Chris Nordquist
I was lucky enough to have one of my favorite people in the world as my boss, not once, but twice. One day every Fall, at the end of some long meeting about a weighty legal matter, Alison would say something like, “Now, for something really important,” plop her dogeared tulip bulb catalogs on the […]
I love it when style, function, luxury and economy come together in one beautiful piece of gear. A good shaving brush is a perfect example of how this can happen. I’m not advocating going all retro with your shaving kit. The safety razor is a modern miracle of performance and thrift, and traditional straight razors […]
I’ve never been very enthusiastic about houseplants, by which I mean those species of plants meant to live indoors indefinitely. It’s just a matter of personal taste, of course, but, aside from in places like sunrooms, atriums and grottoes (none of which I have), I prefer changing displays of cut flowers and greens. Cut flowers, […]
The dreaded event has come and gone: taking down the Christmas tree, and, with it, the garlands, wreaths, flower arrangements and candles that decorated our Southampton home for the Holidays. It always makes me a little sad, but sooner or later, I just have to pull up my socks, vacuum up the pine needles and […]
This is the second arrangement I made for my pre-Holiday week in San Francisco in my quick/easy/inexpensive Holiday decorating experiment. (The first was the table arrangement detailed in my December 24 post.) You may recall that the rules of the game were that all of the materials had to be purchased in a single outing […]
During the Holidays, most of us end up in a sort of decorating/cooking/baking/eating/drinking/entertaining hyperdrive. It can be great fun, but it can also be too much, and it comes too fast. This year, with a wide-eyed toddler to entertain, I’ve been looking for ways to streamline and simplify our Holiday preparations and carve out […]
Last weekend one of my errands was to replenish the liquid soap in our Manhattan kitchen. I had used Molton Brown products for years — White Mulberry was my favorite scent– and I thought I’d stick with that. Until I actually looked at the price: $25 for the standard 10 oz bottle. With the matching […]
It happened fast. After being stuck on the lame New York real estate market for months, our beautiful but too-small loft in the Meatpacking District sold to a cash buyer who wanted to close quickly. Fortunately, at just the same time, we found a great new place in West Chelsea. It was modern, light and […]
If you’re as old as I am, or if you’ve been watching Mad Men, you may know that in the middle of the last century there were ashtrays all over the place, for obvious reasons. They weren’t just utilitarian objects, though. Many were beautifully crafted, and no coffee table tableau was complete without just the […]
A couple of weeks ago I was walking through Manhattan’s Chelsea Market (on a mission to buy Mahi Mahi fillets, gin and green beans) and something caught me eye. Oddly, for a food market, Chelsea Market has among its tenants, Imports from Marrakech, a shop featuring Moroccan lanterns, tile, rugs and other decorative accessories. Piled […]
