Candace Manroe

A Few Favorites

By Candace Manroe

It’s March 1 and I’m still raving about what I saw in Paris in late January. Favorite patterns debuted at Maison include the following from Pierre Frey:

A wide striped effect results from “Dauphine’s” embroidered rows of branch coral motifs alternating with leopard spot patterns on a neutral linen ground. The color is on trend, while  the combo of animal and botanical motifs merges two of the most popular trends of the last several seasons.

Both of the above are cotton prints—my personal faves because of the clarity and whimsey of their design.

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How Color-Confident Are You?—Lessons from the Old World

By Candace Manroe

I’ve always admired the Europeans for their bold confidence with color. (Eighteenth-century English country houses equal sunshine-yellow walls, right?) Fast forward to today’s offerings of raspberry, fuchsia, acid green—nothing meek about these hues, yet  Europeans love them. And not the way we do in America. For example, the French, English, Italians, and Spanish don’t confine these fresh-to-brazen palettes to their teens’ rooms or to modern-only spaces. Or even to a single space in need for a swift kick of coomph, as we Americans tend to do.

That’s what so great about how the Old World embraces color. They have no problem upholstering an 18th-century French settee in an up-to-the-minute fuchsia or grape.

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smoking-hot hues

By Candace Manroe

If you’ve been following my blogs on trends I observed at Paris’s Maison show, you may be afraid that vivid color has vanished from the homescape. No worries.  The warm-gray trend I blogged about earlier is only part of the palette story….the neutral part.

Color is, indeed, alive and well in the fabrics and furnishings introduced last month. And, it’s smokin’ hot.

Warm colors—especially my personal favorite, orange—are spicing up spaces as pumpkins, paprikas and all shades in between make sizzling style statements in the upscale market.

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I got a feelin’: new textiles big on texture

By Candace Manroe

Metaphores, a French fabric house opened by Olivier Nourry in 1981, has always been as much about texture as it is the  other design elements (color, pattern, style, weave or print, and weight). At its Paris showroom in the St. Germaine district a couple of weeks ago, I was pleased to get up close and personal with Metaphores’s  2010 introductions. My pick for most interesting texture from their new “New York, New York” collection is:

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THE NEW GRAY

By Candace Manroe

The new catch phrase for color at Maison de Objet this January was “warm gray.” Nobilis’s shop on Rue Bonaparte, along with fabric houses Osborne & Little, Dedar, Jim Thompson, and more, are  touting this warmed up hue. TRAD HOME’s sumptuous March cover was spot-on trend with its gray walls and rug—warm interpretations of the hue that work beautifully with gold silk drapery panels.

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Paris Window Shopping

By Candace Manroe

Just returned last week from the big French furniture and fabrics market, Maison de Objet, in Paris, overwhelmed by so many gorgeous products I think you’ll love. I’ll be posting in multiples, with pics…way too much to share in a single blog.

First, I want to show you the coolest thing I saw OUTSIDE the showrooms. It’s art displayed in the window of an antiquarian book shop in the St. Germaine area, near our hotel.

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The P-r-r-r-fect Home: How Catty Are You?

By Candace Manroe

So I’ve been reading the TH blogs and slide shows written by my colleagues and realize just how dog-driven a culture we, the TH editors and readers, are. And I have to wonder: What about the cats?

I grew up a dog person, remain one today. Jack, 10-year-old golden retriever, and Nellie, ??-year-old rescued yellow lab, are proof. (As is my newly destroyed sofa, after Jack and Nellie were egged on, I suspect, by my handsome, adorable two-year-old grand-dog, golden doodle Danny, when I dog-sat over Christmas and was gone too long for his liking one day. Such fluff! Such madness! Who knew a single sofa cushion could hold so much
fill?)

But years ago, as a newlywed, I discovered myself hitched to a cat man. Because he was feline-friendly, we did not have a fenced yard for a dog, and I desperately wanted a pet, I followed an ad in the Dallas Morning News leading me to the mixed breed litter of a full-Persian momma cat.

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Free Pass for All Us Pack Rats

By Candace Manroe

Every time I start to houseclean before a party, I’m confronted by my collections. The dust they gather. The clutter they might represent to a more detached eye. The statement they haunt me with—you know, that one about hanging onto baggage and what-not.

But the fact is, I love them. The old black-and-white family photographs in Victorian seashell frames or in smaller micro-mosaic frames collected from travels in Italy (first trip, first frame, trip to Rome with Mother when I was 14; Mother’s been gone 9 years, I still have that first frame) and to antiques shops and flea markets everywhere else; all my books—antiquarian full-leather-bound and otherwise (just short of trade  fiction), that  started as gifts from both grandmothers and have grown to a houseful since—every room book-lined,  each with a different category of books: poetry in entry, family room, and master bedroom; history and art in living room; crime novels, first upstairs bedroom; and so on); my father-the-painter’s brilliant art; turn-of-the-19th-century whimseys (I’m like an ostrich: anything that glistens, sold!); seashells, especially cowries; Victorian seashell boxes and art; Staffordshire; ironstone; etc.

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My Magical Ceiling and Floor Makeover

By Candace Manroe

I’m the first to admit I’m not much of a DIY-er. Not that I lack the desire; it’s the ability part that escapes me. But I do have to share a couple of makeover products that make it look easy even for someone with two left hands like me. How do I know they work? Because I had them installed in my home—so quick and easy I MIGHT have been able to do it myself.

The first is my new white-painted WoodHaven Laminate Ceiling Planks from Armstrong. My 1960 walk-out ranch still had its ugly, light-absorbing popcorn ceiling. In two days, start to finish, installers laid the Armstrong planks directly over my old ceiling. I would have been skeptical of such a major transformation occurring in such a short time had I not witnessed it firsthand. Read more