House Beautiful articles from December 2003

House Beautiful archives from December 2003

Age of enlightenment.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... "Taking It With You" by Eric Cohler ["Thoughts of Home"] in the October issue was enlightening. I've never read an article in a home design magazine that combined so much erudition with the heart-tug of nostalgia. Anybody who can mention I Love...

Vibrant inspiration.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I am an avid reader of House Beautiful and was recently searching for outside-the-box design inspiration. I found it in "Retro Chic" [October]. I really love the vibrant way Stephen Elrod decorated his home. I am moving into a new place soon...

Preserve preservation.(letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... I read Mark Mayfield's editor's letter in the September issue and could not agree with him more. A bit of America, as well as a piece of our souls, is lost with each historically significant building that is demolished to make way for what some...

Let it snow.(editor's letter)
December 1, 2003... Last year--on December 20th--my family and I moved into the house that we had liked from the moment we first saw it with our real estate broker, Jackie Carroll. Five days later, on Christmas Day, a storm dumped 18 inches of snow on our lawn. We...

Gourmet grandeur.(style beat)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Kitchen gadgets and appliances for the chef in your life Pop Out peeler, $7; by Chef'n at Sur La Table: 800-243-0852. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Good Grips I-series container grater, $17; by OXO: 800-545-4411. [ILLUSTRATION...

Five party tables.(swatch watch)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... You can't go wrong with red Dedar's Brio in color 4 rosso is a flocked calligraphic design; edging is a velvet gimp from M&J Trimming. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Abstract shapes in a broad repeat give Clarence House's Giza #34007-1 a...

Add holiday sparkle: get into the spirit of the season with these festive arrangements.(how to ...)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... DESIGNING A SHOW-stopping focal point for your holiday table is hassle free and fun when you combine seasonal fruits and flowers in silvery containers. House Beautiful asked top London floral designer Jane Packer, who runs an American outpost...

Montana December: in a tiny mountain town near the Canadian border, a father sees Christmas through his daughters' eyes.(Column)
December 1, 2003... DRAMA! ON THE DAY OF THE SCHOOL CHRISTMAS play, Wendy, the lead actress, is sick, throwing-up sick, fever sick. Her part in Santa Claus and the Wicked Wazoo is none other than the Wazoo herself, and as she is an eighth-grader, it's her last...

The right angle: a Brooklyn craftsman creates modern classics with warm woods and simple, spare proportions.(designer's eye)
December 1, 2003... "WHEN I FIRST CAME TO NEW YORK, I couldn't really afford furniture," says Hughes N'Cho-Allepot, design director of New Antique Design, a Brooklyn-based manufacturer of sleekly minimalist home decor. "After six months of living with just a...

Warm and pretty: a cluttered jumble of a room becomes a pink-and-orange teen haven.(problem solvers)
December 1, 2003... "HELP!" WROTE BRENDA HANTSCHE from Texas, in response to our request for readers to share their decorating dilemmas. "I have one room I can't conquer." Brenda and Bryan Hantsche had, Brady Bunch-style, each brought children to a second...

The Complete Costume History.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... ANTIQUE PRINTS ARE SO OFTEN USED IN STYLISH INTERIORS THAT IT seems as if decorators have access to a secret hoard where 19th-century renderings of sea-shells and roses are piled high. But here's a little secret. Bibliophiles may cringe, but...

William Morris and Morris & Co.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Despite recent findings that Arts and Crafts proponent William Morris--who advocated the use of traditional manufacturing methods and "natural" pigments--used arsenic-based dyes in his potentially dangerous wallpaper, the wending organic motifs...

Luxury of Space.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... "Decoration is the fashion in which you dress your space," declares photographer Oberto Gili in the foreword to Luxury of Space (Assouline, $70), and he's certainly one to talk. Gill has spent the last 30 years shooting the interiors of the...

Bittersweet.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... There's nothing acrid about Alice Medrich's Bittersweet (Artisan, $35). In it, the master chocolatier counsels how to tackle her metier using the new breed of increasingly available percentage chocolates--epicurean concoctions with more pure...

Where do some of House Beautiful's top designers love to shop? The New York design center. The 500,000 square foot building, centrally located in midtown Manhattan at 200 Lexington Avenue, is home to 100 different showrooms representing the best the global design industry has to offer.(advertising)
December 1, 2003... What's a hot trade secret of House Beautiful's top designers? Three of them tell why it's the New York Design Center. The distinguished building at 200 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan has an official name-The New York Design Center-but to the...

China Modern.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... The slick, shiny, vivid interiors featured in China Modern (Tuttle, $40) by Sharon Leece evoke a land where the past, present, and future collide in a singular way. Where else on earth could a Corbusier chaise preside over what was once the...

A Gardener's Labyrinth.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Luxuriously oversize, and housed in its own posh case, A Gardener's Labyrinth (Abrams/Booth-Clibborn, $85) is resplendent with stunning photographs of English gardens by Tessa Traeger. And since writer Patrick Kinmoth highlights the plots of 50...

McKim, Mead & White: the Masterworks.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... The American firm of McKim, Mead & White is synonymous with architecture of major importance. The classically ordered and stately edifices the company erected during an unprecedented period of economic growth in this country at the turn of the...

The Passion for Gardening.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... Open the average gardening book and you're clobbered over the head with platitudes and authors waxing poetic about tilling the soil, reaping rewards, and the cycle of rebirth. But noted gardening expert Ken Druse avoids such saccharine...

Hector Guimard.(On the shelf: there's something for every bookworm on your Christmas list)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2003... With Hector Guimard (Delano Greenidge Editions, $85), the work of the architect and designer most famous for his swirling Art Nouveau Paris Metro entrances is given an eye-opening and comprehensive review. The book gathers pictures taken by...

Rhapsody in blue: decorator Susan Zises Green's Hanukkah is a festive, whimsical, and elegant affair.(HB entertains)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... "I WANT GUESTS TO ANTICIPATE coming to my home and to anticipate returning," says New York-based designer Susan Zises Green, who ensures her intentions are realized when it comes time for Hanukkah. Her holiday production borrows from childhood...

Rocky mountain Christmas: Carolyne Roehm sets the scene for the holidays in snow country.(Column)
December 1, 2003... I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER THE FIRST CHRISTMAS I spent in Switzerland. I grew up on the Midwestern plains and had never seen evergreen laden with snow; my familiarity with the Alps was limited to The Sound of Music and Heidi. Then I was exposed to...

A fresh look at tradition: pale, open spaces make room for a growing holiday hoard.
December 1, 2003... "I'M A NURTURER," SAYS JAN RODEN, A DESIGNER and shop owner in Virginia. Not only does she coddle her decorating clients, but she also moved from northern Virginia down to Charlottesville last year, the better to run a business with her...

Splendid palette: designer Barry Dixon brings the rustic, intimate warmth of southern Europe to a grand Maryland home.
December 1, 2003... PAT AND ROSEANN MCGEEHIN'S HOUSE IS IN A Washington, D.C., suburb, but guests often feel they've been somehow magically transported to a romantic European villa. In this case, the magic was performed by Virginia-based designer Barry Dixon....

Snowbound: the joys of long white winters are practical as well as aesthetic.
December 1, 2003... BEFORE THEY MOVED TO VERmont 30 years ago, garden designers Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd imagined that the snowy winters would be long and monochromatic. They were right about the length of the season, but they were wrong about the lack of...

Adobe masterpiece: designer Suzanne Rheinstein brings her California cachet to New Mexico.
December 1, 2003... SOME DECORATORS ARE SO IDENTIFIED with a particular region or style that their work looks out of place in a new environment. Not Los Angeles-based designer Suzanne Rheinstein. So when Sarah and Doug Brown needed help with their new, adobe...

Across the ages: three eras come together in a Connecticut Yankee compound.(Cover Story)
December 1, 2003... TALL GRASSES POKED OUT OF snowdrifts and hawks careened across the sky when Edmund Schmidt and his wife, Georgia, first saw this two-acre property in suburban Darien, Connecticut. "It had a wildness to it, almost as if it hadn't been touched...

Christmas in Copenhagen: the Danes' Yuletide celebration is longer and livelier than any of their other holidays.
December 1, 2003... THE DANES LOVE CHRISTMAS. THEY like to see its signs and symbols everywhere--in their houses and shops and on their streets--and they like the festivities to go on for a good long time. Traditions run deep and are practiced almost universally...

New Orleans classic: Jimmy and Pixie Reiss revive a 19th-century house with a little help from their friends.
December 1, 2003... JIMMY AND PIXIE REISS HAD FEW SERIOUS intentions on the Sunday afternoon they went to look at a large old house in a neighborhood known as uptown New Orleans. The house had all the room they needed, but it had been untouched for 50 years...

How sweet it is: recipes from chocolatier Jacques Torres use the simple technique of tempering to make gift-giving a snap this season.
December 1, 2003... Tempered chocolate has been melted gently and stirred as it cools, giving it a dark and beautifully glossy surface as it hardens. To temper chocolate, start by finely chopping the amount needed. Melt 3/4 of the chocolate in a double boiler...

Target.(Highlights)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
December 1, 2003... Target makes fun gift cards! Like the one with a ribbon, so you can tie it to a package or the tree And the one that's made of real wood. And the one that's also a snow globe, really! For kids, Braatz, Ninja Turtles gift cards come with...

GM.(Highlights)(ww.gm.com/story)(Advertisement)
December 1, 2003... Today, with quality at the core of our values, we're building the best cars and trucks in our history. The latest news, reviews and a glimpse of the road ahead. See it all at ww.gm.com/story. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Bosch.(Highlights)(Brief Article)(Advertisement)
December 1, 2003... Once you see beyond the sheer elegance of our Bosch 7-Series Oven, you'll find that its beauty is evident inside and out. With unmatched features like Genuine European Convection[TM] an easy glide full extension rack, and a temperature probe,...

Sterling silverware for sale.(beautiful finds)(Silver Queen)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... More than 6,000 patterns of new and discounted flatware patterns at very affordable prices. China, crystal, and fine silver gift items also available. Call Silver Queen at 800-262-3134 for a free catalog, or visit www.silverqueen.info. National...

Wellingtons.(beautiful finds)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Introducing Wellington's Heirloom Leather Furniture. Exquisite Leather, Decorative Nail Trims, Beautiful Wood Finishes. We're redefining leather furniture. To request a catalog call us at 800-262-1049 or view on online at...

Spectrum authentic Murano venetial all-crystal chandelier!(beautiful finds)(www.greatchandeliers.com)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Hand made by the finest artisans in the world, this beautiful chandelier has 5 lights and is decorated with various hand-cut and polished 24% lead crystals. The timeless beauty of this chandelier is sure to lend a special atmosphere anywhere it...

Authentic pine floors.(beautiful finds)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... manufactures unfinished yellow and heart pine in 4"-12" widths. Hand scrapped and engineered. Prefinished heart pine in 4" & 6" widths. Value and durability, generation after generation. 800-283-6038. www.authenticpinefloors.com convenient...

Surefit slipcovers.(beautiful finds)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Guaranteed to make you fall in love with your furniture again. Choose from hundreds of upholstery-quality styles, patterns and colors that are machine washable and fit almost every furniture shape and size. Call 1-800-339-4256 for a free...

Mayfield leather.(beautiful finds)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Sink into luxury with the timeless style of Mayfield Leather's Chesterfield chair and ottoman. Also available in sofa and love seat at direct sale prices. For Mayfield's complete line of heirloom quality seating call 800-342-7729 or visit us at...

God rest ye, merry hostesses: take it easy. The party you save may be your own.(encore)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2003... Before you lug 14 bags of groceries into the house and decide that now is the time to learn how to make floating island, take a deep breath, close the cookbooks, and read what House Beautiful had to say about holiday entertaining back in...