Inhaltsverzeichnis für November/December 2023 in Veranda

“The Christmas season is fleeting, isn’t it? But beautiful and sentimental while it lasts.”—DESIGNER RICHARD KEITH LANGHAM The soaring 20-foot tree—trimmed with thousands of colored bulbs, foil icicles, and dime-store ornaments—inside interior designer Richard Keith Langham’s former New York City atelier rivaled the neighboring display at Rockefeller Center in size and spirit. This dinner party scene appeared in our 2008 holiday issue, and 15 years later, its merriment endures to inspire this edition’s moments of gifting and gathering, decked-out decorating (including a woodsy Langham encore on page 122), and the wonderment of global travel. As the designer reflects, “By the end of the year, we all need it.”…

5:35 p.m. A Shimmering Preparty Ritual With a swirl of her bubbly, she shows guests to their rooms, then slips off for final dressing table touches. Among them are minty amethyst earrings by Mateo, a favorite Breguet wrist-watch with a gleaming mother-of-pearl dial (it never misses a party), and a dab of Byredo’s cedarwood and violet scent. 6:42 p.m. Gamers’ Cocktail Hour Herend’s cheeky porcelain dominoes tease a crowd for whom games are both gift and ceremony. A lapis and brass playing card case for the ace among them, Dior’s embroidered backgammon set for the dueling classicists, and the Prohibition-chic shaker and hand-cut Japanese martini glasses? Clutched tightly by all, particularly spectators whispering around the loungy perimeter. May the best guest win. 9:50 p.m. Elegant After-Dinner Banter In flickering candlelight,…

The New Royal Botanicals Alberto Pinto’s Feuillage pattern pays vivid homage to Chelsea porcelain’s botanical collection, a prized acquisition of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, with hand-painted herbarium-like studies of flora and fauna on Limoges porcelain. Miller reprises the naturalist scene with regal lavender anemones and magenta Astrantia mixed with chartreuse hydrangeas. Spiky veronicas lend an English garden feel, plus enticing perches for butterflies. Humble, Rosy Romanticism It was caviar taste on a tuna fish budget. Transferware sported designs as refined as its fine china contemporaries but sold at a much lower price, thanks to a new copperplate printing method developed in Staffordshire in the late 18th century. Here, Miller recreates the pottery’s pastoral scenes with a cottage garden–inspired arrangement of Tinkerbell garden roses, spray roses, and tulips in mellow,…

STAY The Original Round Top Antiques Fair is hosted triannually; visit round toptexasantiques.com for 2024 dates. Bunk beside the fields and barns at the Branca Bungalow (redantler roundtop.com). EAT Set in an early 1800s stone building, Lulu’s is Branca’s favorite dinner spot for Italian fare in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. SHOP While Casa Branca’s tent beside Red Antler Bungalows immerses antiquers in extraordinary home decor and accessories, you can often find the designer snapping up vintage clothing at modernMarla and hitting the booths at Market Hill, a 135,000-square-foot shop that is open year-round.…

AREJUVENATING HOLIDAY GETAWAY can take many forms, from skiing in the Alps to sunning in the Bahamas. But for one extended family, it often happens at the end of a long red-dirt road on the banks of an oxbow lake “in the middle of nowhere Mississippi,” as designer Richard Keith Langham puts it. Black Bear Lodge is more than a physical destination; it’s also a way of spending time together. “The whole place speaks of Southern hospitality in a real, old-fashioned sense,” says Langham. “Big, comfy guest rooms; wonderful meals and roaring fires; great fellowship, plus a huge amount of time in the piney woods”—some 6,000 acres of piney woods to be exact. Equally important is what it lacks. “There’s no internet,” says the client. “There’s a big rock about 50…

OBJECTS & ARTIFACTS Pages 26–27 L’Objet Linen Sateen tablecloth, Collecto. RINGING IN THE WEEKEND Page 28 Trellis Twine fabric, Soane Britain. Antique rug, Eighteenth Street Orientals. Risheh fabric, Natasha Baradaran Textiles. Nightstand, lamp, and mirror, Design Supply. Margeaux cushion, Soho Home. Page 30 Vintage evening dress, MK Quinlan. Antique desk, Architectural Heritage. Spanish Sunburst mirror, Maison de France Antiques. Japanese painted screen, Foxglove Antiques. Brookings table lamp, Serena & Lily. Page 32 Calix mantel and St. Amour French oak flooring, François & Co. Silver vase, Circa II Antiques. Obelisk firedogs, Chesneys. Cordell Travertine fireplace tools, Palecek. Antique wooden armchair, Design Supply. Promontory drinks table, R Hughes. La Foce rug, Patterson Flynn. Hex ottoman in Fortuny Apollo fabric, Grant Trick Collection. Page 34 Vase, The Travel Studio. Page 36 Angora Shag rug,…

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I traveled to Japan for the first time for an immersion into the world of Swiss watchmaking. Yes, you read that correctly: I was there for the Patek Philippe Watch Art Grand Exhibition in Tokyo, a biennial installation the manufacture holds in a unique market. For two weeks, the company welcomed 60,000 visitors into a nearly 27,000-square-foot exhibit to experience the extraordinary world of Patek. In addition to the display of 190 antique and noteworthy timepieces from its museum in Geneva, artisan demonstrations, and multisensory presentations of two centuries of timepiece innovation, the exhibition featured six limited edition introductions, including a new self-winding Quadruple Complication (so named for its minute repeater, perpetual calendar, and twin chronographs) and the first World Time watch equipped with a date display…

OUR HOME IS LIKE A TIME CAPSULE,” says Bill Miller of the restored 1773 Connecticut home he owns with his partner, Paul Landy. It’s a melding of period architectural styles both Federal and Greek Revival with abundant tweaking over its long life, he explains, “neglected for about 40 years when Paul and I purchased it five years ago. We completely renovated it and now it has the spirit of a ‘new’ old house.” Filled with fine early 19th-century American classical furnishings and Grand Tour objects with some Black Forest thrown in for fun, during the holidays it serves as an enchanted canvas for their collection of antique German ornaments and other collectibles—many of them extraordinarily precious—from delicate hand-painted glass baubles and a gnome diorama housed inside a suitcase to old…

For buying information, see The Sourcebook, page 134.…

THERE’S MAYBE AN HOUR of sunlight left when I hop in Jeff Lewis’s silver F-150 hybrid to meet the icons of Oregon’s Willamette valley. “The idea is to build some context so you get a lexicon of how to speak about the valley and understand the wines,” Lewis says as we trace the emerald contours of the Dundee Hills he knows like the back of his hand. This is the valley’s most prestigious appellation and the home of Alexana vineyards and winery, whose portfolio Lewis manages. When pioneering winemakers planted the first vines in the hills in 1965, people said they were crazy—turns out they weren’t—and that can-do, counterculture spirit is as ingrained in the valley’s DNA as the iron in its ruddy Jory soil, left over from million-years-old lava…

DOUBLE SPICE KITCHEN IN HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT, interior designer Kristen McCory’s clients presented her with a rosy proposition: Use the deep burgundy Lacanche range and hood as a starting point and then don’t hold back. “It was a chance to do something completely different,” says McCory, who repeated the rich shade inside the glass cabinets flanking the sink and on floor-toceiling cabinetry in an adjacent butler’s pantry (shown on page 130). But like all satisfying spice, the beauty is in the balance. Pegasus marble countertops, linen white cabinetry paint, and black accents temper the red, while painted, parquet-like floors and a sepia English garden mural nod to the early 20th-century Georgian-style architecture. “Everything here is in conversation, providing a beautiful sense of age and character,” notes McCory. BLACK-TIE BUTLER’S PANTRY THE…

WHEN I WA S A KID I always looked forward to summer because I could go out and play ball and go swimming. Then, years later, I discovered Jamaica. In the middle of winter, I could step out of time. We came there on holiday as a young family more than four decades ago. It wasn’t long before we moved into a romantic old villa on the highest point of Round Hill, a resort overlooking the Caribbean. We called it High Rock. It had a spirit and a glamour that harkened back to the days when Grace Kelly, Noël Coward, the Astaires, Errol Flynn, and Ian Fleming wintered there—there was a timelessness that we loved. Surrounded by a jungle of trees and flowers, it was our own Garden of Eden.…

IT WAS THE ULTIMATE WEALTH SIGNIFIER, swathing walls of palazzi and châteaus of medieval and Renaissance Europe, not to mention dinner tables and even well-to-do women. Though damask first emerged in the third century BCE, when Chinese weavers used one warp and one weft thread to create opulent, reversible topographies of silk that draped the shoulders of emperors, it gained its moniker when Syrian merchants introduced the fabric to European weavers. In western hands it became damask, for the trading post it arrived from, and took on symmetrical patterns of flowers, feathers, and fruit that became forever linked to the technique. Today’s wave suggests another resonant rediscovery with Nobilis’s channeling of a Mediterranean paradise, Cowtan & Tout’s rustic expressions in linen, and Chelsea Textiles’ “sun-faded” Venetian Damask that sings of…

Ciao, y’all, pretty much says it all. The phrase is a two-word roundup of what Chicago-based designer Alessandra Branca brings to Round Top: her Italian sophistication plus a wink to Texas swagger plus a heaping dose of Southern welcome. Never mind that prior to this project Branca had yet to join the throngs of design enthusiasts who flock to the tiny Texas town known for its three annual antiques markets. She was invited down by longtime friends and Texas natives Greg Fourticq and John Cone, the developers and visionaries behind Red Antler Bungalows. Fourticq and Cone had both grown up in Houston and, after years living in New York and elsewhere, returned to their roots with dreams of finding property near Round Top. When this well-located parcel came available and…