Hello&Again

THE ARTFUL CLUTTER // THE HEADBOARD PROJECT // 6 reduce,

reuse, reinvent // Dali Found in Thrift // Green Fabrics

HELLO & AGAIN | October 2009

NO. 11.2009

NO. 11.2009

2

//Letters to

Editor

BILL GUY5

30 8

40

The Artful ClutterANDREA CODRINGTON30

DIY: The Headboard ProjectLYDIA LEE8

6 reduce, reuse, & reinventALISON WILLIAMS40


11.2009

3

//Letters to

Editor

BILL GUY5

//Polaroid of the Month

TONY FRENCH14

//Dogs Days

SARAH PETERS17

//Green Fabric

s

ALEX BROWN20

//Who’s who?

BETSY S25

//Dali Found in Thrift

ELIZABETH CORGAN27

//Music in the Town

MICK JAGGER36

//Hallows Eve Ghosts

TOMAS BRODY45

CONTENTS

October 2009

The Artful ClutterANDREA CODRINGTON30

DIY: The Headboard ProjectLYDIA LEE8

6 reduce, reuse, & reinventALISON WILLIAMS40


8

This DIY idea from design writer Lydia Lee is a great way to have the best of both worlds. Lydia sent over her project explaining that she too loved the look of wrought-iron headboards but found them, “kind of jangly and not terribly comfortable.” So she decided to embroider one instead!

THE HEADBOARD PROJECT

DIY: Headboard Project

project by Lydia Lee

Have you always had a thing about iron beds, but have never wanted to acutally get one because you love the feel of a soft upholstered headboard?


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DIY : Do it Yourself


Why keep a plain white fabric?...

try different fabric backgrounds too!

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+ Upholstered headboard kit, like this one from Horchow or build your own.+ Sturdy cotton fabric. (If you pick a weave without a lot of “give,” it will help prevent stretching. If you use a linen or thin cotton, it’s easy to reinforce it with iron-on interfacing, which you can get at any fabric store.)

MATERIALS NEEDED+

+Butcher paper+Tape measure+Tracing wheel and tracing paper+Yarn darning needle+ Wool yarn+Large embroidery hoop+Staple gun and staples

UPHOLSTERED HEADBOARD KITSFour-step headboard kit creates a custom

look for your bedroom. Kit includes easy-to-follow instructions and all parts needed includ-ing 1” thick padding. You supply the fabric and a few simple household tools. Available styles are Savoy (notched corners), Baroness (rounded corners), and Empress (square corners).

• Minimum fabric requirements: 44”H x 48”W.

• Additional fabric may be necessary for vertical patterns.

• Upholstered section of headboard is 39”W; total height is 49.5”H from top to floor.

NEED HELP CONSTRUCTING?FIND ME ATwww.horchow.com



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Follow kit instructions to create a padded headboard.

Tape together butcher paper to duplicate the shape of the headboard.

Draw your design on the paper. A tape measure is helpful for getting the general proportions right. Don’t worry too much about getting the design absolutely precise, since the charm of handiwork lies simply in the slight imperfections of your work.

Pin your fabric to the headboard. Mark center and corners so that you have the fabric aligned correctly when you put it back on after stitching the design.

Pin the pattern to the headboard, and transfer the design using tracing wheel and tracing paper.

Stitch your design, using a yarn darning needle and wool. Use an embroidery hoop to keep fabric taut. The chain stitch is a fun, fast way to create curvy lines and can also be used to fill out solid blocks.

Wash fabric, then iron. Reinforce with interfacing if necessary.

Stretch fabric over headboard and staple gun to the frame, starting from top center, then bottom center, then the sides.

Attach headboard to bed frame.

STEP-BY-STEP=

look for tips on pg 13



12



13


Bring your needle up at 1 and insert it again at the same place, bring your needle up at 2 and make sure your loop of thread is beneath the needle as shown.

Pull your needle through gently. Next make another chain stitch to the left hand side by inserting your needle at 2 again inside the loop, bring your needle up at 3 with the thread beneath your needle, pull through.

Repeat to right and left alternatively and finish with a small stitch after your last chain. Use different threads for a bolder effect. Zigzag chain stitch also makes a really nice decorative outline for any shape as shown in the last photo. Happy Stitching!


to view more work by Tony French, please visit his flickr website @ www.flickr.com/tstarkfrench

book worm (02-09-2009)

Photographed by:

Hometown:

Age:

Likes to:

Tony French

Raleigh, North Carolina

24

eat tasty foods, ride his bike, play epic games of tic-tac-toe, and walk his dogs in the park.

Polaroid of the Month

October’s Polaroid of the Month


15

Polaroid of the Month


DOUBLE FEATURE New York

SITTING in the turquoise-colored living room of his 19th-century Catskill farmhouse, Sean Scherer, 41, gives a guided tour of his tattooed arms, which provide a concise visual lexicon of his obsessions. Orchids cascade down his left shoulder and forearm, mirroring those he tends in the corner of his lemon-yellow back room. On his right wrist is a bold red five, his May 5-born boyfriend’s favorite number, as well as a nautilus shell from an 18th-century hand-colored print that was one of his first natural history pur-chases. Surrounded by botanical, zoological and anatomical artifacts, Mr. Scherer seems to blend

ANDREA CODRINGTON Walton, N.Y.

30

Sean Scherer, 41, in his living room.



into his artfully staged surroundings, the result of years of patient and passionate collecting.

Seven years ago, when he moved to this small farming community, Mr. Scherer was known as a painter who worked in a style in-spired by Russian Suprematism and American Minimalism. Then 9/11 happened, and he re-considered everything.

“I thought 9/11 was going to change the art world,” he said. “But the exact opposite hap-pened. Instead of getting more serious, art got stupider and stupider.”

Traumatized by witnessing the events up close from his South Street Seaport apart-ment, he sought refuge upstate with his partner, Marc Mayer, who was then deputy director of the Brooklyn Museum. They eventually found an 1840s Cape-style farmhouse on 90 acres of rolling fields and woodland. Mr. Scherer, who decided he wanted to live in Walton year-round, bought the house in 2002, for $212,000; Mr. Mayer, 53, who is now the director of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, spends weekends and holidays there.

“Most people couldn’t see the vision,” Mr. Scherer said of the house, which was little more than 1,000 square feet at the time and distinctly down at the heel. “But frankly, this was what I’d been waiting for my whole life.”

Unable to paint for more than two years after 9/11 because of residual trauma, he channeled his creative energies into renovating the farm-house, rebuilding parts of it by hand and tripling its size with an addition he designed. He soon discovered a community of like-minded people nearby, what he calls the “anti-Hamptons set,” that included Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The

New Yorker, and his wife, Brooke Alderson, an antiques dealer, as well as the sculptor Roxy Paine and his wife, Sofia Mojadidi Paine, a well known architect.

It was through Ms. Alderson’s store, Brooke’s Variety, in the nearby village of Andes, that Mr. Scherer kindled a passion for the humble farm furniture native to the area. He quickly jet-tisoned his Barcelona chairs in favor of barn-sale finds.

“I don’t care about pedigree,” he said of the 19th-century furniture that fills the farmhouse. “I like the fact that the objects were made for a specific purpose. They may be a little crude but they also usually have clean, modern lines.”

So modern, in fact, that Mr. Scherer draws frequent comparisons between the low-born furniture and modern art. There’s the rough-hewn insert to an oversize tool chest that hangs 31

“I don’t care about pedigree, I like the fact that the objects were made for a specific purpose. They may be a little crude but they also usually have clean, modern lines.”


from a brightly colored wall like a Donald Judd installation, and the thickly painted utilitarian cabinet whose patina he likens to a Robert Ryman canvas.

One of Mr. Scherer’s favorite recent finds is a three-legged coffee table with a wooden sur-face decoratively crosshatched like a George Nakashima piece. “It’s a slaughtering table,” he said, brushing his hand along the surface. “Can you believe it? This is where they chopped off the heads of chickens , just chopping and chop-ping and chopping for years.”

The eclectic collection of 19th-century pieces is enhanced by clever juxtapositions with con-temporary art, anatomical sculptures, botanical prints, mercury glass and old mirrors that he started collecting when he moved to the area.

“I think everything is a story,” he said of the arrangements he creates. “And the story can change a little by adding a single object.”

Sometimes the narrative is thematic, as in the case of an avian cluster that features a wall pa-pered in sheets from a “Birds of New York” folio, a birdcage sculpture by the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and an oversize French print of a bat skeleton. Or it could be visual, as with a col-lection of midcentury Scandinavian ceramics whose curvilinear forms are oddly mirrored in an Industrial Age diagram of pulleys, winches and gears.

One of the most striking combinations, how-ever, is in the master bathroom, a Constructivist water closet with walls plastered in Soviet agit-prop posters bought in Moscow in 1989 and one of his Kasimir Malevich-inspired canvases from the 1990s.


32

It was Ms. Alderson who first suggested that Mr. Scherer might enjoy expressing his decora-tive vision in a more public place: his own store. Rather than detract from her establishment, she reasoned, another store would serve only to enhance Andes’s reputation as an antiquing destination. So taking his inspiration from the Renaissance tradition of the wunderkammer, a collection of natural and manufactured curiosi-ties, Mr. Scherer opened Kabinett & Kammer in 2006, attracting a cult following among the artists, designers, architects and fashion industry people who have discovered Delaware County in recent years.

“Sean creates these a-ha moments,” Ms. Alderson said of his ability to pair old and new,

“sean creates these a-ha moments, his eye is utterly

unique. He will find something that you and I would

completely ignore and instantly recognize its beauty.”



33



34

Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times



high and low, in unexpected vignettes. “His eye is utterly unique. He will find something that you and I would completely ignore and instantly recognize its beauty. He’s more likely to go for a pipe fitting than a velvet pillow any day.”

Indeed, there is something crisp and mascu-line about Mr. Scherer’s aesthetic that appeals to what he calls “the guy’s eye.”

“I get plenty of local hunters who walk in my store and are in hog heaven because they get dead animals, rocks and anatomical charts from everywhere,” he said.

He has his female admirers too, of course. Bobbi Casey-Howell, a partner at the adver-tising agency Deutsch, is a longtime friend and client whose house in Andes is filled with medical illustrations from Kabinett & Kammer. The comedian Amy Sedaris also frequents Mr. Scherer’s store and the farmhouse, where he

35and Mr. Mayer stage elaborate dinner parties (including a legendary Canadian Thanksgiving Day celebration in October).

Her favorite purchases? “A Styrofoam toad-stool that wasn’t for sale, about nine cement rabbit lawn ornaments, a really nice taxidermy weasel and an old educational chart about crabs,” she said.

Ms. Sedaris found Kabinett & Kammer through her fellow comedian Paul Dinello, a regular on “The Colbert Report” who has a house nearby.

Mr. Dinello, who often attends dinners at the farmhouse as well, pointed out the only draw-back: “After an evening at Sean’s, it’s difficult to go back home and switch a light on,” he said. “You suddenly realize that that cacophony” of clutter randomly piled on top of a dresser “is not an artistic display.”

(top left) A collection of midcentury Scandi-navian ceramics -- most of them by Gun-nar Nylund and all from Antik, in TriBeCa -- echoes the forms in vintage diagrams depicting Industrial Age pulleys and levers and the human head.

(top right) In the entrance hall a collection of vintage postcards with images of Pom-peian ruins, which Mr. Scherer turned into a collage, hangs above an antique grain bin, mercury glass lamps, a pair of wood boxes and an Aladdin’s lamp piggy bank.

(bottom left) A birdcage sculpture by the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz is displayed against walls papered in sheets from a “Birds of New York” folio.

(bottom right) A wooden tool-box insert reminds Mr. Scherer of a Donald Judd sculpture.


40 ETSY FINDS: reduce, reuse, reinvent

6 ETSY FINDS


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AS A VINTAGE LOVER AND TREASURE SEEKER, there’s nothing more exhilarating than rescuing a piece of history from certain doom in a landfill. While I love to use and display the many objects that I collect (skulls, doll heads, quilts), there are inevitable leftovers that leave me scratching my head. What should I do with my beautiful-but-torn vintage lace doilies? How can I best reuse the antique drawer from an abandoned vanity? I inherited ten Mason jars, but what should I do with them?!

This month’s Etsy Finds are dedicated to the thoughtful and resourceful reinvention of vintage objects. This collection is a virtual treasure trove of potential projects, so put on your thinking cap and get creative!

6 ETSY FINDS

www.etsy.comAlison Williams


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Vintage blue glass Ball Mason jar and jar lifter. The lifter was used to lift the jar out of hot water when used for canning. A beautiful element for the home or kitchen.

Set of eight vintage handmade, hand-embroidered dish towels or warshin’ rags. They’re so simple and pretty, would look great in a red and white kitchen. Freshly laundered, they’re made of a soft cotton.

Being galvanized and pretty darn impervi-ous to the elements, these make perfect planters, or catchalls for your shoes, or a large dog bed (stuffed with cushy pillows, of course), or toy bins, or, or, or, or...

6 ETSY FINDS

Vintage Fabric and Crochet

Vintage Drawers and Boxes

Vintage Jars and Baskets

foursqu

arevinta

ge.com

$29

everyes

kimo..com

$64

extravirginhome.com$10

a.

b.

c.

ETSY FINDS: reduce, reuse, reinvent


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Each letter has small holes on the back which could be used to hang on a picture nail.... or they could be left on a coffee table for conversation.

This item for sale is a beautiful eclectic mix of old printers wood type that has a total of 75 separate pieces! The size of the pieces range from 1/2” - 5” inches tall. You can arrange or use the letters in many different ways.

Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. You will get plenty of mileage out of this vintage folding ruler. This vintage ruler is wonderfully worn, with a white back-ground, black numbers, and some red text. Use it to prop up pictures, postcards, and other vintage paper.

6 ETSY FINDS

Vintage Letters and Numbers

Unorthodox Display

You Tell Me!

littleyello

wdoor.co

m

$10

turnerscollectibles.com$215

foundpaperco.com$12

e.

f.

d.

Hello&Again

Documents

headboard projectdiy

padded headboard

headboard projecthello

headboard projectproject

headboard projectlydia

soft upholstered headboard

fabric store

additional fabric