Merry Christmas from Cambridge

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Cambridge has looked so gorgeous since the lights were switched on. I cannot think of a better postcard for Christmas, than this image of St.Johns Street, awash in festive cheer and looking impossibly pretty. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Image from Sun Surfer. 

Daily Art: National Ideas by Alexey Rubanov

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This amusing yet thought provoking piece is by Ukrainian artist Alexey Rubanov who lives and works in Kremenchug City in Ukraine. As his day job he teaches children at the local art school. Alexey is a well established artist, regular participant of the national and international art exhibitions and a member of the National Association of Ukrainian artists.

According to him "Time is the most precious thing in the world", it's always in deficit, every moment of time, every breath you take is important".

Celebrity Home: Brooke Shields Greenwich Village Townhouse

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Brooke Shields beautiful Brownstone reminds me so much of elegant London townhouses. I am sure the interiors are inspired from the old money confidence of patrician homes in Mayfair or Saint-Germain. The house looks so well lived in, that it is quite impressive to know that this look has been created from scratch – for the house was just a derelict shell when Brooke bought it. “It needed a complete gut,” she says in the Architectural Digest article, “but after a quick walk-through, I could see our future there. My bathtub in a niche by a window, our daughters’ playroom on the top floor. A light-flooded kitchen with a big hearth and a balcony”.

She along with interior designer David Flint Woods and architects MADE, have filled the house with specially selected pieces from her childhood and her mother’s flea market finds. Eccentric buys such as a job lot of vintage hardware was used by MADE to accessorize the cabinetry they designed for the townhouse. A wood tub, crafted by a canoe maker in Idaho, was installed in the guest bathroom and a cast-off marble slab that was scavenged at a county fair was re-cut as a vanity top. 

MADE’s mandate was to salvage as much of the house’s original detail and structural integrity as possible. This has been balanced by infusing a sense of fun and wit in the interiors. Jolts of color and asymmetry give the decor an edgy downtown personality. As Flint Wood says “In my design, as in a British drawing room comedy, there is a subtle tension between propriety and irreverence. He has created an urbane mix of furnishings and materials that includes colonial rattan, Asian porcelain, hand-blocked Zuber wallpaper, neoclassical Italian tables, Chinese lacquer consoles—and art by Keith Haring.

The living room features Louis XVI–style armchairs, a French Empire commode, and a 1970s Lucite-base cocktail table. A Keith Haring painting and portraits of Shields’s two daughters hang on the walls .

Linen cushions are by John Robshaw ; the settee is George III, the curule-form stool is covered in a David Hicks fabric from Lee Jofa, and the jute rug is by Pottery Barn.

In the family room, portraits of Shields and her children are propped alongside 

works by Richard Avedon and Adam Fuss.

Don't miss the Louis Vuitton vintage trunk!

I love how the Chinese porcelain jars are placed under the console, like an afterthought!  

A drawing by Haring, used to wrap a gift for the actress, overlooks a chrome bench from Vermillion in the vestibule.

In the master bedroom, an Anglo-Indian tester bed and John Robshaw block-printed linens.  

Guest Bedroom, don't miss the stack of vintage suitcases in the corner. 

All images and product details courtesy Architectural Digest.