can’t help thinking that there’s also a sense of impermanence, that “out of sight, out of mind” feeling with Pinterest. 

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Good morning, dear friends! Today I thought we’d have a look at a great design book that I’ve had now for several years and that I’ve found immensely practical in learning and understanding the quintessential English Country House Style. The book is called Colefax and Fowler – Inspirational Interiors, by Roger Banks-Pye. If you’re interested in interior design and classic English interiors (and have some time to spare), looking at old design books can be a wonderful way to educate your eye and learn valuable insights from someone else’s experience. Yes, some of these rooms may seem dated in terms of color scheme and amount of accessories, but looking deeper we notice the basic tenants of great design (which will never change) – comfortable and functional furniture layouts, atmospheric lighting plans, timeless patterns and accessories. We also get to see and appreciate original ideas implemented with the precision and confidence of someone who knows their craft well. And that’s priceless I think.