Friday Favorites 7/5/2013

Cheryl Katz, Contributing Editor 
Toile de Jouy—a traditional French fabric depicting pastoral scenes—is seductive, but the message it telegraphs is often a bit too demure for my taste…until, with a few carefully placed stitches, artist Richard Saja infuses toile with an irreverent sense of humor and recasts its once-staid message. Saja’s firm, Historically Inaccurate Decorative Arts, is based in New York, where he produces his decorative fabrics along with fine art and apparel pieces. For more on Saja and these and other commissioned pieces, go to historically-inaccurate.blogspot.jp.

Paula M. Bodah, Senior Editor
Red, white and blue are everywhere this weekend, but the patriotic combo doesn’t have to manifest in the expected stars-and-stripes theme. I’m pledging my allegiance to a handful of things for the home that take the colors of America in a new direction.

Your guests will feel at home instantly when they’re welcomed by the Lobsterfest doormat from Company C.

Add an unabashedly patriotic tone to your living room, den or deck with Jonathan Adler’s needlepoint pillow portrait of George Washington.

Set a red, white and blue table without a hint of cliche with these pretty napkins from Henhouse Linens.

Kyle Hoepner, Editor-in-Chief
Can’t manage to wangle as many vacations and day trips as you’d like this summer? Not quite able to arrange that fondly imagined afternoon spent sprawling in a hammock, listening to the breeze?

When the real thing just isn’t possible, I will sometimes take a virtual holiday simply by visiting the website of a gifted landscape and garden photographer. One such is Matthew Benson, who not long ago captured a lovely Litchfield County garden for New England Home’s Connecticut edition.

Check out a few other of Matthew’s images for your own quick refresher course in outdoor calm.