Monthly Archives: December 2022

…………………………..Collecting art is very personal, but when you find something you love…..your heart starts to pound. Jac and I had the same taste, and usually what she loved I loved and visa versa. The small still life paintings of Chinese vases were painted by a woman named E. Moore. There are actually four of them in the living room, but only two are pictured here. We felt they went perfectly with our Delft vase collection, and we were happy to buy her collection…..Since we bought the paintings the artist, Ms Moore, has unfortunately passed away. The large painting over the couch was done by a friend of mine, Steve Kuzman. He has a small house in Nova Scotia where he spends the summers painting…..The name of the painting is “Wind in the Pines”…you can actually hear it!…..The minute we saw it it was love at first sight…The large painting above the fire place was painted by an artist named Reboli. The house in the painting is in the Hamptons on Long Island, and he lived out there for the summers. It had that old world Hamptons charm…..He also unfortunately has passed away. I had this painting in my old house in Darien. When we moved from Darien to the Long Island Sound luckily the painting worked perfectly in the living room above the fireplace!…….Some things are just meant to be!

…………………..In the Fall of 1992, the year I left Anne Klein, and before I started designing for Bergdorf Goodman, Jac and I both had a lot of free time on my hands……We  needed a project. and we found these bare GRAPE VINE forms that we decided to decorate for Christmas. Some were large cones, some were wreaths of different sizes, and we even found a grape vine Angel……We set up my studio as a crafts room and Jac and I sat across from each other with our GLUE GUNS in hand! Jac already was making all kinds of wreaths out of Eucalyptus, red Bay Berries, Tallow berries, dried Pomegranate, Lotus and Poppy pods and Pine cones. Some I sprayed with metallic gold paint or painted the tips of the cones with white paint to look like snow. We added fake fruits, and all kinds of faux birds that we bought at a wholesale nursery. We added small ribbon bows on some of the trees too….We also found bare Topiaries that we decorated to coordinate with the trees. The photos are of my Living room……Where my father lived on Long Island, there were many pine trees that produced beautiful cones. I gave him the job of collecting them. Out he went with paper bags in hand…. He went a little overboard and I still have paper bags filled with pine cones!!! I think he cleaned the forest up…LOL….They look wonderful in silver bowls and a huge brass kettle I have….For the Holidays I have groups of pine cones all around the house…We also bought many Delft Ginger jars and vases to decorate our living room walls. On a trip to Amsterdam Jac and I found this terrific antique store across the canal from the Anne Frank house museum. The owner of the shop was wonderful. He had both antiques and reproductions. Once he realized I was a serious buyer and only wanted antique pieces he started pulling pieces out from the back of the shop. We bought quite a few pieces from him plus the porcelain Christmas balls in the silver bowl in the picture. I told him we were off on a side trip to Delft, and he told us exactly which stores to go to for the good pieces. He gave us the names of the owners and told us what to look for so we would know we were getting antiques and not reproductions. For a few years we corresponded, and he would send me photos of things he had acquired. It would be so much easier today with modern technology!

…………………Over the years Jac and I bought Christmas ornaments where ever we traveled no matter what the season…….One of our favorite things to collect were SANTA. Many of our Santa ornaments were designed and manufactured by Patricia Breen. Even the snow man is holding a little Santa. The Patricia Breen ornaments have become very collectable and the prices have skyrocketed. They always get a special place on the tree.

………………More Santas and more snowmen……At the center bottom is a BRIDE and GROOM and between them an ornament with wedding rings. We bought them in 2000, the year we were married…..We also loved to collect EGGS of all sorts.

………………….All of the ornaments on the tree have a story to tell…..The Gold Cupid at the upper left was a gift from Kate…..We have a collection of porcelain ornaments, at least a dozen, that were given to Jac I by her distant cousin, Frank, in Berlin. Jac’s Mom used to have a large porcelain bust of her great great grand mother that was brought over from Europe when most of the family moved to America. When Jac’s Mom moved in with us the bust came to our home, and for years was in Jac’s Mom’s room. When Jac’s Mom passed it was on Jac’s mind what we should do with this bust? She decided it should go to her cousin Frank. Jac’s Mom had gifted Frank a very old, but lovely farm house her great great grand mother lived which was in Belgium  on the border with Germany. She wanted Frank to have the bust in this house….a true full circle. Frank was thrilled to have both the house and then the bust, because it was his relative too. He sent us beautiful pictures of the bust in the farm house…It was perfect and Jac was thrilled!…..Which brings me to the porcelain ornaments. It just so happens that the porcelain factory where the bust was made all those many years ago is still open, and among the many things they manufacture are Christmas ornaments!!! So we now have these lovely white and gold ornament made in the same factory as Jac’s great great grandmother’s bust that Frank sent to us……..Again, a full circle.