decorating porn 11/26 part 2

4 more of my favorites culled from the 12 pages of new listings on 1stdibs this week (and another 12 pages will be out in less than 12 hours! yikes! it's much too much muchness!)




spider base circular side tables
belvedere, atlanta
$3,700 ea.
how hot are these? love the fact that they have a drawer, so they can be used as nightstands as well (a drawer in a night table is a MUST). maison21 doesn't even mind the crackle finish!




lightolier hanging light fixture
20th century gallery, hudson, ny
2500
maison21 hesitates to use the word bargain in connection with anything on 1stdibs, but in this case it's appropriate, because this lightolier chandelier is like getting a jean royere chandelier without the extra zero on the price. all it needs is some conical shades...




curtis jere gazelle sculpture
collins & mccullough, miami
$1,800
maison21 is mad for animals (the m21 atelier looks like a brass and porcelain petting zoo), and this c. jere gazelle is especially fine. i've never seen this particular animal by jere, and at 3 feet all, it's a whole lotta sculpture for the price.




decorative patio suite
sultana, san francisco
$3,200
designed for the patio, this set would be equally fab indoors. one of the chicest decoristas i know here in los angeles scored a similar sofa for a song on ebay not so long ago (don't think i don't notice when you outbid me, jennifer! :)

decorating porn 11/26

a client of mine once described 1stdibs as decorating porn. i thought that description was brilliant, because for design junkies like moi, it is indeed the stuff of which fantasies are made.

a few items maison21 is drooling over from this weeks new listings (had to hurry and get these posted- next weeks new listings are out in two days, and god forbid i get behind on my 1stdibs!)





two 1970s bronze skull sconces by maria pergay
offered by 1stdibs paris
$33,400 (or 300 euros)
these have got to be amongst the chicest sconces ever- so goth modern. luxe and a little creepy. remember, this is decorating porn, so since it's all a fantasy, price is not an object. but if let me tell you, if he had the budget, maison21 would buy these without blinking an eye and then proceed to design a room around them.




silver leaf bombe chest by samuel marx
offered by todd merrill antiques, new york
contact dealer for price
in my fantasy, this amazing piece would be under those maria pergay sconces. another exceptional piece from the exceptional todd merrill antiques. where does he get this stuff?




brass octagonal beveled mirror by mastercraft
quotient, new york city
$4800
and this mirror would complete my fantasy, hanging between the sconces and above that amazing samuel marx chest. maison21 would then spend the rest of his days, staring happily at the beautiful and luxe tableaux created by these four pieces.

sigh.

faking it is glamorous (trust us)

note: you are going to have to take a bit of a leap of faith and trust us on this post- the fakedy-fake-fake maison21 tree (the post's subject), really is quite pretty, but the photos we took of it are not. we didn't anticipate the problems of taking photos of something white and back-lit, and at night, so our photos don't quite live up to the premise of the post. maison21 is but a humble decorator, not a professional photographer, so please accept our apologies and use your imagination to photoshop the fug photos into something a little more fabulous.

maison21 recently posted about his love of fake christmas trees, the faker the better, so we thought we'd share our current favorite fake with you, just in case some you feel like taking the plunge and faking it this year.

several years ago, maison21 found himself seriously unprepared for the holidays- in a fit of redecorating pique, he got rid of most of the maison21 atelier's furniture several months before xmas, thinking he would work a new look in time for the holidays. but of course the season arrived much faster than anticipated (as it always does), and m21 found himself both over-budget and under-decorated, with a long scheduled holiday cocktail party in honor of a friend's birthday looming near. a dramatic holiday decorating intervention was needed to draw attention away from the somewhat unfinished state of affairs, so we high-tailed it to our local discount stores to see what we could transform with a little sissy magic and a limited amount of cash.

first stop was the world's most dilapidated kmart store at third and fairfax, where we stepped over piles of trash and discarded merchandise to purchase a 7 foot white wire pre-lit lawn decor xmas tree on sale for 30 bucks. since our fake wire skeleton of a tree was white, we wanted to stick to that theme but the martha stewart white ornaments we thought would look great, were 8 bucks for a box of six, and since we would need hundreds for the tree, we had to move on to a cheaper source.

so on to the .99 cents only store, which made the junky kmart look all upscale and pretty. unfortunately they didn't have any white ornaments at all, so we decided to broaden the scope of our all white theme and bought up every box of no-color ornaments they had- pearl, cream, gunmetal, silver, shiny, matte, frosted or clear- we didn't care as long as they weren't colorful.

even though we bought out the stock of silver ornaments from the .99 cent store (about $25.00 dollars worth), we still didn't have nearly enough for the tree, so we proceeded to the next rung down on the discount store ladder, the big lots store in hollywood, whose idea of retail merchandising is to pile mounds of debris about 10 feet high in the store and let shoppers dig through them in the hopes of finding something that isn't broken or entirely ruined. well, low and behold, in those mounds, they had boxes of assorted mixed white, silver and clear ornaments, 3 for $2.00! even though many of the ornaments in the boxes were already broken, at that price, i didn't care and i bought them out too (roughly another $20.00). (i also picked up a rather fabulous door mat with a greek key border btw, for $3.00- just goes to show that there is good stuff everywhere, even at the dreaded big lots, you just have to keep your eyes open!)

the final item purchased was a splurge in comparison: $25, for the glitter starburst topper from crate and barrel (i've seen them knocked off at discounters since, for much, much less). i also added an $8 "dimma" switch from ikea, because being intended for the outdoors, the tree was bright enough blind, and if you've read my older posts, you know i am a firm believer in the dimmest of lighting.

tree and ornaments cost about about a hundred bucks total (far less that the price of a single artificial tree, even at the kmart ) and i thought the end results were quite pretty. the guests at the cocktail party all seemed to love it as well, and a version of the the same tree later even turned up in the windows of a well-known decorator's los angeles store! (i'm not sayin' they stolded my idea or nothin'- it was all store-bought, i didn't actually make it or anything, and great minds do think alike after all, but still, the gift of a pretty needlepoint pillow or a pottery horse would not have gone unappreciated by maison21).

this will be my 4th year working this tree, and i've said every year that it will be my last, but after putting it up this year, i've fallen in love with it all over again. let us know what you think- pretty fake? or pretty fugly? (and remember, please be kind- the photos are dreadful, and the fact that i was too tired to move the really, really heavy marble table it's perched on doesn't help matters either).

gift idea- lucite boxes

i was recently browsing through the vivre.com mail order catalogue when these great acrylic "devon" boxes caught my eye- at $65 & $40 respectively, they are a third of the price of the classic albrizzi boxes they are clearly patterned after. at that savings, who cares if they are only available in black or white, compared to the rainbow of colors that the original albrizzi boxes come in (including a very chic mirrored option, also available on vivre.com). maison21 thinks this a gift he'd be thrilled to get, and another option for gift-giving where the luxe factor outweighs the relatively inexpensive price.

giving thanks.

we're going to take a little departure from our normal design obsessed posts today, and instead offer a little heartwarming holiday story, followed by a brief public service announcement. tomorrow, back to the frivolous world of decorating, i promise.

this thanksgiving, i have so many things to be thankful for- great family and friends, a beautiful home, the ability to earn a living doing what i love- the list goes on and on. but hands down the thing in my life i am most grateful for are my two happy little furballs, mona and richard. day in and day out, they provide so much affection and amusement, i couldn't be unhappy if i tried. an example: i'm one of those people that wakes up grumpy, and it takes a while for my mood to lighten and the happy maison21 to appear. well, grumpy isn't strong enough a word, my whole life, i've woke up pissed off- ready to bite the head off the first person unfortunate enough to cross my path. well, since mona came around, it's been rather hard to maintain the black cloud of doom every morning. being the good girl that she is, she never wakes me, but on the first signs of my stirring, she goes on high alert- if i yawn and stretch, she starts to quiver with excitement, eager to start her day. then, she comes to the head of the bed, smiling like crazy and showering me with hot, stinky dog breath to complete my wake up process. if i proceed to actually sit up or make signs of getting out of bed, pandemonium ensues as she can't wait to start her day! up and down off the bed about a dozen times- she can't wait to go outside and smell good stuff! she can't wait to get that same old bowl of dry food she gets everyday! of course her enthusiasm wakes her little brother richard the cat, who has no clue what all the excitement is about but thinks it's probably a great time to play (he's 18 months old- he always thinks it's a great time to play) and even more chaos follows. the black storm cloud of my morning mood lifts to partly cloudy with a chance of clearing before i've even left the bedroom.

mona came into my life 8 years ago the weekend after thanksgiving- she was initially supposed to be a purebred french bulldog- not a corgi with a highly suspect bloodline. i had made up my mind to finally get a dog several months earlier, and my heart was set on buying a french bulldog puppy. like pretty much every decision in my life, my choice of dog was based on aesthetics and i thought french bulldogs were the cutest things going. my then roommate was aghast that i would buy a dog and insisted that i go to the pound to rescue one instead, but there was no way i was going to give up on my dream of a cute little frenchie. instead, i made an appointment with a french bulldog breeder while hatching a devious plan to satisfy my roommate and keep peace at home, but still get my way and get my designer dog. my plan was to go to the pound just once to shut him up- i'd report back that there was nothing there but german shepard-rottweiler-pit bull mixes, and since i needed a small dog for our apartment with no backyard, it just wouldn't work out and off to the breeder i'd go, obligation met.

well i put in my one-time-only visit to the pound and you know what? there really was nothing but large breed pitibull mixes, so i wouldn't even have to lie about it! but what i hadn't planned on was that they were all such sweet large pit-bull mixes, so excited to see a human, wagging their tails and pressing their faces to the chain link of the cages to get a little affection. just like that the plan changed, my heart melted, and i canceled my appointment to buy a purebred dog. i was now committed to decidedly non-designer mutt ownership.

i started visiting the l.a. county animal shelters, and the local humane society kennel every weekend. i really did need a smaller dog but this was pre-paris hilton lapdog mania, and there weren't many small dogs available. when they were up for adoption, there would be a waiting list- at one point i was number 13 on the list for a little chihuahua mix! i began to despair of finding a dog until one day at the humane society, i was trying to sweet talk the girl at the front desk into calling me first the next time they got a small dog. it must have worked a little, as she replied that they had smaller one right now, but she didn't think it was available- it was in the cat room as the other dogs were picking on it. the guy in charge didn't want to let me see it, as he said the dog was "unadoptable" but like with the french bulldog, i was going to figure out a way! eventually the nice girl volunteer and i wore him down, and he brought out a filthy little medium-sized dog, who cowered against the wall, running away in a panic if i even made the slightest move towards her. i thought maybe he was right and i wouldn't be able to adopt her after all, but just then a new visitor opened the door to the waiting room, and in her blind panic, she ran over to shelter against me, and when she realized where she was, proceeded to pee all over my shoes . well, it was love at first pee, and we've been inseparable ever since.

over the years, mona has blossomed from a dog who wouldn't let anyone near her, and who perpetually wore an expression of terror on her face, into a dog who does nothing but smile and who thinks that everyone was put on this planet for one purpose- to pet her and praise her. there is no nice way to put it- she's turned into an attention whore in the worst way, and i love her even more because of it. when i think that this sweet little girl was given up by her first owner and was considered to be "unadoptable" it literally brings tears to my eyes but it also makes me forever grateful that she entered my life that fateful post-thanksgiving weekend 8 years ago. thanksgiving really has a special meaning for me now.

so this year, if anyone out there reading this post is thinking about becoming a pet-parent, i urge you to give thanks for the abundance in your life and share it with a pet from a shelter or rescue group. take a look around petfinder.com and though you won't see the wagging tails in action like i did at the pound, you won't be able to resist the cute little faces staring out at you from your computer screen. even if you can't adopt a pet, or aren't ready yet, perhaps you could think about donating to an animal rescue group. i think that rescuers have received a bad rap lately because of the whole ellen debacle, and that's not fair- they really are a selfless group who devote huge amounts of their time and money to rescue animals in need, so they could really use some extra donations right now.

lest anyone think i'm ignoring mona's little brother, richard the cat, here's his story: one hot, sunny los angeles sunday, my former neighbor and i decided to go out for a refreshing beverage in west hollywood. after parking, we cut through an alley only to spot a little gray ball of fluff, followed by two more. instead of an afternoon spent ogling boys, we instead spent it bathing and flea combing kittens to rid them of the large amount of fleas infesting their tiny bodies- not quite as festive, but far more rewarding. richard's two sisters were adopted almost immediately but no one seemed interested in a boy cat, so he ended up completely winning the hearts of both mona and myself and was soon a permanent member of the family. he's grown from a tiny ball of fluff to a 15 pound behemoth of fluff, equally adept at making us laugh and making us cry when he destroys something we love (but we wouldn't have it any other way- fabric can be replaced, but the love he gives us is priceless). when he and mona wrestle and play, it's a sight both heartwarming and horrifying- mona caught in a headlock, and richard mock-ferociously gnawing on her ears, but all the while, mona is smiling and wagging her nubbin at a fever pitch, having the time of her life. at the end of the day, with richard on one side of me purring like a diesel engine, and mona sighing in delight during a never-ending pet session on the other, i am truly contented.

god, i love them so, and am so very grateful to have them in my life. now go to petfinder, already! and have a happy thanksgiving!

oxoxo,

christian, aka maison21