Blog

Text and styling: Margaret Zainey Roux Photos: Sara Essex Bradley Alexis Walter takes the phrase “trimming the tree” quite literally. Like clockwork, the artist and textile designer’s passion for passementerie seems to kick into overdrive just as the last plate is cleared from the Thanksgiving table and the first box of trim—brimming with silk ribbon, embroidered tape, and metallic galon—is unearthed...

Text: Jennifer Boles Design: Alcott Interiors Photos: Emily Followill In some areas of the world, seashells have long been used for jewelry, decorative adornment, and even currency, but in much of Europe, they remained something of a rarity until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when European explorers and merchants began traveling the globe and later returning home bearing caches of them. Initially...

Southern Home (SH): What is your first memory of being in a garden or loving the outdoors? John Howard (JH): I was born in Savannah, and as a very young child, I remember going to Forsyth Park, which has a beautiful Victorian-era cast-iron fountain, big live oak trees, azaleas, bulbs, all kinds of things like that. We had lots of...

Text: Tiffany Adams Photos: Gordon Beall Rolling hills and wildflower-dotted meadows are part of the idyllic allure of the Virginia countryside. For this young family, a piece of property on the outskirts of Charlottesville had both and more. “They purchased this land years ago and decided the time was right to build on it,” interior designer Melanie Elston says. Along with...

Text: Tiffany Adams Photos: Stephen Karlisch When Sharon and Buzz Barlow were looking to move from their home in The Woodlands, Texas, to Fort Worth, they knew just who to call to make it happen: their daughter. “My parents are the reason I’m in this industry,” says interior designer Tori Rubinson. Growing up, Rubinson recalls her dad spending time as a...

By Karoline Gore In 2006 there were only 296 certified green building projects in the United States, but that number rose to 65,000 in 2017 according to a report published on The Statistics Portal. You don’t have to have the biggest solar panels on your roof to be inducted into the “eco-friendly design hall of fame”. Something as simple as...

Charleston entertaining and etiquette expert Suzanne Pollak says it best: “We are wallflowers and proud of it.” Those words open a chapter in her book about gracious living, The Charleston Academy of Domestic Pursuits: A Handbook of Etiquette with Recipes. She’s talking about (or from the perspective of) sideboards, the iconic pieces of dining room furniture that preside over a formal...

Southern Home (SH): Please share your aha moment, when you realized you’d become a designer. Susan Ferrier (SF): It was more of an exasperated sigh. I’d done a lot of things, from running a temp agency to managing an infertility clinic in a doctor’s office, but I’d never make it quite a year. I kept coming back to wanting to...

Text: Lydia Somerville Photography: Kip Dawkins Proxmire’s artful use of color is on display in the foyer and dining room, with shots of yellow connecting the two spaces. Architect David Neumann’s Georgian front door leads into a cheerful wallpapered entry hall. The dining room’s color scheme takes its direction from the wallpaper. Kelley Proxmire Showcases Passion for Color Kelley Proxmire Showcases Passion for...

Text: Lydia Somerville Photos: Jeff Herr When a couple from New York decided to build a Southern getaway in Georgia’s Reynolds Lake Oconee, they sought out the talents of residential designer William T. Baker to design the retreat for gathering with their grown children and grandchildren. Baker, whose projects at the luxury property are numerous, took on the enviable site, a...