When Italian-born interior decorator Alessandra Branca and her husband Steve Uihlein built a vacation home on Harbour Islanda long, narrow island in the Bahamas' where, per Architectural Digest's rendition, the "predominant mode of transportation is the golf cart," and one would have to choose between Bill Gates and Diane von Furstenberg if looking to borrow a cup of sugarincorporating vernacular elements was key. They chose classic regional materials like pecky cypress and coral stone for the two stucco-and-shingle British Colonials they situated at opposite ends of a 40-foot-long swimming pool, one a six-bedroom with a veranda on both levels, the other a poolhouse with extra guest quarters. Other traditional features have obvious benefits, like the Bahamian upside-down house plan, which puts bedrooms on the ground floor and public areas on the top, keeping the communal living and dining rooms breezy and cool, but the decorator added a few personal touches to the project, which she spent time away from homes in Rome, Manhattan, and Chicago to help oversee.

The main house's staircases, for example, were made wider at the base, so guests, including the couple's three grown children, "feel like open arms are welcoming them." As to Branca's work on the interior, it channels the same aspiration she had when decorating a Manhattan apartment for Hearst's seventh annual Designer Visions showcase; as she explained while giving a tour last fall, "Any time I can link the past and now in a new and unexpected way, that's where I'm happy." This kind of remixing plays out in the living room, pictured above, with a pair of vintage armchairs outfitted with Bennison-print cushions, and a few nineteenth-century campaign chairs run through with thick Alessandra Branca for Schumacher stripes.

Photo by William Waldron/Architectural Digest Another second floor living area brings together a vintage red cabinet from the 1960s, Hunter Douglas woven-wood shades, and an octopus triptych from Branca's Chicago shop.

Photo by William Waldron/Architectural Digest In the dining room, an RH table is set with vintage chairs. The light fixtures are from Ikea.

Photo by William Waldron/Architectural Digest An Oly four-poster with Les Indiennes curtains sits in the master bedroom. The blue print of an H on the pillowcases presumably stands for Highlowe, the name that Branca and Uihlein gave the place. It gets repeated in one of the poolhouse's guest bedrooms, pictured in the full set of photos over at Architectural Digest.

Photo by William Waldron/Architectural Digest Glazed French doors, Chinese Chippendalestyle railings, and one supremely enviable pool are visible from the outside.

Alessandra Branca's Chic Bahamas Getaway [Architectural Digest] All the Luxe Details in Hearst's Designer Visions Showhouse [Curbed National]

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The Printed Page: Come Tour Alessandra Branca's Bewitching Bahamas Retreat

Crystal Palace garden designer Georgia Lindsay reaches Grand Designs final

5:30am Friday 4th April 2014 in News By Robert Fisk, Chief Reporter

Garden designer Georgia Lindsay is in the final of a Grand Designs competition

Shakespeare said all the worlds a stage but for Georgia Lindsay it is more of a garden.

The 44-year-old, from Crystal Palace, originally trained in theatre design and is a mural artist and interior decorator.

But since 2010 she developed a passion for garden design and is now down to the final four in this years Grand Designs competition for her small city garden design.

She said: "Maximising a small space to create an interesting enjoyable place to relax is my forte.

"It is a family garden, where relaxation and play co-exist harmoniously.

"The garden has many sustainable, green features which is a strong ethos behind the Grand Designs image.

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BY Alexandria Abramian

April 02 - 2014 3:34 PM

BOWMAN GROUP ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Design inspiration can strike at any time. For interior decorator Robin Strickler, when it came to dreaming up her own Newport Beach family home, that moment came when she first watched Somethings Gotta Give, the 2003 Nancy Meyers romantic comedy with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. For Strickler and countless other design junkies, however, the true star of the film was the sprawling Hamptons home with its soothing and textured palette of neutrals. It was that movie that inspired me to create a home that is more Hamptons, as opposed to a beachy cottage look. For me, its all about a look that is clean and cozy at the same time, says Strickler, who is the owner of Design Works in Costa Mesa.

More research ensued as in, Strickler watched the movie more than a dozen times, closely studying not just its furniture and accessories but also its architectural elements and finishes, like transom windows, dark wood floors and high-ceiling spaces. The dark hardwood floors set the tone, says Strickler. Then pretty much everything else is white. The overall effect is to go with the cooler, monochromatic palette and leave the color to the artwork. It suits the house and is a soothing backdrop to the architecture.

Hence, there are no fuchsia throw pillows, bright yellow wallpaper or vibrant green armchairs here. Instead, Strickler, who sourced much of the furniture from vintage stores as well as Hickory Chair and Lillian August, created a rainbow of textures instead of colors. There are velvets and flax linens and woven fabrics. Gray was actually my accent color, she admits. Were probably the only firm in town that designs without a lot of color.

And while the home has a wine cellar, a chefs kitchen and indoor-outdoor flow, the scene-stealer is the great room. The large space, with its mix of new and vintage elements, its high ceilings and cleverly differentiated areas that dont disrupt the flow, works as a stylish anchor to the entire home. I put in pieces that look good, but that will also get used, says Strickler.

Not that the decorator got every last film-inspired design detail that she dreamed of. One of her favorite spots in the movie is Diane Keatons master bedroom desk, an area where the actress writes, ruminates and cries (a lot). Strickler hoped to create a similar space in her home, but the approval process intervened. I loved that office off the bedroom, but the city didnt approve it, so instead we did a window seat there. Now Ive grown to really love and use that space, too.

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Big Screen Chic

Mrs Apfel will sell the items on luxury flash sale site One Kings Lane She was involved in restorations of the White House under nine presidents

By Misty White Sidell

PUBLISHED: 17:51 EST, 31 March 2014 | UPDATED: 17:58 EST, 31 March 2014

Fashion icon and former interior decorator Iris Apfel is selling more than 800 pieces of vintage furniture, jewelry, and accessories on the luxury flash sale website One Kings Lane.

Mrs Apfel, 92, who is based in New York, was involved in design restoration projects for nine different presidents at the White House including Kennedy and Clinton.

Now a trendsetter in her own right, and famed for her love of bold jewelry, she is clearing out her warehouse storage unit.

Treasures for sale: Fashion star Iris Apfel, 92, will sell more than 800 items from her personal archives on luxury flash sale site One Kings Lane

Poodle play: These porcelain poodles are among the 800 relics for sale, and represent Mrs Apfel's habit of collection dog memorabilia

Global bunch: The relics represent an array of geographical areas including Europe (left) and Asia (right)

She told Refinery29: I've had all these things for many, many years, and they were a part of my home furnishing career. I kept holding onto them because I was thinking I'd go back into that business, but then all the fashion stuff came my way. I had those beautiful things lying in fallow in a warehouse it was time to let go.

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Iris Apfel to sell 800 pieces of vintage furniture and accessories

Dentures and Dental Services Paint Walls Preparation South
Painted Walls Complete Kilm Beige SW 6106 Sherwin Williams at Dentures and Dental Services South Arlington http://youtu.be/2-mVOVJVhs8 Paint Walls Kilm Beige...

By: Christian Painters

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Dentures and Dental Services Paint Walls Preparation South - Video

California Pho Grill Arlington, TX Review
California Pho Grill 3700 S Cooper St, Arlington, TX 76015 Vietnamese Asian Fusion Restaurant Rick E. Warden - Owner/ Interior Decorator Christian Painters...

By: Christian Painters

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California Pho & Grill Arlington, TX Review - Video

Turn Out The Lights
Painted Walls Complete Kilm Beige SW 6106 Sherwin Williams at Dentures and Dental Services South Arlington http://youtu.be/2-mVOVJVhs8 Paint Walls Kilm Beige...

By: Christian Painters

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Turn Out The Lights - Video

Fluffy Bunny Interior Decorator Episode 01
Rosie is a lionhead dwarf rabbit, and in this video she is just over one month old. She likes to rearrange the furniture and takes particular issue with towe...

By: Richard Houchin

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Fluffy Bunny Interior Decorator Episode 01 - Video

Are you gonna go my way?

Jennifer Anistonhas said a big yes to having retro rocker friend Lenny Kravitzbe the interior decorator for her Bel Air pad, RadarOnline.comhasexclusivelylearned.

After Aniston, 45, met Kravitz, 49, through her fiance Justin Theroux, 42, she learned his 60s and 70s influenced design style was beyond cool!

Jen is blown away by Lennys unique taste and now hes picked out a series of interesting pieces of furniture for the lavish home she shares with Justin, a source told Radar.

PHOTOS:Revealing Jennifer Aniston Shots From Were The Millers Go Viral

Furniture is not Jens strong suit and she always needs help in this apartment to create her dream look.

Two years ago, Aniston learned what an accomplished designer the singer is when she and Theroux visited Kravitzs legendary New York apartment.

She loved its many one-of-a-kind furnishings, the source said. Jen has confided in friends that Justins taste can sometimes be a little too quirky for her.

PHOTOS: Jennifer Aniston & Courteney Cox Show Off Amazing Bikini Bodies In Cabo San Lucas

And when it came time to decorate her Bel Air home, Lenny was the first person she called when it came to fixing up the interior.

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Is Jennifer Aniston Going His Way? Actress Enlists Rocker Pal Lenny Kravitz To Decorate Her Bel Air Pad

His life was littered with great patrons royal and noble the first two Georges and Frederick, Prince of Wales, appointed him Master Carpenter and Master Mason, invented for him the post of Inspector of Paintings in the Royal Palaces, and on the death of Charles Jervas he was at last, in 1739, at the age of 55, appointed Portrait Painter to the King though George II sensibly declared that he would never sit for him, for by then everyone had realised that Kent was not the English Raphael and his reputation had begun to fade. George Vertue, Kents contemporary, whose observations on art in England in their day formed the first systematic account of the subject, was contemptuous, condemning him as an untalented placeman; his ally Hogarth went further with neither England nor Italy ever produced a more contemptible dauber.

That their view of Kent on his death in 1748 held sway is not surprising, for Kents taste was heavily Baroque but without the flight and fantasy of his predecessors Bernini and Borromini, and utterly lacking the common-sense elegance of Fontana; his contemporary in Turin, Juvarra (of whom he may not have known, though he was briefly in that city early in November 1719), was an infinitely more exciting architect. Worst of all for Kents posthumous reputation was the sweeping tide of Rococo all over Europe, light, deft and enchanting, in contrast to his heavy and exaggeratedly stately style it could reasonably be argued that, far from being a faithful follower of Palladio, he weighed down that genius with his sense of pomp and his monumental mannerisms.

Heavily Baroque: the Kings Staircase and Ceiling at Kensington Palace Historic Royal Palaces

But who was William Kent? We know what he was in later life, but the who remains elusive. How was it that a boy born William Cant in 1685, in Bridlington, then a prosperous market town noted for its many annual fairs, the son of a common joiner, could have so attracted the patronage of the local gentry that, at the age of 24 and having changed his name from Cant to Kent, they sent him off on the Grand Tour to Italy, supporting him there for 10 years? It is said that he went to the local grammar school and was apprenticed to a coach-painter in Hull, but this is not supported by documents (though the oldest coach-builder in the country was the Yorkshire firm of Walter Rippon, 1555-1958, and there might be something lurking in its history). All that we really know is that his mother died in 1697 and that in 1709 he was in London, signing himself William Cant... limner. Who taught him to limn (that is to draw and paint)? It is surprising that he claimed no master, nor, when he was famous, did any master claim him as a pupil.

What were his youthful charms, I wonder, and how thick his Yorkshire accent? Was he, as David Hockney was to be, an amusing pet for the aristocracy? Was he, like Roy Strong, not only clever (in the best sense of that word), but something of a chameleon? Or is there the very simple answer that one of the local aristocrats was his father and that he was educated almost as a gentleman? One writer in the exhibition catalogue has him as warm, affable, witty, extrovert... bubbling with erudite learning though without offering evidence; another (there are 15) quotes Lady Mary Wortley Montagus quip on bisexual ambiguity and goes on to suggest that in the relaxed atmosphere of the court, Kents relationship with Lord Burlington might have had its amorous dimension.

In Italy he joined the studio of Giuseppe Chiari, a pupil of Carlo Maratta I wonder if some of the appalling duds in the Maratta Room in Houghton Hall were not only framed by Kent, but painted by him? His output of paintings copies and originals was, in the circumstances, prodigious, for he supplemented his various pensions from England by acting as a proxy collector of all sorts of works of art and playing cicerone (guide, companion, comforter) to other Grand Tourists, often of the grandest kind. Of these the most important were Thomas Coke, future Earl of Leicester and builder of Holkham Hall in Norfolk (to designs by Kent), and Richard Boyle, exquisite and aesthetically driven, the youthful Earl of Burlington who was to take Kent into his household, and in whose arms the great genius died, then to be buried in the Burlington family vault. Both men were significantly younger than Kent, Coke by 13 years, Burlington by a decade.

And still we ask who was this William Kent? He seems at once to have had contacts with the highest levels of society in Italy, both visiting English and resident Italian, to have been given commissions by Italians (who should have known better), and even to have won second prize for painting at the Accademia di San Luca. We have no portrait of him earlier than a head by Benedetto Luti, a far superior painter whom Kent had known since his arrival from Rome in 1710, and who may have been an influence. It is, I suspect, a fragment of a full-length portrait, and with no costume to distract us we see only a decidedly plump face with a double chin, a petulant little mouth and a disagreeable air of hauteur; he is 34 and soon to return to London. At 40 or so he was painted by the plodding William Aikman, an immediate contemporary from Scotland who had recently come to London seeking patronage; he too gave Kent the double chin and little mouth, but the air is now complacent. In a self- portrait two years later Kent looks down on the great staircase of Kensington Palace, and in this he has run to fat, the cheeks now so plump that they pinch the once large eyes. In Burlingtons household from the day of their return together from Italy in 1719, Burlingtons Countess observed Kents fondness for food and affectionately referred to him as Kentino and ye little Signor. Did he assume tiresome Italian manners, I wonder?

Visual delight: the Gallery at Chiswick House by William Henry Hunt, 1828 Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth The exhibition is disappointing in its modesty. If Kent is known for anything, it is for opulence and grandeur in great rooms and splendid staircases, their theatre controlled by unity and uniformity, by concept rather than impulse, but this we can divine only from small things, from prints and drawings, plans and elevations, from ponderous gilt furniture and the fine frames of paintings of such poor quality as can occasionally still be found in Londons auction rooms on a bad day. All these are crammed hugger-mugger into too small a space, yet, if Kent was ever inspired, it was in furnishing vast rooms in which assemblies met, in his ability to turn every wall into a decorative architectural scheme in which furniture, paintings, curtains and cut-velvet wall hangings combined to form, as it were, a rhythmic architectural faade. Isolated in an exhibition, his ornate furniture, titanic in ambition, laden with detail and far too sculptural for its purpose, may seem more than mildly absurd; but against a wall, under a painting, these cumbrous monstrosities are far more than seats and tables, and in Kents eye were part of an aesthetic unity, part of the process of completing a house in which every detail of colour, material and texture played its part. He was, in this, the inventor of what in Germany, a long century later, was called Gesamtkunstwerk the complete or total work of art though the music should be by, not Wagner, but Handel, Kents very close contemporary.

In this exhibition we see proof of Hogarths judgment that Kent was a contemptible dauber, and his draughtsmanship too is exposed as that of a hapless amateur; but to be fair to him, Kent should be judged only in his houses and palaces, not in the mean circumstances of a meagre exhibition in the V&A. Five minutes in one room of Houghton proves him to have been capable of the most accomplished fusions of architectural convention, decoration and embellishment.

William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain is at the V&A, SW7 (020 7942 2000, vam.ac.uk) until July 13. Sat-Thur 10am-5.30pm, Fri 10am-9.30pm. Admission 8, concessions available.

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William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, V&A - exhibition review