Washington Spaces blog

Why moan and groan about the heat, when you can celebrate it with champagne and cupcakes?

That’s what the folks at Vastu thought last night, when they invited customers out to celebrate the dog days. I had never actually been to their 14th Street store, so it was a good excuse to go, and check out their wares with a glass of bubbly.

Owner Eric Kole, left, stands with customer Christopher Pohled

Vastu recently became a local retailer for EcoSmart fireplaces, which we featured in our green issue last year.

These fireplaces can stand alone or be built into a wall, or shelving, or the deck around your bathtub – wherever. The best part: Under President Obama’s stimulus plan, you can get up to 30 percent or $1,500 in tax credits when you buy one.

I loved these glass beehives from John Pomp in New York,

And the colored-glass collection by Lynn E. Read of Portland, OR, for Vitreluxe is just lovely.

Our homes contain so much of ourselves, so much that’s priceless. The sad news that longtime arts patron Peggy Cooper Cafritz lost her beautiful Palisades mansion last night in a fire contains an extra shade of sorrow. Her home was a haven for art and culture in the District, a celebratory place where politicians and artists often mingled; and where dark, inquisitive, funny, and exuberant art all mingled, too. As Cafritz’s neighbor told The Washington Post today, “It’s like watching Tara burn down.”

The once-stunning property and Peggy Cooper Cafritz in the August 2009 issue of O Magazine. Read the full article, which includes her tips on collecting and a thorough tour of the mansion, here. Some of the art shown in her entryway: Vixen by Federico Uribe, which is made from painted pencils (on wall), Rumor Has It by Mickalene Thomas (on side wall), and Boots (on floor) by Demetrius Glover.

Home photographs by Sang An for O Magazine

No one was hurt in the fire, thankfully – it’s rumored that even the dogs were rescued – but much of Cafritz’s vast African art collection is gone, the works irreplaceable. She was passionate about her pieces. But buying art, for her, is not so much about stringing rare and beautiful things together – it’s about participating in culture and helping to foster vibrant communities. The artists she bought from benefited immeasurably from her patronage; she furthered their ability to create, and in some cases brought watersheds of attention on their work just by having it in her collection.

“Some collectors need their work to be validated, but with her it’s really instinctual” says Jack Shainman, owner of the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, where Cafritz often buys art. “She’s really open to so many things, she loves to champion young artists. It’s [about] whether she responds to it, whether she thinks it’s good.” Cafritz co-founded the Duke Ellington School for the Arts in DC, and recommends finding artists that are early on in their work so you have “a career to follow.”

Black Redemption by Radcliffe Bailey and Study for Great America by Kerry James Marshall, courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery

The CharityWorks GreenHouse (CWGH) being constructed in McLean, VA, continues to inspire. The house, sustainable in terms of the actual structure and the interiors, will also feature eco-friendly landscaping. I stopped by this morning and loved the transformation from the bare dirt that was there last week to the lush, low shrubbery, bushes, and grasses that have since been planted.

The CharityWorks GreenHouse will set a standard for sustainable landscaping.

This is the latest update in a series of blogs on the CWGH. For past stories, click here, here, here, and here.

Designed to be low maintenance and drought tolerant by Greg Brandon of Skye Design Studio Ltd., who collaborated with John Clime of T&J Lawn Service, the property is filled with materials native to the mid-Atlantic region, including hydrangeas, viburnums, and rapanden yews. It’s not a traditional landscape; it looks new and natural. I imagine lots of wildlife – chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, birds, and butterflies – building homes on this property. 

“It’s such a nice extension of the whole theme for the house,” says Mark Lowham, senior vice president of West Group, which is building the green house with GreenSpur Inc. “That design won’t require any chemicals, fertilizers, or additional water once all those regional plants are established. It’s both beautiful and responsible.”

A side view of the house shows the landscaping in the foreground and the green roof on top of the one-story dining room beyond.

Workmen were busy finishing up the sod and planting this morning, so things will have time to take root before the CWGH opens for tours from October 10-30.

The front walk, flanked by native plants, is composed of permeable pavers with pea gravel.

Old-growth trees were saved where possible on the half-acre site, including this evergreen in the front yard.

Mark Turner of GreenSpur says they shifted the house seven feet within the setbacks of the site to save the grand silver maple.

The property is dotted with dozens of hydrangeas, including these oakleaf hydrangeas, which should be spectacular next spring.

Lots of native plants fill the front yard and a side yard. The other side yard will include a lap pool and wonderful outdoor living space. Washington Spaces is proud to be a sponsor of CWGH. See our upcoming Fall issue for a preview of the green designer show house.

My opinion about going green? Thumbs up, naturally!

YUM. These rugs remind me of summer sherbet.

Zubair Mohamed, owner of Senneh Knot in Timonium, MD, sent over these delicious pictures of colorful, reversible rugs – handmade in India – in the new Granada collection.

The rugs are all wool and washable, but in case you can’t get to a professional handmade-rug cleaner right away, you can simply turn the rug over to hide the occasional spot. As a mom of two grubby boys, I love that.

The rugs currently come in four patterns, with more on the way, Mohamed says. And the size and color combinations are endless – besides the standard sizes and colors, you can order them in a custom size and custom color – anything you want.

Whenever I think of an oriental rug store, I think of very traditional patterns and darker colors.

Apparently, Granada is one of several lighter, contemporary designs that Senneh Knot carries. And when a rug like this costs $795 for an 8-foot-by-10-foot style, I’ll have to put Timonium on my list of shopping destinations.

My friend Maril called me this morning with an urgent design question – the drapery man was standing in her house at that moment, needing to know if she wanted her new draperies to hang just to the floor, or to make a “puddle.” 

Just so you know what we’re talking about here, Casa Fiora offers a great illustration:

Floor length:

Trouser break:

Puddle:

It’s all a matter of taste, of course, but personally, I’m over the puddle look. I got that style for my living room drapes 10 years ago, and they’ve gone from elegant to frumpy in my estimation. My newer dining-room drapes, however, fall just to the floor and look much more polished.

Still, I decided to take a quick survey of these drapery styles when they are in the hands of accomplished designers.

Second week, same scenario: Tashica was down to the last two designers at elimination, and the other designer was sent home. So she’s still in the running. And this situation is stirring a lot of hateful comments among HGTV viewers who wrote into HGTV Design Star blog.

At the same time, however, Tashica is running second in the online vote for a designer to get his or her own Web show.

Here’s some background: Tashica Morgan of Bowie, MD, was one of 10 designers on HGTV Design Star last night who split into two teams of five, and each team was tasked with designing and installing a kitchen remodel for a real homeowner.

All this had to be done in 26 hours over three days – with no help with labor or installation.

Here was the result for Tashica’s team:

Before:

The homeowners, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, wanted a colorful, modern look for their new kitchen.

After:

There’s not a lot of color here, and the look isn’t modern. Jany wanted to install a tile backsplash, but couldn’t finish. The counters were not level because the base cabinets were not installed correctly. Cabinet hardware was not completed. No accessories were in place.

Photographs by Matt Dandy

Last night Washington Spaces had the pleasure of honoring elite area architects and design/build firms as we congratulated our 2009 Best of Remodeling Competition award recipients at the fabulous Ferguson showroom in Alexandria, VA.

While rain fell outside, the showroom’s glittering light fixtures from Schonbek, Kichler, and more were a perfect backdrop for the soirée, and professionals warmly chatted about current and future projects throughout the night.

Washington Spaces Account Executive Jill Yager with award recipients Architect Chris Pfaeffle of Parameter Inc., and his wife, Sally

“These events are so effective for bringing people together,” said Architect Bill Poulos of WDG Architecture, who was surprised to reconnect with an old friend at the event, who’s also an architect, at Ferguson.

Bill Poulos and Designer Lori Ludwick of InDesign, whose charismatic Georgetown pied-à-terre took home an award

Read on for more party pics, and be sure to peruse all the winners and entries here.

When I was writing a feature for our summer issue on Phillips Park, one of two new custom-home developments off Foxhall Road in DC, there weren’t any houses that were complete enough to photograph. Finally now, at least one is camera-ready. So Associate Publisher Heather Heider, Editor in Chief Trish Donnally, and yours truly went to a broker’s open yesterday to check it out. 

Heather and I will be your tour guides today. Photos are courtesy of Trish.

Here’s the broader view of the house, designed by Barnes Vanze Architects and built by Gibson Builders.

This house, covered in European stucco, according to Long & Foster Realtor Marc Fleisher, clocks in at 7,000 square feet and costs $3.85 million. Let’s peek inside.

Street art is hot right now. It seems just right for summer – the porch-sitting, parade-watching, chow-down-on-vendor-food-in-the-sculpture-garden season. And cutting spending is on everyone’s mind, which seems to further a blooming interest in informal or anti-classical art. Galleries are responding to economy-minded buyers by showing vibrant, affordable collections of small works, works on paper, and work whose content has strong populist threads.

Construction Site, Mittelstr. a photograph by Frank Day, (from a story on collecting in our current issue) and Berlin Shroud, spray paint on cardboard by EVOL, show different takes (in different media) on very similar subjects. 

First up: Irvine Contemporary’s Street/Studio show. It’s immediately clear that this is not usual Washington art fare – the show is full of rough, sprawling pieces and several of the shown artists go by handles: EVOL, Swoon, Pisa73, Imminent Disaster. The exhibit showcases several Brooklyn- and Berlin-based artists whose studios extend into the public arena. Naturally the show pushes out past the gallery walls too, taking over exterior space and part of the alley near Irvine’s little slice of 14th Street. The show kicked off last month, fittingly, with a block party.

Persephone, cut paper on found cloth, and Untitled (Bird in Flight), cut paper on found wood, by Imminent Disaster

Untitled (Bird Nest), screenprint on paper by Gaia, and After, ink, watercolor, graphite, and gouache by Oliver Vernon

Through August 20.

Candice Olson, the host of HGTV’s Divine Design who is currently a judge on Design Star, is a one-woman home-décor industry. I was reminded of all her work yesterday when Tashica Morgan, our local contestant on Design Star, told me about one of Olson’s chandeliers she had tried to use in her first challenge.

Then I realized I had been saving a couple press kits from Olson’s latest fabric and furniture introductions.

Olson has a new line of fabrics with Kravet that launched this spring.

NataLee (center) probably isn’t cheering so much anymore. (Tashica is on the left.)

Whew. That was close. The first episode of HGTV Design Star came down to Tashica, who lives in Bowie, MD, and works as a designer at Ethan Allen in Arlington, and her partner, NataLee – over who would be eliminated after the show’s first challenge.

NataLee was deemed not fit to continue after she had a physical breakdown during the challenge, after which both ladies were castigated for biting off more than they could chew with their design. I cringed when Candice Olson said, “I’m so embarrassed for you, I’m speechless.”

Their task was to take this enormous master bedroom:

And they turned it into this:

What you can’t really see in this picture is that the paint on the floor came up when they removed the paint tape. The stores didn’t have enough duvets for the six beds, so they cut a king-size one in half. NataLee didn’t have enough time to sew the seams on the drapery panels over the beds, so the edges are all frayed. And there was not enough time to hang hardware for the drapery, so they are taped to the ceiling.

Builders and architects looove to put lots of windows in their houses, and of course we love them, too. Until we have to cover them.

Window treatments can be shockingly expensive, especially when you want to pick out your own fabrics and have them custom made. And when you multiply them but dozens of windows, the price will make you faint.

Maharam shades from The Shade Store

Enter, The Shade Store.  It offers fabrics by Robert Allen, which is usually sold just to the trade, and it’s the sole provider of custom window treatments by Dwell Studio, Chilewich, and Maharam.

 Ivory raw-silk shades by Robert Allen. Consumers can choose from 100 Robert Allen fabrics for window treatments, cornices, and pillows. Interior designers, however, can choose from the entire Robert Allen/Beacon Hill collection, which includes thousands of patterns.

Here’s a tale of two leathers, er, non-leather, er, leather that doesn’t look like leather. Confused yet?

Check it out:
The upholstery on this chair looks like a heavy fabric. But it’s really leather, from the Lynchburg, VA-based Moore & Giles.

Same thing with this other leather, which looks like a silk weave:

"The breadth of our portfolio is really incredible," says Brooks Morrison, the spokeswoman for Moore & Giles, which until last year was focused mostly on the hospitality (restaurants, hotels) industry. They are now branching out into residential interiors. 

Meanwhile, Lights of Venice in North Potomac, MD, just introduced a line of furniture with panels that seem as if they are covered in shagreen leather (sting-ray skin), only they aren’t.

Laszlo Sallay came up with a technique that stamps plywood to look like the pattern of shagreen, and then he merely paints it.  
 

All photography courtesy of Drake Design Associates

Before New York Designer Jamie Drake was to give a lecture at The Corcoran Gallery of Art last night, I found him sitting outside on a park bench, dressed nattily in a gray suit with vivid pink shirt and tie, black shoes spit-shined to eternity, his chunky gold chain-link bracelet jangling as he lit a cigarillo. 

Drake wears his design philosophy on his sleeve. Dubbed "the king of color" by House Beautiful magazine in 2001, Drake says "people come to me for bold, polished, urbane and intellectually challenging interiors, and I think that sums up the personality of my clients. I don’t tend to get retiring violets."  

And how. Here’s the dining room he designed for one "over the top" (OTT) client during a lecture that was filled with delightful quips and hilarious one-liners.

"She’s OTT. She’s kind of fabulously OTT. It’s not my job to edit her down!" Drake said. From the wild rug to the gilded mirror, to the gilded chandelier and candelabras, to the sideboard with orange pony-skin doors, he was true to his word.

Drake was practically born with his colorful design sensibility, as the childhood drawings he recently unearthed suggest. "I was really quite taken aback with how the colors that I used are still the colors that I love," he said, still marveling at the discovery. "I’ve had this feeling of eclecticism and brightness ever since childhood."

Anyone who lives in the DC area has a reason to tune in to the fourth season of HGTV Design Star on Sunday at 10 p.m. One of the 10 finalists who will battle for his or her own show is the adorable Tashica Morgan of Bowie, MD. A resident designer at Ethan Allen in Arlington, she is working on her master’s degree in interior design at Marymount University.

Courtesy, HGTV 

All good credentials for a design show, right? But she has come further to where she is now than perhaps any of her fellow contestants. Tashica grew up in Southeast DC, traveling between relatives’ houses, homeless shelters, and foster homes. Tashica developed a knack for designing, such as it was, when she became the one to unpack the bags at each new place. "I always had to create the space. It was fun for me," she says. Her mother and sisters came to expect that of her. "I had to put it together, get it up and going. I would tell them where to put things."

Tashica’s father was in and out of prison, and her mother "did some hard time on the streets," she says. "I knew that was not going to be me. I just said I was not going to be that." 

She was right. Despite the fact that neither parent finished high school, she’s a graduate of the University of Maryland and will soon have a master’s degree. Oh, and she spent several weeks filming HGTV Design Star while staying in a mansion overlooking Los Angeles that was once home to the likes of Lucille Ball and Frank Sinatra.