Saxon Henry's Blog, page 14

A Room with a View x 2

Justin Shaulis created this illuminated vignette to represent Lucy’s life and Italian adventures.

When I saw the expressive twin spaces Justin Shaulis created as one of American Standard’s 2015 DXV Design Panel participants, I knew I had to feature him for two reasons: the sensual storytelling he achieved within the spaces he designed and the novel he chose as his inspiration—A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, which has always been one of my favorites.

Explaining his point of view, which yo...

Paul Gauguin in Tahiti

“Parau api,” (“Two Women of Tahiti”) painted by Paul Gauguin in 1892.

Seeing the luscious colors and splashy patterns in the summer issues of the top shelter publications (“Big, Bold Blooms” an Elle Décor Trend Alert and “Imperial Red” the month’s Color Crush featured in House Beautiful) I was reminded of an exhibition staged at the Tate Modern I was lucky enough to see on opening day while visiting London in 2010. As I joined the throng of people pouring into the museum to see Gauguin: Maker...

The Tides In Our Veins

The Tor House and Hawk Tower, both stone buildings built by the poet Robinson Jeffers.

One of the most evocative trips I can remember taking as a young woman was a four-day escapade to Carmel, California. I was a newly minted poet, or so I thought I could dare call myself such being inspired as I was by my college professors and the heroes they put on their syllabi.

One of the standouts for me during the semester before I headed west was Robinson Jeffers, who had fallen head-over-heels in lov...

Shelley in Italy

“Oh, if I had health, and strength, and equal spirits,

what boundless intellectual improvement

might I not gather in this wonderful country!”

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

The exterior of the Duomo di Milano from the Piazza.

Soon after he embarked upon a four-year Wanderjahr through Italy with his beloved wife Mary—a trip that would turn out to be an end-of-life journey—the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley found himself in Milan. While there, he would make his way to the cathedral in the center of town to...

Judith Paul’s Cover Story

“My intention is to glorify books and treat them as precious objects.”

—artist Judith Paul

Mixed-Media Artist Judith Paul.

Before I made a definitive decision to carve out as close to a writer’s existence as I could, I exhibited as a stained glassed artist in my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was a member of a gallery and active in AVA, the Association for Visual Arts. Just before I moved to New York City, I had the privilege of being one of three artists to produce an exhibition at The...

Horace Walpole Shops The Decorative Fair

This world is a comedy to those that think,

a tragedy to those that feel.

—Horace Walpole

Horace Walpole, book in hand, seated in his gothic temple to all things Tudor.

The books I’ve been reading about Horace Walpole since I returned from my trip to London to attend The Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in late April proves there was more than a smidge of tragicomedy in the eighteenth-century writer. Not entirely comfortably, I’m also finding that I have more in common with the popular da...

The Old Familiar Faces

…I have been laughing, I have been carousing,

Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces…

These three lines of verse illustrating Charles Lamb’s feelings of loss for the pals who brought intellectual stimulation into his life couldn’t be more meaningful to kick off this #DesignSalon post. I culled them from the poem The Old Familiar Faces, a phrase that is resonant even for the design aspects of the narrative. Lamb left the earth 180 years a...

Threads With a Soul

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts

and in the soul of its people —Mahatma Gandhi

Welspun’s SPUN collection is indeed made from threads with soul.

Soul is one of those words with as many connotations as there are people to consider it. Like truth and beauty, the concept of soul has been interpreted by many of history’s greatest writers and thinkers. Aristotle remarked, “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Virginia Woolf proclaimed, “Books are the mirrors of the soul...

Welspun’s Threads With a Soul

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts

and in the soul of its people —Mahatma Gandhi

Welspun’s SPUN collection is indeed made from threads with soul.

Soul is one of those words with as many connotations as there are people to consider it. Like truth and beauty, the concept of soul has been interpreted by many of history’s greatest writers and thinkers. Aristotle remarked, “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” Virginia Woolf proclaimed, “Books are the mirrors of the soul...

The End of an Era

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

Don Draper reads Frank O’Hara’s “Meditations in an Emergency.”

A voiceover of Don Draper reciting the lines leading this post while thumbing through a copy of Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency bring one of my favorite episodes of Mad Men to a close. He’s reading them from O’Hara’spoem “Mayakovsky,” which first appeared in print in 1957. The choice of this poem by this...