Veranda September/October 2021

IRIS APFEL CONFESSES her preference for idiosyncratic imperfection in a conversation with designer Hutton Wilkinson in Home: A Celebration 1, a new book edited by Charlotte Moss featuring reflections from notable voices (including yours truly) on the meaning of home. When asked by Wilkinson what makes a house a home, Apfel, who is celebrating her 100th birthday August 29, responds with an eye toward a personal past. “Everybody has a history,” she says. “And I think you should have bits and pieces of where you were and what you did and what you bought.” Her steadfast commitment to individual style makes Apfel an ideal muse for this issue. Like so many of us, Apfel found comfort in her collections—antiques, jewelry, even Mickey Mouse ephemera, all acquired during a lifetime of travel…

ITALIAN NEOCLASSICAL REDUX Ebanista’s new hand-carved console reimagines a gilded triumph with scaled-down proportions for the 21st century. THE FIND Ebanista’s Giovanna console THE BACKSTORY Designer Melinda Pakzad faced an interior design challenge for a Tudor-style estate: an intimate living room that demanded spatial economy. “I knew I needed a petite console,” she says, “and necessity is the mother of invention.” The solution had such polish that Pakzad adapted it for her handmade furniture studio, Ebanista. Now, the Giovanna console, with its dainty proportions (just 18 inches deep and 48 inches wide), hardy alder wood construction, and resilient white onyx top, headlines the California maker’s new collection—and reinforces their command of the classics. THE INSPIRATION Giovanna’s design DNA—particularly its legs, apron, hand-carved base, and 22-karat gilding—are direct references to Italian neoclassicism, Pakzad says. “Think of it…

Designer Pilgrimage When Thomas Pheasant confessed to Japan-savvy friends that he longed to visit, they responded with a two-week travel itinerary just for him. The interior designer’s journey in late 2019, from Kyoto’s gardens to Tadao Ando’s Naoshima Island architecture, took his innate embrace of simplicity to a whole new level. “As soon as the door closed on the plane home, I furiously sketched for 14 hours,” he says. The result—his new shibui-infused collection for McGuire Furniture—draws the eye and mind to the pared-down sublime: a symphony of rooflines, a shrine’s mountain trail, and the fold of a kimono. MAIN IMAGE BY BECKY LUIGART-STAYNER, STYLING BY RACHAEL BURROW. ROOFTOPS, THOMAS PHEASANT; PORTRAIT COURTESY OF BAKER INTERIORS GROUP/DIANA PARRISH DESIGN AND PHOTOGRAPHY…

Designer Pilgrimage While most travelers stayed home in January 2021, the intrepid Silvia Furmanovich sailed the Nile like an early explorer. The riches—gleaned only with her eye—from that winter’s journey now emerge in her latest jewelry collection, a 300-piece, masterful tribute to ancient Egypt. “I peeled back the layers,” she says of her visits to temples, from Siwa near the Libyan border to Luxor, “trying to design something that was not made before.” The pace of the journey afforded her an unanticipated luxury: time to think and design. “We planned the collection on the boat,” she says. “I came home, and everything was in my mind.”…

Designer Pilgrimage Amid largely humble architecture, Moroccans are adept at creating moments of intense beauty spotted “out of the corner of your eye,” says designer Katie Leede, an ardent veteran of Marrakech’s medinas. Flush with inspiration after her latest trip, she distilled these moments—spied in tilework, stone walls, a painted stripe in Veere Grenney’s Tangiers library—into a graphically exuberant wallpaper collection. Both acolyte and thief, Leede relishes the feel of the artist’s brush. “You feel the humanity emerging,” she says. And carried back, lovingly, across the sea. MAIN IMAGE BY BECKY LUIGART-STAYNER, STYLING BY RACHAEL BURROW.…

AS MUCH AS I LOVE ARRANG ING flowers and creating a beautiful tabletop, my love of entertaining actually began under the table—specifically, hiding under a long farmhouse table, smelling gorgeous garlic and amazing food while I collected wine corks and eavesdropped on grownups’ lively dinner conversations. Every August when I was young, my parents attended big dinner parties with friends, mostly from Europe, and I lived for those evenings around—or rather, under—the table, listening to forks clink and stories of people living in far-off places. Now my husband and I enjoy re-creating that sort of enchantment for our friends and family in our Pacific Heights flat. We moved here from a larger house and thought this would be a short-term transition, but we’ve come to love the convenient location, water view,…