More Kips Bay Palm Beach

2023 Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach

 

I posted yesterday on the 2023 Kips Bay Show House Palm Beach that opens today. Having attended decorator show houses for decades ( I love them), I always enjoy seeing what the talented landscape designers do with the landscaping and gardens of the home.

Charleston Chinoiserie in the Garden

via Alessandra Branca

 

Alessandra Branca posted this lovely view of a Charleston garden with lots of blue and white fishbowls filled with topiaries and ferns. I love this and it is the look I am going for in my Florida garden - sort of British Colonial - a cross between an English garden with the formal structure and topiaries and tropical with all the palms. Quite lovely.

The Blue and White Ginger Jar

Ralph Lauren

I came across this vignette from one of Ralph Lauren's homes and loved the mix of family photographs, botanical photographs, and an antique oil painting. Look how immeasurably the blue and white ginger jar adds to this vignette, letting the eye rest from all the art.

And here I am yesterday at the members preview of the Salvador Dali exhibit Gardens of the Mind at the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota. It was fabulous, please go, but please go with someone who is not completely clueless. My guest, who shall remain nameless, was really disappointed and completely did not grasp the exhibit because he thought there were going to be original Dali paintings hanging throughout the gardens. Yes dear, museums are going to lend millions and millions of dollars worth of priceless art to hang outside in the heat, rain, and humidity for several months. Just had to share. Wow.

Chinoiserie Bridges with Vases

A follower asked whether the vases on the bridge in yesterday's post on Caspari were based on actual Chinese bridges. I believe that the answer is that vases and urns were used on Chinoiserie bridges-Europe's interpretation of a fanciful imaginary China. The first picture above is the Chinese Bridge at Laxenburg from Dams and Zega's book Chinoiseries. This bridge, with its elongated pagoda, poles with glass pendants, bells, urns, and bold ornamentation, included a dragon boat moored on an artificial lake to complete this Hapsburg vision of Cathay.

Just below is the Large Chinese Bridge at Chinese Village, Catherine the Great's attempt to follow the eighteenth century fashion for Chinoiserie. The bridge is noted for its pink granite vases and imitation coral branches.

This is the Oxford Bridge at Stowe House, a National Trust property in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England. The Oxford Bridge, built in 1761, has three arches, a solid parapet, and eight decorative urns.