Some Thoughts for the New Year

While perusing a couple of my Christmas books (ok, I confess, they were self-gifted – but I know you understand!), I was taken with a wonderful minimalist Paris apartment. The appeal of the bedroom (shown above) depends mostly on one fabulous sofa, a simple low bed frame and a wall of built-ins – all in all, an affordable way to design a room. I know it takes a lot of restraint for shoppers and collectors (like me), but using most of your budget on one outstanding piece can result in a simplicity that approaches the sublime.

Of course, there are a couple of other very high-end items in the room, but the space would be just as successful without that great table and chair, don't you think? You would definitely need to fill those shelves with lots and lots of books, and right off the bat, I'll recommend two: The New New York Interiors and The New Paris Interiors by Taschen. These books have quickly become favorites of mine, and I would suggest are a must for any design lover. The covers are identical (underneath their slips) – one a silver, the other a pewter – and they are big, loaded with large images of art-centric and eccentric apartments in the featured cities. And, given the quality and size, the books are astonishingly affordable.


The top image, from The New Paris Interiors, is the bedroom of Maria Bonnafous-Boucher – an academic who requested lots of different tables throughout the apartment for reading and writing. Her interior designer, Valérie Mazérat, says that "It's essentially an apartment for the mind. The idea was to have pure forms to create a serene atmosphere for thinking."

I really love the concept, and the execution.

The living room of the same apartment.

While we're on the subject of reading and books, I thought you might appreciate this commentary – from our local independent bookstore, Inkwood Books:

Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard professor, author of Stumbling on Happiness and host of the forthcoming television series “This Emotional Life”, has some thoughts we think are relevant to every fan of indie bookstores or other unique businesses (from a New Year's Eve New York Times op-ed): It is only natural to assume that the yearning for “auld lang syne” that was shared by our grandparents will someday be shared by our grandchildren. But maybe we’ve reached nostalgia’s end. “Nostalgia” — made up of the Greek roots for “suffering” and “return” — is literally a longing for the places of one’s past. And lately, it has become harder and harder to find things to miss about America’s places. Downtowns were once collections of local businesses that lured us with claims of uniqueness: “Try our homemade pies,” their signs read, or “Best jazz selection in town.” Today, those signs have been replaced by familiar corporate logos that make precisely the opposite claim, promising us the same goods arranged in the same way as they are in every other place. The banks and burritos and baristas on one city block are replicated on the next — and in all the malls, in all the cities, in all the states. Americans can drive from one ocean to the other, stopping every day at the same hotel. Traveling in a straight line is no longer much different than traveling in a circle. When the industrial smoothing of our nation’s once-variegated edges has been fully accomplished, Americans may no longer need to gather at midnight on the last day of the year to yearn for their yesterdays, because wherever they are, they will see the landscapes of their youths. When they remember the Starbucks where they met, the one they married or the Gap where they lost the one they didn’t ... when they return to the places where they grew up, or went to school, or fell in love, they may not even notice that the Old Navy has been replaced by an Abercrombie, the Friday's by an Olive Garden and the once-fleeting past by an endless present ... Ours may be the last generation of Americans to suffer for return — to remember events that took place when place still mattered. Now, more than ever before, you vote with your dollar. Online options and big boxes, while appearing less expensive, have costly consequences. These illusory savings have negative effects on every aspect of community life: lost jobs, environmental harm, and cultural monotony – especially important for tourist destinations – and an alarming loss of sales tax revenue for roads, schools, parks, libraries and protection.

I say, if you're lucky enough right now to be able to, go forth into the New Year and shop, just don't forget about your local independents. (Unfortunately, my local stores don't have many design book offerings, so my first stop is usually Anthropologie, then Barnes & Noble or Borders, and lastly I'll order from Amazon.

For more on the subject, visit The 3/50 Project.
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