Daniel House Book Club

Join us we learn some valuable lessons on how to furnish outdoor spaces, how to conceive outdoor rooms and what fabrics are appropriate for certain applications. All this of course drawn from the final sections of the famous book, Mark Hampton on Decorating.

Mark Hampton loved library rooms most of all. In the episode, learn everything from how he thought bookcases should be proportioned to where furniture should be positioned to ensure conversation could flourish.

What's your style? Listen and learn about a few of legendary decorator Mark Hampton's favorites as expressed in his book, Mark Hampton on Decorating.

How do you think about bedrooms, about setting the table or about the impact a fireplace design has on an overall room. Learn what Mark Hampton thought and see if you're aligned.

Oh no, more color! The famous 20th century decorator Mark Hampton begins his book with color, and really, is there anything that has a bigger impact on the way a room makes you feel. Even two whites can have a vastly different color. Listen to learn more about what Hampton advised!

The last 100 years of furniture might carelessly be lumped in three categories; the beautiful, the useful, and the purposely bizarre. Which category interests you?

There's empty Post-Modernism and then there's the work of Philippe Starck which is constantly striding to improve the human condition.

Are chairs famous just because of the characters who created them, or are they actually really comfortable? Let's look at a few 20th century cult chairs to see.

As part of our look at 1000 Chairs, Peter is joined by furniture maker Aspen Golann who describes some of the key aspects of making a perfect Windsor Chair. She didn't call the Windsor the most beautiful chair in the world, btw, those are our words.

Today we are talking with designer, and Daniel House Club power user Kristen Siefken. She is joining us today from her home in sunny Mexico to discuss her favorite chairs and how she leverages planning boards on Daniel House Club to simplify her sourcing and increase her profits. 

Ever wonder where our modern sense of comfort developed? Join Peter as he takes a look some of the chairs we know and love and examines how they've contributed to contemporary design.

People love to come to your house because they want to be in your vibe,” says Oregon Home Magazine editor, Emily Grosvenor. "Earlier eras were too concerned with what the story of their space was telling other people, but hopefully we're getting more into telling our own stories now," she adds.  Beyond her editorial work, Grosvenor acts as a spatial therapist. Relying on ancient wisdom and modern science, she helps people orient their homes in a way that reflects where they're headed, rather than where they were. As designers, we're always cognizant of that delicate balance between asserting our own taste on a client's home and taking the time to really understand who they are and how to show them in their very best light.Apologies for some intermittent sawing noise in the background. We did our best to reduce it as much as possible. 

Our guest today is the brilliant Katie Ridder. You may know her for her expert use of color as seen on the cover of Architectural Digest or all over instagram. I know her as one of the very first designers I got to work for. She is a perfect guest to discuss Josef Albers book "Interaction of Color." I think you'll get a lot of practical knowledge out of my discussion with Katie!

Designer Jenna Sheingold is known for her use of color. Today she is joining us on our journey though Albers' Interaction of Color to talk about what she learned and how to really make color flourish in your projects. 

We're discussing Josef Albers book "Interaction of Color" with a great guest today - Portland designer Kimberlee Jaynes. Kimberlee has also written a book on color and has been designing for over 20 years. Her experience is the perfect backdrop to ground today's topic. 

We're going to push our study of Josef Albers' classic book Interaction of Color to next week, because  I wanted to share the interview I did with Cyrus Nazmiyal, the vice president of one of our vendors, Rug & Kilim. In our conversation, we talk about a bunch of stuff from the history of his family's incredible business, the trends he's seeing in rug specification by designers now and some of the processes that make a Rug & Kilim piece so special. Cyrus does mention some upcoming holiday festivities, as we talked right before the break, so I wanted you all to get to listen before the memories of the season are totally gone. Before I play the interview for you, a word of warning, Cyrus is a busy guy and Rug & Kilim has an actual live Canary in their beautiful Long Island City showroom, so you may notice more ambient noice than usual. Still, I think you'll all enjoy hearing what he has to say. 

Listen as author and Quintessence Blog host Susanna Salk gives us the confidence to let our emotional responses guide our design process, even if that represents a departure from what Elsie de Wolfe might have thought.

This week Peter interviews Roy Caro Cohen of The Picturalist. They discuss Elsie De Wolf's chapters on the Small Apartments and Reproductions of Antique Furniture and Objects of Art (Chapter 16 & 17 if you're following along). Roy is the perfect guest for this topic as his business focuses on reproducing art in a way designer's will actually like. Listen to learn more about using reproductions effectively and to understand the philosophy behind The Picturalist.See The Picturalist of Daniel House Club

Hey Design Lovers, welcome to Episode Number 10 of The Daniel House Book Club, where we are working our way through the 8 Books Every Interiors Lover Should Have Read according to Architectural Digest. We're in our 4th of 6 episodes dedicated to Elsie ed Wolfe's The House in Good Taste. And let me tell you, I am feeling the burn. This book is so similar to the last one we read that I'm starting to be like, “yeah, I've heard that, and I've heard that and I know what you're going to say here…” Thank gosh we had our member Heather Martin of Metta Home as a guest last week or I'd be fast asleep. I'm just kidding, but…I'm excited to announce that for our final episode covering this book, we'll be joined by one of our industry's most interesting people, Susanna Salk. For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Susanna is the author of numerous design books with titles including Be Your Own Decorator and Dogs and Their Designers. She is also the host of Quintessence's “At Home With” series where she visits the homes of some of the world's most influential designers. I watch it on YouTube regularly and drool over the amazing places she goes. Our episode with Susanna will come out on December 13th, so be sure to listen!

Today we're joined by Heather Martin of Metta Home. She is adding her unique perspective as an AirBnB designer from Richmond, North Carolina. This is a fun exploration of chapters on Doors, Windows & Chintz, The Problem of Artificial Light, and Halls & Stairs.

I think in some sense all designers can see themselves in Elsie de Wolfe. This feels especially true in the chapter we are starting with today, which is all about proof of concept. She's moved out of her first house near Manhattan's Gramercy Park. She's learned a lot about what works and what doesn't and now she's ready to really showcase her ideas.Showcasing your ideas is hard and expensive work. It's tough to know if you even have anything worth sharing. But that didn't seem to have stopped Elsie. She shared little ideas with us. Like I think I mentioned last week, we have photos of her first dining room when she moved in, then when she'd made a few small changes, and then when it had been completely transformed. She shared the progression of her ideas from not-so-great, to pretty nice, to, “let me show you how I can turn this sow's ear into a silk purse!” And I hope all our listeners can achieve such exciting things in their careers. Elsie's house in uptown at 123 E 55th wasn't just a nice place, it was a demonstration to everyone, that a common, ugly type of house could be made wonderful. I'd love to hear from a designer doing the same with a run-of-the-mill suburban house whose front façade is 90% garage. I'm sure Elsie would have figured out an elegant way to park 3 cars on a 50-foot-wide lot and still have something resembling a good house.

In the last episode, I said Elsie de Wolfe was the Joanna Gaines of her day, except way chicer, but that may have minimized her gigantic shoes – it might be better to call her the Kim Kardashian of her day. In de Wolfe, we see our modern concept of celebrity. She is often called America's first decorator, but she was so much more. She was a stage actress, a social connector, a publicity genius (I think), and a not-too closeted lesbian, which didn't seem to bother many. In 1935, Paris critics named de Wolfe “the best dressed woman in the world,” as she did not cater to trends but wore what suited her best. 

We started our study of this book by identifying that one of its surprising threads was that of simplicity. Today we are looking at the book's final three parts, a chapter on The School – Room and Nurseries, which I'm imagining will feel slightly more relevant than it might have in the pre-pandemic era, a chapter titled Bric-a-Brac, which is a term that makes me think of the scenes on Portobello road in the movie Bed knobs and Broomsticks, and the conclusion. All continue to address this issue of simplicity – In fact, the book ends with a collection of what read like proverbs on the subject, “The supreme excellence is simplicity;” “a great draftsmen represents with a few stokes what lesser artists can express only by a multiplicity of lines;” and, “the tact of omission characterizes the master hand.”  I'm not sure if you all have a collection of short essays by more contemporary thinkers and design practitioners at the end of your copy like I do in mine, but in the one I have by William Cole he says, “the book might equally be called, The Graces of Life - for its real subject is not just about houses, but the quality of life in them. Edith and Ogden are definitely not advocating for the simple life in the sense we think, but they are calling for unity not just in the composition of the home, but in one's life. Nowhere is this more evident than in today's chapters.

Hey fellow interior designers and design enthusiasts. Welcome to The Daniel House Book Club. Together, we're reading and discussing the 8 books every interior designer and design enthusiast should have read according to Architectural Digest. This is the 5th of 6 episodes focused on Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman's The Decoration of Houses. For a complete reading schedule, please visit our website, danielhouse.club and click on the club bulletin tab. While you're there, consider becoming a member. Daniel House Club is a powerful tool that helps interior designers do more of what they love and less of what they hate. I'm the club's Chief Creative officer, Peter Spalding and I'll be your host. Today we are discussing chapters 13 and 14, focused on the dining room and bedroom.

Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman spend a lot of time going over rooms that seem to have no relevance to us today, like ballrooms and boudoirs. While, we may not use these spaces in our contemporary lives, there's a lot we can learn from them to improve the way we live in our homes.

he Decoration of Houses, especially the section we're reading this week, is very much about not getting bogged down in little details – remembering to zoom out, see the big picture and employ design ideas that go the furthest in making a real impression.

Continue following along as we dive deeper into the world of classic home design and learn from Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman about the origin of so many details we hardly ever consider anymore. 

Join me in this inaugural episode as we draw some wisdom from two 19th century greats on the topic of decorating houses.