Table of contents for Winter 2015 in MILIEU

Not everyone knows my favorite color is white, but it is and has been for as long as I can remember. I’ve been asked many times, “Why white?”, and my answer is usually the same. Because I work around color every day, I want my own, personal surroundings to feel calm and serene. With this second issue of MILIEU, I decided to pursue this question further, and I sought to discover and highlight designers who also embrace white as their favorite hue. London was my first stop, and it was there that I met the inimitable Helen Amy Murray, an artist who sculpts leather and other textiles in the most tactile and beautiful ways. I ventured deep into the English countryside, visited busy market towns, and strolled coastal villages, coming…

Any visit to Barnsley House begins with the garden. The moment the seventeenth-century house comes into view from the road, a kind of Roman temple is seen, lit from within and fronted with a shallow pool and stone paving; in fact, it’s a garden folly. It is tempting, too, to follow a path arched with overhanging trees, a place known as the Laburnham, one of the most photographed garden pathways in England. An alleé of topiary-perfect hedges leads to the entrance of the stone house with projecting dormers and Gothic-style details, its towering chimneys registering the smoke of fireplaces. When we walked in, logs crackled and snapped in a vaulted hearth, and visitors lounged on chic white sofas. Suddenly, it seemed as if we had made a mistake and entered…

TRANSITIONAL KITCHEN CONTEMPORARY KITCHEN TRADITIONAL KITCHEN…

Since we’re on the topic of white houses in this issue, let’s start with the most obvious. Put aside your political affiliations. We’re talking only about color, and if white is right for the President’s home, it’s right for your walls and furnishings. The White House is that particular shade because white is the one color in the palette that speaks of purity, freedom, limitlessness. White provides a backdrop that can accommodate any hue, texture, or pattern. White neither overpowers nor underwhelms. It is inherently democratic, whether used for a living room wall or the Taj Mahal, a picket fence or a wedding veil. Soon after architect Richard Meier completed his all-white J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, a town where Technicolor rules, he remarked in an interview, “Whiteness…

When interior designer Connie Buckner moved to New Orleans in her twenties, she got her first — and lasting — lesson in the color white. A friend took her to Tulane University’s campus and stood her in front of the president’s house, a mansion of pediments and four-cornered Ionic columns, dentil moldings, and decorative cornices. “I was told there were twenty-one shades of white on that house,” she recalls now from her pied-à-terre in Sausalito, California, “and that was my first clue about what you could do with the shadings of white. It was as if the white was making the architecture breathe.” A breath of fresh air is one way to characterize the interiors of her small abode in Sausalito, with its head-on views of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz,…

When we met Helen Amy Murray in her London studio, we couldn’t refrain from tracing with our fingers the elaborate designs on her sculpted leather fabrics. So luscious were they, so detailed, that we decided to see if rather than just covering furniture they could also be used to dress a woman. For ten years, Murray’s eponymous label has produced sculpted textiles that figure onto her furniture, wall coverings, rugs, and other items. We saw right away that her fabrics are a marriage of contrasts — light and shadow, masculine and feminine, hard and soft — created through a unique sculpting technique. From bolts of leather, silk, suede, and felt emerge three-dimensional flowers, birds, and structured geometrics whose shapes change depending on lighting and the angle from which they are…

After a successful career in real estate for 10 years, I purchased an existing agency in 2008. I thought my timing was perfect since the Houston area real estate market had steadily climbed for years. Little did I know of the interesting times ahead. In September 2008, Hurricane Ike—with winds of 110 mph—hit Galveston and roared across Houston. Life without electricity and the modern conveniences for 17 days was only the beginning. In 2009 and 2010, our nation suffered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. During 2011 and 2012, the country’s economic news was swinging on a huge pendulum—jobs, manufacturing, and home prices were up one week and down the next—sometimes seemingly on the same day. Finally, in 2012, Houstonians began experiencing more jobs, fewer foreclosures and a…

Sabine and Tom Verellen, owners of the Belgian-inspired home-furnishings company Verellen, graciously hosted MILIEU’s launch party during the High Point Fall Market in North Carolina. Designers, architects, store owners, and friends gathered to celebrate MILIEU’s debut and meet the people behind the magazine. Set within a tent were trees in planters and wood-burning fires that made for a warm atmosphere in the cool, crisp night. Hay bales, topped with linen-slipcovered cushions, stretched the length of a farm-style table set with buckets of white roses and candlelit hurricanes. Guests dined on trays of gourmet food catered by Lisa Hawley of Southern Roots Restaurant in nearby Jamestown. Although guests were tired from long market days, the party continued until midnight. Thank you, Sabine, Tom, and the entire Verellen family, for this lovely…

Going for color means choosing white. White is more versatile than the boldest hue in the palette. For a color that supposedly represents a blank slate, white can fill any surface with meaning and power — perhaps more than any other shade. For Santa Monica–based designer Kelly Schandel, white, the lightest and brightest of hues, is the perfect color to reflect life’s full spectrum. It is an apt idea, for white contains all the wavelengths of the visible color spectrum. “White is uniquely able to evoke both the modern and the classical, and is also unequivocally the best background for art,” says Schandel, who founded her firm, Thinkpure, in 2003. That recognition is realized in this decidedly elegant, pared-down home perched on a famous ribbon of roadway that courses the…

FURNISHINGS MEET FASHION Written by: Suzanne LeVert Photography: Andreas Von Einsiedel, einsiedel.com Pages 19-22 Helen Amy Murray, +44 (0) 207-613-1511, helenamymurray.com FULLY RECOVERED Written by: Marie Proeller Hueston Photography: Jack Thompson, jthompsonphoto.com Pages 24-26 Manuel Ruiperez, upholsterer, 832-978-6825, manuel@manuelupholstery.com GUEST APPEAL Written by: David Masello Photography: Mark Bolton, markboltonphotography.co.uk Pages 29-35 Barnsley House, Barnsley, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, GL7 5EE, +44 (0) 128-574-0000, www.barnsleyhouse.com WALLS OF WHITE Photography: Maxine Helfman, maxinehelfman.com Table of Contents: Page 8 Ô-Clock, Color: Blanc, DEDAR, www.dedar.com, paired with macaroons from Tart Bakery, tartbakerydallas.com, served on Tina Frey Designs resin pedestal bowl in white, FOUND, foundforthehome.com Page 39 Paintable Plaster, Name: Cavetto, WEITZNER LIMITED, weitznerlimited.com, paired with coconut cream cake from Highland Park Cafeteria, highlandparkcafeteria.com. Page 40 1. Balloons, Color: Nacre, DEDAR, www.dedar.com, paired with softball-sized cake balls from…

Houston-based upholsterer Manuel Ruiperez makes house calls. When he receives an inquiry from prospective clients, he visits their home to see the furniture in need of his care. He runs his hand over each piece, inspecting not only what is visible to the eye but also what lies beneath the fabric — springs, padding, and frame. Upholstery done right, he believes, changes the outward appearance of cherished furnishings and it refreshes them from top to bottom. “It’s like turning back the hands of time,” he observes, “to when these pieces were first made.” What has become a lifelong passion for Ruiperez began as an after-school job, helping out in his uncle’s upholstery shop in Madrid when he was just fifteen years old. “I had always been good with my hands,…

One of the most colorful aspects of white is its ability to let you indulge in pattern, especially when it’s white on white, as in these eight distinctive wallcoverings. Florals and geometrics, minimalism and dots in shades of whipped cream and quartz, alabaster and supernova all make for designs as delicious as, well, dessert.…

Darryl Carter, a dashing, Washington, D.C–based interior designer, met with MILIEU from his shop and studio, which he opened last year in the city’s Shaw neighborhood. His store, in an atmospheric pre–Civil War building, is one of the brightest locales in the nation’s capital. MILIEU: You’ve been quoted as saying that there are 179 shades of white that you like. What’s your favorite? Darryl: That’s probably an inaccurate number. There are even more shades than that — hundreds, I would guess. I think of paint more as a wash than as an actual true, pure defined color. In my office, however, which is a clean, modern space, I did choose a bright white. So often, though, I’ll hear someone say something about a white wall, but I’ll look at it…

Mirror, mirror on the wall — and above the fireplace, atop every landing, as panes of glass on faux windows in the dining room and hallway, on tabletops. It’s difficult not to see your reflection somewhere in the rooms of Richard Carnill’s circa-1820 Regency-style townhouse. “It’s not that I have a narcissistic complex,” insists Carnill, who owns a home interiors and garden store just two blocks from his three-story house in the busy English market town of Southwell. “I just love the way mirrors bounce light around a room, that there’s something very living about a mirror, much more so than a painting. In small, dark spaces, such as a hallway or in a low-ceilinged room with wooden beams, as in my dining room, mirrors make a room feel more…

Proof of Jan Barboglio’s devotion to her Mexican roots is revealed when she says, “I cry when I hear mariachi. I don’t cry when I hear country western.” Born in El Paso but raised on a family ranch in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila by her Italian father and Scotch–Irish mother, Barboglio is a decidedly American home accessories designer, based in Dallas. Yet, she references Mexico in every object she makes through her namesake company. Decanters, platters, candelabras, utensils, chargers, napkin rings, hurricane lamps, every item embodies something actual and, perhaps, spiritual about her region of Mexico. Her preferred materials are iron, crystal, silver, wood, and leather, articulated in the kinds of sculptural forms found only in Mexico. “You could say that everything I design is meant to have…

Passport to Stylish Living Learning From the Best I have always been a seeker of information and a collector of ideas. For most of my life, it has been my habit to amass books and magazines. Even at the age of twelve, I devoured them. As a teen, I spent hours sitting on my bed with a notebook and pen, writing every tip and noteworthy suggestion I could gather. As I approached my twenties, I became obsessed with houses and shelter magazines, always eager to learn more from the experts and escape to beautiful worlds. Fashion editor Diana Vreeland once wrote that few things are more fascinating than the opportunity to see how people live during their private hours. I agree. But for me it is more than just peering…