Stuff: The M(Group) Guide

left Casts of gods and George Washington are features of the fireplace wall in the bedroom.

The cabinets are from the Casa Encantada in Bel Air, California, which was decorated by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings between 1934 and 1938.

The fireplace is original to the house. We had the paint stripped and waxed to make it look like a plaster panel. President Washington was found in the trash outside a public school on Manhattan’s 57th Street and Second Avenue in August. He was heavy and it was very hot, but I managed to grapple him five blocks and drop him off with a friend’s doorman.

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7/26/12 3:38 PM

left Casts of gods and George Washington are features of the fireplace wall in the bedroom.

The cabinets are from the Casa Encantada in Bel Air, California, which was decorated by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings between 1934 and 1938.

The fireplace is original to the house. We had the paint stripped and waxed to make it look like a plaster panel. President Washington was found in the trash outside a public school on Manhattan’s 57th Street and Second Avenue in August. He was heavy and it was very hot, but I managed to grapple him five blocks and drop him off with a friend’s doorman.

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7/26/12 3:38 PM

Left Over the bed, the large map of commercial airline routes after World War II was originally in the chairman of the Federal Aviation Agency’s Washington office. It was a housewarming gift from his grandson, who knew Hermes loved maps and later gave it to him. All the routes and carriers are delineated, with little plastic tapes and named buttons. Who knew you could once fly directly from Santa Fe to Boise?

The room is large and bright, so it could handle a rich brown paint by master colorist Donald Kaufman, and the big, bright Oushak carpet. It serves as Hermes’ office in the country, with a fully extended cork-top dining table, by American designer Paul Frankl, that now functions as a perfect desk.

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7/26/12 3:18 PM

Left Over the bed, the large map of commercial airline routes after World War II was originally in the chairman of the Federal Aviation Agency’s Washington office. It was a housewarming gift from his grandson, who knew Hermes loved maps and later gave it to him. All the routes and carriers are delineated, with little plastic tapes and named buttons. Who knew you could once fly directly from Santa Fe to Boise?

The room is large and bright, so it could handle a rich brown paint by master colorist Donald Kaufman, and the big, bright Oushak carpet. It serves as Hermes’ office in the country, with a fully extended cork-top dining table, by American designer Paul Frankl, that now functions as a perfect desk.

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7/26/12 3:18 PM

Right Knotty pine is a favorite wood of ours. The wood is cheap but the finishing process is key. This room was oxidized and then French polished; it is warm and welcoming, and looks like it has always been there (in a good way…). The pine paneling is very American but the decoration has elements from far afield. The black-and-white Robert Mapplethorpe photograph snaps against a wood background.

1 Louis XV fruitwood fauteuil, France, eighteenth century.

2 African antelope skin and raffia wrapped drum, contemporary.

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3 Regency brass dolphins mounted as lamps, England, around 1820.

4 Pair of bronze “rain” drums, Thailand, twentieth century.

5 Robert Mapplethorpe, Flower, 1980s.

6 American Empire side table with a slate top, New York, nineteenth century.

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7/26/12 3:32 PM

Right Knotty pine is a favorite wood of ours. The wood is cheap but the finishing process is key. This room was oxidized and then French polished; it is warm and welcoming, and looks like it has always been there (in a good way…). The pine paneling is very American but the decoration has elements from far afield. The black-and-white Robert Mapplethorpe photograph snaps against a wood background.

1 Louis XV fruitwood fauteuil, France, eighteenth century.

2 African antelope skin and raffia wrapped drum, contemporary.

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3 Regency brass dolphins mounted as lamps, England, around 1820.

4 Pair of bronze “rain” drums, Thailand, twentieth century.

5 Robert Mapplethorpe, Flower, 1980s.

6 American Empire side table with a slate top, New York, nineteenth century.

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7/26/12 3:32 PM

Name: Tulas/Suzanis/Ikats DAtE: Nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Turkish textiles used to be rare, but now with our design globalization, things we seldom saw before are ubiquitous. Take suzanis for example. These large embroidered pieces are used as bed covers, room dividers, baby wraps, or horse blankets. Practically at birth, Uzbek women start working on their wedding dowries. By the time the big day rolls around, the average middle-class girl has ten suzanis in her hope chest. Our first trip to Istanbul turned into a frenzy of textile shopping. Once we had seen the handsome and typical black and red embroidery, we wanted the softer and rarer colors. After we discovered suzanis, we segued to tulus—smaller, usually 3- by 5-foot woven pieces with long angora hair.

A detail of a suzani shows its exquisitely executed silk needlework on a linen field.

Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566) expanded the powers of the Ottomans far beyond Constantinople, threatening Europe’s capitals, and sowing the seeds for centuries of conflict between Islam and the West.

Around 1872, a Jewish spinner, wearing a bright ikat coat, twists silk to make thread for fine weavings in Tashkent, a major trading city on the Silk Road.

A nineteenth century photograph of a robe vendor shows his incredible selection of ikat menswear. The equally vivid linings are often quilted cotton in floral patterns or stripes.

Avoid the hot chemical-looking colors and seek out earthier tones, and whatever you do, keep them away from the cat. We bought four tulas, and a few weeks later, in Paris, we saw one hanging with pride of place over a Louis XVI lemonwood console at the super-chic Galerie Camoin-Demachy on the Quai Voltaire.

Validation—decades of therapy later, and I still crave it. We segued to the silk ikats. For us, the suzanis and the tulas worked well for covering a bed or decorating a sofa. But ikats, woven on

I love this mid-twentieth century Angora tula weaving from central Anatolia for its Marin County hippie vibe. The wool— long, shiny, and very important, since tulas were used as blankets—is cozy and warm. narrow looms, are smaller and too fragile to just throw around, and are thus more of a collectible—as we usually focus on the functional. We ended up with a few beautiful ikat coats as parting gifts from a dealer. Those last-minute gestures of lagniappe, of which we get our fair share, confirm we paid too much. Even at my most delusional, I know it wasn’t about my charm. For the ultimate in the genre, see the catalog from the 2005-2006 “Style and Status: Imperial Costumes from Ottoman Turkey” show from the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The process of creating vibrant silk ikats is extremely complex —involving a combination of dyeing and weaving techniques that go completely over my head.

For more details about Turkish textiles, please visit: www.mgroupstuff.com/turkishtextiles Opposite The headboard in the second bedroom is an old, banged-up section of a tin ceiling that was found in Hudson, New York, covered in generations of paint—just what the room needed. A suzani is used as a bedcover.

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7/26/12 3:34 PM

Name: Tulas/Suzanis/Ikats DAtE: Nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Turkish textiles used to be rare, but now with our design globalization, things we seldom saw before are ubiquitous. Take suzanis for example. These large embroidered pieces are used as bed covers, room dividers, baby wraps, or horse blankets. Practically at birth, Uzbek women start working on their wedding dowries. By the time the big day rolls around, the average middle-class girl has ten suzanis in her hope chest. Our first trip to Istanbul turned into a frenzy of textile shopping. Once we had seen the handsome and typical black and red embroidery, we wanted the softer and rarer colors. After we discovered suzanis, we segued to tulus—smaller, usually 3- by 5-foot woven pieces with long angora hair.

A detail of a suzani shows its exquisitely executed silk needlework on a linen field.

Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566) expanded the powers of the Ottomans far beyond Constantinople, threatening Europe’s capitals, and sowing the seeds for centuries of conflict between Islam and the West.

Around 1872, a Jewish spinner, wearing a bright ikat coat, twists silk to make thread for fine weavings in Tashkent, a major trading city on the Silk Road.

A nineteenth century photograph of a robe vendor shows his incredible selection of ikat menswear. The equally vivid linings are often quilted cotton in floral patterns or stripes.

Avoid the hot chemical-looking colors and seek out earthier tones, and whatever you do, keep them away from the cat. We bought four tulas, and a few weeks later, in Paris, we saw one hanging with pride of place over a Louis XVI lemonwood console at the super-chic Galerie Camoin-Demachy on the Quai Voltaire.

Validation—decades of therapy later, and I still crave it. We segued to the silk ikats. For us, the suzanis and the tulas worked well for covering a bed or decorating a sofa. But ikats, woven on

I love this mid-twentieth century Angora tula weaving from central Anatolia for its Marin County hippie vibe. The wool— long, shiny, and very important, since tulas were used as blankets—is cozy and warm. narrow looms, are smaller and too fragile to just throw around, and are thus more of a collectible—as we usually focus on the functional. We ended up with a few beautiful ikat coats as parting gifts from a dealer. Those last-minute gestures of lagniappe, of which we get our fair share, confirm we paid too much. Even at my most delusional, I know it wasn’t about my charm. For the ultimate in the genre, see the catalog from the 2005-2006 “Style and Status: Imperial Costumes from Ottoman Turkey” show from the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The process of creating vibrant silk ikats is extremely complex —involving a combination of dyeing and weaving techniques that go completely over my head.

For more details about Turkish textiles, please visit: www.mgroupstuff.com/turkishtextiles Opposite The headboard in the second bedroom is an old, banged-up section of a tin ceiling that was found in Hudson, New York, covered in generations of paint—just what the room needed. A suzani is used as a bedcover.

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7/26/12 3:34 PM