Schuyler Samperton Textiles

The world of textile design got richer this year when Schuyler Samperton, a Los Angeles–based interior designer, took the plunge and introduced her own fabric collection under the name of Schuyler Samperton Textiles. With the launch of the fabric line, a dream came true for Samperton, who has been collecting textiles since her teenage years. The word stunning describes my first impression of her collection, which exists of eight fabrics made of 100% linen, available in various colourways. For two months I have been admiring the details of her patterns and asking myself, Where do I even begin to share this beauty?

Nellcote/Petunia by Schuyler Samperton Textiles

You may have seen some of the fabrics by Schuyler Samperton Textiles on my Instagram account this summer, but for the first blog post I landed on the Nellcote/Apricot in a leading role, a bohemian pattern that to me depicts a certain playfulness. (The detail above shows the colour Petunia.)

The Nellcote/Apricot is the fabric and colour I would like to use for a cushion or two in our new living room, after we have purchased a new sofa - I'm moving soon, about to start packing! I have been playing with ideas and every time this is the pattern that feels right, plus its colours match well with the textiles I already have and the ones I have my eyes on.

Left: The Doshi fabric in Persimmon. Right: In foreground, Nellcote/Apricot;
top, Caledonia/Mandarin; bottom-left, Celandine/Sunset

Of the eight designs, the Doshi fabric is the one with a loosely printed pattern, a simple botanical motif. You can easily use any of its five colourways to draw out another colour, resulting in a beautifully decorated space. For this post I chose the Doshi/Persimmon but I also have a crush on a blue version, Doshi/Lake. The floral fabric also seen in my image above is Celandine/Sunset.

Some other time I would like to feature the Caledonia design in more detail on the blog. It's the floral fabric with the butterfly in my image above, in the colour Mandarin. This fabric also has a bird motif.

Another Schuyler Samperton design I'm fond of using in my new home is the Cordoba fabric with a paisley motif, seen folded in the colour Spice in my image above, and in detail below (also spotted in Indigo under the ceramic vase). I have yet to decide between the Cordoba/Spice and Cordoba/Dahlia.

I will be featuring more fabrics later. In the meantime you can view the full range of fabrics on the website of Schuyler Samperton Textiles, where you will also find a list of showrooms.

Cordoba/Spice by Schuyler Samperton Textiles

A few years back I featured the work of Schuyler Samperton on the blog. The suzani lovers out there may perhaps remember this particular post where, among others, I shared an image of a West Hollywood bedroom (scroll down), belonging to a residence she designed. She studied art history and decorative arts at Trinity College, NYU and Parsons School of Design, and for four years she worked for American interior designer Michael S. Smith. Her interior design projects are accessible online. Throughout September I will be adding some of my favourite Schuyler Samperton spaces to the Lunch & Latte Tumblr page.

Textile and interior designer Schuyler Samperton. © Schuyler Samperton Textiles/Alexandre Jaras

A talk with textile designer Lisa Fine

The late American photographer Ansel Adams once said: 'You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.' His words apply to any kind of creative art and I used them to start an email conversation with textile designer Lisa Fine. On the blog I have described her as a designer with a sense of history; I stick to my words. She has a knack for colours, for patterns, and it feels as if each fabric by Lisa Fine Textiles tells a story. She was born and raised in Mississippi. Today she lives in New York with her dogs and travels widely, often to India and other exotic places. Miniature paintings have inspired her career, and so has painter Henri Matisse.

Wherever possible, also in direct quotes, I have added links to e.g. short essays on museum websites that I found interesting and educational. Except for the Matisse paintings, all the images were chosen by me.

[Fabrics by Lisa Fine Textiles shown in my top image (click each for info): Cairo, Kashgar,
Luxor, Malabar, Malula, Mandalay, Pasha, and Rajkot. For books, see further below]

Persian miniature: Mir Sayyid 'Ali, Night-time in a City, c. 1540, Tabriz, Iran, Safavid Period

To go back to Adams's words, what has left its mark on Lisa Fine (given how much she has discovered through her work and travels).

LF: My life is very much about people, however, books and art not only inspire and teach but are the best refuge.

My favorite painter is Matisse. I love his mix of color and pattern, especially in his orientalist portraits. Irving & Fine [collaboration with textile designer Carolina Irving] peasant blouses were very much inspired by his work. I also love the Fauvism movement.

Her other two favourite artists are Kees Van Dongen and Amedeo Modigliani.

Henri Matisse, Zorah on the Terrace, 1912

She doesn't have a favourite Matisse painting but said: 'I love his Moroccan period most, especially the portraits.' Later I found his work Zorah on the Terrace in my inbox with the words: 'Love Moroccan portraits.' The other two by Matisse followed, the one below with the words: 'Love odalisque series.'

Carnations in my study

The other day my son and I were having breakfast when he asked me what were my favourite flowers. Without thinking I said carnations (on the table was a vase with yellow ones). 'Why?' he asked. 'Because they are durable,' I said, 'they last long.' A few years back I would have said white tulips or peonies, without a doubt. When I think about it I cannot really choose between these three, but carnations are the flowers I buy most of the time (the Spaniards were on to something when they chose the red carnation as their national flower). This is an image I snapped in my study this morning while enjoying a nutmeg latte. Carnations and stacks of books on my desk is a common sight.

Happy Holidays with tulips

As I write this in the comfort of my living room with the fire burning and guitar playing, Storm Barbara has swept in. Luckily our region has a yellow zone warning and we're only expecting heavy rain and wind. For us the weather doesn't really matter, it's almost Christmas time and we're not heading anywhere - the next days consist of good food, reading and sleeping. I start Christmas Eve morning with good coffee before preparing the dessert, risalamande (rice and almond pudding) that I serve with home-made cherry sauce in the evening ... delicious! Around lunch time tomorrow we enjoy Swedish braided bread and hot chocolate while the smoked lamb (Icelandic tradition) is cooking. In my mind, the ideal julehygge.

I would like to wish you, my dear blog readers, Happy Holidays and my best wishes for 2017. Thank you for all the blog visits this year and your kind comments and likes on other social media sites.

Interior design: Purple shades and original tiles

You know those pages in magazines that you keep coming back to? For me this is one of them. The bedroom belongs to designer Stefano Guidotti's home by Lake Como in Italy that was featured in the April issue of Elle Decoration UK ('Como in Colour', photographed by Mads Mogensen). In his own words he is obsessed with colour and thought of the original patterned floor tiles as huge rugs when decorating his home. The shades of his walls are beautiful and he has a wonderful selection of decorative objects. If you can get a hold of the issue then check out the leather sofa in the living room and the colour of his dining area. Such an inspiring house tour!

image by me | credit: Elle Decoration UK, April 2016, p. 167 · Mads Mogensen

Happy Easter with tulips

Dear readers, I hope you are enjoying a happy and peaceful Easter weekend!

Interior design: Letting the outdoors in

The March 2016 issue of Elle Decoration UK is filled with many interesting features and has made up for the disappointing March issue of The World of Interiors, which is another story (don't get me started on the cover!). One of the house tours in Elle Decoration that I liked was of a beautiful apartment in Lyon that has been circling in the blogosphere (it also appeared in the Australian magazine Vogue Living where you can view all the images). Another tour that appealed to me was of a contemporary townhouse in Cologne with Asian-inspired influences (see Den of Zen on journalist Kristina Radershad's website). No worries, I'm not going to tell you about every feature in the issue but the reason I snapped a photo of that dining area is that we are heading for spring and I'm a fan of letting the outdoors in when it gets warmer ('The Borrowers', a flat in Milan photographed by Fabrizio Cicconi). Apart from its mismatched floor materials, the flat itself is a bit too quirky for my taste. However, this space is also a kitchen and I like the idea of being able to open the doors onto a large balcony and perhaps feel a light breeze while dining or enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning.

image by me | credit: Elle Decoration UK, March 2016, p. 186 · Fabrizio Cicconi

A natural kitchen with texture

Texture done right is what comes to mind when I view the image above. Kitchens with open shelving usually have that element of lightness that I like and the decorative scheme in this one, the natural and warm look with earthy ceramics and kitchenware, is ideal. Apart from the moss green units the palette is neutral, meaning that texture is the key to an eye-catching look. Everything works here and the cover of the Chesterfield sofa, hand-woven Hungarian linen, adds that extra textural touch. The shelves and other kitchen units are carved from untreated oak, and wooden crates are used for storage instead of closing the units with doors.

About three months ago I pinned two images of this same kitchen. They looked familiar but I just couldn't place them until recently when I leafed through a stack of magazines to look for a particular house tour. In the February 2015 issue of Elle Decoration UK, there it was, another angle of this kitchen I thought I must have seen before, part of a feature called Revival of a Classic (photographed by Michael Paul). Initially I thought it was perhaps Scandinavian but it belongs to a renovated Edwardian style house by the coast in West Sussex. If you like natural and rustic style this house tour won't disappoint you. The house owner is Alex Legendre, who owns the I Gigi boutique in Brighton.

[Want to see more? The images I pinned show the 'Butler' sink, a vintage find, and the use of wooden crates as storage. For those of you who don't use Pinterest, you can view these images on the website of the Norwegian interior magazine Vakre Hjem & Interiør.]

image by me | credit: Elle Decoration UK, February 2015, p. 88 · Michael Paul

The Mitfords: Letters | Happy Easter

I hope this Easter Sunday is treating you well. I was wishing for sunny holidays but didn't get my wish so yesterday I went to the library to borrow some books. I had just finished reading The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley (the daughter-in-law of one of the Mitfords, Diana Mosley), and wanted to borrow more books about these interesting characters, but the library was closed. So disappointing! I will just have to enjoy my magazines and eat chocolate.

Actually, I never intended to read the aforementioned book. I had gone to the library some weeks ago to borrow The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh (Nancy was the oldest Mitford sister, who became a well-known author), but unfortunately they didn't have it. I was looking for something else when the librarian brought me the book with the letters between the sisters and told me she had found it in the storage room; perhaps I was interested? I immediately liked the cover but since the book was 830-pages long I thought I would only leaf through it. Of course I ended up reading it from the beginning to the end, sometimes unable to put it down.

I'm not going to bore you with a long account of the Mitford sisters but I guess we could label some of them as British socialites of the 20th century. The dynamics between them, as expressed in their letters, were interesting, and some of them led colourful lives. I hardly knew anything about them before I read the book and you should have seen me when I reached a point where one of them, Unity, is sitting in a restaurant with Adolf Hitler in Munich. I certainly wasn't expecting a description of his personal charm in a letter, but it's there and quite a lot of it. She was obsessed with him and she tried to commit suicide when the war broke out in 1939, which is another (sad) story. Let me just say that this book certainly takes you to some extreme places! You only have to google the Mitfords to know more about them but I found short articles with photos on the BBC website and The Guardian.

Happy Easter!

A Persian cat was here