Veranda July/August 2021

SO WRITES DESIGNER AND DECORATIVE arts historian Thomas Jayne in the introduction of his book, Classical Principles for Modern Design (The Monacelli Press, 2018), in which he explores the enduring relevancy of Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman’s The Decoration of Houses, first published in 1897. Just two months into the pandemic and our sudden and outright pivot to home, I interviewed Jayne about his predictions for how this profound shift in how we live would change American residential design. How would we reconfigure floor plans for more privacy? How would we look to design to cure the plague of monotony in our daily existence? How could decoration soothe our anxious souls? The answer, Jayne said, was simple: We would once again embrace rooms in the truest sense of the word: divisions…

THE FIND Made Goods’s Gretel chair, in green or light-brown rattan THE BACKSTORY “I think we all design from the perspective of our pasts,” says creative director Oscar Yague, who grew up just outside Barcelona, “where there was always a peacock chair in my grandmother’s house.” Imprinted early by that Victorian wicker exuberance, the furniture visionary yearned to create a new iteration—one for his generation. “I liked the drama but wanted to modernize it, so we scaled down the design, gave it a more open seat and straighter lines.” THE MAKERS The updated design exemplifies Yague’s (and Made Goods’s) ethos. “We approach each piece with an emphasis on material and sense of proportion,” he says, eschewing rigid style niches. “And here, the color was beautiful on the rattan from the beginning. It…

Collecting • Decorating • Entertaining • Jewelry • Preservation • Wanderlust “When I want to cut the fanciness of a drawing room…I will work a slipcover into the space. There’s something inherently summery and more casual about them.”—DESIGNER ISABEL LOPEZ-QUESADA IN MADRID, summers are very hot. Growing up, I remember my grandmother removing all the carpets and covering the furniture—the Louis XVI chairs, the sofas, even the canapés—in cotton cloths, many with floral patterns, before leaving for the season,” says Spanish interior designer Isabel Lopez-Quesada. Today, that “more relaxed, gypsy look” finds a place in the homes of even her most formal clients, she notes, often with couture detailing like buttons, ties, and contrasting trimmings. “When I want to cut the fanciness of a drawing room, make it look a little more…

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ELIZABETH HAY DESIGN. ILLUSTRATIONS BY TRACY TURNBULL.…

IT BEGAN with thrift-minded craftsmen. As far back as 13th century B.C., resourceful Mycenaean artists started replacing gemstones in decorative pieces and jewelry with cheaper glass powders. Melted at blistering heats, it hardened into brilliantly hued shapes of every contour and size. Enamel was, they found, a powerful way to paint color onto surfaces. The technique spread like an empire to cultures and their hottest commodities: Celtic shields, Byzantine icons, incense burners of the Ming Dynasty, wall panels adorning the high architecture of the Moghuls, door pulls from 18th-century Japan, eventually flowering into jewelry in the lyrical expressionism of Art Nouveau. And while styles flame in and out, enamel has endured, with today’s designers embracing it anew in contemporary motifs. “Enamel has been used in our culture for centuries and centuries,” says…

CLOISONNÉ Using thin walls of metal to contain molten enamel in raised compartments, this ancient practice produced pectoral jewels of the Pharaohs, Visigoth brooches, and even 19thcentury tea caddies from Russia’s House of Fabergé. CHAMPLEVÉ Ancient artisans beginning with the Celts in the 3rd century B.C. would hollow out metal compartments to fill with enamel. The art form’s high-water mark was the 12th century, which turned out the Stavelot Triptych and the Becket Casket from Limoges. PLIQUE-À-JOUR This virtuoso form—invented in the 6th century and masterfully employed by Art Nouveau giants René Lalique and Lucien Gaillard—is an aerial act without a net. Here, enamelers fill frames without a permanent metal base to create fragile, stained glass–like pieces. GUILLOCHÉ Beginning in the late 19th century, jewelers created mesmerizing optics by layering translucent enamel over intricate machine-etched geometries in…