Happy Holidays!

Thank you all for supporting us this year. We have some amazing new things in store for 2011--check back with us on January 3rd for an update.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season, and a happy and healthy New Year!

Some Like It Hot

Now that the cold is upon us, each morning in New Hampshire begins with a fire in the kitchen. A cord of wood is neatly stacked in the barn, but we have an old mail bin next to the fireplace filled with enough wood to get a fire going each morning. Its warmth heats the entire kitchen (possibly the coldest room in the house) and we keep it going until bedtime. It fulfills our basic primal need for warmth and the sight, smell and sound is like a massage for the senses.

All the fixin's for a good fire via dropular

Assorted axe heads and tools at the Orford Flea Market

A stack of firewood at the neighbor's

Wood burning in our kitchen fireplace

CD booklet design via Graphic Exchange

Burned out brick from the Grange Hall, South Acworth, New Hamsphire

"Finds" Around the House

No that we have our place in New Hampshire, there's finally room for all the "finds" we've picked up on our travels through the years. We've been populating the house car full by car full each weekend, and we're always amazed at how warm and personal a space can become with the right accents. A friend even commented last weekend that the house feels lived in now...we took that as wonderful compliment.

Header of a antique mirror; much of the ornamentation is broken, but it looks just perfect to us

Wood vintage packing box, wallpapered box, Swedish Army pony backpack and skulls

Ram's horns atop vintage packing box

Collection of vintage bobbins on rack

Early French bathtub (and wood bench that we found in our guest house)

Into the Woods

We'll ask you to forgive our indulgence, but our backyard is so pretty with the new snow fall, that we had to share. We'll show you progress on the guest house tomorrow.

A walk into the woods

Down the path...

From the riverbank

Fresh powder

Sunlight through branches

Tightening Our Snowbelt - A Chilly New Hampshire Weekend

We were surprised by the snow at our home this weekend...then we remembered, early on in the buying process, a local commenting that we were in the snowbelt. While it may look cold and isolated, the truth is that we're surrounded by a warm, quaint community. Beacause we have friends drop by every weekend and the fire roars continuously, we're actually toasty in our little New England escape. Here's what it looks like in its winter gear, snowbelt and all:

Coming up the hill from the Cold River

On the barn door

Cold River, our back yard

Ice on the window of the studio

Everything looks finer with a dusting of winter

Beaded, Taxidermy

Just by chance, we found the beaded sculpture work of Sherry Markovitz and Barbara French Duzan while researching some beaded African fabrics we shot a while back. The tone of the works are completely different, but we love combining the two to celebrate the craft.

Barbara Duzan

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African textile

[2]

Sherry Markovitz

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African headdress

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Unexpected Beauty

We're not especially fond of art glass and we don't, as a rule, like balloons. That said, the following are photos of vintage Murano Glass in the window of The End of History on Hudson Street, and giant gold balloons tied to an awning on 57th Street in Midtown. Beauty, it seems, comes unexpectantly.

Back to Basics: The Genius of Bill Traylor and Carl Hammer's American Folk Art

Bill Traylor, Spotted Dog, Graphite and Gouache on Paper

We love folk art- the extraordinary work produced from a singular desire to create. Bill Traylor'swork has had a huge impact on our aesthetic for the past 20 years or so. Mr. Traylor's gouaches and drawings have an unmatched graphic elegance. Carl Hammer's collection of folk art is inspiring- a curated collection based on aesthetic impact, not provinance or reputation. Here's a look at some favorites from both:

Carved and painted wood figures, artist unkown, at Carl Hammer

Bill Traylor, graphite on paper

William Dawson, Self Portrait, at Carl Hammer

Untitled Bill Trayor at Claudia Demonte

French Bottle Man, circa 1920s at Carl Hammer

Bill Traylor, Man with Shotgun and Dog via Antiques and the Arts

Pennsylvania Scarecrows, 1960s at Carl Hammer

Pair of Fabric Masks, Late 19th or Early 20th c., at Carl Hammer

Guest House Inspirations / Lofty Ambitions

So, we've shown you our guest house at its worst...now we'll show you what we're working towards. A few, perhaps lofty, inspirations:

Darryl Carter's Virgina farmhouse kitchen via Stylture

Deborah Berke's via Remodelista

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[2]

Marston House rental cottage, Wiscasset Maine

Charles Sheeler, Doylestown House-The Stove at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Better or Worse: Our Guest House Renovation, Part 2

The view from our guest house window this weekend couldn't have been more serene with a dusting of snow surrounding the historic Grange Hall. But inside was quite different. Saturday we decided to tackle the kitchen floor. Popping off the linoleum tiles provided a false sense of ease before we started in the on plywood sub-flooring underneath. With nails every five inches in each direction, it took the two of us (along with crowbar and mallet in hand) just about all weekend to get the wood up, only to reveal a layer of red board glued down to the original floor boards. We hacked away at that until dusk, and although the road to beautiful floors in this room is long, the centuries old planks under it all provided a glimmer a hope.

A clean slate Friday night

"During" [1]

[2]

Before

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Floor detail

A glimmer of hope