Spring Market in Los Angeles
Each year the Pacific Design Center (the PDC) holds its annual market in late March in West Hollywood, California. The PDC began construction in 1975 as a complex of three glass-clad buildings designed by the mega-architect Cesar Pelli. The blue building opened first, followed by the green building, and now the red building is almost completed. They all converge on a central park.
The blue building, which we in the know call the Blue Whale, holds the interior design showrooms.
Niermann Weeks is represented by Nancy Corzine, and I was fortunate to run into Nancy herself during market. She, like all of us, was busy visiting all the showrooms to see new product and old friends as well as to learn all we can about the state of our industry today.
In Nancy’s showroom, she has dedicated two rooms to Niermann Weeks, showing off our Crillon and Cristobal Chandeliers and other lighting, Loire Bed, Renishaw Commode, and French Club Chair.
She also has our designs integrated in vignettes throughout the showroom, indicating to customers how easily we all mix and match together. Here’s me photographing a vignette that’s anchored by our Baltic Console.
A hot finish shown at many showrooms looked like oak that has been scrubbed down to reveal its grain pattern.
Niermann Weeks has featured a similar but warmer finish since 1995, shown here in our Renishaw Commode, which makes me feel proud that my company led the trend.
Moving on from my bragging, let me observe that the PDC’s market goes by the name of West Week, since it once lasted a full five work days. That time frame has shrunk over the years, and is now down to 1 ½ days. Another change is that showrooms have either closed during this Great Recession or have moved into smaller, freestanding buildings on the nearby streets. I think well over half the PDC showrooms are empty now, with the display windows covered over in brown paper or showing an art display.
Enough showrooms have moved out onto La Cienega Boulevard between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose Avenue, so that the city has recognized that area as the La Cienega Design Quarter.
It took me just as long to visit the showrooms in the PDC as in the store-fronts on La Cienega. I can’t judge which is the better location, but I did enjoy walking outside from shop to shop.
Having sent home emails filled with the results of my industrial espionage, I then turned to a couple days of pure enjoyment in the California sun. My taxi took me past one of my favorite sites, the oil rigs pumping near the LAX airport. The rigs look like prehistoric creatures with their hammer-heads bopping up and down to pull the oil out of the ground.
A client invited me to dine under my Italian Chandelier in their home.
Then my sister-in-law and I walked the beach at Newport Beach wearing sweatshirts against the chill while enjoying the natural life, including this juvenile sea lion swimming around the pier looking for easy feeding.
Pelicans flew overhead searching for their best places to catch fish
Surfers searched for the perfect wave.
As much fun as I had, I was still happy to get home to Maryland, my own dock, and the Mallard ducks that haven’t yet gone north.
Thanks for reading my blog, and be well!
Eleanor
Websites for your further research about the interior design scene in Los Angeles:
www.lcdqla.com
www.nancycorzine.com
www.pacificdesigncenter.com
Veranda’s 25th Anniversary Party
Joe and I met in Manhattan at the Four Seasons Restaurant to help Veranda celebrate its 25th anniversary. When Lisa Newsom started that magazine as a brand new venture, Niermann Weeks was one of her original advertisers, so we were thrilled to party with the Veranda team and its groupies. Here’s the ad we placed those many years ago, showing off half of our enormous Forged Steel Dining Table. Satisfyingly enough, we got lots of orders from that ad. One lovely customer even ordered three of them to install in her covered patio in a Palm Beach mansion.
In Veranda’s March-April 2012 issue, we focused on the outdoor life again with this ad showing our garden furniture. We started selling these tables, chairs, screen, and accessories as early as 1982, and fortunately each year more gardens and patios need to use them.
So, anyway, back to the actual birthday party. This was my first trip to the Four Seasons restaurant, which is a modernist masterpiece of interior design located within the Seagram Building, an architectural superstar. Because I knew the place was super-special, I quickly looked it up in www.wikipedia.com, which said that The restaurant’s interior, which was designed by the building’s architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, has remained almost unchanged since construction in 1959. The restaurant was designated by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Committee as an interior landmark in 1989.
Entering the building, Joe and I walked up a flight of steps into the Bar and the Grill areas, then down a hall past a tapestry designed by Pablo Picasso into the main dining area, which Veranda had rented for the occasion. Al I can say is WOW! To me, much of modernism seems cold and uncomfortable, never, ever adjectives I’d use for this interior. Throughout the main areas, glass windows go floor to ceiling and are covered by swags of metal beaded curtains. A hidden fan keeps the waves softly undulating up to the ceiling, and warm pink lights shine upwards . Blooming cherry trees in raised pots further enhanced this warm ambiance, making everyone at the party look as beautiful as we could look. This interior is truly a feast for the eyes.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, dressed herself as a cupcake to lead us all in singing Happy Birthday, and she gave all of us a pretty little cupcake of our very own to enjoy later.
Veranda’s second editor Dara Caponigro and second publisher Jennifer Levene Bruno mixed with us all and made sure we had a great bash. Thanks, you all!
Afterwards Joe took me to dinner in the Grill area, where the food was just as beautiful and scrumptious as you would expect. In addition, my eyes found a new object to fixate on, a wire sculpture by Richard Lippold that hangs over the Bar. The wires are all of the same material, just hung in clusters of different heights, so the look of the sculpture changed as we changed our positions in the room.
It was a privilege to enjoy this celebration in this setting, just as it has been a privilege to be a Veranda advertiser and groupie. It made me feel all grown up and important.
Thanks for reading my blog, and be well!
Eleanor
The Age of Comfort
March and April will see me on the road, so my thoughts have been focused on comfort and convenience. How can I carry clothes for NY, California, and places in-between in one carry-on bag without breaking my shoulder? How can I keep from being assaulted by the germs and fragrances of other travelers? To procrastinate, I started reading the fascinating book The Age of Comfort by Joan De Jean (2009).
Ms. De Jean studies France of the 17th-18thcenturies, and her book blew me away with some of her insights. In the early time of her studies, architecture for the royal court was all about the magnificence and drama of the royal family. A slide show at http://en.chateauversailles.fr/the-palace will show you glamorous public places in Versailles, but little to no thought went into human comfort or convenience for the royals, let alone the lesser members of their support system.
Concepts we take for granted – like personal cleanliness – were foreign to the magnificent Sun King Louis XIV (1638–1715). Per Google, he hardly bathed in his entire life, but did wipe his face off periodically. Looking at this portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud, I can just imagine a whole lot of body odor.
He and his father Louis XIII actually received visitors while using the toilet, a replica of which is on display at the museum devoted to toilet history in New Delhi, India, http://www.sulabhinternational.org/pages/museum_toilets.php.
Can you imagine any current politician doing such a thing?
Nobody at Versailles was concerned about adequate heat in the winter. The palace was so immensely large and drafty that people were constantly cold in the winter. Big fireplaces were few and far between, and I can’t see any in this Hall of Mirrors.
Fireplaces also threw out lots of greasy soot but only provided warmth on one side of your body, if you were lucky enough to stand near them. Imagine trying to heat this Hall of Mirrors. Not until 1744 did the American Benjamin Franklin publish his solution – retrofitting a fireplace to throw out heat but not soot. Looking at the portrait of Louis XIV draped in his white silk and ermine, I wonder how long his clothes stayed clean. Maybe like a new snowfall, on the second day they looked dirty.
The Hall or Mirrors measures 235 feet long and would probably dwarf this large Brindisi Chandelier, which we are working on today. Ours measures only 4 ¾ feet by 5½ feet.
Louis XIV and his heirs posed for this official portrait in 1709. The people look trapped in their clothes and wigs, like they were just wheeled in for the portrait. At least the little dog had freedom of movement.
Finally, however, the French royals could no longer tolerate perpetually being on display. Just like a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other, the royal family and mistresses started living smaller, more relaxed, and more intimate lives. As the 17th century waned, the royal mistresses scaled down to places like this palace of the Little Trainon, on the grounds of Versailles but infinitely smaller spatially. Later, Marie Antoinette also escaped here when court life got too onerous.
By my standards this is still a McMansion, but as Ms. De Jean quotes a 1755 French newspaper, The people of the highest rank live in the smallest rooms. I wish that my airplanes could hold such leg room, and that all my accommodations could be so esthetically pleasing.
Anyway, Ms. De Jean goes to describe the development of private rooms for private life, a concept the Sun King only began to enjoy late in his life. To increase the comfort of the elite, gradually chairs got padded and scaled to the human frame. Newly invented types of furniture like a sopha allowed people to lounge, like in this portrait of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV. Thank God, our concept of relaxing clothing has changed.
Can you imagine wearing a more formal version of this dress on a plane, plus carrying more clothing of the same volume? How about three of us women sitting in a row? Give me a pantsuit any day.
You can read more about how the French court led us down the path to comfortable clothes, buildings, and furniture in Ms. De Jean’s book The Age of Comfort. Further, she’s wrote another intriguing book, The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (2005). I recommend them both to you.
But now my procrastination must draw to a close. What do I really need to carry in my single suitcase that will fit in the overhead bin? So many decisions, so little time left.
I hope you’ll be well while I’m gone, and I’ll report in as I can.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Fantomes of Niermann Weeks
Our Fantome series started with my own desire for a nearly invisible console to place in front of my view of our front yard. It stood originally inside the rosy circle in this photo. Ms. Stella the Cat looked lovely sleeping on my console; she looks predatory on my white chair.
However, visitors loved my console, so it came into the factory for its portrait, and it sold immediately before I could sneak it back into my car.
An optical illusion makes the right front leg look bent; the leg is really straight.
My console also spawned an entire series of tables, benches, and etageres, all made of thinner gauges of metal than one usually sees. The inherent strength of metal allows us to use a skinny width varying from 3/8” up to 1/2”. So we get stealth of strength with almost-invisibility all at once.
My eye can hardly see the Fantome Bench at the foot of our Valois Bed, yet the bench is strong enough to hold books and a change of clothes and a person putting on their shoes in the morning.
For her own entertaining, my daughter Claire designed a Fantome Bar Cart. It looked so pretty and worked so well, that we now make it for your home too. Unlike her father, Joe Niermann, Claire understands the value of furniture that rolls, so she’s inserted small ball bearings within the circular feet. (That’s a snarky comment that I hope my husband never reads.)
And now during March 2012, we’re offering a promotion on the entire Fantome series. You can order standard or most custom sizes at our standard retail prices.
Get the perfect fit with any of our fabulously flexible Fantome series of tables, benches, and etageres. All custom sizes of the Fantome series products will be offered at their standard prices from now through March 31st. (Some size limitations may apply.)
Fantome Bar Cart – 28w x 18d x 33h – $4110 list
Fantome Bench – 58w x 16d x 18.5h – $4950 list
Fantome Coffee Table – 40w x24d x 19.5h – $3610 list
Fantome Console – 72w x 8d x 29.75h – $3960 list
Fantome Etagere – 30w x 12d x 72h – $5620 list
Fantome Etagere – 36w x 18d x 84h – $6520 list
Fantome Side Table – 3 legs – 24 dia x 26h – $3740 list
Fantome Side Table – 4 legs - 24 dia x 26h – $3740 list
Here are some photos of Fantomes we’ve already made, like this pair of etageres.
A console with two glass shelves, finished in gold leaf.
This smaller console I photographed this morning, finished in buffed steel.
A coffee table with a pair of glass shelves.
And a whole collection of Fantomes. I think the round side table is really cool.
Any way you want your Fantomes configured or finished, we can do it for you, just like this one for Betsy Berner and Tara Sutphin. Please see more of their work at www.bernersutphindesigns.com
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
The Camera Captures My World
My old digital bit the dust, so I am trying out my new Canon Elph 100HS. In the four years since I bought my old Sony, technology has wrought marvels, and I have taken way too many images in exploring the improvements. My favorite image used the magna-zoom lens to capture a fragment of my living room.
This painterly image lets us look into the faux antiqued mirror on our Julian Mirror, which is reflecting a painted screen on the opposite wall. On Facebook Barry Dixon recently showed a similar image, whose fuzzy focus piqued my interest, hence this photo as an homage.
Lovely as I find the image, my camera primarily records details in documentary accuracy, which led me to walk around our production studios this morning, trying out my Elph’s capabilities.
Here’s a corner detail of the standard Polonaise White finish on our Polonaise Mirror.
An edge of our Veronese Mirror in its Venetian silverleaf finish
Strings of crystals to attach to a chandelier basket.
Later in the day these crystals graced a custom Iron and Crystal Chandelier.
This custom Danieli Chandelier retained our distinctive arm silhouette and only one of the double crowns on the top.
This custom Monaco Chandelier should ship today. It measures 48” x 48” and I would really like to see its 155 pounds installed.
Moving away to an even greater distance, the camera captured a custom Baltic Console that’s 88” wide.
My old camera seemed to lose focus as I stepped back from a product, like in this photo of our Loire Bed. Look how the finials on the tester top lack definition.
I think I like this Canon Elph’s image quality.
Do you have any feedback, and thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Websites for further information include:
- www.barrydixon.com
- www.facebook.com
- www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/digital_cameras/powershot_elph_100_hs
Winter break in China
Remember Emma Hue, the student from China who interned this summer at the Niermann Weeks factory? Here’s her essay about her winter holiday back home in Sichuan.
After 18 months in the USA, I went back home to China for the winter break. It was fascinating to walk across the two cultures in such a short time. Within 30 hours, I watched the sunrise at the Washington Monument and then saw the sunset on an old street in China.
My family and I spent a day in Jiezi, a historic town of 1000 years old. The streets were covered with big blue flagstones, and many sycamores were planted at the sidewalks.
I used to live with my grandma in her wooden house in a street just like this. Days were much slower when I was little. I remember spending winter mornings listening to the rain drops dripping down from the leaves and hitting the flagstones, and hearing people selling fruits in the farmers’ market from one block away. The open markets are nowadays replaced by parking lots, but I still couldn’t help slowing down my pace while walking here.
These marble lions, sitting in front of the houses, are believed to be holy animals that will protect the family and bring good fortune. The two chairs repeat the Chinese symbolism of the number Two – harmony and completeness. You see twos a lot in traditional Chinese architectures, which is symmetrical, and many households also repeat their interior arhitecture and possessions in couples.
Roof with very traditional design.
My visit home came near the Lunar New Year, so lanterns were lit up everywhere to celebrate the coming of spring, although the temperature was unusually cold. Houses in China do not have central heating; people just wear more layers of clothing in cold weather.
An old water tank, acting as a big fishbowl and back-up extinguisher. Sometimes people keep water lilies and goldfish in the water tank.
Surrounded by mountains, it rains a lot here in Sichuan province. These paper umbrellas add a lot of colors to the town in rainy days.
Some interesting crafts are still playing important roles in people’s lives. For instance, this tiger’s head made of cotton with vibrant colors? Is it a fierce or a funny tiger? It is actually a very soft and comfortable shoe for toddlers! My mom told me that I used to wear these shoes when I was learning to walk, but now I guess I am more interested in looking at the shoes than walking in them.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Emma Xue
A Day in Annapolis
On a beautiful February day I looked down on Main Street in Annapolis to our harbor. Overhead the colorful Maryland state flags showed off the ancestral colors of our state’s founding family, the Calverts.
Not too many people jostled for space on the sidewalks, the air was balmy, and life was good. Without being jostled by too many tourists, I slowly walked along our historic buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries, and then made a special stop at one of my favorite stores, Mary and Blanche, which sells preposterously funny cards and novelties. A friend of mine is sick, so co-owner Marian Rainford (a.k.a. Blanche) led me to the silliest of cards.
She and her mother Melissa Rainford (a.k.a.) Mary opened their humorous cornu copia just in time for this recession, which they are weathering wonderfully, thank goodness.
Leaving downtown, my next stop took me to the Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, the center for all art and art education in Anne Arundel County. Its President Linnell Bowen and I once worked together on historic preservation for the Historic Annapolis Foundation. Linnell accepted my gift of fabric for MD Hall’s theatre department, walked me through the current exhibits, and reminded me to walk the maze in front of the main building.
Thanks to the TKF Foundation, MD Hall created a miniature maze on the same pattern as the 13th century one in the cathedral at Chartres in France. When we visited the original maze, most of the maze was obliterated by chairs and candle stations. Joe, Eleanor, and I were disappointed. The cathedral had cluttered it over with folding chairs and candle racks. Since the Chartres maze is the last surviving medieval maze in a church, we felt it should have been open to enjoy.
At Maryland Hall, however, brown and grey tiles clearly delineate the pattern. One walks on the grey tiles, whose path looks like this.
Walking this path takes me about ten minutes of total concentration and results in my forgetting all my cares. It’s a really good feeling.
Cherishing my up feeling, I quickly drove home to walk with the cats through my own garden. As usual, my eye gravitated to all the bright colors and flowers like this variegated camellia that blooms every February.
The winter aconites have crept up from the soil.
The daffodils are just beginning their golden spread under the trees.
The hellebore is blooming long before Lent.
And my favorite image of all shows the winter beauty of red berries on the bare branches of a deciduous holly tree contrasted with the pink blossoms of an early flowering quince bush.
While I rhapsodized, the cats kept their focus on the house and their dinner.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
www.annapolis.org
www.maryandblanche.com
www.mdhallarts.org
www.tkffdn.org
Venice Beach, Florida
Venice Beach in Florida - what a serene place to visit! My friend Joan Datesman invited me down for several days, and I’m so happy I went. The Maryland non-winter had transformed itself into a cruel and dreary season, but Venice Beach presented balmy, sunny days with a relaxed, almost zoned-out pace. Driving down to my hotel, I enjoyed the vista along Venice Avenue lined with live oaks, pines, and palm trees. They dripped with Spanish moss, and they forecast my lazy days ahead.
Our hotel stood across the street from the beach and a pavilion that offered shade, a place to buy simple prepared foods, and a walkway to the sand. Every other night, the pavilion featured live music, like a country western music combo or a solo guitarist. Just as soon as I had settled into my room, I slathered myself with sun block #60, so Joan and I could hit the beach.
At high noon, the seabird and we were almost alone in all this wonder.
As the afternoon progressed, more people came out for sunning and shelling. This area is famous as a source of prehistoric shark teeth of varying sizes, although I didn’t find any. People, many with really leathery skin, stood just beyond the gentle breakers to seine or drag for these precious objects.
No one I spoke with, had succeeded, but one family did collect all kinds of large shells to add variety to their Koi pond.
For my Chicago grandchildren I bought a packet of tiny, fossilized shark teeth that the woman at the pavilion assured me came from that beach.
After I achieved my personal goal of observing the local wildlife and of clocking 10,000 steps on my pedometer, we returned to the pavilion to wash the sand off our feet and then enjoy the concert of the evening. Joan and I took seats that allowed us to watch the SRO crowd sway and dance to the music while we also watched the sun descend for the day. As the sun sank, the sliver of the moon got brighter in the sky, although it looks like a white speck in my photo.
Joan’s hotel room featured an enclosed balcony, which let us read and breakfast at our leisure. Her real reason for being in Florida is to work the antique show circuit, selling her antique French Quimper pottery and related folk art. (In English we pronounce the word Quimper as camp-aire.) Joan has taught me to appreciate this delicate faience from Brittany with its colorful hand-painted decoration. Last summer she returned from a buying trip with a fabulous swan planter, which some lucky collecter scooped up before I could. Darn! I borrowed this image from Joan’s website, www.merrywalk.com, where you can also order a copy of her book Collecting Quimper: Quimper Collections.
But let’s return to our non-structured days at the Venice Beach. My daily routine of 10,000 steps gave me plenty of time on the beach, where the pelicans cruised overhead,
And other seabirds rested on the sand.
Abandoning the beach one day, we explored the central downtown with its low-rise adobe buildings. All the shops were locally owned, so every store presented the unique vision of a different buyer. Joan and I did our part to contributed to the local economy by acquiring some summer clothes for ourselves, antiques for resale, and locally prepared meals for dinner. In front of one store, I saw this fascinating plant.
Its owner raced out to make sure I would not steal part of her plant and also gave me its name, Pseudorhiplsalis ramulosa, or mistletoe plant. Its flat leaves produce tiny flowers, which mature into these whitish berries. When summer comes to Maryland, I must find this plant for my succulent garden. Considering it is drought-tolerant, my specimen should over-winter quite nicely in my home.
For our last night, we returned to the beach for me to take this shot of a potential new finish for Niermann Weeks. Joe and our daughters don’t always accept my finish ideas, but the layers of color and wash in this image will influence them.
My daily 10,000 steps ended on the beach, so we could watch the descending sun go down in glory.
Thus ended my first visit to Venice Beach, FL, but I need to return again next winter.
For your own inspiration you can look at www.venice-fla.com.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Bigger Really Is Better
The New York Times recently carried a story about over-sized seating, and that’s not all that customers want over-scaled. Let me show you some of our recent projects.
On the white sandy beaches of the Southern Riviera stands the fabulous new Turquoise Place Resort. It has every imaginable amenity including Niermann Weeks lighting, tables, and mirrors in Tower One’s main lobby and elevator lobbies. We give thanks to our stocking dealer Matt Nicholas for this attractive placement!
For months our Annapolis studios have busily produced big, custom goodies for the Turquoise. The lighting was so large that it needed special apparatus on which to hang it. Here’s Jen patiently beading one of the many Lille Chandeliers.
And now Breaking News: Matt just sent us this image taken on his phone. Each of the three chandeliers in this picture is 42” in diameter, while our mirrored Mirabeau Table measures 84” in diameter. However, the vastness of the lobby makes our work look just right.
Now I want to go fly down to Orange Beach, Alabama to visit the Turquoise, its white sandy beaches, and our products on location.
However, other large orders are also emerging from our studios. This custom Avignon Chandelier hangs 86” high with custom crystals at the arms. I’m 62” tall, so it’s got almost two feet on me.
Tom is making the final adjustments on this pop-up television console that will head into a private home next week. Maybe we’ll all see it in context some day in Architectural Digest. 
Maybe someday a magazine will also show us this custom pantry cabinet front. It was so big that I could only photograph it from an angle.
This Baltic Console will need its own big space,
and it opens up to accommodate tons of storage.
While we’re making big, bigger, and biggest products right now, please send us your own custom requests for orders of any size. We can do chandeliers as teeny as 14 inches tall that will look terrific in your powder room.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Websites for more information:
www.turquoiseplace.spectrumresorts.com
The Redfern Chandelier, our first new design for 2012
I have always loved this design, as it reminds me of a flower bud unfurled and also reminds me of a successful trip antiquing almost twenty years ago. Joe found this chandelier’s inspiration but he had not yet absorbed my flower-mania, so he walked away from his drawings and the prototype chandelier. I rescued the drawings from oblivion and tucked them away safely, even though he recycled the prototype. It must be great to be creative enough to discard ideas and move on.
Fast forward to the winter of 2011, when my daughters Eleanor and Claire formally joined him in the design process at Niermann Weeks. They loved the idea of this fixture, tweaked it even more, and presto – the Redfern Chandelier!
Our little jewel takes its name from the character Christine Redfern, played by the famous actress Jane Birkin (of the famous Birkin Bag by Hermes). Ms. Birkin played this role in the film Evil Under the Sun (1982), to which my family can recite all the dialog in tandem with the film. Here she is in character, in a photo copyrighted by Universal Picture although I found the photo at www.cineclap.free.fr.
Her character pretends to be clumsy, clingy, and unattractive until the very end of the film, when she blossoms in a spectacular black and white outfit. Sadly Hercule Poirot figures out their crime and has Mr. and Mrs. Redfern hauled off to jail in their gorgeous clothes. What a difference a designer makes!
For me that film provides a parable of our Redfern Chandelier, which Joe ignored as mousy but my daughters have let bloom in its Parisian Gold finish. Now, please don’t make it go to jail, but welcome it into your home as you would these narcissus blooms from my dining room.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Websites for more information:
www.agathachriustie.com, the author’s official website
www.janebirkin.net/UK, the actor’s official website
www.hermes.com, to view the Birkin Bag
www.universalpictures.com, for more information about the film Evil Under the Sun (1982)
Celebrations of Beauty with Niermann Weeks
Our patrons occasionally send us images of spectacular living spaces they’ve created, and I’d like to share some of these beauties.
A dining room in the Bahamas by an Atlanta designer with our Rinaldi Chandelier, Danieli Sconces and a custom Quatrefoil Breakfront. 
An opulent bedroom with our Steel Four Post Bed and Monaco Chandelier by Justine Sancho, ASID 
Our Annecy Arm Chairs in a much-used dining room in Hobe Sound, Florida by interior designer Patricia D’Aloia.
A shimmering living area by Anne Tarasoff in the Caumsett Showhouse in Long Island, New York, which used a bevy of Niermann Weeks designs. An Annecy Settee peeks in the left background, fronted by a pair of Cunyngham Chairs. Our mirrored Sevigne Screen stands to the left of the weathered oak Renishaw Commode. Our Cartouche Coffee Table anchors the center, and peaking on the bottom right is the top of our mirrored Parquet Side Table.
An eating nook exploding with warm colors and lit by our Mizner Lantern, by a Florida designer. 
Our Armillary Chandelier and Paris Oval Sconces on the eighth floor lobby of the D&D Building in New York. 
Designer Barry Dixon’s room in the Greystone Showhouse in Los Angeles with our Jean Michel Cone Light illuminating the center. 
Our Italian Chandelier in this serene living room by Boston’s Wilson Kelsey Design.
Dallas designer Lisa Luby Ryan’s dining room with our Rivoli Chandelier, as shown in Traditional Home. 
Please send me more photos showing Niermann Weeks in your home or in a project. I love to see them and will share on this blog, if you allow me.
Happy New Year from me and my family – daughter Claire, me, daughter Eleanor, and husband Joe! This creative photo was taken by Algerina Perna for the Baltimore Sun’s Home section (December 18, 2011)
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Remembrance of Times Past
Near the end of the year, I get reflective about my accomplishments or lack thereof in the previous months. In looking back, my biggest thrills this year are the continued health and happiness of my husband and family as well as the continuance of our company, Niermann Weeks, through this dreadful recession. What more could one want? World peace would be nice but more practically for me I tend my own corner of the world. My musing came to a head last night as I put the last stitch into a quilt I designed and started fabricating during the Annapolis blizzards of February 2010.
Being trapped alone in the house for eleven days led me to dreams of summertime and my favorite fruit, the watermelon. Usually my quilts are made for a specific new-born baby, but this one was for just for me. My poor non-mathematical brain stretched to create this slightly irregular watermelon pattern with its three concentric circles of red, white, and green in a size, and then to scale them to a queen-sized bed. The border of square steps just seemed a good way to accentuate the more ragged patterns of the melons.
This quilt also refers to my mother Eleanor Hanratty McKay, who grew up on a farm in western Minnesota. From childhood my mother was crazy about watermelon rind pickles, which she and her mother canned for the twelve members of the family plus the varying numbers of farmhands. In my childhood, my mother no longer prepared her own pickles but still ate the store-bought ones with gusto.
My mother lives on even more completely in a hanging quilt I made from the surviving scraps of all her table linens. Long after she left the farm and married my father, they ended up after World War II in the US Foreign Service stationed in Greece, Turkey, and adjacent countries. As an official hostess, my mother accumulated linens, dishes, crystal, and utensils to serve forty people. My brother uses all her silverware, and he and my daughter Claire now use her Rosenthal dishes and cut crystal glassware. My favorite cookbooks are enshrined over my refrigerator in a wooden carton shipped from the Rosenthal factory. In the days when I still had a friendly relationship with my ironing board, I asked for her linen collection. Mother was proud of them, always keeping them starched and carefully folded as though she were still expecting a grand party for dinner.
Alas, the starch provided a banquet for silverfish. When all this cloth came to me, happy insects had riddled it with the tracks of their feasting. N.B. an antique dealer told me that the starch had been the culprit, so please be warned by my experience. As I looked at stacks of ruined fabric, Claire suggested I salvage enough to make a quilt, which seemed like a great idea. Cutting away all the bad parts left me with only a tiny amount of small bits.
While I squared them up and randomly pieced them together, individual two inch squares flooded my mind with remembrances of times past. A fragment of a card tablecloth brought back my mother ferociously playing a hand of bridge with her friends and enjoying a ladies lunch between hands. She bought this hand-embroidered cloth with its napkins during a vacation in Florence in the late 1940s. Its cheerful colors made it her favorite set to use, even though the red dye bled into the rest of the fabric, and I have ironed it many times.
Her favorite hand towels survive only in this linen fragment. She used these towels so often that much of their embroidery eroded over the years. You can see that only a few of the black dots survive from a once elaborate spray to the left and right of the center pink dot.
Putting my little square together and randomly quilting each one in a separate pattern has left me with echoes of the happiest period in my parents’ lives.
They loved serving our country in the Foreign Service, and they also loved the expansive way of life that allowed them to live. In Greece our home was a marble mansion in the lovely neighborhood of Kifisia, and in Turkey we lived in the old part of Ankara in a former German boy’s school. True, in Athens the house lacked central heating, and in Ankara the cement floors telegraphed the cold right up through our bones. Nonetheless life glowed for them with parties, famous people, and good feelings for America as our country was then propping up the war-ravaged world with aid through the Marshall Plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan. Mother’s linens in this quilt reflect that happy time for our family. Just looking at these photos floods me with good memories.
So I leave you with in my reflective mood to return to my workaday world of furniture design and manufacture. We at Niermann Weeks are madly finishing and shipping orders so our patrons can enjoy new goodies in their homes for their holidays.
With this holiday image designed by my daughter Eleanor, I wish you all well during your own holidays and thank you for reading my blog!
From Eleanor and all of us at Niermann Weeks
‘Tis the Season
The winter holidays have arrived, and I’m counting down to the winter solstice December 21, when the days get longer again. The leaves are long gone from my trees, however my yard has not yet received a killing frost, so the last flowers of summer endure. A few marigolds sparkle in yellow, sage plants display in red and purple, and that’s about all the color I can still enjoy. To me, the color freak, this is a dreary season, made even more so by rainy days like today. Tonight the cloud cover will totally obscure the meager light from the stars and the partial moon. Fortunately we humans have developed coping techniques with our winter holidays. For Joe and me, that means a lighted tree in the yard,
a big wreath on the front door,
and Christmas trees in the house. I was raised liking Christmas and then I married a total nut about the holiday. For our first Christmas, we had little money so we made our own ornaments. I made 12 dozen sugar cookies, cutting them really thickly. Joe the artiste then went in high gear decorating each one in my mother’s sour cream and powdered frosting. He painted the cookies in seasonal colors as their base coat, followed by lovely little designs specially designed for each little masterpiece. We tied each one up with a ribbon to hang all over our first tree. At that time in our lives we had no camera, so I cannot show off his beauties; you must just imagine his artistry from my words and your knowledge of the customization Niermann Weeks has always provided our patrons.
On New Year’s Day, we packed each cookie in tissue paper on the off chance they might survive till another Christmas. And some of them actually did! They turned into thick bars of colored soap-like material, so we hung them up again. The very last relic broke about 20 years later, but in the meantime we had accumulated a more varied hoard of ornaments. After four decades of marriage, we now need two trees for a proper display. Our nine footer sits in the living room window and is decorated 360 °. Using a timer and coming home at night in the dark, I need the satisfaction of all the sparkle.
In the foyer sits the three footer, dedicated to just shiny ornaments.
In the early days of Niermann Weeks, Joan Schenking managed our paint studio. Each year she led a weekly hobby night, in which volunteers used her designs to make special ornaments. I loved the years in which we used a delicate jeweler’s saw to cut thin sheets of steel into portraits of her dog Rusty the golden retriever, shown here in his base coat of white lacquer.
my cat Ms. Kitty in her base coat of yellow lacquer,
and other relevant creatures like a blue crab from Maryland,
and angels.
The angel seques me into acts of charity, one of which Niermann Weeks has already done. We contributed the main tree, all eleven feet of it, to the Georgetown Jingle in Washington DC.
A dedicated volunteer group raises funds to support the pediatric cancer patients at the Georgetown University Hospital. A major fundraising event is a silent auction of holiday trees decorated by DC-area designers, which the Four Seasons Hotel Washington, DC in Georgetown (www.fourseasons.com/washington) allows us to display in their main lobby. For more information on the Jingle, look both at their website www.georgetownjingle.com and on their Facebook page. Or you could come bid at the auction on the evening of December 11 for a tree. All proceeds do go to help make life better for the children battling cancer.
Now that all my decorations are up, and the longer days are just around the corner, my soul is happy, and I hope yours is too.
Happy Holidays, and thanks for reading my blog! It’s a pleasure to share with you.
Eleanor
A Day at the Races
My humdrum Friday exploded into a fascinating day at the nearby Laurel Park raceway. I was invited specifically to cheer for la Diabla, a dark bay (brown) beauty whose official name is Sixth and Arch. She was born near Philadelphia, in which city that’s a downtown intersection. Her number in Race 5 was # 5, and here she got saddled and girthed. She trains at the Delacour Stable In Maryland, owned by Leigh and Arnaut Delacour, and that’s Leigh standing behind la Diabla while an official attached the horse’s white girth. Look at the thinness of the racing saddle!
Her rider Luis Garcia met the legal weight limit of 103 pounds fully clothed and holding the saddle, so now they rode out for the race. The jockey’s jersey colors identify the horse’s owner. While teal is a fine color you will see it’s hard to pick out from a distance.
If I am ever an owner at the races, my jockeys will sport a flamboyant jersey, like this symphony in orange and white polka dots.
The ten horses ran a course of 7/8 mile on the turf, reaching speeds of 40 mph, each one straining to reach the white wooden posts first. For a few minutes after the race, the racing officials deliberated about who won, so we got our hopes up, but to no avail. My camera had not given me the answer.
And finally the officials decided that our lady had come in second. The official photo finish camera shows that her rider in the dark jersey ran behind the leader. Rats, but la Diabla still won a prize of about $7,000. Not bad for less than a minute’s work.
After the race, all the horses, coated in sweat like I could hardly believe, walked back to the stables at the far end of the track. See the water tower in the left? The stables stand to its right. Before finally relaxing, the prize winners had their blood and urine tested to make sure no speed-enhancing chemicals had given them a special boost.
My adrenaline was up from just watching all the effort expended by the beautiful horses and the dedication of their people. Among them, Tina drove la Diabla to Laurel, Martha brought me to Laurel, and Martha’s daughter Leigh trained the horse. 
Fans like this nice woman with the race horse earrings cheer them on.
Watching these beautiful creatures perform at their peak transformed my Friday from a day of duty to a day of great fun and new experiences to share with you all. My friend Nana Dealy caught me in the act,
so in a tit for tat, you get to see her too.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Websites for your further research:
www.delacourstable.com
www.laurelpark.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_racing
Marie’s Wedding
Marie’s first marital kiss was preceded, as you can well imagine, by heaps of planning and coordination. In the last hectic hours before the reception, a crane lifted in Niermann Weeks’ custom Biarritz Pendants and the gigantic Danieli Chandelier. I like the use of greenery to hide the chain; it’s much more elegant than a cloth sock.
The overall space dwarfed our 6 ft x 6 ft Danieli Chandelier.
Just before the party started, all the overhead lights dimmed so our lighting glimmered over the black and white dance floor.
For her floral theme, Marie chose blush, just like these rose petals in an antique silver bowl.
Peonies and hydrangeas supplemented her orchids from Argentina.
The caterer finished the last detail on the wedding cake before wheeling it into the reception.
The band took its place on the raised stage, and then the party began!
Family and friends watched the newly married couple dance their first waltz.
Oh, so romantic. My mother would have approved.
All of us at Niermann Weeks offer best wishes for great happiness to Marie and her groom. May they live long and prosper!
Marie, thank you for including Niermann Weeks in your wedding festivities, and thanks also for letting us share these photos (courtesy www.scottburtonphotography.com).
Thanks to all of you for reading my blog,
Eleanor
Websites to check out include:
www.scottburtonphotography.com, with thanks for these great photos
www.mnicholascollection.com, with thanks for including us in his family’s big day
Autumn Joys
Autumn brings the climax of the earth’s growing season and makes me happy. The plants I’ve babied since March, are now at their peak. The frost hasn’t hit yet, but the outside colors are becoming intense. My summer clothes are trading closet space with the winter wardrobe. Weekends I’m in my garden gathering seeds for next year to plant next spring and also to donate to the annual Seed Exchange of the American Horticultural Society. My daughters and I have begun planning our Thanksgiving celebrations, which are so traditional that little planning is required. Wikipedia says that many cultures represent autumn as a well-fed woman, like this 1871 Currier and Ives image,
or like me.
In the late autumn my pineapple sages have grown into huge bushes with sprays of glorious red flowers. Just before the hummingbirds migrated, they gorged at these flowers. Amazingly my plants started in April as baby herbs of just a few inches in height. I never eat them, however, as the September flowers give me too much pleasure to waste any. Our salads include enough diversity from the garden.
Unusually, Annapolis experienced some snow just before Halloween, about two months earlier than we expect,
but the very next day presented as a study in autumnal beauty.
Along with my pastoral enjoyments, autumn also brings closer connections to our showrooms and stocking dealers. My daughter Eleanor Niermann visited the M’Geough showroom at the Boston Design Center where she took this photo of our lighting. Hanging all in a row, starting from the left, are our round Armillary Chandelier, shimmery Palissy Lantern, and the baroque lines of our Vivaldi Chandelier.
Niermann Weeks’ stocking dealer Mayme Baker is also featuring our Vivaldi on the top right of her holiday postcard.
Just now Mayme sent me this view of a bedroom she designed, where she included our William III mirror and the fabulous (her word) Danish Commode. Thanks, Mayme!
My daughter Eleanor, lucky woman, is in Nantucket for a designer trade show with the M’Geoughs, and she sent me a photo of our favorite restaurant for clam chowder. Unfortunately, Captain Tobey’s is already closed for the season, but my family has eaten many a happy meal there.
The trade fair at the White Elephant Hotel gave my Eleanor a happy surprise in her conference room – a custom version of our Wrought Steel CoffeeTable.
I’m now packing for my trip to Dania, FL to speak about the greening of lighting technology. On November 8, come see me in the Nessen showroom at the Design Center of the Americas and earn some CEU credit. Keeping me company on the plane ride south will be this Halloween photo of my grandsons Dylan Michael and little Evan McKay. Just looking at an image of these little boys makes me so very happy.
In the meantime, please look at these websites for more information:
www.ahs.org
www.bostondesign.com
www.dcota.com
www.maymebakerstudio.com
www.mgeough.com
www.nantucket.net
www.nessenshowroom.com
www.whiteelephanthotel.com
www.wikipedia.com
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Something New for the Bride, a Ginormous Danieli Chandelier
Our stocking dealer Matt Nicholas, www.mnicholascollection.com, gave us lighting orders for his sister’s wedding reception. Here’s the story of the 6′ x 6′ Danieli Chandelier. At the reception, it will be flanked by a pair of 42” diameter Biarritz Pendants, all to make the bride and groom look even more fabulous.
Rob forged steel into the raw chandelier.
Sandi put silver leaf on the entire frame to begin the finishing process.
Becky froze the tarnished finish on the silver leaf, so it will never tarnish anymore or turn black. She captured Sandi’s finish.
As an aside, in the early days of Niermann Weeks, the girls and I were the finishing team. We’d come home from work and school, to then put in a second shift. I can tell you from personal experience that NW products have acres of surface for finishing. The top, the bottom, and the sides all need to receive the same finish with no drips from one plane to the next. Not being a detail-oriented person, I grew to hate my night job and was unbelievably glad when the company could hire employees.
Sandi, however, obviously loves her work, and as a romantic person she poured her soul into this gift for the Southern bride. The completed chandelier took her about seven full days to transform from raw steel to our Venetian silver leaf finish and then to bead with it with crystals of graduated sizes.
You can see her handiwork up close in this detail of some arms and the center bottom of the fixture.
Moving this delicate beauty for packing and crating provided our next challenge. Ike and DeJuan had already measured it for its 7′ square crate.
Robert and Jazz walked it down through the factory while Ike drove the forklift.
Wayne in the baseball hat helped them carefully hang it from the center of its crate.
As our last step, DeJuan and Wayne carefully in-filled the crate with foam and other packing material so the chandelier could not shift around in its crate, then sealed the whole crate shut.
Now we’ve made it and crated it and turned it over to the freight company. Thanks to Matt Nicholas for this order and God speed to our chandelier!
Sandi, however, can’t rest on her laurels yet. She still has to finish and bead the pair of 42” Biarritz pendants fixtures.
Brad Boswell from the NW-DC showroom and his partner, interior designer Richard Ploff, will attend the wedding to take pictures, so you will soon see our lighting in the reception room. I hope the bride lets us show her off too.
Thanks for reading my blog, and be well!
Eleanor
Annapolis Boat Shows, Fall 2011
It’s Indian Summer in Annapolis, time for the boat shows! Last weekend we saw the US Sailboat Show, and this weekend will be the US Powerboat Show. Vendors and buyers come from all over the world to see this extravaganza, giving the city’s economy a huge pump. For us local people, these are the last big tourist attractions of the year, meaning that the historic downtown will belong to us now until the warm weather comes in the spring.
For these two weeks, floating docks let you literally walk on the water from one fabulous boat to the next.
© copyright 2011 by George Shenk
The really monster-sized yachts can’t even fit in our harbor, Ego Alley. They must dock in front of the Annapolis Yacht Club. You can just see the club’s roof peeking over the blue-hulled vessel.
My personal favorite view is from across the harbor, looking through the brokers’ boats for sale to the boat show. The yacht brokers with Annapolis offices line the nearby docks with their best merchandise. In the far distance, you can see the colored sails on the boats hauled into town for the show. I think it’s funny that many of the boats are trucked in, not sailed in, but God forbid that a new boat should shown any signs of use.
The local non-profits line the harbor’s streets with food vending booths.
Visitors seeking a sit-down meal can also go to the many restaurants around our harbor. Middleton’s Tavern has been here since about 1750, and was patronized by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Since our weather has become warm and dry, this day was ideal for eating on the terrace.
To actually get in to the show, you must buy a ticket at one of the booths on the left, in front of the Harbormaster’s Office.
And then the boating world is your oyster! The show sells every imaginable component for a boat and a boater and their pets and their children, including personal flotation devices for humans and pets of varying sizes, plastic dishes, boat shoes, navigation electronics, specialized hardware, foul weather gear, nautical art and furnishings, etc.
When you are sated by your visit to the boat culture, be sure to visit our fair city’s other charms. You can walk up from the harbor and look down Main Street to Ego Alley. When I visited Lyme Regis in England, I saw the exact same street plan, so our original English colonists were just copying a town layout they already knew well.
Our State House dominates the Annapolis skyline. Dating from 1772, it’s the oldest continuously used state capital building in the United States. The dome is the largest one in the country that’s made entirely of wood – with wooden pegs, not nails. Right now, the dome is undergoing renovations, hence the shrouding to obstruct the view of tacky scaffolding, but you can already see our gold-leafed acorn at the very top. Piercing the acorn, the lightning rod was made to the specifications of its inventor, Benjamin Franklin himself.
This Sunday is the final day of the two weeks of boat show, and the breakdown early next week will be just as impressive. Click below to see a timelapse video of the 2009 Sailboat Show leaving the harbor.
For more information about our wonderful city, please go to:
www.annapolis.org
www.annapolis.gov/government/departments/harbormaster
www.middletontavern.com
www.usboat.com/us-powerboat-show
www.usboat.com/us-sailboat-show
www.visitannapolis.org
www.whitmoreimages.com
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Networking with actual and potential patrons in the Washington, DC metro area
In September the Washington Design Center hosted an evening open house for the general public to come visit the resources of its showrooms. Most of the showrooms stayed open until 7 pm and offered yummy foods and beverages. Traditional Home brought famed interior designer Matthew Patrick Smyth to sign his new book, Living Traditions. The design center’s Entrée program placed a designer on each floor, to help visitors make a to-the-trade purchase that evening. Don Love of SLD Interiors worked our floor. Designer Richard Ploff worked our showroom, as did our salesman Brad Boswell, Joe, and me.
Basically, we all worked together to provide an entertaining evening for the general public, but the effort fell flat for lack of public interest. What a burn. Joe and I had driven in from Annapolis to be in our showroom for the evening but left after two hours and a mere dozen visitors who showed little interest in ever acquiring our products.
The social scene in and around the Washington Design Center used to be vibrant. When Joe and I entered the DC market in 1983 in the J. Lambeth showroom, the Washington Design Center was very active in its own networking and also in supporting DIFFA, a major organization in providing direct care for people living with HIV/AIDS. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Joe and I drove in at least once a month for design functions. In recent years, however, that level of activity has tapered off, off, off.
Coming on the heels of our smashing showroom opening at the New York Design Center, my daughters and I have been brainstorming about why activity at the Washington Design Center has become so anemic:
- the infamous DC traffic
- the lack of easy, reasonable parking around the design center
- the lack of residents living within easy cab access to the design center
- the lack of other, supporting home stores in the immediate area
- of course, recently the recession
Jennifer Sergent is my one-woman dynamo connection at the Washington Design Center.
She counters all our reasons with the party line, but the fact is that the Design Center’s community doesn’t reach out (at least to me) as much as it used to. Maybe there are small private parties of designers who live and work near each other, but I live an hour away from the Capitol. As a consequence, many of us in the design community are participating in charity activities that add real value to our world as well as connecting us to potential clients.
Niermann Weeks has just begun to participate in the Georgetown Jingle,
a charity that raises funds for children afflicted with cancer who receive treatment at Georgetown University Hospital’s Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation. In 2006 designers David Herchik and his partner Richard Looman initiated this charity, and invited as partners both the Four Seasons Hotel Georgetown and the Washington Design Center.
Posing for the camera are interior designer Richard Looman, our hostess Evelyn Avery, Dr. David Nelson, and interior designer David Herchik.
The Georgetown Jingle’s goal is to make the hospital experience less frighteningly institutional for sick children. Since 2006 the Jingle has raised almost $2,000,000 for care during and after the children’s acute illnesses.
This year designer Michael Roberson has volunteered to manage the Jingle’s PR, and she asked us at Niermann Weeks to donate an eleven foot Christmas tree to the designers’ holiday tree exhibition in the lobby of the Four Seasons Georgetown. We are honored to be included, and my daughters Eleanor and Claire are now busily designing our tree. Claire came with me to an organizational meeting but declined this photo op.
The photographer did catch interior designer Camille Saum, Marc Huppert of DC’s Patterson, Flynn Martin showroom, and moi Eleanor McKay at the rooftop patio of our hostess, Evelyn Avery of Avery Art.
For the theme of our tree, I chose Peaceable Kingdom, referring to David Hicks’ 1826 painting of the same title.
A very religious Quaker from colonial Pennsylvania, Hicks created his painting as an allegory on this Biblical citation from Isaiah 11:6:
The wolf shall lie down with the lamb,
The leopard shall lie down with the kid,
The calf and the lion and the fatling together,
And a little child shall lead them.
We’re interpreting that as successes of the fight against cancer, since the Georgetown pediatric cancer program now saves as many as 80% of their young patients. As our holiday tree progresses, I’ll show you more of our efforts to help even more kids get better.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Websites for you to check:
www.averyart.com
www.camillesaum.com
www.dcdesigncenter.com
www.diffa.org
www.facebook.com - Georgetown Jingle
www.fourseasons.com/Washington
www.georgetownjingle.com
The website is so complex, I recommend you just google this entry -
Georgetown University Hospital’s Division of Pediatric Hematology,
Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplantation
www.houseworksinteriors.com
www.jdsdesigns.com
www.jlambeth.com
www.matthewsmyth.com
www.michaelroberson.com
www.pattersonflynnmartin.com
www.traditionalhome.com
Grand Opening of Niermann Weeks at The New York Design Center 2011
WOW! That’s it in a nutshell. I haven’t been to a design function in twenty years that was so well promoted and attended. Joe and I had to push through the crowds just to enter the building, had to wait for an empty elevator, and had to push through the crowds in the halls and in our own showroom. My heart was tripping with joy.
Our sign on the ninth floor.
The view of our showroom from the hallway with our Andres in the purple cardigan helping a customer Andres has been with us since we opened our first Manhattan showroom, and his product knowledge is as immense as his courtliness.
The beautiful rugs in this room and throughout are on gracious loan by Stephanie Odegard, whose showroom is also in The News York Design Center.
Just inside the door, to the right of this photo, my daughter Eleanor created a vignette that she knew would please me. Our Gabrielle Chair and Ottoman are right there as a comfy, elegant spot from which I could greet our visitors. To the left stands a Henry Royer Side Table holding our Chinoiserie Tulipiere. Joe designed the plant holder as a Chinese pagoda in honor of Charlotte Moss, who like me loves all things Chinese and all things floral.
The plant holder includes a water well in each level, so mine at home displays seasonal flowers: asters right now, and at other times pansies, tulips, miniature irises, roses, daisies, etc.
A lovely customer at the opening bought this diptych Rolling Pathway by Douglas Freeman. I like this vignette for its composition of samples from our various vendors. Including Douglas’s work, you see Niermann Weeks’ Octagonal Mirror, Spectrums’ Edinburgh acrylic table, and Henry Royer’s Frisson Hall Table.
Our Lighting hung through the showroom, and here glows over our ever-popular Steel Four Post Bed with the Fantome Bench at its foot. The bed rests on another outstanding Odegard carpet and is flanked by a pair of our Danish Commodes. The Sienna Chair is by Gemelli Reproductions.
The New York Design Center directory scheduled my daughters Claire and Eleanor for demonstrations from 3-9 pm – oh their aching feet! Claire showed how we by hand wire and attach the beads to our chandeliers, and Eleanor applied silver-leaf on various items to show a step in our processes. As a proud mama, I greedily enjoyed hearing customers sing their praises.
Eleanor had already silver-leafed three of our Baccello Mirrors as door prizes.
Congratulations to our lucky winners!
- Dane Pressner from D’Aquino Monaco, dane@daquinomonaco.com
- Heather Hickling from Jaime Drake Design Associates, hhickling@drakedesignassociates.com
- Suzana Monacella from McMillen, smonacella@mcmilleninc.com
To add to our evening, Traditional Home sponsored a book signing by Matthew Patrick Smyth of his new book Living Traditions. Trad Home’s editor Ann Omvig Maine introduced Matthew before his hand started cramping from all the book-signing he did.
Joe and I stood ready to refill Matthew’s glass of sparkling water. Don’t we look absurdly happy?
Our friend John Danzer from Munder-Skiles of the fabulous garden furniture, also came up to chat with Ann and with a startled looking Joe. Joe should know that my camera is ever-ready!
Our opening was big enough news to attract interior designer/blogger Elizabeth Orgera from Shorely Chic in Darien, CT. Now that’s cool.
Tomas Georgi, the newest member of the NW team, stopped giving tearsheets for a moment so I could include him in this blog.
Joe and I finally left for a party featuring a great bluegrass band, BBQ, and cornbread. We abandoned our daughters who doggedly continued their demonstrations for all comers.
Even the Chrysler Building cheered Joe and Me on, as we trudged to our hotel.
When I left for the train home the next morning, I got to see public health at work in Penn Station. The free clinic for flu shots attracted as many people as the NY Design Center had the night before.
Thanks for reading my blog, and please do come see our digs at The New York Design Center (at Lexington Avenue between 32nd and 33rd streets). Tomas and Andres are expecting you.
Eleanor
Websites for you to check out:
www.douglasfreemanartworks.com
www.gemellireproductions.com
www.henryroyer.com
www.matthewsmyth.com
www.munder-skiles.com
www.nydc.com
www.shorelychic.com
www.spectrum-ltd.com
www.tradtionalhome.com
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
For starters, I hurt myself, so had to spend eight weeks swanning around like a Victorian invalid. I don’t know how those Victorian ladies managed to sit around all day, reading interminable novels and sipping tea. The corsetry alone would have killed me. Towards the end, however, things got more exciting.
First came the earthquake on August 23, which made hardly any impact on me personally. I was hobbling around in the garden photographing flowers, and one wretched yellow flower would not stay still for its portrait. After three tries, I decided it wasn’t ready for its close-up and moved over to a more worthy flower, this zinnia in peppermint white and pink. I raised this plant from a seed and am very proud of its flourishing yellow parts that call out to the hummingbirds, bees, and moths.
While the camera continued to dominate my consciousness, the trees in our forest were mightily swaying and rustling, and the earth made the sound of a heavy truck groaning up our hill. Later that night, the news informed me of the earthquake – d’oh! Then my mind made all the connections about the pictures hanging crookedly on the walls, the paint brushes on the floor in Joe’s studio, etc.
Following this very rare natural disaster (for Maryland), a series of hurricanes dumped loads of rain day after day after day. Our house lost power on the evening that Hurricane Irene roared through, not to be restored for nine (9) days! Joe fled to NYC as soon as the trains ran again, but I stayed home to listen to the generator roar. Our neighborhood loses power so often that most households have had to invest in a generator. We did the year that we twice had no power and twice had to trash the contents of the freezer and refrigerator. After the power came back on this Labor Day weekend, the entire neighborhood then roared with the noises from neighbors removing damaged trees and shrubbery.
As I walked around our place, I saw five downed trees, but not one was on the road or the driveway, thank goodness. During the blizzard in February 2010, trees fell in front of and behind my car, and on the driveway, and on the street. That was a really icky natural disaster, but I did get all my cardio digging out my car.
However, let us return to August 2011. Because we are hosting a fundraiser for the Museumof Maritime Pets (http://museumofmaritimepets.org) on September 17, Joe has been busily preparing our home to look like a consciously designed residence. Over time we get lazy, the paint gets scuffed, the stuff increases on every surface of the interior, and we give a bad impression. One would never know that I am married to a designer. So, even before the earthquake and the hurricanes, our home has been overrun with plasterers, painters, light installers, floor refinishers, sellers of Turkish rugs, and other vendors. Basically I have been living in a disaster area within my home, while Mother Nature has inflicted her own fun and games on us.
The only safe place has been our third floor, our bedroom, so we could at least sleep without construction debris on our bed. Our five cats have also all retreated to this sanctuary, where their trauma just accumulates. As much as I hate the noise and mess of construction, cats are creatures of habit whose every habitual ritual has been overturned. My poor little creatures are freaked. I told the head contractor today that Sept 16 is his absolute deadline. He can do it, and my nervous system needs my home to return to being our safe place.
Last night I excavated one chair in the living room so I could sit quietly and quilt. Before I could unfold the quilt, my kitten Stella collapsed on my feet. Finally she had found an oasis of calm. In just a few more days, my entire household can feel that protected.
Thanks for reading my blog, and please come see us at markets in our showrooms.
-On Thursday September 15 at the Washington Design Center.
-On Tuesday September 20 in our new flagship showroom at The New York Design Center in Manhattan.
If you can’t make them, you can be sure I’ll blog about them and we’ll put photos on the Niermann Weeks Facebook page.
Eleanor
National Wildlife Federation Gala
Long-time friends of our family Catherine Ladnier and Mickey Robinson commissioned the fledgling Niermann Weeks to create many items for their home and have continued their patronage over the decades. This year they invited me to attend the 75th annual gala of the National Wildlife Federation (abbreviated here as the NWF). Catherine serves on its Advisory Board, and the couple also financially supports it. See the federation’s website at http://www.nwf.org/.
OK, I knew vaguely about this NWF and that my friends’ philanthropy does good, however, attending this gala really opened my eyes to the value of supporting environmental causes. I have since joined the NWF. For my property I also applied for and received the designation of Certified Wildlife Habitat site. In this posting I’ll share some of the information from that evening.
The first thing I learned was that people can be really stupid about disturbing wild creatures. Here’s an eagle which some moron stole from its nest just a few days after its birth. When the bird got to the age of imprinting on its eagle parents (which lets it know that it too is an eagle), it imprinted on the human thief. Now the poor bird thinks it’s a human. Somehow, a kind person rescued it, and now the NWF uses this eagle as a demonstration of human damage to wildlife. That’s not much of a life.
This rare crocodilian was kept as a pet until it got inconveniently large, then it was dumped. The NWF’s David Mizejewski handled it without any obvious distress to the animal.
This Southern Three-Banded Armadillo met the same fate, and it’s still not comfy around people.
Seeing these and other creatures during the cocktail party was unsettling, but during dinner the NWF focused on success stories and intelligent human interaction with Mother Nature.
Among the award winners was the actor Robert Redford, whose adult life has focused on grassroots advocacy for wild creatures and the environment. Mr. Redford has been as active in this field as he has been in the independent film movement with his Sundance Film Festival (http://www.sundance.org/).
First Lady Michelle Obama won an award for her commitment to outdoor activities for families, including her vegetable gardening on the White House lawn. She could not attend the gala, as her political life claimed her that evening.
Photo from justjared.buzznet.com
Jayni Chase, the wife of comedian Chevy Chase, received honors for her work in bringing environmental education into school curricula. Her husband introduced her with his usual humor, but she was the star of the show at the NWF gala.
Photo from flixster.com
Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) rose for his honors and quickly earned my admiration for his many environmental actions. He and his family own and operate a 600+ acre farm, a third of which they allow Purdue University to operate as an experimental farm. That section is a classified hardwood tree farm, including significant acreage in black walnut trees that were planted in recent years. The Lugar Farm was the first in Indiana to provide carbon sequestration offsets on the Chicago Climate Exchange. Senator Lugar has also used his political clout for energy and conservation legislation.
Other non-celebrity people won additional awards for dedicating years of their lives to making our world a better place. I thank them all and continue to be inspired by them. For me, the moral of this evening was: improve your own corner of the world, and we will all benefit.
I hope this has energized you to keep doing your part, and thank you for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Packing (in the) Heat
We control our entire process here at Niermann Weeks, from the original design, making the prototype, making and finishing all your orders, and even crating each one for shipment. The crating is an art in itself considering all the sizes and weights and shapes we ship, and considering all the perils in the shipping process. Once your order leaves our factory, we’ve packed it for safe arrival at its final destination – your place.
Because trucks are coming in and out of our warehouse all day, the guys in that department work through the heat of summer and the cold of winter. The 100 ° days this summer don’t deter them, nor do the below-freezing days of last winter. DeJuan, Wayne, and Carlair just keep on packing and shipping.
The process starts when we receive your order. We determine its final size and order special weights of cardboard to best cocoon your goody during shipment.
When the finished product passes its final inspection, then the guys really spring into action. Let’s follow our Palissy Lantern in their hands.
First, Wayne assembles your carton from raw sheets of cardboard (we use three different weights), and he makes a wooden pallet as a secure base for the final carton.
While the lantern still hangs on its rolling cart, DeJuan covers it in a plastic bag, to keep it dust-free. The bucket on our rolling cart serves as a counterweight to the lantern, keeping it from tipping over.
They wrap the chain and canopy in bubble wrap to include in the carton.
After the carton is nail-gunned to its pallet base, layers of bubble wrap begin the cushioning process.
Carlair is wrapping each string of beads with a self-adhesive wrapping that will protect the beads as they ship. Occasionally you’ll receive a fixture in which the bead string has slipped from its moorings on the chandelier. That’s easy to re-attach with a small pair of needle nose pliers.
DeJuan and Wayne line the carton with a grey plastic sheet to protect the lantern from any direct contact with the packing materials.
Your lantern fits inside its carton and is tied up in a bundle of grey plastic.
Remember the little bundle of chain and canopy? That gets nestled in the bottom of the carton.
They spray liquid foam into the carton and shape it by hand to fit the contours of the lantern. As the foam dries, it forms a rigid shell protecting your lantern from jiggling during transport from us to you.
Here you can see the next steps in crating, but the light fixture is now a Crevecoeur Chandelier. Wayne makes a rigid, wooden frame within the carton and uses a strong plastic strap from which the fixture hangs.
He seals up the carton, applies warning stickers, and writes the name, address, phone number, order number, and any special shipping information.
Our mirrors are packed equally well, plus put in an easel to keep it up-right during shipment.
You can see the final labels and palletizing best on this Polonaise Mirror that’s all ready to roll.
So when your lantern or mirror or chair or table or whatever leaves us at Niermann Weeks, we have made every effort to protect it in transit to you. It won’t shift or rock in its crate. The plastic protects it from moisture and humidity. The rigid wooden frame gives it a hard protective shell. And we proudly proclaim on each carton that we’re Made in America.
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
Eleanor’s July Vacations
It’s still July, yet Joe and I have already enjoyed two vacations, one with friends in the artists’ colony town of Narrowsburg, NY, and the other was all mine – three days alone in my garden at home. Joe had fled to NYC to escape any more bucolic pleasures. Honestly, we were thinking about furniture all the time, and I did take some research photos, but the main thrust was simple R&R.
On the Independence Day weekend, we celebrated a Norman Rockwell-esque holiday with our old friends Dan and Margaret from Memphis and their daughter Allison, her husband Paul, and their photogenic child. Downtown Narrowsburg sits where the Delaware River is deepest, and therefore narrowest. Main Street is all of one block long, and here’s the river view from the center of the street.
On July 3, Narrowsburg jumped the gun on fireworks.
On July 4 we attended the morning parade in nearby Lordville, NY. This hamlet formed along a ravine of clean, clear water that runs into the Delaware River.
We don’t see water that pure in the suburbs and cities.
Many of the local communities have organized against fracking to keep their water clean. Our insatiable energy needs are pressuring for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract natural gas from the rock formations in the Delaware Valley.
But let’s get back to back to less controversial concerns. For the Lordville parade, 117 people, 1 calf, 2 goats, assorted dogs, and one truck came through town and across the bridge into Pennsylvania, where they turned around and came back up the hill again.
An English family celebrated our independence by ignoring all the hoopla in town. Their intrepid beagle was so cute, and she was raring to get in the canoe!
For the afternoon we returned to Narrowsburg’s festivities. I think every fire department in the county loaned a vehicle to the parade.
The Red Hat Ladies fit right in without being at all gaudy.
Even the beleaguered US Park Service took part.
Most every store had window boxes specially done up with our American colors.
Leaving our friends at the end of the week, we drove back to Annapolis through rural Pennsylvania and Maryland, where I was too busy driving to take pictures. We returned to Niermann Weeks to earn our daily bread for a week, and then I took a long weekend alone with my garden. Joe preferred to enjoy the summer heat in an air-conditioned apartment in Manhattan, a choice that I would never, ever make.
As I was watering plants on the front steps, this tiny visitor perched on me for about 90 seconds. Later that day it joined me again for a shorter time.
For Mother’s Day, my daughter Claire and her partner Ryan had given me dahlia bulbs. In the language of deer, dahlia = yummy!!, so I must hide these plants between the front berm and the porch. So far, the deer are ignorant. The delicacy of this pink dahlia is a feast for the eyes during the dog days of summer.
My first sunflower is all ready for the birds to eat its seeds. The birds will hang sideways and upside-down to peck this flower clean. Soon the seeds of other plants will also ripen, keeping the birds well-fed. In high summer I don’t need to refill the bird feeders very often.
I love morning glories and always have. When I was eight, I planted a wall of them alongside my grandparents’ barn in Minnesota in June. My family was long gone when they bloomed, but my grandparents and cousins enjoyed the early morning blooms. This year my blue morning glory is a disappointment, so next year I’ll try a different variety. However, my small red morning glory has just burst into bloom, giving the hummingbirds another nectar source.
As I cleaned up on my last day, Bambi’s big brother emerged to forage for his own snacks.
Before I lived in the woods, I used to love deer.
Anyway, we’re back at work again, getting ready to move our showroom in New York to 200 Lex by the end of August. In the meantime, please come see our Moving Sale at 232 East 59th (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues).
Thanks for reading my blog!
Eleanor
