Just in Time…Last Piece of Cream Hibiscus Branch From Aleta

As always, I know my expectations of what I can accomplish at the beach house in just 8 weeks has to be tempered by reality. Posting about the brass wall sconces yesterday got me thinking that maybe a reasonable goal should just be to finish the TV room/back bedroom from soup-to-nuts and accept that everything else will only make as much progress as luck will allow me. So I pulled out my to-do list and started to work through it, which means you’re sure to be seeing posts on that space over the next weeks. Luckily, this decision sent me over to Aleta’s website as I have been planning on using one of her Brigitte Singh fabrics for the curtains with a vintage sudare bamboo blind, as mentioned in a previous post.

I had been choosing between Cream Hibiscus Flower Buta…

…and Cream Hibiscus Branch…

…but I had been lollygagging on the whole decision for a while.

While I had originally been leaning towards the Flower Buta, this autumn I came across this photo of Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux’s new bedroom in the Hollywood Hills which features the Hibiscus Flower Buta on the curtains. It looks lovely, but I decided it also looks too regimented and stripey when the curtains are open. Therefore I decided to choose the Hibiscus Flower Branch, at least in my own mind, and promptly did nothing about it.

Now the danger with artisanal hand printed fabrics like this is that they can run out easily and are not always reprinted. You’ll remember I used the work “luckily” at the top of the post – and luckily it was that I checked over the website as there was only one final piece of the Branch fabric left and it is not being reprinted! Phew, just enough for my curtain.

Image credits: 1 & 2. via Aleta, 3. via Huff Post

May 13, 2012 By tokyojinja in Renovation and Decoration Report, Textiles Tags: Aleta, Brigitte Singh, curtains, Indian block prints, sudare

Gokokuji Temple…a Bit of a Shrine Sale Puzzle

To help out all my Sunday church-going readers I have been wanting to report favorably on the second Saturday of the month shrine sale at Gokoku-ji. I don’t have it on my “official” shrine sale page because I don’t like to recommend anything that might be disappointing and while it has been good in the past, I tend to find it unreliable now, both in terms of schedule and quality/quantity of dealers and merchandise. Today wasn’t much different from that assessment – only about a dozen vendors. Now, we all know that Nogi Shrine only ever has about that many dealers at best, but they are all top quality. The goods today were more junk shop and imports from China than real antiques, so if you live in the nearby Mejiro neighborhood or on the Yurakucho line, it might be worth stopping by. I am not sure I would have anyone travel there, although that being said, it only took me 15 minutes driving from my house on the Shuto.

Just because it wasn’t the best market doesn’t mean there weren’t things to be found. My subconscious has been making itself heard lately by pointing me towards medium-sized unusually shaped Imari plates. I think it wants them for first course or lunch settings. I have been resisting, on the grounds that I don’t need them, but today brought two examples.

The first was eye-catching, but…

… it was the second set that was breathtaking.

If you do go and the market turns out to be lousy or unexpectedly cancelled, the Temple complex, situated up on a hill and surrounded by substantial grounds, is beautiful and well-worth visiting. Built in 1681 by the 5th Tokugawa Shogun at the request of his mother, it has survived earthquakes, fires, and WWII, and the main temple is designated an important cultural property of Japan. Today they had a special flower arranging exhibit on the grounds and in the main sanctuary. Take note of the unusually colored sudare.

Unfortunately for me, my practical conscious mind ruled out and I didn’t buy that second set of plates. I am now mooning over the photo at home, so if anyone sees them tomorrow or next week at a different market, please feel free to let me know!

May 14, 2011 By tokyojinja in Porcelain and Pottery, Shrine Sales and Flea Markets Tags: flea market, imari, japanese antiques, porcelain, shrine sale, sudare

The Mail is Always Late…more on Japanese Glass Fishing Floats and Sudare

One of the disadvantages of living in Tokyo is that magazines are hard to come by. International subscriptions are expensive and often arrive well after they do on the newsstands back in their originating country. So of course I got the November House Beautiful the day after I wrote my last post on the glass float and bottle I found at the Kawagoe shrine sale, and it was full of images I wanted to share. So here are a few, just a little bit late…

Peter Dunham, another favorite designer of mine, featured a beautiful greenish glass bottle on the counter of the kitchen in this L.A. home he designed. He also used a number of clear giant bottle lamps in the living room and bedrooms.

And in the same issue, designer Steven Gambrel seems to have gone shopping with Tom Scheerer for the glass float lamp in his front entryway.

That photo jogged my memory and sent me scurrying to page through Gambrel’s portfolio. Voila, he uses the same lamp in a boy’s room in a Long Island Beach house. Gotta love the nautical maps made into wallpaper.

He also uses a giant glass bottle in the entryway of the same home. Perhaps he and Mr. Scheerer need to duke it out for the “king of the glass bottle” title.

One more from another beach house on Long Island that he designed – this one in Bridgehampton – with two huge blue glass fishing floats.

And finally, Gambrel does a double whammy in his own Sag Harbor house, using a glass float and the netted lamp together.

On another note, I also just got my hands on the October issue of The World of Interiors. It featured an amazing new house on the Costa del Sol, built by Studio Peregalli Sartori to look as if had “the patina of the past”. While the entire house is rich with antique architectural elements, the tower bathroom is my favorite with its magical old world elegance. There is great tension between the coolness of the white fixtures and the marble floor contrasted with the warmth of the Moroccan tiles and the Japanese sudare blinds covering the windows. For more on sudare, check out my post here.

I think I could really live in that bathroom…

Image credits: 1 & 2. House Beautiful November 2010, 1. photo credit: Victoria Pearson, 2. photo credit: Steven Gambrel, 3-6. Steven Gambrel , 7 & 8. The World of Interiors October 2010, photo credit: Roland Beaufre

Nov 3, 2010 By tokyojinja in Glass, Interior Design Tags: Japanese glass floats, Peter Dunham, Steven Gambrel, sudare