Designer

……………………….There are six paintings in the dining room……….The white daises I bought in Florence Italy…..I just liked it……The MORNING GLORIES were painted by my friend Steve Cuzma during one of his summers in Nova Scotia. Both Jac and I love Morning Glories so we had to have it. It’s unusual in that it is a very long skinny painting…..like the vine……Another painting is of a basket of strawberries……To tell you the truth I’m not that fond of strawberries, but I do love paintings of them….However, Jac did love to eat them on her cereal!….so there you go!…The painting of the yellow flowers Jac bought for me. It’s very bright and cheery….perfect for a dining room…..The “rooster” is a story…..Jac and I took a trip with  dear friends, Lori Lewis and her husband John , to San Francisco. One day we went to Sausalito, and in one shop they had all of these stuffed hens and a rooster!!! The display was lots of fun, and I mentioned how much I liked the rooster…It had wonderful colors…..end of story. About a week or so after we got home a package came to my house, and there he was….Mr. Rooster….Lori and John bought it for me to surprise me, and had it shipped to my house. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see Mr. Rooster and think of Lori and John. I would bet they would be surprised about how much I think of them!!!! LOL…….”THE WHITE TABLE SETTING” is one of my absolute favorite paintings that I own. On one of my many trips to Florence, Italy to work with Giovanna on the AK sweater collection, I would pass this art gallery every day to and from the office. I was with my assistant Fran…..The painting was in the window, and we both mentioned how beautiful it was. I was thinking about going in and asking how much it was, however Fran had the same idea and beat me to it…..I couldn’t say anything. The owner of the gallery said it was sold! Both of our hearts sank…..I really really wanted it…..When we got to the office I told Giovanna all about the painting and described it in detail. About three or four weeks later Giovanna called me and told me she thought she saw the painting I described in the window and it was now for sale!!!! When we established that yes indeed it was the painting, I had her buy it for me and she shipped it to my home!….I was never sure if it had been sold or if the owner didn’t want to sell it to an American. I have learned that sometimes these art dealers don’t want the art works to leave the country……I’ll never know, but what I do know is the painting I coveted is hanging in my dining room where it was meant to be!

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…………………As in most homes this is a room that didn’t get a lot of use…..It was a “special occasion ” room. When we would host Holiday dinners we’d make a big deal with the table settings, china, glass wear, silverware and decorations…..otherwise the dining room is the passageway into the family room or rear entrance to the living room. None the less we wanted it to look good…..It is sparsely furnished with an English dining table, and 10 Palomino color leather chairs. Against one wall there is an oval pedestal table I call “The PORT table”, because that’s where I keep my Port. There are some interesting objects on the table like the s oval silver biscuit container, and the silver toast holder shaped like a clam shell. The pineapple jam jar from Buccellati with the silver top, silver egg cups and silver and ivory knife holders are all conversation worthy… One of my personal favorite pieces is the CIANTI bottle. In stead of straw wrapping the bottle and a straw cord wrapping around the throat of the bottle, as the original bottles have….it’s all made of silver to look exactly like the straw would have. In the old days when they opened a bottle they used to wrap a piece of news paper around the top. This bottle has a cork, but hiding the cork is a piece of silver wrapping it to look like newspaper. It even had writing inscribed in it! My friend Giovanna, who lives in Florence Italy had one, and I loved it. She said I can get one for you, and so she did. I have never seen anything like it in this country even in stores like Tiffany, Cartier or Buccellati that carry wonderful and unusual  silver objects from Italy….It’s just a pain  to keep shiny!……Against another wall is a Chinese cabinet. It has incredible brass work. The front section opens down to create a shelf. I’ve turned it into a bar. That’s it for furniture in this room. I always wanted to get more like a long English serving buffet table, but Jac liked it spare……”Happy wife…happy life”…….There are seven painting in this room, but that’s another collage. There used to be a beautiful rug under the dining table, but the fur babies thought it was a pee pad!!! No matter what we did they would still use the rug….so the rug went bye bye…..Thank you Annie, Lily and Samantha!!

…………………The dining room table has a large oval silver tray in the center….two candelabra, two silver biscuit jars at each end and two large silver leaf dishes from Buccellati. When the decorations are put away I have a very old Chinese Rose Medallion large bowl on the tray filled with faux lemons.

……………………..There is very little in the house I don’t decorate! I love to decorate the the Dining Room chandelier. It came with the house, and it’s quite elaborate….At a certain time of year, at a certain time of day….the sun rays stream through the room at just the right angle hitting the prisms which in turn create little rainbows all over the room!!!…It’s magical….For that reason alone I never changed the chandelier, but you have to be lucky enough to see it at the right time ……..Some people decorate their chandeliers with bows or greens, but I like my chandelier hung with lots of GLASS ICICLES………It’s very DOCTOR ZHIVAGO!

………………………Some people collect Santas, and Nutcrackers, but we collected SNOWMEN! We have always displayed them in the kitchen on glass window shelves…..Where ever we went we would always find a snowman 0r snowwoman, and add it to our collection. What you see in the pictures is  just some of our little family of snow people. I usually keep them on display until there is absolutely no chance of a snow fall!