Interiors and their design have been a keen interest since I was young. I constantly moved and rearranged my parents furniture, always to my father's consternation and dismay. I always was eager to try to improve the looks and feeling of a room. My own room was kindly given over to me to do with as I liked and it saw many incarnations. At one point I had a giant mural of my cat on one wall, another saw beautifully printed sheets in a classic eighteenth century tree of life pattern used to create a baldachin above the bed.
My first apartment allowed a greater range of choice and the first serious debt I ever incurred was to purchase a chic small sofa and a lovely Louis XVI style oval cane back chair. The rust color of the chair's suede seat and the over-scale magnolia pattern of the couch inspired the colors of cinnamon, navy and cream for the entire flat.
When Mark and I finally arrived in San Diego as a couple we took a great colonnaded house on Arista Drive. There I met again my first obstacle to design - another person's likes and dislikes! Through our years together, though, Mark, has taught me the value of comfort and the need for it to be integral to a home. I think I've managed to persuade him that proportion, elegance and style are the balance of the equation. I've had the good fortune, in one sense, to have moved frequently, thereby forcing me to use a budget, reuse many items in a new space and lastly selling and buying other pieces as dictated by the new floor-plan.
The house now has a look which is eclectic, though a strong neoclassical influence throughout adds masculinity and a sense of order to the disparate collection of furnishings. Mahogany and cherry woods add a subtle understatement to the bright
and effusive exuberance of baroque objets d'arts and rococo mirrors, gilt bronze, zebra and cow hides, and bright silks and woven carpets. Various shades of green from leaf to olive and lusty wine reds are balanced by many subtle shades of ochre, gold and cream. Into this traditional mix accents of orange, lime and violet lend unexpected daring sophistication. A Tibetan altar, still smelling richly of the smoke of years of candles and incense burning is carved with bright orange and vermillion dragons. 
It bears a large Portuguese or Italian majolica leopard, almost vulgar but not quite! It is accentuated by a gilt and carved wood French Louis XVI style mirror, a pair of Charles X candelabra. Porcelains in pale yellow, azure and lavender and bright gold gleam. This vignette is balanced by a large imposing provincial First Empire armoire in walnut, rubbed to a soft glow with years of waxing. This same half of the room is centered with a large glass-topped table, it's rich cherry wood hidden under yards of Italian striped gold silk, trimmed in bouillon fringe from Houles. Atop the table rests a French circa 1790 mahogany gentleman's toilet mirror, severe in its simple classical pediment and bronze Corinthian capital topped pilasters. It holds it's original key, blackened with time, in it's single drawer. Before it stands a late First Empire silk thread pendulum clock of gilt and patinated bronze, the figure of a windswept woman (Hiver?) so clearly derived from the style books of Percier et Fontaine. Louis XV and Louis XVI gilt bronze candlesticks and small gilt-pewter objects and a grand bronze copy of Pan with his pipes complete the display. The table is encircled with fine Louis XVI style armless fauteuils upholstered in a rich cognac and gilt stamped leather, cracking with age. The creamy white painted frames are also chipped with time. This feeling of the antique in gentle decline opens the whole space to the sentiment of place and permanence - two cherished notions so often lost in our frantic moving society.
The main seating area bounds the fireplace. The mantle is a simple cream painted wood. The color is echoed in the Barbara Barry divan, upholstered surprisingly in cream linen twill printed with various leaves and flower tubers. This fabric's motifs in golds, yellow greens, leaf greens, olive greens and ochre add more movement to the swirl of patterns we've established. The floor beneath is carpeted by a heavy wool woven check in wine and cream and ochre bounded by a wide four inch border of solid deep red in a heavily textured canvas. The coffee table has been usurped by a four foot square Vincent Wolfe ottoman, originally in a dove gray leather but which we had stained cognac. The leather is deeply tufted and the English feeling is unmistakable in its simply carved frame and rosette over double ring legs - quintessentially adorned with brass wheels. It is deliberately disarrayed with some of my most cherished art books, as well as a bronze wrapped black marble tray upon which rest a delightful, if smallish, pair of bronze and marble copies of the Marly Gate Horses, ever rearing as their nude Nubian footmen do their best to harness fiery spirits. Contemporary plates sit beside, their wax removal technique leaves crisscrossed lines of raised white porcelain swishing through the matte black china - echoing the zebra skin rug.
Facing the ottoman a late, circa 1860, round mahogany Biedermeier hall table stands. The table is fortunate to have fine companions including a pair of First Empire style mahogany fauteils with the seats and fronts amusingly upholstered in a fine soft brindle cowhide of white and brown. The backs in ruby silk play off the carpet. The contrast between rough hair hides and polished mahogany formal chairs is delightful. The pattern in the hides lends yet another element of movement and in its way is representative of the thought behind the entire scheme of the home. A steer horn legged stool covered again in the cowhide lends rest for my feet and a twinkle for the eye in it's silly charm. The table is topped by a hand thrown Asian ginger-jar shaped ceramic lamp in the deepest and glossiest shade of chocolate and is topped by a 'ball gown' of a shade in lime green silk, the shade being gathered and ruched on the bias, the frame reminiscent of the straw hats of Asian rice gatherers. The cord is silk wrapped. The finesse of small details reap the largest of rewards! Upon my table I keep a charming pair of terracottas: a medallion of Petrarca, a doctor of the early Church. I hardly new of his historical status of dreadful religious conservatism, think Inquisition, when I bought him; but he is now adequately subdued by an exuberant Italian rococo terracotta figurine, eighteenth century, which we deduce to be the allegory of summer. He's scantily dressed and must surely be holding a half of a large scallop shell. Naked at the beach!
Upon all these surfaces are also to be found the drawings and designs and letters of my work, amongst alabaster jars of pens, inks and pencils, chalks, brushes and pastel crayons, my easel and case of oils and a few black crows feathers for luck. Mahogany tea caddies, circa 1780, hide treasures of smoking apparatus and bits of silk ribbon tied to clock keys. These rest next to ornate Victorian and contemporary enameled and crystal studded photograph frames which guard beneath their pomp photos of myself with my darling husband and precious daughter.
Pale cream sheers and voluminous olive silk drapes on gilt and carved wood rods with pompous finials complete the atelier,
although you may stand and walk around finding little treasures all about. Two more French clocks, one made for the 1900 Paris Exhibition keep no time. The busts and torsos of Antinous and Eros, of Bacchus and Zeus gaze at you. A contemporary but very charming bouillotte lamp of gilt bronze and red painted tole bestows soft light. Glorious Chinese Fu Dogs, upon which swarm tiny milk-white toddlers each with a small top-knot of black hair on their otherwise bald heads. A small Japanese altar shimmers in it's thousand layers coat of deep and mysterious lacquer - the lacquer gathered from the beetles of Japan. It has been deliciously piled with Wedgwood basalt ware in the form of a engine turned creamer and six espresso sized cups and saucers. Each is emboldened with classical motifs of raised black jasper decorations, once again after Percier et Fontaine (The great design consultants to the Napoleon I and his family and courtiers. Above hangs a painting by Richard Titlebaum which subject warns us of those who would challenge the gods; his representation of the Flaying of Marsyas. Lastly, an oaken carved pillar, probably from a seventeenth century Dutch church, supports on its Ionic capital a charming marble torso of his 'mischievousness' self, the boy-god Eros. Or as he is more humbly known these days, Cupid.He is a fine ending to this piece of writing for it is surely the arrow shot from the mischief maker's charming bow which has smote me hard with the love of excellent form in all my surroundings: the simplest tea cup to the greatest artwork of all - man himself. And in this regard I direct you to my own spouse most particularly.
He has most beautifully, one may say exquisitely, exceeded the proverbial bar in excellence and beauty; for his face shines like Apollo, his brow like a crown of wisdom topped with the golden locks of pleasure, his sinewy limbs recall the athletes of Greece and his manly chest, his fattened rump, his strong steel legs all carry him with utter grace, and give proper housing for his kind heart and gentle soul. Yet he is a man of battle when battle is called forth, and a man of exceedingly fine pillage when he spills his 'treasure' into my loins in our bed. 
(A fine classical four-post bed, designed for Baker, Knapp & Tubbs by Parrish-Hadley, in soft black lacquer and gilt edging, crowned with patinated and gilt palm sprays. The headboard is surmounted by a very fine oval carved and gilt wood Swedish mirror, circa 1790, in the form of a pair of facing eagles' heads which terminate in very fine scrolls of acanthus leaves. Upon the hardwood floor a Persian woven carpet of vibrant colour: violet, cream and wine is surmounted by a red lacquer Chinese armoire holding media equipment. The walls have various classical and mythological copperplate prints of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.) We shall expound upon the bedroom more in days to come, but I feel it, the bed, AND, Mark, my spouse, calling to me at this moment and I will oblige them!
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