I've been in need of a new overhead light in my kitchen for about, say, eight months now.  My $40 yellow half-globe pendant from a Panama City antique mall refuses to come back to life, so instead of buying a new hanging fixture or flush mount, I just stuck a white ginger jar table lamp on top of the fridge and called it a day.  I don't cook, but summer's here and I need more light while operating the blender. Margaritas Grandes! What do you think of these options from cb2 ?

I really love the eclipse pendant lamp at top but it's a bit small (9" diam.) and I only have one electrical box (these would look great in multiples).  Same issues with the silo pendant.  But both are less than 30 bucks!  I wish the folks on "Flip This House" and all those shows would jump on simple, anonymous fixtures like these -- even if the material is crappy they still look way more expensive than three Alexander Hamiltons.  Also wish Home Depot et al would copy the eclipse style in every size and color. 

OK, this is the last of the Atlanta shops, but I loved this one and we didn't have time to photograph it for the story. It's called Belle Chambre, and it's a very good place to know about if you live in the area. They supply bed linens, towels, soaps (obviously), and they sell beds too.  Below is a photograph of a headboard with really smart nailheads.  There are also lamps and the general things that you need to soften your home. 

Yesterday I thought to check out PBteen (that's Pottery Barn for youngsters) again, because I remember thinking their stuff was chicer than 90% of merch in old people catalogs.  And I was not disappointed -- just look at this Maison Campaign bed:

Finally a simple, non-frou frou canopy bed. Reminds me of one the boss did for a client that wound up on the cover of domino:

PBteen's is $899 for a full, which I guess isn't cheap, but this is one the kiddies can take to college and even the starter apartment.  The black metal will suit a potential goth phase; add tie-dye side curtains for a hippie moment.

While still on the Atlanta shopping outtakes, here is one of my favourite stores, South of Market.   This picture is from their ADAC store, where they have a huge space and a combination of very good and well priced upholstery, like this sofa, and antiques that they buy in Europe.  Below is a chest of drawers that I love.  They have just opened a new store in Virginia Highlands 6 weeks ago, next door to the delicious Bella Cucina which is in the Domino piece.  The address is: 1044 North Highland Ave, 30306, Atlanta tel:  404 844 0884.  This store is really good to check out if you are decorating, especially for their accessories and sofas.

I was asked the other day, I think here, if there were any great stores that didn't make it into the Atlanta shopping story and, of course, there is quite a lot.    Shopscad is one of them. It is the very impressive shop belonging to the Savannah College of Art and Design.  This black and white photograph was one of the highlights for me. It is by Chia Chang and costs $1200.  Design Sponge has a large Shopscad write up which was wierdly just posted last week.

The other night I re-read Happy Times by socialite survivor (and my Pisces soul sister) Lee Radziwill. It never ceases to inspire ... I mean, I wish Andy Warhol had buried ME in the sand:

So what if Lee admits to marrying some rich old Polish prince because he was just like her father?  That's pretty typical, right?  Anyhoo from India to Skorpios to Marrakech to Montauk to Park Avenue she's lived an awesomely stylish life.  And like all Fish, girl loves the sea.  These pillows from Williams-Sonoma Home are so Lee, sunning with her sister Jackie and brother-in-law Ari on the deck of the Christina somewhere in the Aegean:

Or at least that's what I see. 

When exactly did Pier 1 drop the "Imports" ?  I started going there in middle school when it was like Pearl River: tchotchkes as far as the eye could see.  Back then I had a collection of lacquer jewelry boxes and brass vaserie so this place was heaven in a strip mall.  Now it's all slick and Crate & Barrel.  Sigh.  But behold a timeless deal:

The classic Director's Chair!  40 bucks, almost too good to be true.  I'd copy my old pal Allison (who used to feed my tchotchke addiction) and paint the frame her favorite peacock blue.  The Pier sells alternate covers but I'd just as soon make my own in a more saturated color or print (canvas). 

Sometimes product names make me giggle.  For instance, who at Urban Outfitters came up with "Regency Dream Tent" ?

No matter 'cause it's still a cool tent, right?  I'm in total spring cleaning mode right now ... I have dreams of chucking everything in my apartment and starting over with just a platform bed and something like this over it.  Wait one second, Dr. Freud -- it's on sale for $79.99!

I am sure you have forgotten by now that last week I said I would let you know about Angela McCluskey and Paul Cantelon's performance at the Ballroom in Marfa.  Well, it was great--relaxed, easy and moving.  The dynamic between the two is fantastic (maybe unsurprising as they are married). She is this flamboyant Glaswegian with a voice that can reduce you to tears; he is an ethereal Celt with pure 18th-century looks.  They are real Ying and Yang material. He composes and plays the piano; she sings. Their chats are very amusing between songs.  There was one piece of music that Paul played alone, it was a score written for the upcoming movie of that fabulous and deeply moving book The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, which is directed by Julian Schnabel .  The piece was as deep as the ocean in parts and as light, literally, as a butterfly in others.

Seeing the couple perform was an unexpected treat, partly because the environment was so informal, which I think is how music should be enjoyed.  The great thing about Marfa is that because it is this cool and cultural oasis in the middle of the desert, you take it all in with ease.  Getting to Marfa is a bit of a hike, but once you are there it is bliss.  Check out what is going on at The Ballroom, they have about 10 performances a year and you definitely want to plan a visit around what they are showing.

Wallpaper can be expensive, yo.  Like $150-$200 a roll.   I can understand if it's hand-rolled painted or hand-painted ... or platinum leaf.  But WallPaperDiscount.com is a great site for cheap, simple papers.  I can't vouch for the quality, but then again I can't see paying through the nose for a stripe as simple as this one:

Looks like a direct copy of a Rose Cumming stripe called "Antibes," and this green and white is such a classic color combo.  Also loving a harlequin right now:

Both less than $10 a roll! 

I was staying with a friend last weekend and while snooping in her cupboards I found box loads of these Meduri dried fruits. I have a bit of a thing for dried mango - which these people don't actually sell - but they have all sorts of exciting things like these hard to get ahold of peaches, which have just about enough sugar on them to make them interesting to me.  There is something about dried fruit when it looks like some dried up old dingleberry that is very unappetizing, but these look yummy.  Meduri World Delights have berries and fruits from all over the world that come in very smart tins. You can also get  dried fruit dipped in chocolate.

Yesterday afternoon we went to see Prada Marfa - the controversial art installation by artists Ingar Dragset and Michael Elmgreen thirty miles outside Marfa in Valentine, Texas.  It has gotten very mixed reviews. Artforum wrote a review at the opening, and it is also covered on the Marfa website.  I am afraid that i loved it. It is beautifully executed, and seeing this tiny store with its all too familiar awnings sitting quietly on the side of the highway in the middle of the ravishing Texan desert is interesting and modern and humourous and brilliant.  There are Pradas all over the world, quite a few in old buildings in ancient cities, so there is something about seeing this image stuck in yet another foreign setting that is very normal, and then it is of course, completely bizarre. I loved it.

A few weeks ago Tim told me about this blog desire to inspire, authored by two girls (an Australian and a Canadian) who just wanna have fun spreading good design.  I 'm obsessed!  Foreign interiors mags are too expensive so I'll gladly let them sift and sort and bring me all the great photos, like this one from the Portuguese Maxima Interiores:

Ebonized floor, pale aqua wall and baseboard, rando grouping of art and this amazing yellow chair.  Anybody know who designed it or where I can get something similar for my desk at work?  I love the metal frame and the close buttoned cushion.  Thanks Kim and Jo!

I arrived in Marfa (click on marfa.org) late last night with a band of merry friends.  It is exciting to arrive in the desert. I am not sure if it is to do with being English, but it is just very exciting, in a way that I never found cowboy movies exciting. This morning we went to Chinati - the Donald Judd Foundation, which is housed in an old military base.  If you have a weekend that you aren't sure what to do with, definitely come down here.  We walked into one of the converted artillary bases. When the door opens and you look down this long room to see the aluminium boxes in a grid, it is really breathtaking.  Each one is different and captivating and en masse they are incredible, which is compounded by the wide expanse of Texan landscape visible outside the many windows. It is just amazing; and then you get a couple of deer running by the window and down into the field below where there are more Judd works in concrete.

Marfa itself is super cool.  We are staying at the Thunderbird Motel which is so hip and spot on; the mini bar (a metal basket filled with treats) is the hippest thing you have ever seen and I am addicted to the ginger chews that came in my Ballroom goody bag.  I will fill you in on more of the Ballroom and the performance at Liberty Hall after we have been there tonight.  This is a design/style/talent mecca.

Never judge a catalog by its cover: that's what The Company Store taught me when it arrived in the office mailbag today.  Beyond the bubble letters and patchwork comforters you'll find some serious deals!  Exhibit A:

These nesting tables are off the style charts -- so modern and nautical (paging Netto Collection ) -- I especially love the marine blue.  They work beside a bed or sofa for table lamps or for tv dinner trays or a little minibar.  $189 for all three!

How much do I love the cover this month?? Pink, red, aqua, black and white ... such a great mix of colors.  And I was so excited to Albert Hadley's cotton "Tipper,"  one of my favorite fabrics of all time, in the context of a Josef Hoffmann spread:

If you missed the show at the Neue Galerie a few months back let me take you through it in a little review I did for Metropolis.  (Look, Dad, I AM using my education!)  Seems both Mr. Hadley and Mr. Hoffman loved a simple geometric, so why not copy the classic Tipper (and please comment on how Mrs. Gore earned that nickname) in a Hoffmann-esque painted border, enlarged about 500 percent?  I see these stripes and dots around a window in a white bathroom above subway tile. Break out the blue tape and paint two five inch pink stripes, leaving four inches of white wall in between.  The cut a kitchen sponge in small rectangle (1.5" x 2") and paint bright red dots up the white. This will take some time but trust me, the graphic impact is so worth it!

A lot of the new design coming out of Stockholm right now has to do with either craft or cleverness, which is why I'm really into these lamps by Mattias Stahlbom for the Swedish lighting company Zero. They're cool without trying too hard. His Last tripod lamp--love the burnt orange--sits on spindly legs but is so durable it's virtually impossible to break. My favorite, though, is the Foto lamp. Reminds me of those black faux-Hollywood spotlights everyone had in their living rooms in the '80s, but these are much cleaner and more playful.

I think these tulips are just glorious, and they are as wonderful now, during their final days, as they were when they were fresh.  Tulips are joyous for their haphazardness. They are just all over the place and rather like roses - every moment of their evolution is just lovely, right up until they are dropping their petals.  Hurray for spring. xx

Please excuse the rather unprofessional photograph--I took it while I was having lunch with my mother on Friday. She arrived with armloads of shopping bags including two small and tantalizing ones from Verdura, the fabulous Italian jewelers.  Of course these caused the most intrigue - shopping for jewels is extravagant even by her liberal spending standards. The chic shopper in her had found a good thing - she produced this really pretty pomegranate bottle opener, which she had bought for $170.  Now this may seem like really rather a lot of money for such a thing. But when you think that it is from Verdura who make such whacking jewels, it is really quite a good thing to know about when you need a high impact present for some chicified person.

How's this for a coincidence: Two young studios out of Berlin, qed and Baumann Hoof, have both introduced new and brilliant ideas for flexible clothes hangers. Michael Neubauer and Matthias Wieser from qed have made theirs out of translucent plastic and aluminum in four different color combinations, and their site features a nifty video demonstrating how easily it navigates tricky shirt collars. (See photo above.)

Crafted from two strips of rolled bendable steel, the Spring (below) by Fabian Baumann and Sönke Hoof unfolds automatically once it's inside your sweater; it was inspired by the way tape measures snap back into place.

No word yet on where or when they'll be for sale, but you'd think there would be plenty of interest in stylish little objects like these that solve everyday problems.

Last night I found inspiration in the unlikeliest of places:  the Home Depot display window.  I love that Home Depot Manhattan has a window dresser in the first place.  He/she had made a marvelous little bathroom vignette with four vanity lights around a rectangular mirror:

You normally see one of these six-lighters atop a medicine cabinet, but if you can get the wiring right in the wall, why not make it a true vanity mirror above a dressing table in a bedroom?  Get a custom mirror cut for the center or just take one out of an existing frame.  These lights come in varying widths (the one here is 36 inches wide and costs $39.95 at Destination Lighting), less expensive sans mirrored back.  Cheap, sexy and glamorous -- I'm sure Prince could make it work. 

You've got to hand it to Moroso. It's gotten amazingly good at creating beautiful, cohesive collections out of a motley crue of established and emerging designers. This year it introduced Ross Lovegrove's plastic Supernatural chair and Marcel Wanders' little mushroom-shaped side tables.

Moroso also introduced a set of hand-embroidered, Indian-style daybeds and pillows from Doshi Levien, a British duo that nobody's heard of until now but everybody's talking about.  The patterns on the beds are taken from an ancient Indian board game, but with the checkerboard motif and the rainbow colors, they look weirdly '80s, don't they?  What do you think?

Cabinet hardware can be tricky. I'll wander Gracious Home looking for a knob or pull in the right material, scale, design, and finish until my eyes start to glaze over. Most of the options are too contemporary or too rustic or just plain dowdy (lacquered antique brass with scrolls and filigrees?).  So here's an old-school alternative to knobs on kitchen or pantry cabinets:

Cabinet latches, also known as box locks.  Functional and stylish but not fussy. Our very own Scrappy Cathy had these in her kitchen when I visited and I hope they haven't gone anywhere!  Bossman Miles has silver-plated box locks on his ebonized cabinet doors -- like I always say, steal from the best -- but the basic ones aren't expensive at all.  House of Antique Hardware carries the style above in four finishes, including polished nickel for $2.99 each.