bedroom

Expat Decorating…An Updated Master Bedroom

So I want to relieve you of the suspense I left you in as of my last post and show you the current chapter in the story of my striped curtains. They have never looked better and ironically seem to have been custom designed for their new home framing the little charming arched windows that made me want this house in the first place. The rest of the bedroom has been updated too and I want to talk a little bit about that process, especially in response to all the inquiries I have been having lately about how to think about changing or modernizing a space when you have limited resources and no ideas on how to start. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the items in our bedroom, but here in Doha (and to a certain extent in Tokyo) they had started to feel too ‘Paris flea market’ if such a thing is possible. Almost all the furniture is 19th century antique French – even my winter duvet is made from antique document print curtain panels sourced at les puces. The tiny French night stands shown below in our Tokyo bedroom were purchased originally for a New York bedroom so small that there was barely 18 inches on the side of the bed and both they and the sweet lamps were completely insubstantial in our new cavernous Doha bedroom.

By choice and by the default based on availability I talked about last time, the rest of the house had brightened with a more modern eclectic mix and the bedroom needed to join in that party. For years in Tokyo I had been dreaming of getting my gray painted walls again but now, with the gray tiled floor, everything felt too gray and too subtle. The room was screaming for some color punctuation, although I did not want to lose its overall soothing vibe. So the starting point was to think about what might be easy to change like textiles, bedding and accessories, using a Pinterest board and inspiration photos as a way to narrow down choices and test combinations.

My main inspiration came from two very different bedrooms, by two very different style designers. The first one, by Bunny Williams is in a formal Park Avenue apartment, full of gorgeous storied antiques. The mirrored bed is a 1930s piece by French designer/artist Serge Roche. The headboard is upholstered in a spectacular Indian-inspired silk embroidery by Naeem Khan. You can see more of this space in The Wall Street Journal and the New York Social Diary.

Vignettes of collected objects and art, as well as simple white ruffled linens against a soft color palette speak to the antiquarian in me. Much of the furniture is from a similar place and time as mine.

The other bedroom is in a 1940s home in Charleston, designed by Angie Hranowsky and featured in Lonny Magazine. It is often referred to in blog posts on ‘boho glam’ or some other silly name as it unexpectedly combines casual elements such as a rattan headboard with a more glamorous material like the mirrored nightstands.

The lavender is of course my long standing favorite, but the unexpected surprise of the yellow is what really captured my attention, along with the incredible textile mix against simple white sheets.

So what binds these two very different spaces together? You might say nothing, but for me, they are filtered through the lens of what I have to work with plus the feeling I want to create. The Bunny Williams bedroom has a softened pretty formality that I can’t escape with the majority of the furniture I already own. The Angie Hranowsky bedroom has relaxed vibe I’d like to add, along with a color palette I adore. The actual binding between them is in the mirrored pieces (bed and night stands) and the handmade textiles – the Indian embroidery above Williams’ bed and the tapestry, bolster pillow and block printed John Robshaw quilt in the Hranowsky bedroom. I knew an embroidered ethnic textile – I was thinking suzani or something similar originally – would soften the formality of the furniture and bring in the color and visual interest I was looking for. But from a practical point of view, my husband and I are duvet sleepers and nothing will change that. I didn’t want a fussy extra coverlet that served no purpose other than display. As luck would have it, a ready-made savior came in the form of the Safia Embroidered Duvet Cover from Anthropologie. It is so perfect, it’s as if I conjured it, with its Indian applique and embroidery and exact color palette.

It didn’t hurt either that it coupled perfectly with the new Gray Scalloped Embroidered Sheets Set from Crane & Canopy and my other vintage white bed linens.

Another key component of all the inspiration spaces I was using was mirror – for two main reasons. The original impetus was to add another material, another finish, to all the wood furniture. Part of what kept the room trapped in the past was that lack of variety, and even though the bed frame is painted, everything else is medium to dark wood tone. A mirrored surface provides much needed contrast while also being dressy enough to hold its own with the French antiques. But the second reason – the expat reason of its possible availability – is what truly made it compelling. As I’ve mentioned before, the local population here likes very glitzy interiors so I knew that somewhere out there something along the lines of what I was looking for existed. While my fantasy tables were of the vintage 1940s variety like these on the left from 1stdibs, settling for these brand new ones from the main mass market furniture store here in Doha didn’t feel like such a terrible compromise. The fact that they were also a fraction of the price didn’t hurt and honestly, their modernity, their newness, provides even more needed contrast with the rest of the room.

Other inspiration photos included one detail again and again – simple yellow ceramic gourd or vase-shaped lamps like the ones in the Angie Hranowsky bedroom, here in two stand-out rooms by Miles Redd and Bailey McCarthy. Most are Christopher Spitzmiller, which once again is not available here (although those of you in New York right now can go to the last day of his Summer Seconds Sale today!!!!) nor are there many similar options. This was a situation in which local sourcing just wasn’t going to happen. On a trip to Hong Kong last November I hunted for a pair of Imperial yellow porcelain vases to convert to lamps, but had no luck either.

That left the internet, which is sometimes the only option when you know you want something very specific. I was obsessed with the gorgeous pair of yellow lamps on the left from Palm Beach Antiques Center, but no matter how I tried to spin it, they were way too large and a bit too orange. I’m still in love with their shape and luster and they are still available along with numerous other beauties. In the end, One Kings Lane delivered with this pair of more vase-shaped lamps with a Chinese mount. They were a bargain – especially if you compare similar pieces on 1st dibs (subtract an entire digit from those prices). And for another expat homily, sometimes the price of doing business and living your life is costly shipping. Luckily, I had finally joined Aramax, an international shipping service that delivers here pretty reliably and at fairly reasonable cost. Since the lamps were a bargain, paying their price over again in shipping was worth it. All in, they still cost less than many other choices.

The combination is bringing me great visual pleasure and the functionality of the taller, more substantial lamps and the extra drawer space the night stands provide can’t be beat.

The room is not finished, but has certainly made strides in the right direction. Finding a floor covering is high on my list as getting out of bed to those acres of cold tiles isn’t very nice. In typical expat style I brought a giant empty suitcase with me on a quick trip back to the US a few weeks ago and stuffed it with a giant wool flokati rug. It never made it up to the bedroom, getting hijacked by the living room along the way, where there were also acres of cold tiles. I’d love to add a chaise or other comfy chair to the corner next to the settee, where some old world crystal sconces have been hung on either side of a trio of painterly lithographs by Japanese printmaker Keisuke Yamamoto. What an interesting coincidence that these prints are all about the arches and now they are hanging in a bedroom that is kinda all about the arches too. I happened to stumble across these yellow pillows in the housewares isle of our local supermarket (!) so I grabbed them, knowing they wouldn’t be there if I hesitated. Playing around with other pillow choices on the Pinterest board.

Along those lines of mixing old and new, I’d like to find a great piece of abstract art to hang over the bed, a little like this combo in a room designed by Amanda Nisbet. Although I’m laughing a bit, as the night table lamps remind me so much of my old ones – they could use a little beefing up I think.

Those little lamps have been relocated to atop the dresser, in similar style to the Bunny Williams bedroom. I’m still working on the gallery wall here, grouping antique sketches and etchings.

Miles to go before I sleep…well no, not really. Actually, the house is in substantial shape as I ready myself to leave in two days for the next ten weeks of summer, where I’ll be turning my attention to our beloved beach cottage. See you there!

Related Posts:
Expat Decorating…Getting Lucky and Making Do

Jun 12, 2014 By tokyojinja in Doha Move, Expat Life, Furniture, Interior Design, Textiles Tags: Amanda Nisbet, Angie Hranowsky, Anthropologie, Bailey McCarthy, bedroom, Bunny Williams, embroidery, expat decorating, French antiques, gray, lavender, master bedroom, miles redd, mirrored night stand, yellow

He Giveth…And He Taketh Away

So I have been promising this story for ages and it is a good thing that I hadn’t told it as it developed a surprise ending yesterday. Design resources here in Doha are in some ways more limited and in other ways less limited than they were in Japan, but for everyone back in the USA, it really is a struggle to source items that you all have in such abundance of selection. This story might have been part of a larger post on decorating as an expat – entitled “Getting Lucky or Making Do” perhaps? – but now I think it is entitled to its own show.

Those of you who have been reading along with me these past months know from this post and this post that I snagged 3 French style fauteuils for free early this fall. They have been an integral part of my design scheme for our dining room, which has been proceeding nicely.

Along with the chairs I also got a huge marquetry desk with gold mounts and an inlaid leather blotter. It may sound potentially ugly and it certainly is a bit over the top, but it arrived on my horizon as if it had been an answer to a prayer. As you may also know, I’ve been working on redesigning my elder daughter’s bedroom. Her Pinterest board is full of Moroccan shaped upholstered headboards in interesting fabrics, monogrammed hotel linens, simple night stands and gourd/vase-shaped porcelain lamps. Basically, it is a look that is super popular right now and in her case, Ashley Whittaker has been her go-to designer for inspiration.

Circumstances make it such that like the Whittaker room below, we too bought the IKEA Malm 3 drawer dresser to use as night tables. There are not a lot of other choices to be had and its simplicity and large storage capacity is unbeatable. We discussed using mirrors and O’verlays to create our own IKEA hack and make the Malm look like the dressers above, but decided we were perfectly happy with it on its own.

The trouble for me in all this was that the room had become too full of bright white furniture and was starting to feel childlike or worse perhaps, have that blogger-on-a-budget look. It needed some weight, some gravitas, some wood to ground it. Had I been at home, I would have trotted off to some antique/consignment/thrift shop and picked up an interesting wood desk in an afternoon. That isn’t possible here so I thought a bit and realized that what might be perfect – and more importantly available – would be a French style desk. As I have mentioned before, decorating here has a tendency to run to the super ornate brocade/damask/gilded avenues, but a piece or two plucked out and used in a tongue-in-cheek manner in a different environment could be perfect. And certainly a little OTT can be just right for a teen’s room. I mentioned it to my family that night at dinner and my daughter thought it sounded like a fun idea.

The very next day I was visiting a friend over at her large compound (think gated community if that word is just too weird) and as we were taking a walk we passed a villa (glamorous sounding but basically a house) that is used for compound storage. In the open car park stood a bunch of washers and dryers, metal bed frames and other detritus, but more importantly a huge desk in full Continental style with ormolu mounts and dark blue leather top. It was so exactly what I had been thinking of that I couldn’t believe it. Even the leather blotter was blue! It was covered in sand and dust and had just been sitting out there getting ruined. Tucked in a corner under cover were the three chairs, so dusty you couldn’t see the color of their upholstery. While not antiques in any way, they were good pieces of furniture with definite potential and needed saving. My regret from that day is that I didn’t think to snap a photo so you could see how trashed they were getting.

My friend proceeded to call her compound manager and over the next few weeks they determined that nobody needed or wanted the furniture and they gave it to me gratis. Because they were free I was particularly satisfied with them – one doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth after all! I spent a good day cleaning them and I worked on the desk with some lemon oil and slowly it emerged. Since the room is in no way finished, I don’t have real photos, but here is a quick snapshot. We are planning to turn the tall vase into a desk lamp and be sure to note my small IKEA hack – I painted the legs of the Snille desk chair with old gold spray paint to make the modern chair integrate with the antique looking desk. The room was really beginning to come together.

So the closing of this post should have been some kind of musing on fate and luck. Instead, I got a call yesterday from the aforementioned compound manager. It turns out that the furniture didn’t actually belong to the company that leases all the properties and is actually the personal property of the Sheikh who owns the compound. And guess what? He wanted it back! So as of today, I no longer have accent dining chairs and my daughter’s books and papers are on the floor of her room. I feel a bit paralyzed about going forward. Do I look for just the same things? Do I try something different? I love the serendipity of the find and now that has been snatched away. Your thoughts?

Image Credits: Ashley Whittaker photos via Ashley Whittaker and House Beautiful

Feb 6, 2014 By tokyojinja in Doha Move, Expat Life, Furniture, Interior Design Tags: Ashley Whittaker, bedroom, desk, dining room, French antiques

A Match Made in Heaven…Bennison and Ticking

All this writing and talk of ticking has helped me to my own small personal epiphany. I have been stalling on making the window valances in my elder daughter’s room at the shore for a while now, but have finally found the right person to construct them.

I have quite a few yards of Bennison‘s gorgeous Lilac linen earmarked for the project as the room has six windows – two sets of bays. The windows and the incredible light are really the focal points of the space and I only want something simple to frame them. In general, I don’t use curtains in the bedrooms at the beach, preferring plain roller shades for light control hidden behind the valances during the day. The rooms are all so petite that curtains just take up space and seem heavy for the lightness of the environment. I never understand beach projects with yards and yards of heavy curtains! It is also a great way to use less yardage of beautiful and thus expensive fabrics. I have been searching for the right person to make these as sometimes the fabric is so dear – both emotionally and/or financially – that the expense of the fabricating is less important than the fabric itself. The thought of them coming out wrong is unbearable because I simply couldn’t buy the fabric again, either because it was one of a kind vintage or just plain old costly.

The ceiling in the front bay behind the headboards is quite easy to deal with because it is just straight, but the side bay has a complicated ceiling and the corners of the window molding are cut off. I can’t tell you how many people came through my door and couldn’t or weren’t willing to work with me on solving the problem of those cut corners, suggesting ridiculous things like having the molding show above the valence.

My plan for the valances has been simple scallops which mimic the curvature of the headboards and the clover shaped night table in between the twin beds. The valence below is in Cath Kidson‘s bedroom in another wonderful Bennison roses pattern called Daisy Chain (you already know how much I love their Faded Floral and I’ll be showing how I used their monochrome blue Roses on beige linen soon). Kidson’s window is flat, so she is able to run a single piece valence with small scallops. My bays require a bit of a different treatment, with each window having one single large scallop.

Luckily my lovely new curtain lady understood exactly what I want, where I want them to start from and how I want them to hang. She took some iPhone photos and created this rendering. While lovely, it is a bit too fancy for me (and my daughter) with the green ruffle in between the scallops – too “decorator-y” if you know what I mean. That said, without some kind of border or contrast the Lilac fabric might look diffused, without punctuation, and I think that issue was what she was trying to solve by adding the secondary fabric. If you look back at the Cath Kidson photo, you’ll see there is a contrasting edging.

So in all these recent posts on ticking fabric I keep coming up with examples that mix well with Bennison florals and scallops. And it got me thinking…

Don’t I have some great lilac ticking put away in my magic fabric closet? And ridiculous me, don’t I have a photograph of it stored somewhere in my files?

Yes!

I don’t remember how much I have but this is real vintage ticking. What if the scalloped Lilac fabric was piped or bordered in it? I think that might be just the bit of sporty casualness it needs while also defining the edge of the large print. What say you all? For a little visual assistance, here is a mock-up, but keep in mind the scale and color is off.

I really enjoy these great monthly newsletters from Bennison – its easy to sign up for them if you are interested. There are always prettily styled photographs, like this one featuring the Lilac in this post as well as the newest Bennison design information. The most recent newsletter features the same photo of a room with ticking plus a Bennison floral pattern that I just used in my ticking post!

Oct 8, 2012 By tokyojinja in Interior Design, Renovation and Decoration Report, Textiles Tags: beach house, bedroom, Bennison, Bennison Lilac, ticking, valence, window treatments

Teenage Wasteland…Bringing Life to Bridget’s Bedroom

Right now I am working on a really fun project, quite different from my usual style. It is a bedroom for a teenager with a strong sense of what she likes without knowing how to make it get that way. Rather than giving me a list of furniture or a design style, her inspiration photos, sourced by her on Tumblr, communicate emotion and personality – a distinct mood. Take a look….

What do these all have in common? A dreamy feel. Obviously little white sparkle lights, perhaps even with tiny lanterns are an absolute given, as is a collage wall of photos, ephemera and other goodies. She is already at work collecting pictures and images she likes. The de-riguer Apple lap top which is a requirement for high school she already has. What these photos also have in common is what they don’t have, i.e. there is no significant or important furniture or art, which bodes well for the budget. On the other hand, the room needs to be more than just some sparkly white lights. It needs to be functional and practical and perhaps able to mature along with its owner.

The room itself is absolute Tokyo standard – small, with ugly off-white wallpaper and carpet and no interesting architectural features. Tracy the bear has to stay.

Her other dictates are also quite clear:

She loves bright pink.

She doesn’t like “Asian”.

And her mom’s dictates are clear too:

She needs the room to grow with her.

This needs to be done on a budget.

My additional inspiration photos for desk and orderly display include quite a bit of white and pink, containers for order, cute desk lamps and a mid-century modern chair. (From here, here, and here.)

Our resources here in Tokyo are limited, particularly on a budget. I know readers in the US and elsewhere think of Japan as a design mecca, but when it comes to reasonably sized furniture (as in not miniature) at reasonable prices, the selection here is very small. We have IKEA, shrine sales for an occasional find, IKEA, antique stores, IKEA, some sweet boutiques and mail order for accessories, and IKEA. We can’t paint or change anything and arguably can’t even put holes in the wall.

That she doesn’t love “Asian” can’t really go over well as that is one of our only pools of choice. I think it requires a bit of trickery – choosing things Japanese that she doesn’t consciously read as Japanese. For instance, one of the key pieces in the design is this hot pink shibori silk kimono obi for a window valence bought at a shrine sale. Quintessentially Japanese, but to her it reads as funky tie-dye. It has her pink and a soft accent of turquoise, which we will also be using.

IKEA, IKEA, IKEA

While an absolutely amazing resource, we don’t mean for the space to end up looking like one of the little sample rooms at the store. That being said, items from IKEA will be the backbone of the design, in particular this black and white Stockholm Rand dhurrie rug.

We have pulled this living room photo as a working tool. The black and white rug grounds the pink and makes it more sophisticated and eclectic. It also allows for later changes and updates. My theory on these Rand rugs is that we should all buy one and put it away. Some day soon IKEA will stop making them and we will all be reminiscing about them for years.

The brand new issue of Lonny also had a perfect inspiration space for this project. Here the striped rug is actually a zig zag, but it has just the kind of bedding mix we want to put together – white background and pink and turquoise accents. Note the mid-century chair here too. (You need to look left and right here as it is the same room in this screen shot.)

For bedding ideas we can turn to the internet, especially since the sizes of local linens doesn’t match the US standard sizes, and order things to be sent to a friend’s house in the USA and shipped here. We will stop into some cute local design stores here that aren’t a fortune too, like Franc Franc and Afternoon Tea, for throw pillows and other accessories like desk lamps and organizers.

I am still on the hunt for the perfect duvet cover, but this Nile cover from West Elm on big sale for $24.99 might do. I’d really rather find something more like the Roberta Roller Rabbit duvet in the Lonny photo above.

We are all loving this long accent bolster from Pine Cone Hill.

Perhaps a splurge on a special elephant pillow from John Robshaw or Jonathan Adler. The choice depends on which way we swing the mood.

And we definitely plan to add some turquoise with either a quilt like these – the Amanda or Big Cata from Roberta Roller Rabbit…

…or a little turquoise trellis, quatrefoil or zig zag in a pillow or two, like this one from Urban Outfitters.

The desk and chair combo needs a little modern sleekness mixed with vintage style. Although the room could use a little brown wood to weight it and keep it from being too child-like, we’d take Carla Fahden‘s exact set-up as-is – vintage white wicker desk with hot pink bentwood chair and turquoise peanut lamp. The lamp is on sale at Pier One right now, so maybe we can order it along with the little white string lights and add it to our box coming from the US.

We are likely to look for a good mid-century desk that could travel with her to her adult life, like this one via Houzz. And I really continue to think the room needs some wood to warm it up…

There are plenty of vintage bentwood chairs at the shrine sales if we want to go that direction, whether in wood or painted pink!

Here’s a mid-century desk + plastic Eames type chair from a great Etsy shop – too bad they can’t ship to Japan.

We could use the IKEA Snille in white (or pink!) and shop Meguro-dori for a desk to get the look above…

We are planning on hunting up the more unique accessories at shrine sales in the coming weeks. I’ll let you know how this develops and hope to have a full reveal quite soon – teenage clients are very impatient!

Sep 13, 2012 By tokyojinja in Expat Life, Furniture, Interior Design, Kids, Lighting, Rugs and Carpets, Shrine Sales and Flea Markets, Textiles Tags: bedroom, collage wall, IKEA, mid century modern, pink, teen, white lights

Shades of (Pink) and Grey…A Little American-French-Japanese Overlap

Indigo abounds here in Tokyo, and while I love it, not everything can be blue. Finding porcelain, like the pieces in yesterday’s post, or textiles, like the one in this post, in other colors tends to be more unusual. So lucky me found this amazing pieced and sashiko-stitched blanket recently, in the most unusual colors of pink and grey. The blanket is a four block grid, over stitched in white thread. I brought it home and changed out our duvet for summer. Ironically, for all that it is Japanese, it looks so much like an American quilt, even an Amish one. And perhaps even funnier, I have it on a very French bed.

It’s perfect simplicity really is reminiscent of late 19th and early 20th century Amish quilts, like this one from an old Christie’s auction.

Kinda apropos with this pillow, isn’t it? Not just color, but the mix of American quilt block and Japanese obi, all on a French settee.

And the room already had another mash-up, with a late Federal American birds-eye maple and cherry dresser, paired with sconces and a pastel portrait from the Paris flea market.

Nothing like a little multiculturalism, is there?

Jun 11, 2012 By tokyojinja in Interior Design, Textiles Tags: Amish quilts, bedroom, bedrooms, quilts, sashiko