Like a pond recently disrupted by a belligerent stone; the ripples of today’s world-wide economic ‘splash’ continue to tussle, if not capsize completely, every boat in the water. (more…)

London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson on how fat this makes me look. (more…)

As is true for any path to success the journey is a sum total of small steps. At times the act of taking a single step can bear resemblance to shouldering the weight of the world but it remains a step nonetheless; proceeded by one of a similar description while anticipating fruit from the same family tree. As the old tune reminds us in what can be an annoyingly perky platitude, “put one foot in front of the other…” (more…)

Be on the lookout! Beverly Hills Interior Designer James Swan’s DesignQuotient™ blog is holding our first-ever Treasure Hunt! (more…)

Opening tomorrow, March 13, 2009 and running through Sunday March 22 is the TEFAF Maastricht 09: The Worlds Leading Fine Art and Antique Fair (www.tefaf.com). Proudly featuring an estimated $1 billion dollars worth of art and antiques (not including modern fine jewelry), the fair draws high profile private collectors and museum curators and trustees from 25 countries. (more…)

No, this is not an entry in the “financial scandal of the moment” contest but rather something a bit more upbeat!

My fascination with the Christie’s auction of the Pierre Berge/Yves Saint Laurent collection in Paris this week proved a worthy subject as the sale accelerated past initial estimates of $255 million to a final sale price of $484 million. The 733 pieces making up the collection of these noted lovers, friends and business partners marked records both in the art and decorative art categories.

Much has been written of the provenance, prices, scandals and sentiments circling around the sale and to this burgeoning file I will not add. My one observation would be that of the delicious validation this sale has offered, despite the world’s financial turmoil, to the pursuit of beauty and refinement.

We may not aspire to the “real money” which Mr. Berge notes opened the opportunity for collecting to the pair in the early 1970’s but we can honor the impulse and mimic the efforts of gathering objects we treasure, even when valued only by our own hearts. I have for years encouraged friends and clients to collect; to find something which occupies their interest and to invest time gathering to themselves the best examples possible.

It matters not if these items are precious or prevalent the question is how you perceive them in your living environment and then how you elect to share this passion with those who are guests in your home. Sharing your collection (thank you Mr. Berge) extends personal charm in a manner which no amount of money can buy. You and your guests will be richer for the experience.

Here is a picture of Mr. Saint Laurent’s Paris Living Room taken around 1977. Note the Eileen Gray Serpent Chair in the foreground which set a record at auction for 20th Century furniture; selling this week for $29 million.

Enjoy!

Post your comments–and don’t forget to enter to win the DesignQuotient™ $500 American Express Gift Card Giveaway!

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Ballard Designs asked acclaimed Beverly Hills interior designer James Swan to design the four central rooms in their March/April 2009 catalog.

Behind The Scenes

Go behind the scenes at Ballard’s Style Studio website to see a gallery of Jim’s favorite pieces and their great prices.

Also on Ballard’s Style Studio:

An Interview with James Swan: Decorating on a Budget

James Swan budget decorated this Living Room for Ballard’s March/April 2009 catalog.

Ballard: We asked James to design four different rooms for us, all filled with Ballard Designs. We are thrilled to have James creating a fresh new approach to our products. His unique sense of how a room should evolve will inspire our customers to go beyond their comfort zone in creating their own style. James has created some of the world’s most beautiful spaces. His style is instilled with clean, effortless elegance, a consistent eye for detail and keen sense of the appropriate.
We introduced James to our new items that would be featured in our March 2009 catalog. He feverishly started sketching ideas and concepts for the living room, bedroom, dining room and office space we wanted him to conceptualize. What an inspiration! We hope you enjoy James’ vision which reflects his eye for detail and his process in creating spaces filled with eclectic taste and personality.

Then, we talked to him about the project and how he approached the project:

SKETCH * JAMES ON LOCATION * FINISHED ROOM

Ballard Designs: What was it like to work exclusively with Ballard Designs?
James Swan: There were three big benefits: Number one – the range of options. Ballard has amassed an amazing body of stylish products for the home and it was exciting to have such a broad selection. Second was the uniqueness of options. A lot of resources out there seem to cookie-cut their lines to reflect what’s already on the market. Ballard consistently offers unique, fresh choices that reflect the worldwide market. And I really appreciated how easy it was to use Ballard. Homemakers have enough challenges, so to work with a company that makes the process easy, is worth its weight in gold.

BD: Where did you begin in decorating these rooms?

JS: When building a room, I like to work from the bottom up, just like building a home where everything springs from the foundation. When you select a rug or carpet for a room, you give yourself wonderful parameters for color, pattern and texture that can be easily spun into each subsequent selection.

BD: After the rug, what’s next?

JS: I would say that the major upholstered pieces would take the next slot of importance, followed shortly by major case pieces (tables, chests, armoires, etc). Upholstery you will sit on most everyday of your life needs to be beautiful, comfortable and appropriate to the home. Case pieces should function in a way that supports how you use a room, so give thought to what your needs are and how a specific piece can meet those needs.

BD: What about color and texture?

JS: We communicate a wide range of ideas and emotions by the colors we select and we support those with the added dimension of texture. A beautiful room is of little use if it doesn’t entice you in and put you at ease. I believe that the rooms you see here, strongly supported by their range of colors, do just that – they put you at ease.

BD: What role do accessories play in your rooms?

JS: I like to think of decorative accessories as the jewelry in a room. A woman can be beautifully dressed and ready to head out the door when suddenly she adds a piece or two of jewelry and suddenly she dazzles! Accessories do the same thing in a room; they add character and interest particularly when they reflect the tastes and interests of those living in the home.

BD: Which room did you have the most fun putting together?

JS: Each room was great fun, but I think the office might be my favorite. The broad range of accessories used in the room help to sketch out the personality of the people living there. To me, this proved very exciting because it was very close to the work I do everyday, creating unique spaces for my clients and their families.

Coming Soon…a new book from interior designer James Swan!

101 Things I Hate About Your House
By James Swan
with Carol Beggy
Illustrations by Stanley A. Meyer

What if you could buy one book for the cost of a chrome bathrobe hook in a popular mall store’s catalog and that book could add thousands of dollars to the value of the your home and enhance your quality of life? Homeowners, aspiring homeowners, renters, and those looking to recoup some of the value lost in the recent market downturn, would consider such a book a gold mine. 101 Things I Hate About Your House from nationally renowned interior designer James Swan is that book.

As Beverly Hills-based practitioner of the principles for gracious living, Swan is the perfect style Sherpa to guide readers on their journey of transformation as they improve their daily surroundings and develop a more gracious way of life. Whether the place you call home is a 1,000-square-foot bungalow in Arlington, Massachusetts, or $1,200 month rental in a five-story walkup in a Chicago brownstone, or a sprawling Contemporary-style in Los Angeles, everyone has dreams of what they want their home and life to be. Swan’s 101 Things is an instructional manual for those who want to make the most of what they have. It is a crisp and humorous book that takes readers on a room-by-room, subject-by-subject, thirteen chapter tour of “everyman’s house.” Along the way, the book points out “101 Things” that require attention and while the laughter echoes, Swan delivers solid, practical solutions. Readers are primed for action as they set out to improve their surroundings and, more importantly, their lives.

By eschewing the traditional glossy, high-end, four-color tomes depicting unattainable interiors, 101 Things shines the light of humor on practical opportunities and presents doable, cost effective solutions for readers to make their homes and lives more beautiful. Swan’s smart, concise and practical advice can be turned into reality regardless of income, size, style or location of the reader’s home.
Swan says that “Regardless of the state of your estate, be it massive or minuscule, or your Style IQ, these principles of good living will deliver a framework for a gracious home and by extension more gracious living… And unlike subjective opinions about “style” and “taste” these principles can be focused in a way that allows you to celebrate the home you have and the life you lead. Another way to look at this is that you can have fun with your home. I hereby give you permission to do so.”

Make sure to enter to win the James Swan DesignCoach™ American Express $500 Gift Card Contest today!

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Everything we believed to be true seems to be sliding into a state of pseudo-fiction leaving some to dig their heels of denial further into the hardpan of reality. There are others, many it seems, who view the times as having changed and actively look for ways to manifest this essential difference.

Two stories from the New York Times fashion pages shed light on corners of our cultural consciousness which bode well for the new chapter unfolding daily.

FASHION & STYLE | February 15, 2009
Revealing New Layers of African Fashion
By Guy Trebay

FASHION & STYLE | February 15, 2009
Fashion Diary: Has the ‘Obama Effect’ Come to Runway Castings?
By Guy Trebay

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Shown in the book View From the Top: 50 Great Apartments and HGTV’s “Homes Across America.”

The Architecture Monogram Series

These great personalized gift and home accessories have an interesting history. Each piece features classical architectural follies designed in the shape of letters from the original 1773 Architectural Alphabet manuscript of architect J.D. Steingruber…

Choose note cards and a tote bag with your initial,
or hang one, two or three framed prints.

…Intriguingly, architect J. D. Steingruber decided to majestically flank his letter ‘I’ with a small ‘E’ & ‘A.’ Even more curious, he left out one letter completely from his Architectural Alphabet—the letter ‘J.’ We think J.D. kept it for himself. Although DesignCoach™ James Swan loves the ‘S’ canvas totes and note cards, he was not content to only hang the letter ‘S’ on his wall, so he hung Steingruber’s entire alphabet! You can see the stunning result in the photo above from the book View From the Top: 50 Great Apartments, also featured on HGTV’s show “Homes Across America.”

19″ x 15″ Framed Prints $45.49 Tote Bags $16.89 Note Cards (Pk of 10) $12.99

A Fascinating History: Steingruber’s Alphabet is a rare alphabet-themed volume that was published in 1773. The blog Giornale Nuovo offers this history and commentary of the unique work:

 

Each letter of the alphabet is made into a plan of a palatial building. In the case of A, there is a grand hall at the apex of the building, while its crossbar comprises a central passageway flanked by a pair of arcaded hallways, and, at the letter’s feet there are ‘cabinets’ and ‘garderobes.’ E is intended to house two sets of apartments, with main entrances top & bottom, and a chapel in the central prong of the building, which, Steingruber concedes, could equally well be made into a grand staircase, or a special reception room.

Some letters make for more conventional buildings than others: H ‘lends itself admirably to a design for a palace in the country for a personage of consequence,’ whereas S must yield a ‘curiosity, rather than a workable building.’ Even so, Steingruber has thought hard at making his S a suitably royal residence, with a pair of circular reception rooms, a quartet of spiral staircases, and a dozen servants’ rooms at the extremities of the building, some of whose occupants would be granted the peculiar pleasure of inhabiting a serif. The Z building is another which provided the architect with a challenge, but by blunting its outward angles, and softening its inward ones with rounded cabinets; and by carefully shaping and arranging rooms and stairwells; he is able to complete the alphabet to his satisfaction.

 

Steingruber (1702-87) was the son of a master mason from a place called Wassertrüdingen an der Wörnitz, near the town of Dinkelsbühl. After an apprenticeship in which he worked on constructing palaces at Mannheim and Rastatt, he came to work at the Brandenburg court at Ansbach in the service of the margrave Friedrich Carl Alexander. He was soon appointed court & public surveyor, and was later made principal architect of the board of works. Besides completing many building projects, Steingruber expounded on architectural theory in his books Architeccture Civile (ca. 1748) and Practica Bürgerlicher Baukunst (Practical Course in Civil Architecture, 1763).

In their book Neiw Kunstliches Alphabet by Kiermeier-Debre and Vogel, the authors mention other architects who had proposed constructions from alphabetical foundations: one Anton Glonner, a contemporary of Steingruber’s, designed a Jesuit church and college around that order’s ‘IHS’ monogram, while others sought to build up from their own initials. More interestingly, almost a century before the publication of Steingruber’s alphabet, a French architect named Thomas Gobert (1625-90) had compiled a manuscript Traitté d’Architecture dedié à Louis XIV which included a series of building-plans which spelled, in stylized letters, the words ‘LOVIS LE GRAND’ (Louis the Great). (History posted by blog poster misteraitch on Giornale Nuovo.)

19″ x 15″ Framed Prints $45.49 Tote Bags $16.89 Note Cards (Pk of 10) $12.99
Find your monogram.

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A Beverly Hills Interior Designer Asks “Can Design Save the U.S. Economy?”

Some things seem as productive as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Many will consider the suggestion that design could prove valuable in restoring order to our economy to be simply ridiculous. I would suggest to you that the idea is no more ridiculous than the suggestion that the Unsinkable might today be found at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

One of my favorite definitions of design may be found in a copy of The New York Times Book of Interior Design and Decoration (1965 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc.) were in the preface the author suggests “designing starts with the development of an idea and sees it through to its completion.”

So pick your discipline: fashion, graphic, architecture, interiors, product, industrial… there is not a moment in our day when the world of design has not touched our experience. In each instance the process has, to a greater or lesser extent, followed a process which initiates an idea through to its reality in the real world.

To say that an idea, as regarding our current economic condition, is missing or is in some way illusive would indicate a shocking lack of awareness. Regardless which side of the aisle you prefer the idea paramount in today’s public conversation is one of survival–as in “How will we survive?”

To cheapen the answer to this monumental idea by ideological bickering is an insult to the public who have been victimized by rhetoric and irresponsible leadership for far too long. Much like my clients who can spin themselves into twisted states of anxiety when debating which fabric to pick for the drapes, many of our leaders today are twisting their long held party traditions into untenable knots which threaten to hamper forward motion.

Remember: no lives will be saved by picking the right fabric and honestly folks, does anyone really believes that clinging to an ideology is going to save our collective asses? What needs to happen is for us to “see it through to its completion.”

We have a leader who is leading (much like designers design). Let’s let him do his job, shall we?

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Sadly, another shelter magazine folds and the number of outlets for design dwindles. As reported in the New York Times, Domino, the three-year-old shopping and home décor magazine, will stop publishing with its March issue…The publisher, Beth Fuchs Brenner, and the editor, Deborah Needleman, will leave Condé Nast, a company spokeswoman, Maurie Perl, said. A handful of staff members will be placed in open Condé Nast positions, but most of the staff of about 80 will be dismissed and will leave the company within a week.

The New York Observer noted that Domino was “launched with great buzz in 2005, the magazine was nominated for two National Magazine Awards in 2008.”

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Beverly Hills Interior Designer James Swan is delighted to announce a partnership with Ballard Designs on Ballard’s 2009 Spring Collection. As reported in Home World Business Magazine:

Ballard Designs, a multi-channel retailer of classically inspired furnishings and accessories, today unveiled a partnership with interior designer James Swan. The design collaboration is the first of its kind for the retailer.

Swan will produce full room layouts and decorating vignettes featuring Ballard Designs products, using both spring 2009 introductions as well as the brand’s iconic items.

“Ballard Designs is thrilled to partner with such a talented designer like James Swan for our Spring 2009 collection,” said Laura Daily, Ballard’s vp/merchandising in a statement. “His elegant approach to interior design will create a fresh look for our catalog and hopefully inspire our customers to embrace their designer within.”

In addition to the catalog spreads, Ballard Designs will also be creating a “microsite” which will provide consumers with an inside look at the design process and catalog shoot, as well as a gallery of Swan’s favorite products.

“The partnership with Ballard Designs is an exciting opportunity for me,” said Swan in a statement. “I have been a fan of the company’s furnishings and accessories for years and am looking forward to creating inspired designs from their range of product offerings.

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There is something wonderful about simple things. Sometimes it is the most basic threads which unite and remind us, if we’re willing to take an honest look in the mirror, just how wonderfully human we are.

Today was no exception. In the midst of the enormity of the inauguration of our country’s President I found it comforting to know that the inaugural day lunch menu was on everyone’s mind. Well, at least according to Senator Dianne Feinstein, Head of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies as she welcomed congressional members and powerful guests to a luncheon earlier today.

As told by the senator there was nothing of more importance to Americans, as they searched the internet for inaugural facts, figures, tickets and timetables, than the menus for the Inaugural Celebrations.

Stop the presses! Americans interested in food. Well super-size me an inaugural happy meal!

Okay, maybe as a country we’re just a tish too interested in food, but just for today I’m willing to get off my Elliptical Trainer and enjoy the moment. Some of my favorite memories from childhood are of Sunday afternoon dinners at my grandparent’s home. Few things call up such visceral recollections of warmth, safety and welcome than these familial gatherings.

Seems fitting today then, that after honoring the jewel in the crown of the American political system (free and fair elections) that Americans, on the whole, might turn their attention to what’s for lunch: http://inaugural.senate.gov/luncheon/.

Hungry? Download the recipes for the inaugural day lunch menu.

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The official announcement came earlier today, as CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported, and the country breathed a collective sigh of relief. Or at least some in the country breathed more clearly; their enhanced capacity for oxygen intake coming from the news that celebrated Los Angeles Interior Designer Michael Smith has been tapped to “do” the residential wing of the Obama White House.

“Laura Bush has been a wonderful steward of the White House and created a beautiful residence for her family. I look forward to adding our own touch to the East Wing and creating a living space where our family feels comfortable, happy and settled. Michael shares my vision for creating a family friendly feel to our new home and incorporating some new perspectives from some of America’s greatest artists and designers,” said Michelle Obama.

“I am delighted to work with the Obamas as they bring their own energy and style to the residence at the White House,” said decorator Michael Smith. “The family’s casual style, their interest in bringing 20th Century American artists to the forefront and utilizing affordable brands and products will serve as our guiding principles as we make the residence feel like their home”, as reported by Lynn Sweet Washington Bureau Chief for The Chicago Sun-Times. Read Lynn Sweet’s full article about the Obama White House interior designer.

Gone are the fears that well-intended, but remarkably bland national retailers, might have a hand in the diddling of decorations in the first quarters. Taste, refinement and a much- anticipated personal point of view (care-of the strong style sense displayed by our First Lady-Elect) seem in store as the mighty Mrs. O and the talented Mr. S work their magic.

Who cares what breed of puppy is to pee in those historic halls? We want to know what colors those walls will be painted!

Tell us what you think about Michael Smith designing the White House. Click on the contact link above to send us an email, or post your comments below.

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