Albert Hadley

Sadly, the world has lost a design great. I learned, via Habitually Chic, that Albert Hadley has passed. Mr. Hadley was graduated from Peabody College. As an aside, I know something about that august university, it was fully named Peabody College for Teachers. He was a graduate of Parsons School of Design, worked at McMillen then co-founded Parish-Hadley, Associates. He was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 1986. He has always been in my hall of fame. Included above are some of my favorite designs of his. His apartment is for sale, find the details at Brown Harris Stevens.

Fabulous Fish

This isn't really about fish, it is really about Nancy Lancaster's fabulous yellow drawing room done by John Fowler. Atop the bookcases are a pair of Ginger Jars, which are the perfect touch to bring the Yellow out of the realm of potentially cloying.

My master bedroom is Benjamin Moore Weston Flax, a similar, but more subdued yellow. The color is richer than appears in the photos. Other colors in the room are raspberries, peaches, greens, blue-greens. Yellow is a strong color. It truly demands a determined approach. If one backs down or shies away, yellow will just scream and pout and look over the top or pathetically insipid.


I have a fantastic upholsterer who created the pillow above, which was one of the early changes. It used to be an inexpensive retail purchase standin, below, until I could find what I wanted for the bed.



There are more major changes which need to happen, the carpet needs to go, for one. I have been contemplating ways to update the room without a major overhaul. I still adore the green lamp, but its companion, which is not shown, is less exciting. The ginger jars atop the bookcases in the Nancy Lancaster drawing room have inspired a search for red orange ginger jars.


On ebay, I found this inspiring pair. At over $1300, ouch!, they are completely 'oh-oh-bee', that is, out of budget. Still, they are inspiring, and, along with the ginger jars above, serving as the basis for what needs to happen in the room.

Next, the closet metamorphosis!

Be sure to head back to Susan's for more metamorphosis Monday!

Colorwheels

Back when I had a design business, I had wonderful samples books which were easy to organize.

Now, I have a lot of small fabric samples which I have picked up over the years since we moved to this state and our current house, so I decided to sort them. That is not quite accurate. This started out as an adventure, I was looking for a specific fabric in order to check it against a large paint sample. Along the way, I found myself sorting the fabrics, muted-reds, yellows, golds, greens, blue-greens, etc., etc., laying them out in a color wheel, in a similar fashion to the wheel above. You can see the greys radiating out from the black in the center with the undertones as closely approximated as possible to red, violet, yellow and green undertoned grays.


Red placed at the top,

muted reds below that,



green directly across from red, yellow green to the left of green,





blue to the right of green, with blue green in between,

yellow to the left of green,

orange across from blue and between red and yellow,

violet between red and blue,

blacks in the middle,

gold tans between black and yellow.


Before I knew it, I had a fairly complete, and rather crowded, color wheel.

Also, I found the fabric which I wanted!


Lastly, to keep this organization intact, I labeled Ziploc bags with the color tones of each set of samples and placed them in the bags. Then I popped the bags into a basket. Much Better!