The Cottage Orné Quilt

The Cottage Orné Quilt
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Wednesday 25 May 2011

A favourite room



Many years ago, just after I moved to my present house, I saw this picture on the cover of "Homes and Gardens" and because it was a British magazine I assumed that the pictured room was here in the UK.


Actually it isn't, it's in Houston, Texas and I've just found out that it is a room in the the house of Carol Glasser, an interior decorator, who is well known in the Southern USA.

I confess I have always been compulsive reader of design magazines so am familiar with the work of many American decorators, but her name didn't ring any bells.  However, when I saw pictures of some of her work on a favourite blog  - ( http://cotedetexas.blogspot.com/2009/04/story-of-one-perfect-house.html)
I realised I had clipped and filed many of them.

Of course my living room is nothing like this room (I wish) but it has so many elements that I love. The dresser (of course) filled with blue and white Staffordshire - well I have quite a bit of that!  The dark and interesting portrait over the mantel, the wicker furniture and the large scale gingham and toile fabric - I have those too.  The seagrass matting on the floor - well here I was ahead of Carol Glasser on one thing at least!

Now that I analyse the elements, I know the source of our inspiration, it's Colfax and Fowler, that legendary decorating establishment in Brook Street.

In my opinion, John Fowler was the ultimate interior decorator and his body of work has influnced so many of today's designers. Although he died many years ago, if I ever won the lottery I would make a beeline there as it is still in business.  The premises are delightful even though I have just gazed through the showroom window and was too overawed to enter.  So I content myself with just buying wallpaper and some bits of fabric to put in my quilts, but oh one can dream!



The main Colfax and Fowler website isn't very illuminating, this one is better and will give you an idea of their style and it shows Nancy Lancaster's  famous "butta" yellow drawing room on the home page -  http://www.sibylcolefax.com/decorators.html
There are also a couple of good books - both on Amazon.

2 comments:

Sue said...

Oh I love anything Colfax and Fowler. I have a friend who is an interior designer and she took me last year to the pre-sale day in London. I did spend rather a lot of money but my thinking was how much I had saved on the full price.

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