green

The new issue of Lonny is out and it has some lovely features on top designers including Charlotte Moss and Miles Redd, both of whom have books coming out this fall, both of which look to be spectacular. Redd’s The Big Book of Chic is his first and looks to be a more typical decorating tome, if you can call anything he does typical, while Charlotte Moss: A Visual Life: Scrapbooks, Collages, and Inspirations seems more like a personal pathway into her creative mind and process. As a master of the single room showstopper, her ability to mix disparate things has always amazed me and I would love a chance to see what inspires her. Her office featured in Lonny is no exception and as it is a working space, it is more casual and livable than some of her more formal projects.

Charlotte Moss has a particular flair for one of my favorite colors – green – and in this case has pulled off the magic perfect green wall color in her office. It is exactly the shade that I have always dreamed of for my own living room, an ambiguous watery color that makes you ask, is it green? is it grey? She has mixed in a variety of fine antiques, all sturdy and workable, with great art, simple lighting and floor covering. But it is the elusive color of those walls that has caught me and I am dying to know what it is!

I know this is her office but it reads like a modern-day dining room, multitasking as no one seems to need a devoted dining room anymore.

She is a master of the gallery wall and this one is truly amazing. You know there are a lot of very fine pieces up there too. And this color green looks so good with old gilded frames.

The details are all there – custom colored Arbre de Matisse curtains and a lampshade of Les Indiennes.

I love fabrics with silhouette reverse colorways like many of the China Seas fabrics.

And speaking of green, gallery walls and one room showstoppers, who can forget her Kips Bay sitting room/bedroom in 2009 that is on the cover of her previous book Charlotte Moss Decorates. One of the best gallery walls ever and again the use of green with elusive shades of grey and old gilt. There are numerous items here, including the desk and some artwork, that are now in her office.

And for those of you who are up to your ears in hearing about ticking, this is the last time for a while. Upcoming posts on blue and white porcelain, the CWAJ Print Show and a new shrine sale schedule are in the works, I promise. But in the meantime, I can’t help myself! Look at the bathroom in Moss’s office! Ticking plus Chinoiserie and a little gilding – that great casual/fancy mash up.

And on One Kings Lane today a French settee covered in silk ticking – yum!

Now the challenge is to find out the name of that paint color. You know (and I know, sigh) that it is the quality of the light in the room that makes the color so perfect and there is no guarantee that it would look the same elsewhere, but you can’t blame a girl for trying.

Last year both House Beautiful‘s February color issue and Pantone pegged pink as the color of the year. This year, Pantone chose tangerine for 2012, but the magazine has struck out on their own with a green issue, so I am going to use this as an excuse to write about the color for me personally. One of my most popular posts features moody deep green rooms, but I have also been tracking soft green spaces as inspiration for my guest room in the New Jersey beach house.

One of my earliest tear sheets, I carried the image below in my minds eye, knowing I would try to employ its best features one day. It seems fitting that the room that started my journey towards a simple but elegant country bedroom painted green – not sage, not mint – but that elusive color in between which didn’t seem to exist until Farrow & Ball, comes from the same magazine, although an issue that is almost 20 years old now. I love the dragged effect on the walls too and have it as a “possible” on my own checklist. The “definites” on that list include the white framed windows, simple sheers, wooden furniture, lace-edged white bedding, a duvet covered in green and white ticking, some tiny prints as shown on the wallpapered screen and a comfy antique chair in the corner. A cloth-covered table is a possible too. Some of the details are pre-existing, like the sloped ceiling and bare wood floors, both of which I have in my guest room.

A more recent photo with the same appeal adds some other requirements. Again there are the lovely soft green walls, simple white bedding (matelesse in this case), wooden furniture and corner chair, but a matched set of herbiers, pressed botanicals, has been added.

This room punches the wall color up a few notches, but manages to make what is normally an eyesore – the ceiling fan – look good, something else I am attempting. As much as I wish I could take mine out for aesthetic reasons, a summer house just needs ceiling fans for practicality and being green – the other kind of green that is. In particular I love the botanical prints and their pyramidal arrangement here.

No doubt about it, groupings of small vintage prints are a must!

This oft blogged about photo from Martha Stewart Living is more elegant and formal than my house can pull off, but I do so love it!

I’ve pulled this bathroom photo because I love the ebonized aesthetic movement cabinet against the green. The ornate quality of the cabinet is lessened by the austerity of the space. My plan is similar, but I am using an amazing grouping of antique faux bamboo furniture from the same period instead.

Not painted but wallpapered, this room just charms the pants off of me! I love the contrast of flowers with the plaid rug (plaid being another pattern I would like to add), the lines of the chairs, the Victorian magazine stand, and the wisp of a ruffled valence.

Drumroll please…and a disclaimer on the photos. I do promise to do a proper job this summer, using all the great techniques I am learning from Camille at The Vintique Object. But in the meantime, please excuse these quick point and shoot versions.

I have made quite a bit of progress, although the lamps look anemic without their long-awaited lampshades. The room is small, with two windows, a closet and a sloped ceiling on one side. We have painted it Farrow & Ball Green Ground and I am still considering doing a dragging technique on it to give it a little texture. Check mark to the white lace and matelesse bedding and antique botanical prints, a local bargain find. I am working on the ticking duvet cover by sewing one from a fabric shower curtain, but in the meantime I have added a vintage plaid woolen blanket for warmth, both literal and visual. You can see bits of the faux bamboo furniture peeking out and the strings hanging from the ceiling fan (Oh, I had not noticed that tassel – gotta get it off).

Tiny prints include the patterns on the custom lamp shades (the color looks off in the photo below) still to come and valances made of Kathryn Ireland’s Diamond Batik fabric.

The vintage chair in the corner is out at the upholsterer’s getting redone in the linen floral shown draped over it – unfortunately the name of the pattern escapes me right now. You can see the edge of the mirrored dresser which functions as both storage and a dressing table, so useful in a guest room without its own bath. I am working on layering up the artwork, but want to let it evolve naturally as I find things.

There is still much to do, but I think most of my guests last summer found it quite comfortable!

Image credits: House Beautiful February 2012, photo credit: xxx, 2. House Beautiful December 1994, photo credit: xxx, 3. Country Living January 2006, photo credit: David Prince, 4. Mary Cooper, no credit, 5. via Chiarabelle’s Flickr photostream, 6-7 Martha Stewart Living, 8. photo credit unknown – please let me know if you have any information on this, 8-9, 11. me, 10. via Kathryn Ireland.

Charlotte Moss and the Perfect Green

Views To a Room…Green Guest Bedroom at the Shore