Friday Favorites 9/2/2011

Cheryl Katz, Contributing Editor
In our design studio, on the top two shelves of our bookcase, are twenty-five issues of the now defunct Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors. (We are missing #1, which is so difficult to find that it’s practically a collector’s item.) The magazine, published from 1997 to 2004, showcased interiors that were beautiful because of, not in spite of, their idiosyncrasies. It was in Nest that I first saw the photographs of Derry Moore.

The seventy-four-year-old Moore had been photographing interiors (as well as portraits–thirty-seven of them are in London’s National Portrait Gallery) since 1973. But I came to his work in the third (Winter 1998–1999) issue of Nest, where Moore’s photographs of Pauline de Rothschild’s London apartment–shot a few months after she had died in 1976–were published. What drew me to the hauntingly beautiful interiors was that the spirit of the woman was palpable in the photographs.

I’ve been a devotee of Moore’s ever since, returning to his work often, always surprised by the personality of the inhabitant his rooms, even when empty, can evoke.

Interior by Elsie de Wolfe; photo by Derry Moore

Paula M. Bodah, Senior Editor
I don’t usually think of blue as an autumn color but these new Brentano upholstery fabrics are changing my mind. I love the rich blueberry hues in Pompadour (left) and Parfait. What’s extra-nice about these fabrics is that they’re super-durable, made of a blend of acrylic and polyester and treated for stain resistance, but they don’t sacrifice style a bit. I’m partial to the blue, but both come in a number of other colorways.

Kyle Hoepner, Editor-in-Chief
It’s now September, when New England’s weather, to me, becomes briefly perfect. Something about the state of the atmosphere–a limpid clarity we get at no other time of year–brings to mind the subtle elegance of acrylic side tables like these two.

The Meiji Acrylic Table, from Suzanne Rheinstein’s Hollyhock in Los Angeles.

The I-Beam Table from Gus* Design Group of Toronto. (Gus* products are available locally through WA Harmony in Provincetown, Addo Novo in Portland and Boston, and KW Home in Easthampton, Mass.)