Veranda Mar/Apr 2020

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.” THE WORDS OF JOHN BURROUGHS, a prolific naturalist writer from the turn of the 20th century, likely would have struck a chord with author and amateur garden aficionado Edith Wharton 1, who traveled to Italy in 1903 to survey its villas and gardens. “The old Italian garden was meant to be lived in,” she writes in her 1904 book Italian Villas and Their Gardens. As such, its design was engineered to effect a transition from domestic life to the wilderness. “Each step away from architecture was a nearer approach to nature.” The promise of respite tendered by cool pockets of green has appealed to our senses since the beginning of time—gardens, after all,…

INSTANT HEIRLOOM RETURN TO THE SHORE THOMAS O’BRIEN’S LATEST FURNITURE COLLECTION IS AN ELEMENTAL, NOSTALGIC SALUTE TO THE SEA, AS PURE AND MAGNETIC AS THE TIDE. MEET THE ARTIST• Prolific decorator and lighting, textiles, and accessories artist Thomas O’Brien is drawn to the relaxed elegance of the shoreline. “There’s an ease to places you return to, that you know and love through the seasons and years,” says O’Brien, whose own home on Great South Bay in Long Island helped inspire a new furnishings collection with Century Furniture, which feels like a celebration of the simple beauty of what we see and use daily in homes by the water. THE COLLECTION• Beach-house essentials reminiscent of pieces found in the designer’s travels, ranging from textural seating to cozy, low-slung upholstery THE BACKSTORY• “I’ve always loved the idea…

Giardino di Ninfa CISTERNA DI LATINA, ITALY Just outside of Rome, time appears to stand still in this wellspring of romance and enduring fertility. “As a landscape designer who appreciates and enjoys using antiquities, the Gardens of Ninfa left an impression on me I will never forget,” says California-based SCOTT SHRADER of the deeply enchanted oasis built on the ruins of a medieval town. The gardens are crossed by several springs and a river, beneath which verdant layers of botanicals thrive. He discovered them on a recent vacation to Italy and “became obsessed with these gardens under the waterways, the way they flow from the hills onto this once-thriving 14th-century town. It’s one of the most stunning places I’ve ever witnessed, and it’s clear to me why Ninfa has been referred to…

SHALINI KASLIWAL IS A MODERN-DAY ALCHEMIST. “I consider myself a classic experimenter, mixing elements of different cultures and generations,” says Kasliwal of her jewelry. As the global ambassador of her family’s storied jewelry house The Gem Palace (and CEO of Sanjay Kasliwal USA), Kasliwal, who was raised in Bologna, Italy, and Jaipur, India, by her Italian mother and Indian father, draws from her heritage to concoct bewitching amalgams of gem-studded flora and fauna with gold filigree and pavé techniques. “I’m also inspired by listening to my clients on what keeps them on the hunt.” Here are nine other secrets to her irresistible charm. 1. Visit my home, and you can definitely tell there is India in my blood. I love to decorate with exotic motifs, like Iksel Decorative Arts wallpapers. Their…

AWAY WITH EASEL-pictures! Away with that unnecessary piece of furniture! The work of the painter begins where that of the architect is finished. Hence let us have walls, that we may paint them over…. There are no paintings, but only decorations.” In a passage from his 1930s memoirs, the late Dutch artist Jan Verkade feverishly advocates for the return of paintings of the grandest scale—and even grander ambition. An informal member of a group of turn-of-the-century artists known as the Nabis (from the Hebrew word for “prophet”), he and fellow vanguards of the day advanced the concept of decoration by its purist French meaning: a revered, and often historic, form of artistic expression. It was not, in other words, defined by collections intended to move in and out of rooms, but…

MAIN IMAGE COURTESY OF MARIA TRIMBELL; FABRIC SWATCHES, BRIAN WOODCOCK.…