Yes, we’re serious. January 1st claims star billing on the calendar, but in real life the truer New Year comes these last days of hot weather, when we pack away summer and launch into Fall. Whether you’re knee-deep in new school binders and backpacks for yourself or your children, or twitching to old back-to-school rituals from an earlier life, Fall urges us to clear the decks and get back to business.
Jenna Lyons at J.Crew, New York. Photo by Heather Clawson, “Creativity at Work”
There’s nothing like a compelling work space to open our minds and spark good work, whatever our work might be. Consider Diana Vreeland’s lair at Vogue:
And John Updike’s study in Ipswich, Massachusetts:
Photo by Jill Krementz
Likewise, the Wills Company built serene magic into these nooks for two Nashville creatives.
What’s more, you don’t need a lot of space to carve out your own inspiring office. You just need the books, pictures, clippings, swatches, or totems that ignite your creativity. Picture Jacqueline Kennedy writing at her Georgetown home:
Photo by Jacques Lowe, 1959
Or Coco Chanel working at the Ritz Hotel, Paris:
Photos by Mark Shaw for Life Magazine, 1957
After all, look where Jane Austen wrote during the last eight years of her life:
Photo courtesy of the Jane Austen House Museum, Chawton, Hampshire, England
The Wills Company Design-Build team transforms even small spaces into home-office jewels.
Like this bright perch on a sunny Nashville landing:
What matters is that your own space trigger the kind of focus and clarity – the kind of happy mental distance from more mundane daily tasks – that lets you think, plan, write, and create your best work. It should reflect and refresh your most spontaneous (and even outlandish) self. Just imagine the creative sparks flying in Roald Dahl’s writing shed, in Great Missenden, England.
Dedicated corner, spare room, or shed at the end of the garden: resolve to claim space for your best work this Fall.
We all have a list of reliable favorites – old friends that never disappoint us. Like these classic whites:
But every habit needs a regular shake-up, and color habits are no exception. When we’re looking for revolution, any idea might turn our heads. No matter the source.
Like the unabashed greens in this Gucci ad.
Benjamin Moore Yellow Green, Pantone 390C, Benjamin Moore Neon Green, Pantone 327C
Or Wes Anderson’s scene-stealing oranges.
Farrow & Ball Charlotte’s Locks, Benjamin Moore Orange, Benjamin Moore Sunflower, Pantone 1795C
Movie costumes can shock with possibility. Take Charlotte Rampling’s Edwardian gown in The Wings of the Dove, directed by Iain Softley. Purple and deep citron? Nothing safe about that.
Benjamin Moore Purple Rain, Benjamin Moore Citrus Burst, Farrow & Ball Studio Green
And for anyone who still worries about mixing reds and pinks, take courage from this Gucci dress, here worn by Dakota Johnson.
Finally, you don’t have to be bright to be bold. Consider the subtle depth of color in this Edward Steichen photograph from 1925.
Inspired? We suggest you start small, like painting a powder room, a stair landing, or a nook you use for reading. The wall behind your bar, a mudroom, or even your laundry room all make great color laboratories. And when you’re ready to experiment, call the Wills Company Handyman for expert painting services. Like this Nashville homeowner:
Have you ever entered a house that doesn’t quite . . . breathe?
Nothing’s really wrong. The rooms are perfectly nice, and pleasantly decorated. But still, you don’t truly relax. You don’t feel that deep comfort, that profound ease we crave from a home. The space simply isn’t a joy.
Maybe a serious flaw in the feng shui? An inauspicious qi?
Or maybe the house just needs a space-lift.
Consider the front hall in this traditional Belle Meade colonial. Orderly and correct, it doesn’t grab attention, either good or bad:
Now look again, after Ridley Wills re-designed this same space, and led its renovation by Wills Company specialists:
Out go cluttering walls and doorways, with that dark, closed-off feel. In come air and light. This house says “welcome” from front to back. Aaahh.
That’s Wills Company Design-Build at work: one seamless, integrated system for making homes breathe better. Architecturally intelligent design. Detailed planning and budgeting (we’re very serious about budgeting). Meticulous construction. The Wills Company Design-Build handles every step.
That made for a smoother process when the owners of this classic foursquare home wanted a generous space for entertaining. Ridley re-envisioned an unused side hallway as a cozy, now much-enjoyed bar.
And the jumbled kitchen became an airy sanctuary for cooking and conversation.
The same Design-Build expertise let Ridley re-invent a conventional mid-80s cluster-house as a sophisticated urban retreat for a downsizing couple. Change began at the front door, where Ridley transformed the once-choppy foyer into a smooth, serene invitation. . .
into one of Nashville’s best spots for a leisurely, talk-filled dinner.
Wouldn’t anyone seem more interesting at this table? We certainly think so.)
Finally, even a large room can feel closed and airless when walls and doorways don’t make their best sense. Consider this entry way, in a venerable Belle Meade house:
See all those visual road blocks? All those closing doors and blocky wood frames? Ridley cleared them out to let light and air circulate freely. This already large space seemed to double in size. And triple in joy:
These Nashville resources have roused us (finally) to clear the mail stacks off the dining room table. Easter, weddings, graduations; any reason at all. Spring, we’re coming for you!
Corzine & Co. 4003 Hillsboro Pike, Nashville. Phone 615-385-0140. Store hours Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 5:30 PM; Saturday 10 AM to 5:00. Online at www.corzineco.com.
Gilchrist Gilchrist.2825 Bransford Avenue, Nashville. Phone 615-385-2122. Store hours Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM. Online at www.gilchristgilchrist.com.
(Shop mascot Finn sits ready to help.)
AshBlue.2170 Bandywood Drive, Nashville. Phone 615-383-4882. Store hours Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM; Sunday, 12 PM to 5 PM. Online at www.ashblue.com.
Target.26 White Bridge Road, Nashville. Phone 615-352-8461. Store hours Monday through Saturday, 8 AM to 11 PM; Sunday, 8 AM to 10 PM. Online at www.target.com.
Epergne. 6592 Highway 100, Suite 100, Nashville. Phone 615-840-6341. Store hours Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM. Online at www.shopepergne.com.
And for the online shopper, don’t forget one of our favorite sites, Taigan.com! The perfect way to fill Easter baskets!
These macaroons from Taigan are the best!
How about a precious watercolor by Nashville artist Lexie Armstrong? Makes our heart JUMP!
Inspired yet? We want to see your own Spring table creations. Post your photo to Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #willscospringtables (make sure your post is Public). We’ll be watching for you! And while you’re at it, follow us on Instagram and on facebook.
Seeing March around the corner makes us restless. We’re throwing open windows and doors – though still wrapped in sweaters against that bright, biting air. We’re poking in the chilly mulch for the intrepid crocus (or two). We’re unfolding from the winter, a bit, ourselves. Not quite ready for energetic Spring, we’re craving something fresh all the same. And we’ve found it in these five creatives who share, online, their distinctive visions of a vibrant and exuberant world. Consider this your wake-up call.
1. J.J. Martin is a Berkeley-educated American journalist living in Milan, where she writes about Italian style for the likes of Elle Décor, Wallpaper*, T: New York Times Style Magazine, and WSJ Magazine. Martin’s new website, LaDoubleJ , combines her joyful, insider’s take on Italian life and design with e-sales of her luscious collection of vintage clothing and accessories. Our favorites are her tours of Italian homes and ateliers (look under “Live Like an Italian”), including her recent visit to the historic family home of legendary designer Piero Fornasetti:
Martin’s Instagram feed is delightful, too: @jjmartinmilan.
2. International design magazine Cabana, launched in 2014, took only a few issues to secure its reputation as a coveted inspirational source. Founded by Martina Mondadori Sartogo on the principle that “[i]f you are going to do print, you might as well do it beautifully,” Cabana visits spaces drenched in the creative emotional lives of the people who have inhabited them – whether rural bolt hole or pedigreed urban castle. And, almost unbelievably, every copy of each issue is covered in actual wallpaper or fabric, by designers like Pierre Frey, the Italian fashion house Etro, and the Milan textile maker Dedar. It’s hard to convey what it’s like to hold a magazine covered in real, and really beautiful, paper or fabric. It takes a few minutes to catch your breath for the compelling photographs inside, where the images are sometimes printed on specialty paper like vellum, or with unique finishes or lamination.
On Instagram, Cabana offers regular doses of the rich, charged interiors the biannual hard copy seeks out. The Cabana feed has become an essential, regular fix for us, like these 18th century textiles from the Rubelli Group archive in Venice,
or this mix of Hungarian embroidery:
And if you find, like us, that your Cabana crush extends to founder Martina Mondadori Sartogo herself, take a look at this Architectural Digest spread on the London townhouse she shares with her husband and two young sons.
3. Danielle de Lange lives in a village near Amsterdam, where she writes The Style Files, a design and lifestyle blog that features stunning spaces in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. Expect serene photography and a cool Northern European touch: a nice balance to the Italian sites’ maximalism.
4. Rita Konig, daughter of designer Nina Campbell, is an English writer and interior designer whose work appears regularly in Vogue, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and House & Garden UK, among others. Her two books – Domestic Bliss and Rita’s Culinary Trickery – are lovely hymns to a kind of openhearted, open-armed life with family and friends. The rooms she designs (or admires) give off that same whiff of lives richly-lived.
It’s possible she also had one of the coolest weddings we’ve ever not attended:
(Guests arriving at her childhood London church being served espresso from a Fiat 500)
We check in on her website, Rita Konig, which collects images of her interiors work and a sampling of her published articles (click “Rita Says”), and we follow her on Instagram here. Be prepared, though: her website also sells linens, lighting, art, glassware, and other chic bits and pieces – our wish list now includes the bottle green “Corners” tray she’s designed in collaboration with The Lacquer Company. Sigh.
5. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest that writer Amanda Cutter Brooks might have invented the Instagram-driven, high-end lifestyle brand. Makes you want to hate her? We find that impossible. Palm Beach and New York bred, Brown University educated, Brooks’ early New York resume is pretty enviable to design geeks, including a stint as fashion director at Barneys New York. A few years ago, she transplanted her young family to rural Oxfordshire, England, the childhood home of her husband, artist Christopher Brooks. Amanda Brooks has chronicled her life since then (and her work writing about remarkable 20th century and contemporary design) on her irresistible blog, I Love Your Style, and in her genre-defining Instagram presence. Seriously beautiful photography, and Brooks’ distinctive writing voice – intelligent admiration for what she considers best in visual culture – have made us loyal readers. And the precious children, dogs, pigs, and horses don’t hurt, either.
Inspired yet? Let us know what’s waking you up these last weeks of winter. And happy first of March!
