Mally Skok

Updates on an Oldate…Beach House Bathroom

Some finishing touches happened this week on one of the earliest projects I took on here, the downstairs bathroom renovation. Long planned, Mally Skok‘s gorgeous and utterly perfect fabric Nichola in Aqua/Sand on Canvas went up as a Roman shade on the window. I have long adored this fabric and in this space it reads like bits of coral and sea life.

There’s not really anything left to do in this space – finishing touches aside. I still can’t quite figure out where to put or hang the toilet paper.

The brass has all been patinating very well. I could not be more pleased with having chosen unlacquered brass and the exposed shower workings shine like jewelry through the glass doors.

The sink faucet is also looking great, although as I showed in my last post, the sink bowl not so much. I’ve been reading up on reglazing and porcelain home repair kits but I am still really unsure of what to do about this.

There is still a bit of room for finds – and certainly more sand dollars and shells – on the display shelves. With my iphone there was no way to get the upper ledge of kashigata in the photo, but the patterns in them look wonderful with Mally’s fabric.

I do have one little marriage to make, between this Japanese print and vintage frame, and then its simply a matter of placement.

I think we can call this one finished, don’t you?

Aug 12, 2014 By tokyojinja in Interior Design, Metals, Renovation and Decoration Report, Textiles Tags: aged brass, bathroom, bathroom renovation, Mally Skok, Roman shade, vintage brass

Carnation Fixation…Ottoman Inspired Textiles

Location really hones the eye and I find that as I settle into my new home, certain design motifs are coming to the forefront of my vision. It’s not that I am abandoning my love of sho-chiku-bai, ami, kamon or the rest of the lexicon of Japanese pattern, just that I am deeply interested in adding to it. Long time unexplored favorites, such as the stylized Ottoman carnations seen on this 17th century Turkish cushion at The Museum of Islamic Art here in Doha are catching and fixing my eye. Similar velvet cushions and fragments of this pattern can be found in the collections of museums worldwide, from here to here to here to here and I’ve stumbled across it in a few antique shops. I honestly think this velvet was the equivalent of the modern-day cushion covers we see on benches in the souq.

During the reign of Sultan Süleyman I (1520-1566), also known as Suleiman the Magnificent, there was an incredible flowering – literally – of artistry in the nakkaşhane, the imperial painting studio, credited to Şahkulu and later pupil Kara Memi, who was responsible for the new naturalistic painting style which incorporated spring flowers, such as tulips, carnations, roses and hyacinths. The embroidered cover above, part of last year’s The Sultan’s Garden exhibition at The Textile Museum is such an example. Stylized versions of these flowers grew out of the more naturalistic designs and both were adopted by artists and artisans in other fields including the weavers and the potters (which we will hear more about later this week). Ottoman textiles were greatly admired and collected by Europeans, and as this post will show, that has not really changed. And while the fan-shaped carnations became standardized and somewhat formulaic, it is that very simplistic repetition that makes them read as modern today.

No surprise at all to find carnation patterned fabric at Carolina Irving‘s place – in this case a double whammy in the red pillows on the bed and the softer colored panels on the closet doors.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she found some of it over at Robert Kime‘s shops in London, where antique ottoman textiles intermingle with his modern-day interpretations, including the Palmette Blue and Palmette Red seen here on pillows.

David Hicks Herbert’s Carnation Weave is probably the best known Ottoman inspired carnation pattern and comes in numerous colors. Here, his daughter India has it on the headboard in her Harbour Island bedroom in a soft neutral.

You’ll also find it in India Hick’s childhood home The Grove where a bold colorway on the wing chair stands out in the richly appointed library…

…as well as some drool-worthy marbelized paper lampshades. The spectacular Oxfordshire estate was featured in great detail this winter in Domino and really must be seen!

Herbert’s Carnation Weave pops up in this pretty living room from Angie Hranowsky…

…and I spotted it in blue on a chair in a Tory Burch interior.

Schumacher also makes a carnation patterned fabric and wallpaper called Ottoman Flower. It comes in a few muted colorways, like this soft gray Moonstone and the repeat is huge…

…which you can see clearly in this wallpaper application. Ingenious dressing up of plain closet doors, no?

If you need an inexpensive fix of carnation, there is quite a bit of it to be had on the flash sale sites right now, from this pillow on Jaypore with its more traditional embroidered look…

… to this bright contemporary version over on One Kings Lane.

Back on my own home front, a large remnant of a crazy colored outdoor fabric from Raoul Textiles (called Dianthus I believe) covered in giant Ottoman carnations had suggested a bright color scheme for my kitchen, designed to overcome its severe limitations and make some cohesion out of the colors already in play. The fabric is thick, durable and cleanable, making it perfect for chair cushions for the crumbling rush seats on the Hitchcock chairs.

The super fun and small-scale Rohet Multi from Mally Skok that I mentioned in my last post is a perfect counterpoint to the large Raoul print and will be used for the large Roman shade over the sink. Add in an unexpected find – this woven rag rug in just the right colors – from the amazing Zara Home (on the top ten list of great things in Doha that aren’t in the USA), and a kitchen scheme is born. Necessity does breed invention!

I mean if you can’t fix, what else can you do but distract?

Watch for more posts on carnations as well as pomegranates and cintamani. I’m just getting started.

Image Credits: 1. my Instagram, 2. The Textile Museum, 3. Lonny Magazine Oct./Nov. 2009, photo credit: Patrick Cline, 4. Loi Thai via Tone on Tone, 5. Domino, date unknown, 6-7. Domino Holiday 2013, photo credit: Brittany Ambridge, 8. Angie Hranowsky, 9. Tory Burch credit unknown, 10. F. Schumacher, 11. Martha Stewart Living September 2011, via Tilton Fenwick, 12. Jaypore, 13. OKL, 14-15. my Instagram, 16. me.

Jan 28, 2014 By tokyojinja in Design Motif, Doha Move, Interior Design, Textiles Tags: Angie Hranowsky, carnation, Carnations, Carolina Irving, David Hicks, India Hicks, Mally Skok, Ottoman, Ottoman textiles, Raoul Textiles, Robert Kime, Tory Burch, Turkish Textiles

(Fabric) Bordering on Obsession

Friday’s Wall Street Journal brought a wonderful article by one of my favorite bloggers, Style Court‘s Courtney Barnes on the charm of self bordered textiles. I have long been obsessed with traditional Indian fabrics which routinely use borders as integral parts of their design as well as modern renderings by many of my favorite textile designers, including those of Zak+ Fox , Peter Dunham and Parlor Textiles, whose fabrics are illustrated in the article. Using the auction of a pair of armchairs, covered by designer Michael Smith in a bordered textile reprinted from an antique one in his own collection as the starting point of her musings, she pulls us into the intimate story of her own passion for the fabrics. As luck and serendipity would have it, this was the very topic on my mind exactly as I was reading it.

My own Michael Smith bordered fabric illumination occurred years ago with this Santa Barbara guest house in which he used a myriad of inexpensive Urban Outfitters Indian bedspreads to upholster the walls, the furniture and make the draperies. His masterful manipulation of the borders really demonstrated the punctuation they can provide, in this case both as a fillet and curtain edge and trim. His use of these simple artisanal fabrics turned me on to the idea of their flexibility. You know I love good repurposing!

The serendipity part comes in because I have been working on and off all fall and in particular this past week for my most exacting client to date – my 14-year-old daughter. When moving a young teenager halfway round the world to a new school, it’s good to have a bribe, in this case a big new bedroom and entirely new decor as she had outgrown the furniture and color scheme of her old space. Add an en suite bathroom – about the size of her old Tokyo bedroom – and the potential for happiness goes way up. While her younger sister’s room is basically finished, progress on her’s had stalled. Her request for soft blues and a bit of Indian block print had resulted in this dreamy Instagram palette, but other than actually ordering the Parlor Textiles French Ikat in blue for her headboard and bedskirt, nothing had been done.

For that “bit of Indian block print” I had turned to my favorite source, Aleta Bartel-Orton (also mentioned by Courtney in the article), whose online shop sells both her’s and Brigitte Singh‘s beautiful fabrics. The bedroom plan calls for Roman shades, ideally to be made in a blue and white print, highlighted by some sort of decorative edge. In addition to yardage, Aleta has tablecloths and other finished pieces available which I thought might be perfect as they tend to have borders. But while I was scrolling around the website I realized that what I really wanted was my favorite old standby, Hibiscus Branch. Of course, the print run is finished and there is basically none left – why is it I only manage to figure out that I need a particular fabric from her only after she is out of it? Luckily Aleta was willing to search for any remaining pieces of the Hibiscus Branch (and it seems like there may be just enough)…

…and also came up with this cotton panel, mainly white and unprinted but with the loveliest borders which will be added to the Roman shades to create the effect of a single fabric. The flowered portion won’t go to waste either – I’ll use it to make throw pillows. It’s good to note here that complimentary fabrics can be combined to create the bordered look.

This brings me back to Michael Smith’s bargain trick with bedspreads that I find works even better with tablecloths. Different projects need different sizes and tablecloths are available small to large. Both can be counted on the have the quality Courtney refers to her in her article, the constrained “frames, along with symmetry, to bring order to a profusion of ornament.” So in addition to Aleta’s offerings, other resources I have been exploring include Priya Raj’s beautiful block prints at Peacocks and Paisleys. I almost grabbed this Exotic Mint Sprigs tablecloth in the sale this weekend with an eye towards using it to make a shade for the guest room.

And instead of ho-hum shower curtains, it’s not that hard to put 12 button holes in a tablecloth or bed sheet, which is exactly what I am planning on doing in my daughter’s bedroom with the block printed bed sheet I bought this summer from Jaypore. And for purpose made shower curtains in block print patterns, take a look at Saffron Marigold. I recently recommended their Wedding Day pattern for an impossibly boring yellowy-beige bathroom.

I have also given up on trying to get permission to change the ugly tiles in our kitchen here and am going for a new approach which involves distraction. In searching for fabrics for the French chairs, I had an epiphany and realized Mally Skok‘s Rohet Multi on Oyster might be just the thing to link the disparate elements in the kitchen together. More on that later in the week but be sure to notice that it too has a border.

I’ll be putting it to good use.

Image credits: First two photos Michael Smith via 1. The Wall Street Journal, 2. Cote de Texas. Other photos mine or as linked.

Jan 19, 2014 By tokyojinja in Doha Move, Interior Design, Kids, Textiles Tags: Aleta Online, borders, Brigitte Singh, Courtney Barnes, fabric borders, Indian block prints, Mally Skok, michael smith, Parlor Textiles, Peacocks and Paisleys, Peter Dunham, Saffron Marigold, Style Court, ZAK + FOX

Freshening Formal Furniture With Mally Skok Fabrics

So let’s just say the formality of the rooms in yesterday’s post is just not your style, but you happened to have inherited your beloved grandma’s French bergeres or your grandfather’s old wingchair and you are at a loss to know what to do with them. I say look no further than a fresh fun fabric to breathe new life into them. One of the best people to turn to is designer Mally Skok. Her fabrics start out as watercolor paintings that are then hand-printed by local artisans in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The fabrics make beautiful pillows and window treatments, but seem particularly suited for revitalizing upholstered pieces. As Mally herself says, there is “nothing like putting a slightly inappropriate fabric onto a really good antique chair for adding that bit of pizzaz that stops the chair from looking like its taking itself too seriously.” I couldn’t agree more.

Her Ikat Crazy comes in lots of colors and is instantly transformative! Just think how fuddy duddy this chair might look in a heavy old-fashioned covering. And be sure to note the different way it has been positioned on this wing chair…

…versus this tub chair. Same fabric in different colorways, with different parts of the pattern centered on the chair. Extra versatile too!

And if you really can’t stomach the brown wood frame of your chair (and assuming it isn’t actually a valuable period antique), painting the edges a clean white and pairing it with a jazzy fabric like Mally’s Zig Zag from her Africa collection might be just what you need. I can’t help but be a bit tired of chevron, but this organic hand drawn version is a stunner.

Her sweet India collection fabrics look ideal on painted and Scandinavian pieces. There is such a lightness to the patterns which doesn’t overwhelm these more fragile pieces. I have a real soft spot for her Julia pattern, as does she…

…and her Rohet Flora mixes and matches with her other Rohet designs.

Her Africa collection is particularly lyrical, perhaps influenced by her strong relationship with the location – after all, she was born in Capetown before wending her way to Massachusetts. This chair almost looks like it is a colonial piece and covering it in Botswana Trees is so perfect.

Her fabrics also look great with a different but complimentary fabric on the back. Mally’s array of stripes in many colors work perfectly for this trendy look, which is most successful when a graphic print is paired with a simple geometric.

Mally has a brand new fabric, Suzani Luv, that I have my eye on. Just last week I stumbled onto these three French fauteuils for that most magic price – free – which is a story unto itself that will need to wait for a later post. Good furniture is definitely turning out to be hard to come by here in Doha and there was no way I was going to turn them down. They are in beautiful condition with a very formal blue damask on them. Since it looks like dining room option two is definitely happening and that the Saarinen tulip table is being sent here, I thought the pair might be perfect as dining chairs once they are freshened up and mixed with something more modern.

Suzani Luv comes in three colorways, but it is the taupe and lilac one that screams my name. Don’t you think my chairs would look fabulous like this? I think I might be ditching the seat cushions too – the chairs are more comfortable without them.

If I want to go even further I can paint the frames and I would love to hear your opinions on that. I am contemplating doing that on the larger chair to use it in a different room, but more on that in another post…

Oct 31, 2013 By tokyojinja in Furniture, Interior Design, Textiles Tags: fabric, Mally Skok

Renovation Report…Do You Throw Good Money After Bad? Thoughts on Fixing My Master Bathroom

For the last few days I have been here at our beach house in New Jersey pondering the age-old question “Do you throw good money after bad?” which really is a tough one to answer. Consider the following…a brand new master bathroom, with nothing “officially wrong with it” other than the fact that I hate it. For those of you unfamiliar with my house, it is a simple Victorian beach cottage, full of pale soft colors, vintage furniture and thick white original moldings. The previous owners carved out 2 bathrooms upstairs from what may have been only one. The hall bath is simple white subway tiles and small blue and white checkerboard floor, with white fixtures – just right for the period of the house and my taste. I have also renovated the downstairs bathroom in a similar fashion, with white hexagons and a vintage pedestal sink. The connundrum of this post is what to do about the master bath. For me, it has major problems of both form and function. The photo is from the sale listing almost two years ago now. While the bland colors and finishes are there, it is harder to see the silliness of the design, so I am going to try to draw a literal and a verbal picture for you. First, in terms of function, there is an unnecessarily small vanity with no counter space and about six inches of unused and therefore wasted space on either side. It has 3 ridiculous little drawers, each cut out in the center to accommodate the plumbing, so no real storage to speak of, even though it is a reasonable size cabinet. This photo is taken looking straight down into the drawer – you can see the space for the plumbing cut out – and the storage gets less and less as you move down.

Added to that is an oversized modern mirror/medicine cabinet that projects out from the wall, rather than being set in and recessed. It sticks out so far it actually makes a shadow over the sink and you bump your head into in when you lean over to spit out toothpaste.

Next take a look at the floor plan. You have to open the door inwards to enter the bathroom, then move all the way towards the shower in order to close it to get near the toilet. Now this bathroom was entirely new construction, so there were other options when building it, such as a pocket door. While I am no real fan of the pocket door, if ever a space called for one, than this is it. I hit my head on the door edge all the time, when turning from the sink to move towards the toilet, and not realizing the door is partially open. This architectural change is a must, whether or not I visually tweak the bathroom.

If you are not a floorplan lover, the photos below give a sense of the awkwardness.

And finally, the aesthetic part, which shouldn’t matter so much to me, but it does. The vanity is the worst kind of “faux French” and could not be less in sync with the style of the house. Stylistically, the modern mirror looks all wrong with the ornate vanity. The color in the room is all an unpalatable pinky peachy beige – the tiles, the walls, the ceiling – everything. Now, I love pink, and actually the master bedroom outside the door is painted Farrow & Ball’s Calamine, a wonderful dull grayed pink, as soft as it is pretty. But when it comes to bathrooms, I am a white tile and fixture kind of girl and I have just not been nor continue to be sure what to do with this mish mash. There is simply no way to pull it all out as it is new and clean. I just have to find a way to make some functional and cosmetic fixes. But the big question is when do “small” fixes cross the line in effort and expense? Would I be better off leaving it and living with it and going whole hog at some later date?

My actual fantasy bathroom is this well-known “English Bohemian” one from the beloved defunct Domino. But as the budget doesn’t call for a full gut and frankly, I can’t make the square footage materialize out of thin air, I’ll just sigh and file it away. (I will note that my bedroom has 2 beautiful threadbare Laver Kirman rugs, much like the one on the floor here.)

I had stewed on it endlessly, but still had no ideas on how to manage some kind of smaller improvement to the space. And then, voilà, just like that, I stumbled across this photo in my files of a bathroom decorated by the renowned Phoebe Howard and it gave me just what I needed. So here is the usual pitch I always give people – save inspiration photos whenever you find them. You just never know when you will need them. They give visual language to unformed ideas and can clarify and communicate thoughts that would otherwise be impossible to relate.

For me, there are a few key components here. The French mirror, pinky Indian inspired wallpaper, and jewelry faucet. I have to skip the mounted bowl sink as it is powder room friendly, not master bath friendly, and sweet husband has used his rare veto. Frankly, it doesn’t go with the house either. But I am not looking to slavishly copy this photo anyway, just to use it for exactly what I have named it for – inspiration.

First, the French mirror.

This turned put to be an easy fix thanks to a gift from a friend. Her mom runs a small antique shop in the old icehouse attached to The Gatehouse Country Inn in Shawnee on Delaware, PA. The mirror is in great condition – the circle in the center is just from the flash. In this photo you can really see clearly how silly the vanity is and how much space is wasted. (And I know some of you are thinking it is pretty, but trust me, in person, it truly is not!). One of the immediate practical improvements is the mirror sits directly against the wall and does not get in your way or cast a shadow. And if nothing else, it goes stylistically with the vanity below, unlike the former modern mirror. What is humorous though, is how the French mirror feels right – it feels eclectic – while the faux French vanity still feels wrong.

Next Wallpaper.

I keep thinking I can ignore the floor and shower tiles and think of them as a neutral background, which would work, except for the fact that they come around and line the area behind the sink, rising high to about 4 feet. In trying to simply ignore the tile work, I need a wallpaper with a white background, and some soft pink. Since the whole house has a bit of “Out of India” meets “The Orient Express” what better than spying Les Indiennes‘ new Madame de Montreuil wallpaper in a Vogue feature in February of 2010, soon after we had bought the house. I carried the photo around all winter and ran right into John Derian‘s as soon as I got home to see it in person. Loved it!

Here you can it featured in a room on remodelista. I just adore the feel of this and think it might actually look OK with that tile.

But alas, my sweet husband was a spoil sport. Our first priority upon taking possession of our house last summer just could not be wallpapering a perfectly good bathroom. There were serious things to fix first, including changing the bathroom door to a pocket one, which does actually involve tearing out the sheet rock and would need to be done before the wallpapering. His further point centered on the practicality of very expensive wallpaper in a bathroom with no window or ventilation.

I was not discouraged though! My new budget plan was to make my own woodblock print “wallpaper” by stamping directly onto the walls. I had long admired the hand printed canopy the talented Lauren Liess of Pure Style Home had made for her son’s nursery. I believe it was actually a stencil, but somewhat the same idea.

And everyone had been talking about stencils including the second issue of newish online shelter magazine House of Fifty. Courtney over at Style Court had actually block printed a pillow by herself, and it came out beautifully.

So while in Singapore on my “evacuation vacation” last spring I made sure to buy a few pretty floral woodblocks, a bit like those in the Les Indiennes’ wallpaper. I had huge dreams of the best DIY project and post for the summer of 2011 but life got in the way. And as we still hadn’t put in the pocket door…

I also came across this extremely pretty Nichola wallpaper by Mally Skok, which feels both 18th century and modern at the same time and is less expensive than the Les Indiennes paper. I adore Skok’s entire line of fabrics and wallpapers and promise a full post in the new year!

Definitely Change the Vanity

From both the form and function point of view, the vanity has to be changed. If I wanted to stay with dark wood, something like this simple Schuyler Samperton elegance would be ideal. (Note another favorite of mine – the butler’s trolley.) But in this photo, the lovely wallpaper extends behind and around the vanity. In my bathroom, the tile work extends up the wall behind and to the side, so ideally I would like to remove it. When I checked with the contractor, assuming it would be easy, he pointed out that it created a chain of events, all the way to having to take out the shower doors, cut new tiles and locate some extra bullnose tiles. That seems to be getting awfully close to actually re-doing the bathroom, which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

So what about an antique piece like this? The softly colored marble might neutralize the ugly tile work on the wall, although it doesn’t provide the practical storage I need.

But if I don’t take down the tiles, is a dark wood cabinet the answer? Is it different enough from what is there already to make the effort? Might a smarter choice be a neutral painted cabinet that blended into the tile? Well, if I had the answer to that one, then I’d be showing you a photo here. From an aesthetic point of view, I could finally pull out the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint I have been recommending to everyone and use it to paint the vanity, but that wouldn’t change the fact that I can’t store anything taller than 4 inches in those drawers.

The fun and the ease of decorating the room lies in the details. Additional design ideas include using my bits of pink lusterware and pink depression glass that I have managed to acquire over the years. These lustreware displays are from my files, I assume from Martha Stewart Living, but I can’t find the credit.

Luckily for me, there is no tile on the far side of the bathroom behind or around the toilet!

Here’s a little mock-up of the area over the toilet with the Nichola wallpaper sample and some pink lusterware cups on a vintage display shelf alongside my favorite Jo Malone Red Roses summer mixers.

So I am at a loss. To sum up, I need to change the door to a pocket door – that has to be done no matter what – and needs to be done before any other work. I need to change the wall treatment, whether with wallpaper or a DIY block print project. I can add cute accessories. But do I change the vanity? Do I tear out the tile? Do I gut the whole thing and start over? I wrote this post, more for myself than you dear readers, in the hope that it would clarify these issues, but I am still unsure. I would absolutely relish comments!!!

On another note. I am loving Mally Skok’s Nichola so much that I am considering fabric in another colorway for the renovated downstairs bathroom. The aqua/sand color has such a different feel, almost coral-like, a bit like the Min Hogg fabrics and papers I had considered for there too.