Veranda Sep/Oct 2020

“The countryside is a space that’s transforming faster than the most contemporary city.” SO SAYS DUTCH ARCHITECT AND scholar Rem Koolhaas, who helped organize a recent exhibition at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, “Countryside, The Future.” 1 The exhibit explores how the countryside has evolved throughout history and what implications those changes have for the future of our planet. Its timing, it turns out, was both unfortunate and prescient: unfortunate in that the novel coronavirus pandemic has forced the temporary closure of public institutions like the Guggenheim; prescient in that the lure of the countryside—a landscape with built-in social distance and the ensuing promise of simple pleasures—has never been stronger. After all, one can mistake the bucolic bliss evoked by country escapes like the four featured in this issue 2 for a paradisiacal…

INSTANT HEIRLOOM HAND-PAINTED VENETIAN FABRICS SHIMMERING VELVETS AND LINENS BY ITALIAN FABRIC HOUSE VIA VENEZIA AWAKEN ROMANTIC RENAISSANCE-ERA ARTISTRY. THE FIND • Block-printed throws, bedcovers, tablecloths, and other exquisite textiles inspired by ancient Italian works of art. THE MAKERS • “I began in textiles when I was 12,” says Via Venezia Textiles owner Dawn Papakyriacou, who was gifted an industrial sewing machine from her 7th grade home ec classmates and began cranking out pillows (often from garage sale cast-offs) that she gave to others. Degrees in fashion design and merchandising led her to Chicago’s retail and design legend Judith Niedermaier and the Venetian textiles of designer Mirella Spinella. After Niedermaier’s death, Spinella saw in Papakyriacou a potential partner. She invited the American to visit Venice. “We spent a week together designing everything we could,”…

Since its flowering more than 600 years ago, Imperial China’s curvy, low-slung legacy has never been far from fashion—among its historic forays, an imprint in 18th-century England, as Queen Anne furniture emerged bearing hints of inscrolled legs, and later, dipping into Hollywood Regency and Baldwin-era cocktail culture. In clever revisits, today’s designers spin Ming’s tradition of precious and exotic woods into experiments in lacquer, linen, and cast metal, turning up the volume on the dynasty’s alluring, ageless song.…

WEST COAST DUO Amy Kehoe and Todd Nickey view the homes they design not simply as backdrops to their clients’ lives, but as main characters in them. Each, they say, should have a soul that beckons one inside and that plays more prominently than pedigree. It’s a tug at the senses that comes through vividly in their new 240-page monograph, Golden Light: The Interior Design of Nickey Kehoe, with its 15 residences from Pasadena to Toro Canyon interwoven with misty, wondrous images of their adopted Southern California landscape. Throughout, the pair’s deft balance of modernity and traditionalism challenges our ideas of both. And with a nimble embrace of the vernacular that’s as redolent here as in their eponymous Los Angeles shop, they do more than extend invitations inside these well…

IT WAS ONCE AMONG THE most treasured vaults in the house, a room kept under lock and key for housing a family’s valuable china, silver, and other essential servingware. Presided over by a domestic doyen who was equal parts sommelier, head server, and maestro of the manor, the serving pantry was considered a critical support arm to the dining room and situated as close to it as was reasonable. And yet it functioned as much as a butler’s office as it did storage. It was here that he chose and fined wines for service, polished the silver, and saw to the administrative operations of the household. Most had a modest desk or even sleeping accommodations (one can never keep too close a watch over the Lamerie coffee service). Today, the room’s…

PART OF CREATING is understanding that there is always more to do; nothing is ever completely finished.” Such are the words of late design legend Bunny Mellon, whose well-chronicled devotion to her gardens called for numerous sheltered extensions of it—after-hours laboratories for a passion that wouldn’t wane with the sun. Centuries of gardeners can relate and have built a tradition of soil-dusted workspaces ranging from glorified potting sheds that double as reference libraries to flower rooms for puttering with arrangements. Among the essentials of these deeply personal sanctuaries: hardy counter space for potting (and repotting), generous shelving for collections of containers and ephemera, and ample windows for late-day views of the beds and hedges (what gardener can resist a glimpse at the next day’s work?). CHARLOTTE MOSS ROOM, MELANIE ACEVEDO; BUNNY…