For the love of sage

If you’re from the Northeast, in particular, you’re quite possibly familiar with Vermont’s penultimate old-school, traditional glass and pottery maker and purveyor, Simon Pearce. Their trademark celadon crackle glaze was popular seemingly from the first moment of its inception and continues to garner such fervor and admiration even today, whether it’s on bowls, lamps, plates, or pitchers. There are collectors who quite simply cannot get enough of celadon crackle Simon Pearce pottery.

The color itself, however - that somewhat ineffable hybrid of sage, celery, mint, and pistachio - has waxed and waned in its popularity throughout the years in regards to interiors and design, tableware, tile, lighting, fashion, and furniture. Versions of it pop up in Saarinen and Eames furniture, Warhol’s soup can prints, and in Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” an “eau de nil” light green suit is worn by the Tippi Hedren as she flees the maniacal flocks. (You can read a fascinating piece on “eau de nil” and its omnipresence throughout the ages right here.)

Recently, we started a fantastic project in Malibu, a small but incredibly precious jewel of a spot by the sea (#projecttheskyismoreblueinmalibu on Instagram) and immediately noticed our client’s affinity for this sage-y/celadon-ish/eau de nil color - it’s on their living room, kitchen, and dining room walls (the collective space encompasses all three of these rooms, to be fair) and in some of their displayed ceramics, as well. The home is literally atop the Pacific Ocean, so the idea of putting any sort of blue on the walls seems redundant and destined for failure - I mean, how do you compete with the myriad versions of blue offered up by the Pacific Ocean? You don’t.

But we didn’t stay wholly committed to sage/celadon/mint-green, either. Ultimately, we went with our favorite “warm but fresh” white, Benjamin Moore’s Simply White, for the living room, kitchen, and dining room walls, but we wanted to give our fabulously ready-for-change client some sort of sage . . . somewhere. Especially because when you’re in the midst of a complete re-do remodel, you don’t want to ever feel like you’re pushing a client so far out of their comfort zone that they’re a stranger to themselves and the final reveal of the home feels like an unknowable environment they’re forced to reside within. It’s a balance of creating entirely new spaces with new elements, colors, energies, lighting, textiles, art, and furniture, and doing so with the clients’ truest natures being respected, revered, and reflected in the unexpected and wonderful newness.

And so, here we are, right now, with a Malibu bathroom fated-to-be-painted in Farrow and Ball’s Green Blue and we’re currently cooking up some ways we can bring some sage-y celadon into their kitchen cabinetry. We’re currently keeping it in our back pocket - because a bit of this pale green goes a long, long way, baby, whether it veers towards celery, serpentine, jade, or minty fresh.

Since we took a dive into the world of sage and found some amazing things while doing so (like incredible cement sinks , The Road to Todos Santos paint, and deliriously delicious settees, for example), we’re sharing some of this sage-y beauty with you! All for the love of sage. Enjoy!

Studio Ashby, London penthouse.

Jimi Sofa, made in Spain; 1stdibs

Designer Matilda Goad’s U.K. home

Carolina Mariana Rodriguez, Apartment Therapy

Thonet Targa 2-seat sofa by GamFraseti

ASKA’s Maria NIla Salon

Leo Bruno Todd painting

Concretti Designs concrete sink (in Pistachio)

Sandra Relagado’s Barcelona home, Apartment Therapy

Architects EAT, Melbourne, Australia

Take your pleasure seriously

Last week, us Lily Spindle ladies were fortunate enough, thanks to the magnificent Lisa Chester Schroeder (read our SHAPERS profile on Lisa right here!), to get an extremely special, private, nitty gritty, anecodote-laden tour of the iconic Eames House and Studio in the Palisades. We began our day in Los Feliz doing a speedy outdoor patio installation, spent the afternoon shopping and eating in West Hollywood (Lawson Fenning and AMMO, respectively), and then drove up the respendent Pacific Coast Highway in the early hours of the evening to meet with Lisa and our wonderful guide, Catherine. Set on a bluff surrounded by eucalyptus trees, Case Study House No. 8 is an ingenious merging of work and life, as well as a brilliant collection of oddities, furniture, textiles, intimate ephemera, art, and books guaranteed to inspire you in unexpected and magical ways.

Among other tales, Catherine shared with us the story of the fragile and fantastic tumbleweed hanging from the ceiling by a string: when Ray and Charles were married in Chicago in 1941, their honeymoon-on-a-major-budget was a road trip to California to start anew. Somewhere in the Southwest, they came across this beautiful tumbleweed and popped it in the back of the car, later hanging it from the ceiling of the Case Study House No. 8, where it has remained and decayed bit by bit over time. Eventually, it will be replaced by another tumbleweed, chosen by the surviving Eames' generations and hung once again in that same place, continuing the tradition. 

The Eames House, as photographed by Julius Shulman in 1950. Photo: J. Paul Getty Trust. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library at the Getty Research Institute

While we were gazing upon the gorgeousness of the home's interior, we discussed the design trends of today, the impatience of our culture, the unfortunate myopia so often present when it comes to architecture and its relation to the natural environment. Deb commented on the books within the case, everything from high literature to "Where the Wild Things Are" and "The Little Prince," and we applauded their freedom in displaying whichever books they happened to love and revere, rather than those intended to intimidate or impress. Catherine laughed and brought us around the backside of the bookcase, where rows upon rows of Charles's softcover science fiction books were arranged. These beloved books were decidedly not given the esteemed placement of "forefront." As all couples do in shared spaces, in order to continue sharing a space, you compromise.

Interior photographs are forbidden during tours, so I'd like to defend myself in announcing this is not in fact my own photograph. Rather, it's one I've borrowed from the internet. The house and studio, including the kitchen and living room's interior furnishings and details, are shown today as they existed upon Ray's death in 1988. Uncanny fact: Ray died exactly ten years to the day following Charles's death.

You can read about the history of the home/studio on the Eames Foundation site, but here's an excerpt: The Eames House, Case Study House #8, was one of roughly two dozen homes built as part of The Case Study House Program. Begun in the mid-1940s and continuing through the early 1960s, the program was spearheaded by John Entenza, the publisher of Arts and Architecture magazine . . . Charles and Ray proposed that the home they designed would be for a married couple working in design and graphic arts, whose children were no longer living at home. They wanted a home that would make no demands for itself, and would serve as a background for, as Charles would say, “life in work” and with nature as a “shock absorber."

Charles and Ray moved into the House on Christmas Eve, 1949, and lived there for the rest of their lives.  The interior, its objects and its collections remain very much the way they were in Charles and Ray’s lifetimes.  The house they created offered them a space where work, play, life, and nature co-existed.

We cannot recommend a personal visit to the mystical, gorgeous Eames house more vigorously! Take a picnic with you, sit on the grounds, and experience the enchantment and quiet power of this space. I promise you it's life-altering and absolutely worth it.

xx ~ Rebecca
 

Many, many, many thanks to Lisa for arranging this private tour for us! And huge gratitude to Catherine for spending the last hours of her work week with us and starting our weekend immersed in inspiration and beauty.

There's much about this maxim that galvanizes me - turning your passion into something relevant and meaningful. And it's nearly as good as this other Eames gem: "Any time one or more things are consciously put together in a way that they can accomplish something better than they could have accomplished individually, this is an act of design." Hallelujah!

(sidenote: our visit did inspire a conversation about feminism - its current version, as well as the challenges that Ray no doubt faced as a five-foot-tall woman in a predominantly male world. This is another story, however, for another blog post!)