The Threads That Bind Us

Friday Update:

Also wanted to mention that last week I was lucky enough to have a cup of tea with Pamela of the blog "From the House of Edward", who was enjoying a brief interlude in Los Angeles. It's always lovely to meet fellow bloggers in person and discover that they are just as fabulous as you thought they were. She is stylish and charming and the owner of the absolutely most FLAWLESS skin I've ever laid eyes on. And talk about a love of Scotland that rivals mine -- she and her husband have a possible retirement plan there!

Thursday Update:

Just spoke to Santy at the Santa Monica Museum of Art who kindly sent me some better photos of the two pieces I entered. Check their website in June for "Incognito Revealed": an unmasking of all the artists who participated and their works.

(For those of you who asked about size, both pieces are 8" by 10".)

* * * * *

Now that the INCOGNITO show is over and all the artists are finally able to acknowledge their work, I'm so happy to finally get a chance to show you what I've been up to lately, embroidery-wise.

Check it out below (or click HERE):

Note: Apologies for the semi-dark footage of my new embroidery pieces -- I shoot everything with my iPhone 4 because I love the moody edge it imparts, but getting sharp details has at times been difficult. Good things lie ahead, though: I am saving up for a Canon 5D Mark 2 digital camera with video capabilities that will take "The Domestic Explorer" webisodes to a whole new level of clarity -- so be patient a bit longer!

xx/Lisa

Say It With Flowers

There is something so quintessentially English about having your portrait taken in the garden, don't you think? I need a good photo of myself and am considering such a setting for mine. In the spirit of research, I've culled a few of my favorites for inspiration. 

I have always loved this photo of Lady Rhoda Birley (1900-1980), glamorous Irish beauty and unbridled eccentric by even the strictest of standards. 

(Lady Rhoda Birley, photographed by Valerie Finniss)

If it looks like the plants are craning to be close to her, it's probably not an illusion. According to her daughter, Maxime de la Falaise, she would often bake lobster thermidor and feed it to her flowers: "She would forget that she was making it for the garden, and add a bit of cognac, some garlic and spices. The roses would almost cry out with pleasure." (Let's all take a moment to compose ourselves after reading that, shall we?)

Moving on, this photo of actress Emma Watson effortlessly captures her irrepressible enthusiasm and youthful joie de vivre. The masses of flowers strewn everywhere, the worn rug on the ground, the colorful chair and her crazy fabulous outfit create a multi-layered scene illustrating my favorite design principle -- the charms of disorder.

(Teen Vogue, August 2009, photographed by Arved Colvin Smith)

There's more unkempt luxury in this next portrait: the profusion of roses, the striped sofa, the crumbling brick wall with those lovely vines trailing down...and Miss Chloe Sevigny in the midst of it all, soignee and smiling. I felt a strange twinge of deja vu when I saw this photo and after a brief search through my images, realized why. 

(House and Garden, January 2007, photographed by Francois Halard)

Am I crazy or does this pairing of fabrics from the Cecil Beaton Fabric Collection perfectly capture the spirit of the photograph?

(Ashcombe Stripe and Beaton Rose, via their website)

Continuing the Cecil Beaton theme, here is Tim Walker's 2005 photo of Madonna at Ashcombe House, Beaton's former home. Looking at it now, I find it slightly unsettling. Surrounded by elegance and beauty (and all those loose petals), she seems nonetheless at a slight remove from it. 

(Vogue, August 2005, photographed by Tim Walker)

Interestingly enough, faded roses symbolize transience, a fact that seems prescient when you consider that the house now belongs to her ex-husband.

Off The Beaton Path

Just feast your eyes on this house, would you?

(Ashcombe House, Wiltshire. Former home 

of Cecil Beaton, current home of Guy Ritchie. 

Photographed by Tim Walker.)

I've harbored a fascination with it ever since I read Cecil Beaton's memoir about living there, called "Ashcombe: Story of a Fifteen Year Lease." It was love at first sight when he first visited it with Rex Whistler, Stephen Tomlin and Edith Olivier. They almost didn't find it, however. As Beaton tells it:

We motored along the main road...then suddenly turned off to circle through narrow lanes.... The pathways became rough and overgrown, and a few rabbits bolted at our approach.

"It can't possibly be this way. Nobody would live up here", remarked Rex. We found ourselves mooring over the side of the downs at a perilous angle.

Eventually they arrived at their destination.

None of us uttered a word as we.... stood before a small, compact house of lilac-colored brick. We inhaled sensuously the strange, haunting - and rather haunted - atmosphere of the place.

After a tour of the grounds, they made their way back to their motor car:

 It was as if I had been touched on the head by a magic wand. Some people may grow to love their homes; my reaction was instantaneous. This house must belong to me.

By all accounts, Beaton spent his happiest years at Ashcombe. He held legendary garden parties there called fete champetres (literally, "country feasts") which involved his guests dressing up in their finest gowns, drinking champagne, declaiming poetry and running barefoot at midnight along the rolling downs.

They were heady years. Beaton enlisted the talents of his artist friends to help him redecorate the place, painting an extravagant circus mural in his bedroom. 

(Decorating Beaton's bedroom at Ashcombe, 1931.

Group includes Lord Berners, Rex Whistler and Oliver Messel. 

From this book.)

There was always a project going on. One summer, they filmed an amateur movie with Beaton in the lead. 

(Ashcombe, 1935. From same book as above.)

And how's this for a lovely token of friendship? Before his guests left his house for the first time, Beaton made them trace the outlines of their hands on his bathroom wall. As he recalled:

By degrees an extraordinary collection was achieved. As one lay sousing in hot water, one could ruminate on the characteristic traits shown in these significant and life-like shapes and the choice of position or proximity to others chosen by their owners on the wall.

In 2005, Ashcombe was photographed by Tim Walker for Vogue when Madonna lived there and I always thought she did a wonderful job retaining the spirit of the place, as evidenced in a few photos here:

And I would love to have a fete champetre, wouldn't you? So many summer outfits seem to languish in one's closets just waiting for an invitation to be seen. And gardens provide the perfect backdrop for Arcadian glamour. Gossamer silk against velvety flowers, a well-cut linen suit framed by tangled vines -- it's that age-old juxtaposition of refinement and unruliness. 

Maybe that's why I've held onto this picture of Chloe Sevigny for so long. Photographed in her city garden in Manhattan, it nonetheless captures the spirit of a fete champetre in full bloom, don't you think?

(Cover of House and Garden, January 2007)

Come on, who's going to have one first?

Revolt. Read.

If you live in Los Angeles, get in your car and head to 830 North Highland (between Melrose and Santa Monica) NOW.   Berkelouw Books is tragically going out of business and their ENTIRE inventory is 50% off.  Henry Berkelouw, the ever-so-charming owner, has amassed a wonderful and highly idiosyncratic library of antiquarian books, collectibles and sought-after tomes.  I discovered it two weeks ago and have been back five times already.  Below are some of my fabulous (and highly reasonable) finds:

I can't wait to dig into the Cecil Beaton one...I've read three other books by him and have become slightly obsessed with his glamorous life and bitchy commentaries about all the luminaries he encountered.  

The Harold Nicolson book was an exciting find because he was married to Vita Sackville West, author of "The Edwardians" and "All Passion Spent" and one-time lover of Virginia Woolf.  Their son Nigel Nicolson's marvelous account of his parents' enduring relationship, "Portrait of a Marriage" is one of my favorite biographies ever, but until now Harold has always been a bit of a cipher.

"A Hermit in the Himalayas" looks like a breezy read, and as I'm going back to northern India next month, it will feel especially relevant.

And as for "Vulgarity in Literature", what is there NOT to love?!  The title, the beautifully illustrated cover, and of course, the prose of the great man himself.   I consider it a capital find.

But the piece de resistance of my treasure-hunting at Berkelouw Books will have to be saved until my next post.  A book so titillating, so compulsively readable, that I finished it in a single evening and haven't been able to get the authoress out of my head since....

Great 20th Century British Aesthetes

Stephen Tennant. Noel Coward. Dirk Bogarde. Osbert Sitwell. Cecil Beaton. Harold Acton (if anyone can ever find me a copy of "Memoirs of an Aesthete", I'll be indebted to them forever). Beverley Nichols. E.F. Benson. Ronald Firbank. Saki.

The next time you're in a good used bookstore, run to the shelves and hunt for some of their brilliant (and often brilliantly funny) works.

Then open a page and instantly elevate your afternoon.