www.fluxstudiosdc.com; www.novietrump.com; 703-346-5284; Laurel Lukaszewski: www.laurel lukaszewski.com; 703-801-4927.
Sure to bring smiles, the show also provokes thoughts about the buoyantly moving target between function and art. It runs from June 6 through August 9. Phone 202-885-1300 or visit www.american.edu/cas/katzen/museum.
March/Febuary 2009
Every day Eileen Doughty walks her greyhound through the sylvan parks near her home in suburban Vienna, Virginia. Beyond houses and cars, she observes the bare limbs of oaks in winter, the blooms of wild cherries in spring and the changing light on tree bark in all seasons. These images—fractured and sewn together—take on new life in her engaging art quilts. “People always say, ‘Do what you know,’ and I love trees,” Doughty says, standing in the second-floor studio of her home, where the seeds of her ideas germinate. Above all, she points out, “My quilts have a sense of place.”
That sense of place is what inspired “Beyond Great Falls,” her view of the Potomac River’s rocky overlook at Mather Gorge. The three-panel work, commissioned as part of the Utah Public Art Program, depicts sweeping mountains and a stylized tree suffused with rich colors of the West. Doughty embeds deeper meanings in her decorative landscape quilts. “Root Domain,” created for an exhibition at a Wisconsin nature preserve, fancifully explores animal life below ground while suggesting the interconnectedness of all life.
Most recently, Doughty designed two pieces that capture a sense of the moment as well as a sense of place, for an art-quilt exhibition celebrating President Barack Obama at the Cafritz Foundation Arts Center. The first, a commentary on hope and freedom, is based on the classic Greek allegory of Pandora’s box. At the center, a monochromatic figure with headdress represents the statue of freedom crowning the Capitol. A folksy patchwork background of machine-pieced blue-and-white cotton above red-and-white stripes subtly echoes American flag tones. Rising from an open box like a god in disguise, Obama as hope takes the form of an appliqué bird with a golden beak.
On a lighter subject, the second quilt shows a greyhound curled up and dreaming about being adopted by Obama’s daughters. Doughty’s dog appears in all of her political quilts. He stands for Everyman, asleep and unaware of everything around him.
In fact, Doughty’s light touch plays to the strength of her accessible medium. As Martha Sielman, executive director of the nonprofit Studio Art Quilts Associates, points out, “A lot of political art can make you so uncomfortable, you don’t want to look at it. This element of humor gives you a way to relate to it.” She adds, “Eileen’s work is very approachable.”
Doughty began quilting 20 years ago while working as a cartographer at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, when she took a class in quilt making. The teacher brought in magazines illustrating landscape quilts and, Doughty recalls, “It was an epiphany for me. I realized quilting was not just about squares and triangles. It could be about anything you wanted, like places.” Quilting extends her experience in cartography since, she has discovered, both visually express an abstract idea. As she explains, “Maps use colors and shapes to communicate geography or populations. Now I use them as emotional symbols.”
Doughty majored in cartography at the University of Wisconsin, where she grew up. With her wide-boned face and silver curls, alert blue eyes behind rimless glasses, Doughty seems the model of a heartland America quilt maker. In fact, her work builds on tradition. Rather than sew functional quilts by hand as her mother, an accomplished seamstress, continues to do, Doughty pieces everything together by machine. She prefers the look and speed, noting, “I have too many ideas and too little time.” Instead of turning under the rough edges of appliqué fabric, she likes the natural look and added texture of loose, fraying edges. “I don’t intend it to look like a painting,” she says.
While contemporary quilt makers now incorporate a startling assortment of materials—from matchsticks and twist ties to fishing line and roofing nails—Doughty still prefers fabric and thread. When she’s ready to assemble a design, she heads over to a stash of fabric. Her supply consists mainly of cotton and transparent fabrics with less distinct patterns. Increasingly, she draws or paints on fabric to achieve effects such as water or clouds.
In an intuitive process, Doughty adds and moves samples around until everything works together. Then she sits down at her 10-year-old Bernina sewing machine. Depending on the design, she may use the machine either to join fabric or as a free-motion drawing tool.
Doughty continues to explore new directions. Two grants support her investigations into creating three-dimensional sculptures entirely with thread interwoven on a sewing machine. She also works on public and private commissions. While her quilts average three-feet square, her pieces have ranged from postcard-size views of Washington monuments to a 14-foot-long assembly of panels. This year, besides showing her work locally, Doughty will display her quilts at exhibitions in Connecticut, Taiwan and Birmingham, England.
Doughty gets up from her machine and looks out the window to the front of her house, where a seed she planted many years ago has grown into a statuesque elm. It seems inevitable that at some point a rendering of that fine tree will artfully find its way onto one of her quilts.
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. To reach Eileen Doughty, call 703-938-6916 or visit www.doughtydesigns.com. She shows her quilts regularly at Potomac Craftsmen Fiber Gallery in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria;www.potomaccraftsmengallery.com.
**Out of the array of interior design magazines, Home and Design magazine stands out as a primary idea source for luxury home designs. Wonderful visuals of inspired décor and lush landscapes are combined with expert advice to provide a fundamental reference point for bringing amazing home interior design ideas to life.
Before Catherine Roseberry and Rob Womack became partners in life and work, Roseberry came home one day and noticed that the knobs on the kitchen stove had turned red. She was amused. Womack, who had painted the knobs, then began painting bigger household objects—small tables, a kitchen utility cabinet. Soon after, he brought home a quirky table and chair from a flea market; channeling the pieces’ folk-art style, he painted them in a crazy-quilt pattern. “That’s when I thought about how the idea could be applied to other furniture—what you might do with a 19th-century chest or what approach might work on a 1960s coffee table,” recalls Womack, who was later joined by Roseberry in the process.
Twenty-five years after that first eureka moment—and the couple‘s marriage—they continue to pursue this ingenious art form together. “Right from the beginning we had an interest in art history and furniture design and how we could link them,” says Womack, who first learned about furniture periods during high school, when he worked for an antiques dealer. He and Roseberry met while both were studying painting at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where they continue to live and work.
Their business is called Coloratura, defined as musical ornamentation for voice, especially with trills and runs. “We like the word—its reference to embellishment and color, and how jazz musicians have adopted it,” Roseberry says.
Their paintings on furniture play on themes inspired by each piece. However, as independent artists, Womack and Roseberry follow different drummers. Roseberry’s compositions mainly portray women’s narratives, while Womack’s work responds to the period when a piece was made. “I like doing research, finding out what was happening at the time in painting and applied arts—textiles, ceramics, furniture, architecture,” he says. “That context, or an image, triggers an idea.”
In one of Womack’s most ambitious schemes, an Art Deco chest becomes a streamlined canvas for a sweeping urban panorama set in the 1930s. Vintage photographs of Rockefeller Center and Times Square, paintings by Edward Hopper and George Bellows, and graphic designs of the period all pass through the artist’s filter. The work’s evocative atmosphere and realism belie the fact that, as Womack points out, “It’s a fantasy. All my architectural pieces are imaginary, with a dream-like quality.” The piece, entitled All Sound, is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery collection.
Roseberry’s paintings relate an evolving personal and universal story about the female condition, sometimes harsh, but often rendered in soft pastel tones. On a chest of drawers from the 1940s, a woman peers from a window, eyeing a baby reaching up in another direction. Called Elusive Joy, the piece was inspired by Roseberry’s reflections on her own ability to bear a child. Roses with thorns embellish the picture, a nod to religious symbols in Madonna-and-child paintings, as well the artist’s own name.
In the studio located in the couple’s 19th-century home, an untouched chest awaits its destiny. With popped veneer, missing wood pieces and stains, it is prime material for their specialized art. “We would never touch a piece with an original patina or one that could be restored,” explains Womack, “but it has to be salvageable. We’re very selective because of the amount of time we’ll invest.” A simple coffee table takes four to six weeks; a highly complex design can take nine months to complete.
After repairing a piece, the artists apply up to 10 coats of interior enamel paint as a base, sanding between each coat. The fine painting is depicted with artist’s brushes, followed by two protective coats of varnish and wax. The finished, hand-polished surface is hard and durable enough for everyday use.
About half of Coloratura’s business is commissioned and generally involves furniture already in a client’s collection. Richmond residents Howard and Coral Gills had admired the artists’ work for years before deciding to commission a piece. Womack and Roseberry visited the couple at home, discussed the clients’ interests and experiences, and helped select a fall-front desk inherited from Howard Gills’s grandfather. The artists returned a week later with books and reference materials; they indicated in general terms that the theme would be Italian. Three months later, when the finished piece was delivered, Coral Gills recalls, “We were delighted. We were giddy.”
Titled Memoria, the desk had assumed a double life as a cabinet of curiosities—real interior cubby holes and trompe l’oeil exterior ones are filled with imagined souvenirs that might have been gathered on a trip to Italy in the 1920s—a period of time when Howard Gills’s family did, in fact, travel there on a Grand Tour of Europe.
sees them,” Coral Gills observes.
Incorporated among facsimile Majolica ceramics, Venetian glass and postcards with accurately rendered historic stamps, other trompe l’oeil objects relate to the clients’ personal history. “They are meaningful only to us and our family, but beautiful to everyone who asked about the artwork’s appeal, she chuckles and repeats a friend’s comment: “It will give your children something to fight over after you’re gone.”
For more information on Coloratura, call 804-321-0022 or visit the Web site www.coloraturafurniture.com.
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Hand-blown glass will sparkle, mixed metals will shimmer in sculptural furniture or on walls, and fiber art will take functional or visionary form when 190 artists selected by jury convene at the 2008 Washington Craft Show.
Accomplished artists from Maryland, Virginia and the District will join others from all parts of the country at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, presenting new work in 11 different media. Together they represent a cross-section of creative energy in the contemporary craft field. Here is a preview of four of the 18 selected from this region to exhibit and sell their inspired studio arts.
Jim Syvertsen, Wood-Turner
Jim Syvertsen stands at his lathe in Chesapeake, Virginia. Wood chips fly as he applies a high-speed-steel gouge to a section of gnarly burl. The rough wood begins to take form.
“It’s exciting to simultaneously destroy and create while you are turning a piece of wood and seeing what develops,” he says. From the shape, exterior topography and type of burl, he generally knows what to expect.
The thin-walled, hollow forms he creates reveal richly figured patterns and varied colors. The pleasing round shapes, he says, are intended “to highlight the simple beauty of wood without embellishment.”
While Syvertsen favors exotic woods—varieties of Australian eucalyptus burl, Honduras rosewood, snakewood from Suriname—he also uses domestic woods such as black ash burl from Minnesota, which grows in swamps, and maple burl from Oregon.
After the burl is rough-turned and hollowed, the piece is seasoned for several months in a low-temperature kiln to prevent any movement after the piece is finished. It is reshaped and re-hollowed to final form with walls often measuring just one-eighth or three-sixteenths of an inch. The top, fitted with an epoxied insert, receives a slender, custom-turned finial designed to complement the vessel’s curving profile.
Syvertsen started turning wood full time when he retired after 20 years in the Navy. He enjoys the change of command in his current lifestyle and says, “What I’m doing now is dictated only by the piece of wood and me, working together.”
Xiaosheng Bi, Painted Porcelain
Seated at a worktable in his studio in Derwood, Maryland, Xiaosheng Bi picks up a calligraphy brush and sweeps it across a delicate porcelain bowl. “Brushwork is really easy for me,” says the potter, who was raised in China. “Before I was in art school, I used a brush.”
Bi, 42, started learning calligraphy at age seven. He became so accomplished that he was among only 13 out of 3,000 applicants chosen to attend one of the country’s most prestigious art schools, Qinghua University in Beijing, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ceramic art.
Bi adapts Chinese characters and natural forms in fluid painting. His bold, dynamic brushwork on refined translucent cups, bowls and vases sets up a central contrast in his art. He explains the contradiction in two of his favorite subjects: “Lotus blossoms grow in mud, but they are beautiful and clean. Bamboo is soft, but when the wind comes, it never breaks. Inside it is hollow, symbolizing more to learn.”
Bi first hand-turns his fine Chinese porcelain pieces on a wheel, then carves the dry clay bodies down to a refined one-eighth inch or less in thickness. He paints many layers using natural sulphates that turn to rich greens, cobalts and coppery hues that seep like watercolors into the unglazed porcelain. Colors can change capriciously, however, in the 2,300-degree kiln. “There’s a lot of surprise,” says Bi. “Sometimes all 40 pieces in the kiln may be gone. If I can get 10 pieces really good, I am really happy.”
Faith Wilson, Floor Cloths
“It’s hard to get people’s minds wrapped around the idea of walking on art,” says Faith Wilson, who paints floor cloths that look a lot like her hanging art and often end up on the wall.
Both share an intuitive, spontaneous charm. A self-taught artist who started out as a weaver, Wilson paints floor cloths using acrylics mixed with glazes for a translucent quality. She may add pastels and charcoals, wax resist or old sepia photos found in junk stores—“whatever you’re not supposed to do,” she jokes. “I use different materials to add depth and texture to the work.”
She takes extra steps to be sure the floor cloths won’t deteriorate—waterproofing the back with exterior latex paint, using fixative over charcoal and pastels and sealing the surface with three coats of acrylic urethane.
In Wilson’s imagery, recurring motifs float and mutate to reflect changes in her life. Birds appear as sinister crows during a somber period or as gracefully flying forms portrayed in warm pastels during rosier times. Black rectangles resemble ominous cemetery stones, dancing stepping stones, open doorways or windows in free fall.
“A lot of times I have no idea what will come out,” says Wilson, who works from her studio in Chestertown, Maryland. His finished pieces reveal rich colors and patterns. He says the shapes are intended “to highlight the simple beauty of wood without embellishment.” “Someone told me that open windows and doorways are Quaker symbols. These are cultural threads that we all share. I hope, if anything, they are a snapshot of a moment in time, a connection to the universe.”
Rob Glebe, Metal Vessels
In Rob Glebe’s world, colorful dragonflies intertwine, grass blades arch and abstract shapes overlap in airy metal spheres that seem to drift above kaleidoscopic shadow patterns thrown on the surface below.
Glebe is fastidious about balancing the design and structure of his vessels. “It may be part of my training as a tool maker—I’m always looking for imperfections and symmetry,” says the artist, who began crafting his metal vessels full time three years ago. His earlier career operating a yacht service involved outfitting boats with technical precision.
For 20 years, Glebe and his wife have collected pottery from Southwestern Indian pueblos, baskets from the rain forests of Panama and pieces by contemporary artists at craft shows. “It’s the vessel shapes with geometry and texture that we admire most,” he says.
In the workshop behind his Chestertown, Maryland, home, Glebe creates vessels of cold-rolled steel, the sheet metal used in cars. He makes separate design elements—identical but often varying in scale—with a plasma cutter, similar to those used in auto-body shops for cutting metal. Pieces are then welded together, bent over a wood form and sandblasted to soften the edges. Color is applied with metal stains, chemical patinas or hand-painted finishes.
His largest piece, a five-foot-tall, vase-shaped form, required more than 200 sail-like elements, loosely woven together. That dramatic work led to a commission for a hanging sculpture.
“I like the challenge of doing new things,” says Glebe. “I have so many ideas.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
RESOURCES
The Washington Craft Show will take place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center from November 7 to 9. Hours are Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.;
Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.craftsamericashows.com or call 800-832-7813.
Art Studio Home Artists
Xiaosheng Bi, Derwood, MD; 240-472-5204; www.xiaoshengbi.com
Rob Glebe, Chestertown, MD; 410-778-0756; www.robglebedesign.com
Jim Syvertsen, Chesapeake, VA; 757-816-5622; www.jimsyvertsen.com
Faith Wilson, Chestertown, MD; 410-708-4652; www.faithwilsonart.com
In Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood, once-forgotten factories have been restored to life. Gone with the winds of time are the pounding of heavy equipment and clouds of smoke from casting iron and steel. From the mid-19th into the 20th century, this area thrived as one of the biggest centers of large-machine manufacturing in the country.
Today, these now-revitalized buildings form the core of Clipper Mill. Wrapped in a romantic patina of age, Clipper Mill is a quiet community of residences and offices surrounding a different type of industry—working artists and artisans.
Vibrant studios occupy the central Foundry building. As doors are flung open or through glass panels in the masonry walls, craftsmen can be found working at the forge, blowing glass or painting at an easel. Finished work is scattered around the grounds, an unofficial outdoor gallery.
Railroad tracks that once transported raw materials and finished products for the industrial park now carry passengers on Baltimore’s Light Rail. Take the train to Woodberry, and here’s a sampling of what you’ll find behind the walls at Clipper Mill.
Gutierrez Studios
John Gutierrez stands on the mezzanine of his design and production studio, surveying the 20,000-square-foot space extending the full length of the historic Foundry building. He looks up at the soot-blackened wood trusses, and below, where in the distance two artisans fabricate stair rail components for a grand staircase. Farther along the open expanse, storage shelves are stacked with a variety of steel, aluminum and brass. A complete woodworking shop also operates within the imposing heavy-timber structure.
Gutierrez relishes this mix of old and new, and the raw beauty of materials. It is the hallmark of his large-scale, custom work for architects and commercial and residential clients. It also characterizes his line of smaller tables, lamps and cabinet pieces sold in the showroom below.
“I like living with art and leaving materials in a natural state,” says the artist, who also has a preference for combining wood and metal components in a single piece. “I like when a bar of steel is cut, cleaned and attached, without over processing. We try to use wood to derive the best character out of a given piece—like using an old walnut board instead of staining one dark brown, or using reclaimed, re-sawn timber.”
Gutierrez’s work, which he calls “light industrial modern,” enhances the Clipper Mill site and Woodberry Kitchen, a restaurant next door; he designed and fabricated its wood staircase and glass-and-steel storefront. His studio also created benches in Fells Point and Harbor Place in Baltimore.
Gutierrez designed the rails at clipper Mill.
Gutierrez’s affinity for the large-scale and dramatic may be traced to his background in set design. He has also worked in carpentry and construction, and earned a degree in furniture design from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The studio’s 15 employees include designers, engineers, project installers and graduate art students trained at the shop in fabrication and finishing skills. “We’re trying to bring back the glory of trade unions and guilds,” says Gutierrez, “when there was huge pride if you were a skilled craftsman. Our goal is to render a project at the highest level.”
Gutierrez Studios is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and by appointment. Phone 410-889-5341 or visit the Web site www.gutierrezstudios.com.
Corradetti Glass
Anthony Corradetti’s glass-blowing studio and gallery are modeled on shops along the streets of Venice and in towns long ago. “What excites me as a craftsperson is having a functioning studio that’s also part of the community—as it was back when work was hand made, and you could find a local blacksmith or glass maker, watch how the work was done, and take it away,” he says.
On the upper level of his light-filled studio, hand-blown glass stands ready to take away. One-of-a-kind pieces reflect the spectrum of styles created below: small cobalt-blue vases rimmed in fiery red, a circular serving platter awash with watery hues and jewel-toned bowls with gritty textures, the result of rolling a blown-glass form in chunks of clear glass, then fusing them together.
Corradetti’s signature vessels, placed on pedestals, are lyrically hand-painted in abstract designs. Multicolored lusters, built up in layers that are each fired on separately, give richness to the surface. A large piece may require up to 12 kiln firings.
Anthony Corradetti
Corradetti's blown glass is painted with abstract designs.
Corradetti’s pieces are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Corning Museum of Glass. Examples of his large steel-and-blown-glass sculptural commissions are installed across from his studio in a building courtyard and at the edge of the pool. During most of the year, visitors can watch Corradetti and his assistants blow glass beside the glowing furnace at the studio’s heart. They also teach classes and workshops on weekends.
Each piece bears a “Made in Baltimore” label, inspired by the renowned Venetian glassworks’ identification “Made in Murano.” “They’re proud of that, and I’m proud to be working right here,” says the glassblower of 30 years, happily settled into his three-year-old studio and gallery.
Corradetti Glass has limited summer gallery hours. Call for an appointment. Regular hours begin again in the fall. Phone 410-243-2010 or visit www.corradetti.com.
Mandala Creations
“We take a bar of steel, heat it up in the fire, hammer it and give it life and character,” says Chris Gavin, blacksmith and owner of Mandala Creations. In the showroom, hand-forged metal works with presence extend the long heritage and individual expression of blacksmithing. Decorative wall sconces and an ecclesiastical bench patinated to resemble wood revive the Gothic spirit. Traditional fireplace tools and turned railings rest against a wall.
Paul Daniel Sculptures
Paul Daniel’s abstract kinetic sculptures blow in the wind throughout downtown Baltimore. His lanky assemblages of moving arms and shapes, spinning propellers and mirrors can also be spotted outside of his studio and around the grounds at Clipper Mill.
These playful metal constructions have cosmic dimensions, according to Daniel. Environmentally driven by the wind, they are tuned to the atmosphere and planets. He views the mirrors as tracking devices for the sun’s changing position throughout the day as the earth pivots.
Painting bold stripes and primary colors on the metal also has a purpose, he says. They “stand out from all the accumulated visual information in our minds, all the objects in our environment that we glaze over and don’t see, like lampposts.”
Patrick O’Brien Studio
Artist Patrick O’Brien swivels his tall frame around on an upholstered chair in his studio. Surrounded by his meticulous paintings of the high seas, book-lined shelves, artist’s palette and oils beside a canvas washed in northern light, O’Brien might have dropped in from a past century; he writes and illustrates children’s adventure stories set in remote, heroic times. His tales of swashbuckling pirates, chivalrous knights and ships at sea line his bookshelves.
O’Brien also steps back in time to research details for his maritime oil paintings. These depict historic ships and decisive battle moments in what he calls “the classic age of fighting sail.”
O’Brien recently completed a series of maritime paintings for a solo exhibition, “New York in the Age of Sail,” opening in September at The Union League Club in New York. He pointed to one new painting showing a ship in New York’s harbor exactly as it would have appeared in 1605, when the city was called New Amsterdam.
Nol Putnam is pictured with his latest work in progress: a
nine-foot tree sculpture bound for display on the deck of a
Maryland home.
Past open fields and rambling houses set high on a ridge, past horse fences and cattle silhouetted against the misty Blue Ridge Mountains, a visitor turns onto a dirt road, slowing down in the approach to White Oak Forge.
A tall, welcoming figure strides through the forge’s high wood doors. Proprietor and blacksmith Nol Putnam extends a sturdy hand, etched and blackened from 25 years of coaxing metals into some of the most captivating decorative ironwork in the region and beyond. Putnam’s work adorns public institutions and private residences. For the Washington National Cathedral, he designed and crafted gates of breathtaking beauty, scale and detail. He has produced a formal Rococo-style staircase for a private art gallery in a home in Rhode Island; a minimalist forged-brass driveway gate for a Rockefeller estate near Tarrytown, New York; and a spiraling outdoor sculpture for a private garden in Gettysburg. With fire, hammers and primitive tools, Putnam creates works of elegance, delicacy, even whimsy. His small pieces—pierced ecclesiastical spice boxes, swirling salamander door handles, forged-metal vases filled with wispy grasses—also demonstrate his versatility in shaping rigid metal into lively, useful forms.
Putnam’s current project, a nine-foot-tall sculptural tree, lies partially completed on a workbench in his forge in Rappahannock County, Virginia. The object’s spidery branches and curling leaves extend into space with such energy and force that it seems ready to straighten up and magically connect to its tree-trunk base resting on the floor. Once the piece is finished with small creatures and a light, it is destined to command the center of attention on the deck of a suburban Maryland home.
“I’ve never done anything like it,” Putnam says, his clear eyes sparkling with delight. “Each job is different. Each has it own set of problems.” He relishes new challenges. From initial sketch to finished metal, Putnam works entirely by himself, almost exclusively on commission and on his own schedule. A self-taught blacksmith, Putnam won his first major commission in 1982. When an architect asked if he could do a curving stair rail for a new house in McLean, he replied “sure” and spent many sleepless nights figuring it out. Because of structural complications on site, he discovered another “big nightmare” with installation—the only job where he had to forge a piece indoors. Ten years later, Putnam installed the third of his gate designs for Washington National Cathedral’s columbarium. The exquisite Folger Memorial Gate explodes on two sides with 84 forged-metal blossoms. Rivets holding the crossbars together are all decorative and varied: one depicts Yoda from Star Wars.
“It had to be consistent with what was there, but also with the time we were doing it,” Putnam explains. His design was inspired by the Gothic-style cathedral and its majestic grilles and gates, designed and executed by Samuel Yellin, America’s 20th-century giant of ornamental ironwork, in the classical European tradition.
These days, Putnam is developing minimal sculptures still in maquette form. One is shaped to suggest an elongated figure, another the wind. Both, he says, “are intended to explore a line in space using blacksmithing techniques.” Whether his designs are representational or abstract, he adds, “I don’t try to mimic; I try to suggest with hot-forged ironwork.” The word iron is used loosely, since wrought iron, a fibrous material closest to pure iron, is no longer commercially available. Like most blacksmiths today, Putnam works mainly with mild steel, an alloy of iron and carbon. It comes in different grades, some for small objects, others to support greater loads.
Demonstrating the process, Putnam picks up a steel rod, places it between tongs, and moves to the fire. As the flaming coals turn from bright orange to yellow heat—indicating a temperature of 2,100 degrees—the metal becomes pliable. He then places the glowing metal rod between forging dies of an air hammer, turning, flattening and shaping it to the desired size. With rods of smaller dimensions, he forges by hand with a hammer on an anvil, a 3,000-year-old process.
Tools of the trade line walls and cabinet drawers at the forge. “I probably have 10,000 tools,” says Putnam. “Every job requires new ones. You can’t go down to the corner hardware store and buy these anymore.”
Before becoming a blacksmith, Putnam taught high school for 14 years in the Berkshire Mountains. As chairman of the history department, he bought books for the library. One, The Art of Blacksmithing, became his first instruction book. Since then he has taught hundreds of others at blacksmithing workshops from Richmond to Colorado. He has received awards from the Virginia Society of Architects and Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture. His philosophy remains: “Iron should be beautiful, while unobtrusive and functional. It should lift your spirits. So much iron we see is clunky and heavy, with too much shiny paint. It takes time to show how delicate the work can be, yet still strong.” Wearing jeans and a work shirt, his hair graying as if seared by the burning coals, Putnam remains youthfully curious. He observes, “I’ve learned on the job. It has taken 35 years, and I’m still learning.”
Writer Tina Coplan is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
Nol Putnam’s work is available at Caulfield Gallery in Washington, Virginia. He can be reached at White Oak Forge LLC; phone (540) 636-4545. Putnam is scheduled to speak at Washington National Cathedral on May 10 at 10 a.m. His lecture is titled “Forged by Fire: Flora, Fauna, and Fantasy in Wrought Iron.” For details, phone (202) 537-6200.
The loom made it easier for her to create vigorous curves
on the abstract landscape “Norwegian Inheritance,"
woven of wool, silk and rayon.
Continuing a tradition that is millennia old, Christine Spangler weaves hand-dyed threads into lyrical patterns and bold abstract designs. No mythic Penelope stationed at her wooden loom and endlessly hand-weaving a funeral shroud as in the Odyssey, Spangler is more likely to be found sitting in front of her Dell laptop designing in Photoshop and other specialized software, or standing and passing the shuttle across the cast-aluminum, state-of-the-art digital floor loom in her Chevy Chase studio.
A storybook spectrum of fiber styles flows from this combination electronic and hand-weaving process. Her collection includes pastel and brilliantly hued scarves with imagery worthy of display, vivid wall hangings and uplifting designs for liturgical commissions.
Throughout her 35-year career, Spangler created works inspired by the folk arts of Norway. These geometrically patterned pieces are perfectly suited to the mechanics of a traditional loom. However, all of that changed a decade ago when she started working on a computerized loom. “The design possibilities using this technology are tremendously greater,” she says. “It gives me far more flexibility and the ability to create free patterns—the part of the process I enjoy most.”
Spangler learned the weaving craft while living in Oslo in the 1970s. Fair-haired, blue-eyed and speaking the local dialect, she was the only non-Norwegian attending the State College for Art Teachers and School of Art and Design.
“It was a time when traditional crafts were widely practiced. Now almost all the textile industry has been lost and with it an appreciation of older knowledge,” she says with a note of nostalgia. Still, the proliferation of new technology has attracted a new generation—at least in the U.S.
According to Rebecca Stevens, consulting curator for contemporary textiles at The Textile Museum in DC, the number of weaving students in this country has doubled over the last 10 years. “They already know how to use the technology, and they love the ability to design with threads—to create a tactile object in our digital world,” she says. “Anything you can do on a computer, you can do on a traditional loom, but it would take so long, it would take you a lifetime to do it.”
Spangler pulled out two recently completed scarves, illustrating her ability to switch colors, patterns or themes with ease. On the first, creamy butterflies flutter across a wavy background of pale rose, soft green and azure blue.
As Spangler explains, “I use the computer because there’s much more freedom to control the entire process. During the design phase, I can zoom in to see the weave structure or zoom out and color code them on a digital map, so I’m sure to have a good distribution of different weave structures throughout the piece.”
She still threads and passes the shuttle across the loom in the time-honored way. But she is assisted in weaving as the electronic loom guides her to achieve the pattern already programmed in. And she no longer needs to calculate the number and order of threads grouped together to form a pattern.
Now each cross thread can be manipulated independently, allowing her to change patterns across an entire piece without stopping. This revolutionary advance eliminates the time-consuming task of completing each little section as the pattern changes in traditional tapestry weaving. The possibilities for pictorial designs or patterns are limited only by the 27-inch width of the loom.
Weaving, despite its antiquity, has a natural compatibility with the computer process. Its basic building block involves crossing one thread over another at right angles, the longitudinal thread called the warp and the weft running across—a unit similar to a pixel. To depict a convincing curve requires placing threads close together to create the impression of a continuous line, in the same way that a digital picture appears more accurate or realistic when pixels are densely packed.
A precursor of modern computers, the Jacquard loom, invented around 1805, was the first machine to use punch cards to control the loom’s action, automating production of woven patterns across the width or length of a fabric. The method Spangler uses is considered Jacquard weaving, but different from that still used in industry. Spangler now spends at least twice as much time designing as weaving, compared to equal time in the past. The ratio reached four to one on a wall hanging she designed two years ago. Called “Norwegian Inheritance,” the abstract landscape of undulating curves and robust textures in wool, silk, rayon and metallic threads required Spangler to work out six different weave structures so that each of six different colors would rise to the surface, one at a time.
In a different mood, the playful trompe l’oeil “Grandmother’s Norwegian Coverlet” simulates wrinkles and shadows on a wall hanging. As Spangler affirms, “The piece would have taken me several months to weave before. For all practical purposes I wouldn’t have done it without the technology.” Both pieces appeared in an exhibition “Banishing Boundaries—Weaving Digitally,” at the Grand Rapids Art Museum in 2006.
With a parallel career teaching at George Washington University, Mount Vernon College and the Corcoran School of Art, Spangler has passed on the fundamentals of weaving and design that she has learned. “While my textile education was classical and strict,” she concludes, “most of my work has tried to push the boundaries of a given technology, springing from my love of tradition, and the expressive power of color and texture.”
Tina Coplan is a writer based in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
RESOURCES: Christine Spangler’s weaving can be found at the Potomac Craftsmen Gallery in the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia. For more information, call (301) 652-1637 or visit www.spanglertextile.com.
“A lot of my glass is an expression of my musical life,” she explains. “I don’t mull over how to express music in glass, but the experience of music is always running through me, and a great deal of what I’ve learned about balance, rhythm, texture and form in music is translated into glass.”
In her signature sculptures, called Waves, each gently billowing piece suggests a sense of movement that can be linked to the flow of music, water or life. “I look for purity and simplicity in design,” she says. “It’s always about the oneness of life and the beauty of a curve and how the curve is seen in nature and everything that flows.”
Falk is fascinated with the play of light on these undulating forms, with their highly textured surfaces, a counterpoint of horizontal threads and vertical grooves on two sides. As light changes throughout the day, the colors also shift. When the pieces are combined in staggered groups, the chromatic interest intensifies, as colors appear differently on single or overlapping sheets of glass.
A recurring leitmotif weaves its way through all her designs: the violin. “Sitting in the orchestra waiting to play, I spent a lot of time focused on my violin,” she recalls. “My first violin was beautiful, a child’s-size instrument by a very famous maker. I loved to study it.”
She traces the dynamic curves in her glasswork to the violin’s sinuous shape. The threaded texture of her sculptures echoes the fine lines of a violin’s wood grain, strings and hair bow. Even her color preferences—shades of amber and turquoise—relate to the warm hues of violin varnish. “I think of it as honey,” she notes, smiling.
Falk grew up in New York and started playing the violin at age eight. She took music lessons in Juilliard’s Preparatory Division, alongside fellow students Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman. Graduating from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, she received a Fulbright fellowship to study violin-making in Europe.
Artist Nina Falk in her Takoma Park studio.
Throughout this time, the talented musician was also drawn to art. When she first entered New York’s High School of Music and Art, she seriously considered changing majors, remembering moments when “I looked longingly at art students carrying their portfolios.” In college she took sculpture and painting classes.
It wasn’t until 2003, when Falk attended an exhibition at Maryland’s Glen Echo Park, that the impetus for her second career began. She fell in love with and bought a large circular glass platter by Jerry Zayde Sleph, who was a founder of the Glass Consortium at Glen Echo. Inspired by the beauty of the piece, she took a class in kiln-formed glass.
She recalls the horror and joy. “The first piece I made was awful. But the teacher said, ‘Don’t take it too seriously; it’s just for technique.’ The second piece was much better. I was so excited. My life as I knew it was over. I’ve been making glass with a vengeance ever since.”
Workshops at the Corning Museum and renowned Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle followed. In 2005 and 2006, Falk became an artist-in-residence at Washington’s Wesley Theological Seminary. She continues to take workshops and interact with the DC area’s supportive glassmaking community.
Falk’s lyrical design direction was inspired by elements in the platter by Sleph that sparked her second career. Her bowls and platters also use multicolored glass threads and frit—particles of crushed glass ranging in size from small chunks to pulverized powder—along with cut-glass squares in confetti shapes.
Nested Waves reflect a universal form seen in nature
and also in the rise and fall of a melody. They are textured
on both sides. “The idea for these pieces originated from
a comment a dear friend made; she said that people who
love each other are connected by invisible golden threads,”
explains Falk.
Her pieces often incorporate shapely lines of brass, copper or nickel wire embedded between sheets of glass. The grooved surface texture results from cutout forms carved into the glass during firing. Each completed sheet is placed on a commercial mold ready to be slumped into shape in the kiln. The largest piece, a platter, measures 19 inches square.
Falk’s studio, located in the basement of her home in Takoma Park, is a pristine white space outfitted with two kilns, a worktable and shelves studded with more than 100 jars of varied frit. Tubes of glass threads are stacked below. Facing walls are adorned with her favorite art work and motifs: Richard Serra’s surging steel sculptures, Frank Gehry’s curvilinear Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Matisse cutouts, a Calder mobile, a Marimekko fabric wave-pattern in canary yellow and photo details of the ribbed veins on a hosta leaf and peeling bark on an ancient tree.
The process of forming glass in a kiln, rather than by labor-intensive glassblowing, lends itself to a double life. Her two kilns run all day, every day. A single firing may take up to 12 hours to reach a maximum temperature of 1480 degrees, before cooling down to room temperature during the annealing stage. “I can load up the kiln and go off and do a concert or get groceries,” she says.
After a recent matinee performance with the Washington Bach Consort, Falk headed to her studio. She limits her concert schedule to allow more time for making glass, while continuing to perform with ArcoVoce, the chamber ensemble she co-founded with her husband, Steven Silverman, a pianist, harpsichordist and full-time lawyer.
Reflecting on her dual career passions, she muses, “It took years and years to be able to play well, and then the performance is over quickly. It’s satisfying to create glass that will last longer!”
Tina Coplan is a writer based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Greg Staley is a photographer in Silver Spring, Maryland.
RESOURCES
Nina Falk’s glasswork is available at Arts Afire Glass Gallery in Alexandria, Weisser Glass Studio in Kensington and Amano (jewelry only) in Takoma Park; online through Guild.com; and at select craft shows identified on her Web site: www.ninafalkglass.com.
Falk’s Nest Wave Platters blend art and function. When the
platters are displayed in pairs, their curves interact; they are
used separately as serving pieces.
After 13 years of renovating and refining their home, Julie Girardini says with satisfaction, “We love it so much. It’s a crafted, handmade house, and it reflects us.”
Perched on a hillside in Sykesville, Maryland, the conventional contemporary seemed an unlikely choice for the couple’s first single-family home. It did not have the outbuilding they wanted for a studio. It did have overgrown shrubs, lots of dark paneling, a warren of little rooms and a short, narrow hallway ending abruptly at a back door.
Though the property was not what they had envisioned, Julie recalls, “We felt we could make it into what we love.” They liked the symmetrical shape of the house and its placement on a wooded four-acre site across from a protected dairy farm. If they knocked down walls on the first floor, big windows offered possibilities for light and panoramic views.
Ken’s background as a systems analyst at Goddard Space Flight Center and his lifelong interest in hands-on art, coupled with Julie’s experience growing up on an Iowa farm (where everything had to function), ensured that their dream house would remain uncluttered and true to their guiding principle: “We view design as successful if it’s beautiful and still works well,” she says. “You can have both.”
Entering the house today feels like walking into one of the couple’s large-scale sculptures. Metal surfaces glow with the incandescence of patinas and polish. Viewed across the space at a glance, a room divider, a fireplace surround, a door panel, tables, stools and chairs resemble abstract forms in a serene composition. All crafted by these self-taught metal artists, the pieces impart a surprising sense of warmth for cold finished steel.
A few paces from the front door stands the studio where the Girardinis work their wizardry. At 2,000 square feet, the freestanding facility is 10 percent larger than their house. An iconic fruit-bowl design, now discontinued, was a top seller that largely paid for the studio’s construction nine years ago. Here they transform sheets, bars and tubing of steel into functional or purely decorative objects using conventional metalworking tools, a range of chemicals—and their imaginations.
According to personal preference, Ken cuts and welds, Julie finishes. She grinds and polishes pieces using abrasives to achieve the desired surface texture, then seals them with protective lacquer. The couple designs jointly and independently, always consulting with each other. About a third of their work is custom, with fireplace surrounds and installations the most popular.
New pieces typically travel across the courtyard to their home, which often doubles as a gallery space for their latest work. “We transition so much in our work; we’re always doing new things. Why keep anything?” Ken asks rhetorically. Exceptions happen when pieces stay so long they become too difficult to part with, or one artist decides to buy a piece from the other.
Works by fellow craft artists, on permanent display, complement their own. “We have so much great art from our friends. A lot for entertaining, amazing dishes,” notes Julie, who is a gourmet chef. The couple enjoys inviting friends over almost every weekend.
Ken’s photo-transfer-on-patinated-steel wall “paintings” and Julie’s three-dimensional sculptures in metal and mixed media gleam beside objects such as Robert Briscoe’s oversized ceramic serving platter, a centerpiece on the dining table, or Charles Savoie’s Venetian-style goblets in the living area.
Like assembling pieces in a puzzle, the house took shape gradually over a period of 13 years. A sledgehammer got it all rolling. As the first order of business, Ken notes with a wry smile, “we had to destroy the country kitchen.” They proceeded to gut the whole first floor.
During deconstruction, Julie points out, “We never ceased to entertain, even if it wasn’t perfect.” She laughs about a Thanksgiving dinner they hosted during those early years. “We had some chairs that didn’t look good around the cherry table, so we went out and bought green plastic patio chairs. Our family asked, ‘What is this?’ and I said, ‘Don’t worry. The food will be terrific!’”
Limited time to work on the house and a tight budget slowed progress. But, Julie found, “It’s smarter to do it that way. As you go along, your taste is refined and you make smarter choices.”
Those choices required, as Ken put it, “treading that fine line between good design and making it affordable.” In the kitchen, for example, upper cabinets—reminiscent of an abstract jazz-age arrangement—create a lively focus on the first floor. The units were custom built of birds-eye-maple Formica Ligna by the Girardinis’ friend Jamie Jensen, a craftsman-turned-home remodeler. The lower cabinets—a compromise off-the-shelf solution—gain distinction with hardware that the Girardinis fashioned from lamp parts and a twist of stainless-steel aircraft cable.
Determined to take down a bearing wall in the front hall, they consulted an engineer but decided to tackle the job themselves with help from a construction crew. On installation day, they managed to maneuver the steel I-beam up the front stairs. Trying to position the horizontal member into place, they discovered the piece was a quarter-inch too tall. A few car jacks borrowed from the workmen were used to pump up the ceiling. The monumental support—which features a cutout pattern to lighten the industrial look—frames a 15-foot-wide opening to the living area and woods outside.
A cylindrical powder room also demonstrates their artful ingenuity. Once the original structure and its lemon-yellow fixtures were removed, the team was left with exposed floor-to-ceiling copper waste pipes. Now cleaned up and lacquered like one of their metal sculptures, the shiny pipes command pride of place in this Zen-like space, outfitted with other calming materials including a slate floor and polished river stones resting in the sink. The tiny room’s curved walls and steel-paneled door were also installed by Jensen.
The original owner of the house, who became a friend, has watched the transformation of her former home with interest. “If we knew we could have done this ourselves,” she told the Girardinis, “we never would have sold it!” Certainly she must realize that no one else could possibly have done it the Girardinis’ way.
Tina Coplan is a writer based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Photographer Anne Gummerson is based in Baltimore. Ken and Julie Girardinis’ work will be presented at the Washington Craft Show, November 30 to December 2, at the Washington Convention Center. For more information on Girardini Fine Art and Design, visit www.girardinidesign.com.
The fireplace forms an inviting presence at one end of the living room. Its metal panels are recessed as niches and bumped out to create a shelf for art display and seating. On the wall, Ken’s steel “paintings” reflect influences from his early travels as an exchange student in Japan.
** Out of the array of interior design magazines, Home and Design magazine stands out as a primary idea source for luxury home designs. Wonderful visuals of inspired décor and lush landscapes are combined with expert advice to provide a fundamental reference point for bringing amazing home interior design ideas to life.
In the foyer, craft art forms a bold and witty cortege, with a settee by Judy Kensley McKie, Tommy Simpson's carved wood ladder and Czech artist Bohumil Elias's fountain-like glass spire. 20th-century American Realism paintings by Jon Hunt and Joseph Konopka depict urban scenery.
Filtered through trees behind a towering window wall, light animates a procession of monumental craft objects like contemporary totems stationed along the entrance hall in this Maryland home. On one side, a cut, layered glass spire and gnarly wood ladder soar in the vaulted space. Opposite, bronze monkeys kneel like sphinxes forming the arms of a ceremonial settee. The impression is of a temple dedicated to each anointed work of art.
Yet peeking from behind the glass wall, a giant steel giraffe hints at something beyond. Rather than a cathedral of art, this gallery is the gateway to a welcoming home with a stellar craft collection, both much used and enjoyed. As one of the homeowners makes clear, “Our priority is we’re a family that lives with art; this is not a museum. We want everyone to feel comfortable here.”
The collectors assure that this happens. When they host charity receptions, guests carrying drinks casually wander into the first-floor master suite. One wary visitor, wondering whether to place a cup of hot coffee directly on a hand-painted table, is assured, “Don’t worry; it’s ceramic.”
During frequent family drop-ins, the couple’s young grandchildren ride tricycles in the 40-foot-long entrance hall. While remaining calm, the amiable grandmother of nine admits that at times her heart skips a beat when the tricycles turn corners around treasured William Morris glass artifacts, displayed on open pedestals.
The owners’ fun-loving spirit is evident in the playful character of their collection. Humor, wit and an element of surprise prevail in one-of-a-kind pieces created by some of America’s foremost craft artists. Dan Dailey and Thurman Statum in glass, furniture makers Sam Maloof and John Cederquist, Viola Frey and Beatrice Wood in ceramics, fiber masters John McQueen and Diane Itter and wood turners Edward and Philip Moulthrop are among the many artists whose work can be found in museums and in this personal collection. In the couple’s sometimes topsy-turvy universe, trompe l’oeil and literal objects mix and mingle, often amusingly. “We want people to smile,” one of the collectors affirms.
At first glance, a dining table seems to be supported by classical figures that, on closer inspection, turn out to be robots. A glass chair floats, mid-air, in the living room. Here and there, familiar objects appear out of scale, out of context or made out of unexpected materials.
It’s easy to overlook what appears to be a well-worn leather briefcase resting on a foyer table. In fact, this contemporary facsimile was crafted in clay by Marilyn Levine. And in the library, it’s startling to discover that the hanging wall piece—a convincing portrayal of a draped satin tallit, or Jewish prayer shawl—was actually carved from wood by Fraser Smith.
The collection started out with a functional purpose. When the couple built their 9,000-square-foot home 17 years ago, they brought along 110 paintings, but little furniture. The house had wide halls and high ceilings so guests could stand back and enjoy the owners’ collection of 20th- century American Realism paintings. These works, depicting buildings and urban views, reflect the husband’s interest in craftsmanship and realism, and, indirectly, his background in engineering and real estate development.
Viola Frey’s ceramic Grandma with Baseball Player (opposite) greets guests entering the dining room. On the sideboard, the Man with a Hyena lamp by Dan Dailey incorporates a blown-glass shade and a patinated metal base. Another whimsical figure (above), Patti Warashima’s sculpted clay bust of a woman, A Slice of Life, sits on a side buffet. Greg Payce’s series of five clay forms (below), inspired by Italian Renaissance apothecary vessels, takes advantage of the negative space between the jars to create the illusion of male figures.
Interior designer Mallory Lawson designed the breakfast room wall unit to display teapots and other large pieces. Each rests in a mirror-backed niche with built-in illumination. Apple Slice, a painted bronze centerpiece by Politeo, sits on a curly maple dining table by Ed Zucca. Robots form its sculptural trestle base. The collectors commissioned the table after seeing Zucca’s work in a museum exhibition.
Lawson, ASID, a craft and art enthusiast and art-jewelry collector. She has noticed a trend: “Once people who collect art that’s flat on the wall see the quality of these three-dimensional craft pieces, they get hooked,” she says.
Arriving three years ago to renovate the master suite, Lawson moved on to update the couple’s most lived-in rooms, bring order to their existing collection and integrate newly acquired pieces. Her work weaves seamlessly into the home’s existing fabric.
When she began, the surroundings were all safely neutral. In the master suite, she retained the graphite-gray upholstered silk walls as a serene background, adding texture and lightness with new fabrics, deep carpet, Lucite tables and a redesigned bed and nightstands. On both sides of the fireplace, closets were converted into display shelves.
Lawson also renovated parts of the kitchen and reorganized much of the art and craft for heightened impact. A ship model built by the owner became the central focus of the library display, where wood-turned vessels that he crafted in his basement shop are grouped on glass shelves, along with other small wood objects from around the house. “Little things don’t work in great big spaces,” Lawson advises. “Bringing them together as a collection makes more of a statement.” To further the neat look, she alternates shelves of books and objects in a checkerboard pattern.
In the breakfast room, Lawson designed a new built-in wall unit for larger objects, employing her effective craft-display principles.
Lawson moved an étagère, originally located in the breakfast room, to the lower level and filled it with the husband’s wood-turned vessels. Paintings re-hung around the room, ship models floating on discreet cantilevered shelves and vivid oxblood walls transform this expansive gallery into a glamorous entertaining space, where the couple frequently hosts up to 100 for a lecture or 85 for dinner.
Meanwhile, the process of collecting and rethinking goes on. “It will probably be a lifetime project,” Lawson says.
“I hope so!” her client promptly adds. “It continues to be a source of pleasure…trips, learning, meeting people—a big extended family.”
The wife hoped the home would become a magnet for visits from their three out-of-town daughters and their husbands. The movie Field of Dreams had just opened, promoting the message “If you build it, they will come.” She adopted the theme as her own, along with the related idea, “They should all want to come and play.” The plan worked beyond her wildest dreams: The entire family relocated back to the area.
Before moving in, the couple attended craft exhibitions in Chicago and had purchased two craft pieces. A strategy emerged. “It was an epiphany,” the wife recalls. “It occurred to us that if we bought a coffee table, we would have a work of art, a one-of-a-kind piece, and we’d be investing in an artist’s career. We realized that the cost wouldn’t be much different from buying good mass-produced furniture.” The search began for one-of-a-kind craft furniture and accessories, complemented by upholstered pieces for comfortable seating.
The couple’s first commissioned piece came about by chance soon after. They had just sold stock in Jaguar, and the funds remained in a bank in England. Their interior designer at the time, the late Sam Morrow, advised them to order a piece by English furniture-maker Viscount Lindley, a nephew of Queen Elizabeth. The commissioned marquetry cupboard, a regal piece of architecture with inlays of burl elm and Macassar ebony, anchors the living room and center of the house.
Whether the value of any piece escalates doesn’t concern them. “We never bought for investment,” explains the wife. “We buy what we like and somehow it all works together.”
