Cindy's Salon

November 17, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (5)

Someone asked me the other day about my creative influences, and I found myself immediately taken back to my high school English class in Pacific Palisades, California. Every afternoon in Miss O'Brien’s classroom, among the open breezeways and palm-lined courtyards of the modernist masterpiece that was Palisades High, I was encouraged to read critically, write thoughtfully, and to pursue my increasing passion for antiques and design.

Miss O'Brien had noticed my interests, probably because she shared them, and she urged me to think and incorporate them into what I wrote. She taught me to have confidence in my taste. As ...Read More

November 10, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

“Plaid is perennial,” my friend and aesthete, Josh Van Gelder pointed out recently as were on a regular London field trip to see what is new in the world of design and fashion. Plaid was arrayed in many shop windows, so it was among the many subjects we critically analyzed that day. Josh and I have spoken about plaid before, especially about his collection of vintage shirts made by the Pendleton Mills in Oregon.

We agreed that even though the fabric and patterns are constructed simply, the designs still change with taste, often with great facility. (The design of woven plaids can only be manipulated by changing the color of the threads and their arrangement in the warp and weft.) At the same time, the ancient plaids associated with ...Read More

November 3, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

I went to the “American Painting” exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum or Art on Sunday.  It is superlative experience that every American would benefit from seeing. There are 100 paintings on display from 44 institutions. The theme of the exhibition is narrative painting—paintings that tell a story overtly or subtly. The first picture, Watson and the Shark, is a great John Singleton Copley painting of a man overboard in shark infested waters. Since Watson lived, one understands the curatorial reason behind its placement at the entrance of ...Read More

October 27, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

Rick Ellis, my partner, is a food stylist and culinary historian.  He has over 5000 books devoted to American cookery.  I serve as an adjunct curator of sorts.  In fact, I suggested he specialize in American material because, when we started almost 25 years ago, American food was under appreciated.  Its serious scholarly study and even the interest from chefs were just beginning.

Since it is October, I have been thinking about the unavoidable decoration, pumpkins, as blog topic.  And recently, at dinner, amongst our towers of bookcases, Rick and I spoke about this iconic s...Read More

October 20, 2009 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

I was recently in Oxford doing among other things arcane research about paneled rooms, and discovered these photographs. (Are decorators at the Jayne Design Studio the only ones left who employ paneled rooms? I find nothing is equivalent to the kind of background old paneling provides for decoration.)

The photographs are from the Pitt Rivers Museum, a Victorian collection of ethnographic and anthropological specimens arranged by types. What is fantastic is that the old system of arrangement has been maintained, row after row of sarcophagus-shaped glass vitrines filled with a diversity of man made objects, from baskets to shrunken heads. 

...Read More