Rebecca de Ravenel

Local Specialities…Qatari Wooden Benches

With Qatar National Day fast approaching, I thought it would be fun to write about one of my favorite home-grown crafts – the Qatari wooden bench. Found everywhere all over town, but particularly in Souq Waqif, the main shopping and eating artery where we recently devoured the cheapest most delicious meal with some of our very best friends visiting from Japan (all while sitting on some of these benches)…

…and Katara, the stunning cultural village out towards The Pearl. The benches are charming, surprisingly comfortable and visually arresting.

It was a wonderful surprise to discover that they are readily available, customizable and very inexpensive to have made by local carpenters tucked behind Al Rayyan Road along Al Shagab Street – I’ll call it the “bench souq”. This is definitely a spot you’ll be hearing about in my “Doha Design & Decor Directory” that will be added to the blog in the new year, but more about that another time. With an empty back patio to fill and gorgeous weather for sitting outside, I have been desperate to furnish my garden space but didn’t want to spend a lot of money (nothing lasts in the summer sun for long) nor choose something out of context. The space is square, with lots of fuchsia Bougainvillea hanging over it.

Looking back towards the house I have started to find plants for my blue and white hibachi and planters (post on those coming in the new year as well). As this brick patio lines up directly with the living room/dining room, the view of what is out here is quite important.

On my first visit to the bench souq I saw numerous varieties of this traditional seating of varying style and quality. Most of the benches are designed to be painted and there is a large roster of bright colors. I am super tempted to go with a color, but worry that it will be too distracting from inside the house. Instagram friends have suggested going with blue or green for the benches, and even coral, all of which sound appealing, but I’m not sure I want to pull that much attention from the interior.

I left that first visit full of ideas while a friend here went ahead and ordered the simple benches above. They were finished within the week and when we went back today they were loaded up on a truck and delivered to her house.

Another carpenter had a few more unusual choices including this bench with finials similar to the green one I love in the top photo from Souq Waqif. This blue is also dreamy color!

But I fell in love with a more finished (and thus more expensive) bench featuring a traditional dowel musharrabieh (or moucharabieh or mashrabiya, the myriad of spellings is endless) the latticework so often used for window coverings in Arab architecture. It’s often said they are used to allow women to see out, but keep others from seeing in. I’m not sure that this is really true but I loved it as a decorative feature in these benches.

The carpenters are looking into getting me a white stain, instead of paint, as I think it is the paint that has trouble holding up against the extremities of the elements here. I have been planning on a lush blue and white backyard oasis for a while now, which was utterly confirmed when Vogue published Rebecca de Ravenel’s gorgeous NYC terrace recently. Ticking, Indian block prints from Brigitte Singh and blue and white porcelain. Need I say more? I keep finding inspiring things in her apartment (as in this post) and I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of it.

White with a bit of wood grain peeking through will be soft against the white garden walls and it gives me the perfect backdrop to mix blue and white with the bright pinks, greens and yellows found elsewhere in the garden flowers. It is pretty standard to get long cushions made to soften the hard seat of the benches, usually in a traditional red Arabic fabric. I decided to buck the trend and look for something a little more western for contrast. I think the cushions will only last a year or so, so budget was key. I could not have been happier to find this new IKEA fabric called Angsrutta for about $5 a meter. It works on so many levels!

Not to forget to mention that I am having a giant coffee table made to sit between them, much like this one, perfect for casual dining and hors d’oeuvres. This also gives you a peek at how bright the paint colors can be and the traditional red fabric used for the seat cushions.

So I bit the bullet and placed my order today. We will have to see what gets lost in translation – surely something will – but I can always have them repainted if necessary. Here’s to cocktails in the garden in the new year!

Dec 17, 2013 By tokyojinja in Doha Move, Furniture, Gardens 12 Comments Tags: benches, Doha, garden, garden furniture, garden seating, Qatar, Rebecca de Ravenel, Souq Waqif

Curtains and a Canopy for a Double Digits Girl

There is nothing like a big birthday and a move to spark a bedroom re-do. Both of my girls were due for a change, moving from their tiny closet sized bedrooms in Tokyo to their much more expansive bedrooms in Doha. The elder had a plan and a Pinterest board from the beginning. But the younger wasn’t sure of what she wanted when we first moved in. Personally I had a plan in my mind for a full size bed using this wedding noren as part of the bed hangings. Once settled, she had other ideas, mainly a desire to keep as much floor space as possible for play area, so a single bed against the wall made more sense. She quickly commandeered the French iron campaign bed and the painted French armoire from her sister’s room. She wanted to keep her Claire Murray Alphabet Garden hooked rugs (which have since become collectors items I am given to understand) because they are soft and provide interesting backdrops for imaginary play – and even nixed the idea of a Madeline Weinrib dhurrie. Can’t argue with the recycling or the continuing interest in play!

The bare room had a lot of promise, including this very sunny east facing window. All varieties of small birds come and perch along the windowsill to my daughter’s great joy. The campaign bed fit perfectly underneath it, leaving lots of play space as requested. But my daughter felt something special was needed, some pretty girly centerpiece to make the room special. I suggested bed hangings and some kind of fitted valance/canopy as the solution and she was hooked.

We went straight to images of Katie Ridder‘s whimsical bed hanging designs (and frankly, you know you are in trouble when your nine, soon to be ten-year old tells you she has a favorite designer). Here in Katie’s own daughter’s room she has installed the basic combination I am planning on – valance type canopy, roman shade for light control and ornamental bed curtains. It looks like there may be real curtains as well in the pink fabric although I am not planning to make those.

We knew for sure we wanted to pair two different fabrics, a solid and a pattern, just like all these examples.

This bedroom designed by Katie has to be one of the most pinned girls rooms ever and continues to be a favorite of mine. It demonstrates how successful this kind of arrangement can be with a daybed. I also love the idea of a small light fixture tucked into the canopy and you can just see the pierced brass lamp peeking out here. Many of these brass globes with scrolling arabesque pattern or karakusa were made in Japan and I am lucky enough to have a few.

I can’t resist showing how pretty this one looks in the stair hall. And I have another one if I wanted to use it over the bed.

Back to the topic at hand, Barrie Benson has a similar set of bed hangings made from an Indian block print in this lovely bedroom. I really like a soft fabric valance for my project, rather than a stiff pelmet.

All of the above designs have the canopies mounted to the ceiling. With the crown molding in the room, ours would need to be placed below it and I was a bit worried about whether or not that would look good. Inspiration examples were not hard to find, including Rebecca de Ravenel’s lovely blue and white New York apartment recently featured in Vogue. The dreamy soft canopy in her bedroom has just the feel I am going for.

Palmer Weiss used the same wallpaper as Rebecca in this oft blogged about show house bedroom which is another example with a daybed against the wall. Note that the box is also below the ceiling…

…as are these in another showhouse room by Elizabeth Dinkel.

Since I have arrived here in Doha I have been farming out projects to different upholsterers and fabricators to find the ones that I like and I think I have found the right person for these. Ironically Qataris love incredibly ornate over the top window treatments which means the skill set here is high. It’s just a matter of simplifying the fabrics and details. After a bit of searching through all the velvets and brocades I found a very nice cotton just the color of the walls (Benjamin Moore Silver Crest 1583). And as the client requested girly, I went into my stash (yes I even have a stash with me abroad) and pulled out a huge amount of yardage of an old and discontinued Rachel Ashwell Bemberg silk fabric called Trellis Rose or something like that. One of the main things we are planning on doing differently from all the examples above is reversing the fabrics – in other words, having the solid on the outside and the pattern as the lining. To jazz up the plainer exterior curtain and valance, I have found an elaborate and detailed trim.

For those of you who have been following me on Instagram, you’ve seen the incredible trims I have been finding here. Both vintage and new, made anywhere from Oman to India, designed for trimming abayas and saris, they are extraordinary and I have been incorporating them into decorating projects wherever I can.