Featured! My home in Rue Magazine

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen a few of these pics in the last month. But I wanted to share a link to possibly the most-fun feature I’ve ever been a part of: a Q&A and home tour in the beloved online design magazine, Rue!

The feature landed earlier this summer, and it’s still live here. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside. Photographs are all by Allison Sepanek.

They even included a few of my real-life design tips, and featured pieces from my new ceramics collection with Jill Rosenwald!

If I’m being totally honest, these spaces are usually much more lived-in than they appear in this feature. We use every inch of our house, and our counters are usually topped with all manner of construction-paper art projects, pipe cleaners, breakfast dishes, and mail. But whose aren’t? In any given month, these rooms look like the above pics approximately twice, for about twenty minutes at a stretch—and never at the same time. I did manage to sneak in some reminders that people live here, though. Who can spot the Beanie Boo owl on page 21?

Head on over to Rue to read the full story.  And huge thanks to editor Kelli Lamb for the beautifully produced feature!

Obsessed With: Lilac & Saffron

I’m not a purple girl, but lately I’ve been oddly attracted to moody shades of lilac and lavender. Maybe it’s the gray undertones I’m seeing in today’s purples; they feel dusty, moody and sort of antique.

And then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve been loving bright hits of saffron, yellow mustard, and brighter shades of ochre. One piece in a warm, sunny-afternoon hue can brighten and modernize any space.  

So why not bring them together? Here’s a sampling of lilac- and saffon-colored pieces that caught my eye in June. I’m loving what happens when the two shades mingle.  

1. Fonteyne purple and teal area rug, from $27, Joss & Main. 2. Delphine chair, $2,295, Jayson Home. 3. Wonderland Tropisk wallpaper in Yellow/Green, $1.68/square foot, Joss & Main. 4. Morphew barrel chair, $290, Joss & Main. 5. 'Taupe Floral' framed print on canvas, $150, Joss & Main. 6. Tasseled velvet pillows, $58 each, Anthropologie.

Purple and yellow in your house: Yea or nay? 

Introducing... My collection with Jill Rosenwald!

If you’re following me over on Instagram, you may have heard the news (or spotted the goods): I’ve launched my first product collaboration with the inimitable ceramics, rug, and bedding designer Jill Rosenwald!

Have a look:

I first learned about Jill when I came to Joss & Main in 2012. Happy, patterned flat-weave rugs were making a HUGE splash in home decor at the time, and her rug designs were great sellers on our site. Digging in, I soon learned that her main medium was actually ceramics, and that she had an incredible studio not far from me in Boston. There, in an airy industrial space, her small team crafts the most beautiful pottery and lamps by hand. Still, for many years, I only admired Jill’s work from afar.

Cut to late 2017. I was getting ready to publish Your Home, Your Style, and the book’s photographer, Joyelle West, invited me to speak at a local event for women in the design industry. Jill was one of the hosts, and she and I hit it off from the start. So when I began asking her about her process and how she works with outside collaborators…. Well, within a few weeks we were in  her studio drawing, painting and picking out shapes.

The three patterns Jill and I came up with were based on motifs I love from the textile world: antelope spots, indigo batik prints, and velvet ikat.  All have an elegant, glamorous quality to them, but they’re also a little wild. I love that each has a coordinating tray in the same print, and that the pieces can be used literally in any room of the house.

My favorite ways to use the wee vases, a.k.a. Jilly cups:

• For a tight bouquet of inexpensive flowers or roses
• As a makeup or toothbrush holder in the bathroom
• As a pen/pencil cup
• For tea or coffee

My favorite ways to use the curved-edge trays:

• To dress up an assortment of appetizers
• As a catchall for keys, sunglasses, and other daily essentials
• As a tray for paper clips, pushpins, and other desk supplies
• As a cuter-than-cute spoon rest by the stove

All six pieces would be amazing gifts for a special occasion. They're handmade to order and rimmed in 14K gold. You can check out the complete capsule collection here.

What do you think? Do you have a favorite piece?

Obsessed With: These Perigold Picks!

Friends! This is going to be the fastest post ever, since I'm traveling, but today I'm thrilled to share that my friends over at Perigold, a newer site from the Wayfair family of brands, invited me to curate a sale featuring my top finds! 

This sale was unbelievably fun to put together. While I've curated collections for Joss & Main, shopping the products on Perigold was next-level fun. The site features the creme de la creme of home decor brands—think Currey & Co., Jonathan Adler, Janus et Cie, Henredon, Worlds Away,  et cetera. It was fascinating to home in on what I'd buy for my own home if budget and space were no concern—but rest assured, there are some great deals in there too, especially given the lifetime-quality of this stuff. 

Below is a peek at a few of my top finds. Have a look, then head over to Perigold to check out the sale! 

1. Aviva Stanoff for Currey & Co. Forest 10-light crystal chandelier, $8,740. 2. Bungalow 5 Heaven Tower sculpture, $367. 3. Feizy Alden hand-knotted wool rug, starting at $130. 4. Interlude Gianna bone box set, $394. 5. Regina Andrew bone and brass tray, $248. 6. C.R. Laine Desi sofa, $2750. All available at Perigold. 

What’s a Home Without Books?

OK, it’s fair to say this post has an ulterior motive: To get you to buy my book. But in all honesty, I think I’d be pretty happy if it got you to buy ANY book for your home, because design books have just had that much of an impact on me, my space, and my life.

It’s true: As I infer in the introduction to Your Home, Your Style, design books, along with home-makeover shows and that class of home-focused magazines known to insiders as “shelter mags,” taught me almost everything I know about putting a space together. That, and actually getting my hands dirty doing it—over and over again, in my own homes and as a part of my job at Joss & Main.

But books of any kind bring interest and wisdom to the home and a feeling of warmth and life to any space. Any time I need a shot to feel “finished,” one of the first things I grab is a book, which is how so many of other people’s design publications ended up making cameos in my own.

Here’s are just some of the volumes you’ll spy in Your Home, Your Style:

Restoring a House In the City

Appears on: The cover and page 93
Deep is my love for this guide to renovating and restoring townhouses by Ingrid Abramovitch, a Brooklyn-based writer and editor who shares my affection for quirk- and history-filled urban dwellings. I was partway through my own townhouse renovation when I purchased her book, and you can be sure it had me rethinking all of my design choices as I flipped through page after page of incredible homes ranging in style from ultramodern to piece-of-the-past.

Living With Pattern

Appears on: Pages 111 and 115
To peruse these pages is to see the world through a true creative’s eyes. Textile designer Rebecca Atwood takes us on a tour of spaces that are downright alluring in their ease and imperfection, pointing out all the ways pattern influences the look and feel of each room. Fabrics are only the beginning; she calls attention to every element in the home, from the arrangement of floorboards and tile to the weave of the rugs and paning on the windows. It’s utterly fascinating—and the organic dot pattern on the cover makes it look incredible on a coffee table, too.

Remodelista

Appears on: Page 175

Striking, typographic spine: Check. Clean, beautiful layouts: Check. Inspirational interiors that actually seem achievable: Check. It's no wonder this title appears on the bookshelves of chic people across the country. Remodelista blog founder Julie Carlson filled her pages with an edited mix of spaces that mix high-end and low, making "style at home" feel like a concept within everyone's reach. and the heavy, oversized book just feels good in your home and hand. 

Domino: Your Guide to a Stylish Home

Appears on: Pages 115 and 167
There is No. Book. On the Planet. That will ever compare to the original Domino: The Book of Decorating, written by original Domino mag editors Deborah Needleman and Sara Ruffin Costello. But lo, its followup, created by Domino successors Jessica Romm Perez and Shani Silver, comes pretty darn close. Like the now-iconic original, this tome delivers a TON of decorating know-how despite its compact size, and does so with Domino’s signature blend of whimsy and authority. Both Domino books are remarkable in that the covers themselves make the books covetable and recognizable—a clever move I took to heart when choosing the cover pattern for Your Home, Your Style.

Surf Shack: Laid-Back Living By the Water

Appears on: Page 20
Nina Freudenberger’s ocean-inspired book captures that amazing feeling of being away—that kind of magical “away” where the confluence of sun, salt, and sand seems to dust everyone and everything around you with contentment and peace. Unlike many books on beachside style, Surf Shack is 100% free of kitschy clam-shack decor; instead, Freudenberger spotlights environments that are mellow, sometimes minimalist, and that capture the cool, come-as-you-are attitude of life by the sea.  

Styled: Secrets for Arranging Rooms, from Tabletops to Bookshelves

Appears on: Page 115
Stylist and blogging queen Emily Henderson has admitted she dislikes the spine of her book, Styled—”too shiny gold—and therefore impossible to photograph,” she’s said of the design. But that didn’t stop us from popping it into a coffee-table vignette in Chapter Six, and I think it works. Styled is full fantastic advice for staging character-filled decorating “moments” around the house; I wish I’d read her tips on styling a mantel, for instance, before photographer Joyelle West and I shot Your Home, Your Style. We did fine, but if you want to take your Instagram skills to a whole other level, this is a must-read.

I could go on and on. A few design books that didn’t appear in YHYS’s final imagery, but that I adore for their down-to-earth approach to home and style:

• Sage Living: Decorate for the Life You Want by Anne Sage (who wrote the jacket praise on my book!)
   
• Design Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney
   
• Habitat by Lauren Liess
   
• The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman 

And if you need a GORGEOUS showstopper on a console table or bookshelf, you must pick up:

• The Finer Things by Christiane Lemieux
   
• Elements of Style by Erin Gates

What have I missed? Are there any design titles that changed your home and/or life?