A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

Those close to me are convinced I can’t go six days without buying a new vase. I can appreciate their concern, but really, vases are one of the basic building blocks of interior decorating. And as long as you’re mixing them in with boxes and books and objets and art, you should be able to avoid visitors mistaking your home for a vase museum.

Out of my most recent batch of home decor purchases, less than a third are technically vases, my critics will be (un)pleased to know. I’ve been pounding the pavement on One Kings Lane with increased frequency and found this vintage Mexican abalone box during my favorite Tastemaker Tag Sale of the Fall, curated by designer Darren Brown.

Brown offered some kooky, California folk art vessels shaped like bearded Jesus-lookalikes in the collection as well, which didn’t quite seem like they would’ve worked in my home.

But Jonathan Adler’s reversible king/queen vase referenced the same 70s, fuzz-faced vibe in a subtler and less psychedelic way, and for four hundred dollars less.

With the Adler vase, the abalone box, and the metallic paint-splattered pot I found on Etsy, I’m seeing if a hit of retro, hippie-commune chic can add some unexpected and eccentric echoes to the otherwise genteel tablescapes of Tudor Mansion.

Most of the art I was aiming to get framed and in place before the holidays remained grounded in lightless closets this past month. Every time I was set to be ready, some other piece, new or old, would pop into the picture and prompt me to pause. With the garland gone and our wilting Christmas tree now thrown to the curb, it’s time to finally spruce up our space and do some hardcore hanging.

One of the pieces I’ve been most excited to install was the above bust portrait from Russia. The image is originally off a postcard I retouched to eliminate needless negative space, and I threw in a free nose-job for the old Soviet while I was at it. I shaved a good 10 years off his schnoz in under a minute, that’s how deft I am with digital knives.

The abstract water color I commissioned from my very own artist-in-residence, M. Hurlburt. Over the course of six or seven nights I had Hurly render similar pieces in endless shades and shapes – and in the end, drove him to madness and myself to giggles by choosing the very first one he’d completed. When it’s right, it’s right, but sometimes you don’t know that until you first go way wrong. (For, like a whole week.)

The colorized photo of this sun-streaked courtyard had been sitting around, unframed, for at least three years. Probably more like four. I wasn’t ever sure whether to go modern or antique-y with it, so in December I finally decided to not really officially decide, and just jam it in a twenty dollar frame that wasn’t up to any good anyway, and call it a day.

Really/obviously, I’ve been thinking, and perfecting, and waiting too long on all this. Hand me the hammer, and let’s just nail these things.

All is now glistening and glowing here in our little house we inaccurately (but affectionately) call Tudor Mansion. The year we moved in I found a bucket of deeply discounted garland in citrusy sherbet colors during a Boxing Day sale. And so ever since then our home’s holiday get-up has strayed from the red/green grind of Christmas tradition.

Our house is already outfitted in faded, sea-glassy colors the rest of the year, so we simply tint our Christmas in the same sorts of hues, adding in Whoville-like pops of bubble gummy pink and key lime green.

Many of the pieces have been handed down to us from German Grandmothers or Church Crocheting Club members over the years and have become some of our favorite items for the warm sense of history they bring to our set up.

And everything else we try and keep silvery or sparkly or fuzzy or felted.

I try and find one or two new things to add to the arsenal each year. We ordered a dozen boxes of white bubble lights for the tree back in November, but they were back-ordered and only arrived a few days ago.

Next year, though, we’ll bubble up for sure.

Many out there may whine about how early it gets dark the end of December. But I can’t wait for the sun to fall out of the sky this time of year so I can flick on the tree and watch our non-Mansion shine.

Since our house was built in 1932 and still features much of its original Art Deco-era lighting fixtures and tiling, furnishing it these past years has required a sort of elegant formality, overall.

Lately though, I’ve been brainstorming ways to insert some kooky quirk into the look of the place, scanning the whole wide world for irreverent pieces that playfully modernize the mood – without veering into plasticky kitsch.

I recently found these little footed bowls from India on-line and they’re just the oddball oomph my living/dining/every room could use.

Hand-carved in marble, the bowls’ classic material grounds them in a museum-worthy timelessness. And yet there’s an irreverent wit about them due to their sly, bisected shape. Their overall look whispers ancient Aztec Teletubby statues severed in half by a lunatic art star.

I’ve found that, with or without a plant potted inside, even one of these sly little guys kicks up the crazy/cool quotient of an entire room.

Recent foraging through my favorite thrift store had proved fruitless for months on end, but the curse was finally broken this week with some shiny, fine finds.

Totally “Hot” bling – for my house, not me.

The “family portrait” of all I found including a massive quartz crystal that Speidi would die for.

The fine print on my ‘lil British tin.

I found a place for all my shiny finds in almost no time; although the lamp is resting in a closet, waiting for some shade.

There’s a room where I live that’s turned a little musty and museum-like in its aesthetic. Inside sits an oak-y old grandfather’s clock, a taxidermy partridge, a military trunk, and a tarnished metal desk seemingly salvaged from Ichabod Crane’s first house.

My goal is to gradually mod the place up and propel it into the 21st century (or at least the middle of the 20th) and the shiny slickness of the 1960s Space Race seems a futuristic yet rightly retro reference to start with.

Designer Ross Berens has created a series of science-lab-ish prints for the original nine planets on cotton rag archival paper, available at inPRNT.com.

Mercury, the most heavenly of them all, is orbiting toward my mailbox later this week to rocket my rusty old room into a revolutionary new era.

Incense is for hemped up hippy-dips and candles can get a little soccer mom-ish. The “hot” new way to play with fragranced fire is with Armenia Papers.

Florentine pharmacist Santa Maria Novella offers an abundance of dramatic costume-drama-like cosmetics and tonics, and their frankincense and myrrh-scented Armenia Papers singe away the stagnant staleness of our modern days with a cinematic sense of ceremony.

Sized like a stick of gum, each scented stick is to be folded back and forth like an accordion, set on its side, and set aflame, to fill your room and your soul, once again, with a sense of romance and of warmth.

On my window today, there sat a frosty peacock…

…and it stood still just long enough for me to snap its picture.

Gold and silver and other metallic-ized gifts.

1. Postalco Jotter Notebook.
I had really needed this as all year I had been scribbling phone numbers and directions on a stupid stocking stuffer from last year: a box of little loose (and easily lost) sheets of paper printed with a light orange graphic of man climbing a cliff or jumping over a river or something (I’ve blocked the beyond-dumbness from my memory) and the words “The will to succeed.” (Yesterday I easily mustered the will to successfully toss them in the trash!)

2. My dog Aesop looks like a fox, so thus this door-knocker looks like my dog.

3. My mother gave me the vintage spoon, along with a story: When we moved from England back to America when I was nine months old, the movers had accidentally packed up my baby spoon and my mom was in a panic about how she was going to feed me during our week long sea voyage back to the states. She said every restaurant in England had these little silver spoons in the standard brown sugar tins set on each table. So she guiltlessly stole one with which to feed me at sea. Flash forward 30 some years and she comes across the spoon somehow in my sister’s kitchen and steals the spoon (once again!) and gives it to me for Christmas.

4. Ultra-chunky pretend nails, perfect only for laying around looking pretty.

5. Another vintage English gift, though not stolen. A stamp sheet cover from the 1940s. Trying to figure out how/where to display it as it doesn’t really fit modern American stamp books.

6. A hunk of Brazilian pyrite now giving gritty glam to the top of a stack of books.

With all these shining, sparkling gifts, my digs are one big disco ball!

Their label said Beauty Berries, and they were almost $15 for a bunch of three at the expensive grocery store.

They’ve lasted a week already – maybe they’ll stay this bright and happy forever.

If I put a little thought into it, and maybe do some re-arranging, I think I could plunk this swivel-armed clock somewhere in my house.

I’ll figure it out, just give me a minute…

Even though it seems I’m always acquiring framed prints of pirate pistols, military ships, and solider choruses, I’m equally drawn to gaudy glam when it comes to dressing up my digs.

Saturday night I dreamt for hours of a jagged, Kelly Wearstler-like quartz statue (not pictured, per se) and I’ve spent the past two days criss-crossing the city to various stores trying to get my glitz hit taken care of.

I’m not sure how all my rugged warplane photographs ‘n such will work in the larger context of my ongoing disco decor-addiction, but if you simply surround yourself with true blue treasures, the aesthetic elite proclaim, then everything eventually sorts itself out.

I’m gonna trust that’s true.