Veranda Nov/Dec 2018

Just to recap: 2018 has been Veranda’s year to celebrate the joys of wanderlust. Throughout the past five issues, we have met homeowners with glorious personal collections and treasures they’ve gathered from their travels, and visited homes filled with exotic patterns and textures. We started the year off with our first-ever New York issue (the center of the world, to some); dedicated an entire section to the trend for globally inspired kitchens in May/June; and in September/October featured a special 12-page Wanderlust section with epic international design intelligence and, elsewhere, homes from France, the Bahamas, and as far afield as Israel. Your response has been enthusiastic, and I’ve loved reading your letters, e-mails, and social-media comments. After such a whirlwind tour, it feels appropriate that we’ve landed back home again, just…

when the globe-trotting New Yorker Annabelle Moehlmann got engaged and began registering for wedding gifts several years ago, she wasn’t impressed with the cookie-cutter options available to her. “So many of the things I really wanted were from small brands and artisans that I’d found on my travels, but there was no place to register for them,” she recalls. “That got me thinking: Why not create my own?” And thus was born Land of Belle, a website and series of pop-up shops that has brides-to-be and design cognoscenti alike swooning over its carefully selected objects from around the world—think Murano glassware, decorative ceramic caftans from Istanbul, Penny Morrison plates. Moehlmann’s personal style trends similarly eclectic, with white T-shirts sharing closet space with floor-sweeping, embellished dresses from Johanna Ortiz and Dries Van Noten.…

ADLER’S New Orleans Known for: Supplying haute favors for Mardi Gras krewes since 1898. In store: Baume & Mercier, Raymond Weil, Rolex. 722 Canal St.; adlersjewelry.com. AMANDA PINSON JEWELRY Chattanooga, TN Known for: Highlighting cult-favorite brands in a sleek, modern setting. In store: Elizabeth Locke, Gabrielle Sanchez, Pomellato (below left). 1110 Market St.; amandapinsonjewelry.com. BACHENDORF’S Dallas Known for: Custom jewelry service (including repurposing gems) and an exhaustive watch selection. In store: Chanel (right), David Yurman, Roberto Coin. 8400 Preston Rd.; bachendorfs.com. BETTERIDGE Palm Beach Known for: A jewelrymaking pedigree that dates to the 18th century; latter-day emerging luxury brands. In store: Buccellati, Seaman Schepps, Verdura. 236 Worth Ave.; betteridge.com. CAYEN COLLECTION Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA Known for: A curatorial approach to contemporary labels and blue-chip period pieces. In store: David Webb (below), Lydia Courteille, Tony Duquette. NW Mission St. between Fifth & Sixth Ave.; cayenjewelers.com. BROMBERG’S Mountain Brook,…

BRIGHT LIGHTS Harry Winston toasts the Big Apple in its New York collection, which translates icons of Manhattan into high-wattage baubles, like a ring that doubles as a “map” of Central Park (complete with a sapphire reservoir) and earrings that mimic brownstone proportions. Talk about a skyline that really glitters! ETERNAL SPRING The advent of winter has us dreaming of the gem-studded bouquets that Fabergé created for royalty in early-20th-century Russia. The botanically accurate specimens featured gold stems in rock-crystal “water,” with enameled leaves and blooms glistening with diamonds and pearls. Many were lost after the revolution, but rare pieces occasionally come up for auction and several are currently available at A La Vieille Russie (alvr.com). Latter-day empresses should keep their eyes peeled. MIDAS TOUCH Charlotte Moss has teamed up with the master forgers at…

In the age of castles, drawbridges, and moats, tapestries—along with roaring hearths—were what passed for central heating. Hung on palace walls, they insulated the highborn from drafts while doubling as status symbols. They could be prohibitively expensive to make, and any queen, duke, or bishop worth his or her pedigree had plenty of tapestries lining the halls. This was a rare instance in which a traditional craft—weaving—flowered into a legitimate art form. Verdure tapestries were a particularly alluring subgenre of the medium, so called because they depicted garden or woodland scenes rich with dense green foliage. In the 16th century, they were the preferred method for bringing the outdoors in. The allure of verdures endures to this day, and textile firms are now adopting the look and updating it in ultramodern ways…

The day begins in the drawing room, where shutters dapple sunlight on walls the color of Guernsey cream. Opera plays above the gentle sound of foot traffic wafting through windows open to the breeze. Students take seats on low slipper chairs or a deep English sofa. The classroom is the inimitable London townhouse of Alidad, the setting for an ongoing series of workshops the Iran-born decorator offers to civilian design aficionados, and the fitting first lesson is that every room should be a feast for the senses. The small workshops were born of conversations Alidad kept having with people about decorating conundrums: optimizing space, devising color schemes, decoding scale. The agenda is loose, tailored to the interests of the group. Alidad will discuss furniture plans—he’s obsessive about them, down to the…