Jane on Decorati.com

I’m so pleased to share with you our newest press coverage at Decorati.com, the #1 decorating blog in the country. The site offers a wealth of great information, such as “shop this picture,” where one click lets you shop the online stores that carry all of the items in the photographed room. When I am looking for a special item at a low price I check out the sample sale where I often get lucky enough to find it!

For the latest blog post, I was asked to discuss the use of antiques in modern interiors and how I have incorporated these rare and unusual treasures into a functional, comfortable living environments. Finding just the right piece of history to blend into every day life is just one of many things that excites me about what I do. It might be like others feel when they place a puppy with a good home that will love and cherish it. But, unlike the puppy, antiques can be handed down from generation to generation, and increase in value. It’s really the most elegant form of recycling there is!

The Birth of Our New “Spa Packages” for the Home

Early in December of last year, my team and I were installing new family room furniture in a client's primary residence. I had finished their second home the previous year, so they knew the capabilities of the firm, but I hadn't done much for them in this house. She asked me to “take a look at the dining room and living room” to see what the rooms might need to make them look better for the big party she was planning.

The first thing I noticed was that there was a lot of nice art, but it was hung in a way that was not very effective. I knew that by rehanging the existing art, we could help the areas to be much more dramatic and engaging. So I had our art installer come by and help us hang the work that I had reorganized and placed into groups. The groups are much more powerful than the pieces scattered about, which you can see here.

Before

After

Then, I noticed the furniture in the living room was not showing the room to its best advantage.I Pushed the furniture around a bit, opening the room up more to the fireplace and suddenly theroom appeared larger! I noticed an area by the window that was not furnished with much of anything. We moved an antique sofa table into the window area and decided that it would benefit from some new lamps and accessories. With that, an area that was once dead was now alive and interesting, both from outside the house viewed on the way to the front door and from the inside as well.

Before

After

I inventoried the lamps. There were not enough to create the warm glow I had in mind. So with the clients permission, we brought in some new lamps and lampshades, some new pillows for the sofa and other accessories for the room.

The book case in the living room had a few items on it, but needed help. I picked the raspberry accent color that was in her fabrics and had the painters who were working in the family room paint the back of the bookcase that color. The client had a few pieces of blue and white Chinese Export Style ceramics. So we filled the bookcase with more of the blue and white ceramics, interesting wooden boxes and beautiful old books. And a couple of small pictures that we took down from the walls and hung inside the bookcases added drama, scale and perspective to the shelves. The shelves went from drab to dynamite!

Before

After

The living room was looking very good by now, so on to the other rooms!

When we had started the re-do, I put all the clients accessories from the three areas in one area of the floor so I could see them all at the same time. This allowed me to notice patterns of items that worked well together, small collections we could place and also let me know what was missing. I brought in a carload of accessories to add to the group and then everything began to sing. We were able to restyle the bookshelves, tabletops, kitchen counters and desks. We also brought in some containers for plantings and orchids to make the rooms feel really live!

Before

After

We then raided the clients other rooms and found a wonderful antique Italian leather stool that we placed next to center table in the central foyer. We added large branches to her beautiful Chinese planter, found a lovely antique chinoiserie sewing box for the table and removed the rug from underneath the table. You can see below what a spectacular difference that made.

Before

After

The chest of drawers, and the rug beneath it, that were in the entry area was off center in the hall. I recentered the piece, hung an antique giltwood mirror above it, placed candlestick lamps with charming shades, and refreshed the planter that the client had placed there. Now there was a space next to the chest that cried out for a chair. My favorite vintage store had an old Michael Taylor style chair that would fit the bill. We placed a small oil painting above it and the entire area felt warm and inviting, instead of a bit "off".

Before

After

In the dining room, we rearranged the display areas on her antique French buffet and the sideboard by using her silver tea set and other family pieces. We found a new mirror that was painted in just the right shade of blue and rehung the art there as well. Again, one of the clients beautiful containers was repurposed for just the right touch in the dining room. The room felt fresh and completely revived!

The clients were so thrilled with their new look. They just loved it. They told me over and over how delighted they were with everything. And of course, the joy that our clients feel when the project is complete is what we live and work so hard for!

Before

After

As we were considering our marketing plans for the new year, I remembered how much we enjoyed doing that small project in a short amount of time and how incredibly happy my clients were with the dramatic results. They couldn't have been more pleased! I thought others might be interested in “refreshing the nest” also. And we enjoyed providing that small service so much. I decided to put together a special offering of packaged services that would allow us to have some fun from time to time by doing a small service for a client, instead of the very large estates we are used to working on. Those are usually 3-5 year projects that take quite a bit of stamina! So our new offering is going out to a few selected homes this spring.

That was the birth of the "Spa Packages for the Home" idea. It is nice to know that we really can help families feel like their homes are refreshed, fluffed up and looking their best, without breaking the bank this year!

Please read my earlier blog called "Spa Packages for Spring" for more information on our special offerings. Our "Total Bliss" package even includes a treatment at La Belle Day Spa on the day we are working in your home!

If you or any of your friends are ready for a "Spa" day for your home, let them know about our special offers for Spring!

Spa Packages for Spring

Announcing a new service at JAID!

We at JAID have been known for 25 years for providing interior architecture and interior design services on large and complex estates and vacation properties.

We are pleased to offer some new, smaller service packages to a selected group of our neighborhood friends. See our blog titled "The Birth of the Spa Packages" to see how we came up with this idea for a special offering and some photos of the difference it makes in a home. As happens so often, we got the idea from one of our dear clients.

Listed below is a bit more information about our new packaged services that allow us to work with people we have not been able to take care of in the past. We call them our "Spa Packages", because they are packaged into a limited number of hours, and "spa" because taking advantage of the offer will allow you to completely "refresh your nest"!


The “Total Bliss”: The Several-Rooms Package

All of the services of the "Polished and Glowing" package shown below, plus:

- Focuses on several rooms for a treatment of rearranging/displaying/organizing
- A preview visit to plan for your big day
- Our entire team including Jane and our Senior Designer will be on hand to dramatically transform your home.
- Re-hanging and reorganizing your art work
- Arranging your accessories into vibrant displays
- Any additional services you have pre-selected with us
- Plus a La Belle gift certificate for a spa treatment of your choice on the day of your service!

With this package, we may also be able to provide services other than these. Visit our website at http://www.janeantonacci.com/ and go to the "About Us" page for a complete list of the services we offer.

We take care of the transformation, while you’re totally pampered!
~ $5800~


The “Polished and Glowing” Deluxe Package: A two-three-room package

All the items included in "Stress Free" package shown below, plus:

- Helping you to envision the possibilities of your room
- Light furniture rearranging
- Fresh ideas for framing and installation of your art
- Help with remodeling finishes and material selections, if desired
- Window treatment ideas and quick sketches
- Suggestions for the brilliant use of color in your rooms like pillows, art prints and paint

Leaves your home positively glowing!
~$2200~


The “Stress Free” Package: The one-room package

Focusing on one room, our services include:

- Suggestions for furniture rearranging
- Reorganizing bookshelves and messy areas
- Creating charming displays with your accessories, or with some new items
- Suggesting many ideas for you to follow to finish up the room
- Choosing new paint colors and simple remodeling ideas , if desired
- Ideas and resources for “greening” your home

Takes the stress right out of your living environment!
~$1200~

The best way for us to arrive at your home well-prepared for a very productive session will be for you to send us 2-4 digital photos of each of the rooms you would like us to work on for you. Then,we can review the photos and plan some special things just for you! Please send an e-mail to us at info@janeantonacci.com telling us your name, address, phone, e-mail address. and the best time and way to reach you. Please attach the photos and include in the Subject line: Spa Photos and your name.

In order to book the service, we require a deposit of 50% of the service. Then we will book the date and time for your appointment. On the day of your service, we will charge the balance to your credit card. Simple as that!

With your permission, we may bring along a few small accessories for your home. Or tell us what you are looking for, and we will find it and bring it to you. Just like that, your room feels more complete! These items will be billed to you as a separate charge from your service fee.

There are a limited number of these appointments available through May 31, 2009. Please call us now to reserve your time.

Your home will thank you for it treating it so well!

Heaven just might be in Puerto Vallarta....

I just returned from a magical holiday in Puerto Vallarta.

Although I've been to several other places in Mexico, this was my first trip to Vallarta. As always, I wanted to stay in a well designed hotel, one that would allow me to experience one of the best designs of the region I am visiting. I found this at the Hacienda San Angel in the Centro region of Puerto Vallarta.


Take a look:

The Grand Salon of Hacienda San Angel

The owner, Janice Chatterton, had purchased the original property as her vacation home in 1990. At one time, Richard Burton had purchased this house as a Valentine's present for his wife, Susan Hunt. Over the years, Ms. Chatterton has purchased 5 additional Old Vallarta-style homes. She proceeded to blend them seamlessly into a museum quality treasure in the heart of town.

One of the three swimming pools on the property.

And here is another of the pools:

Did I mention the views?

Behind antique carved doors is the chapel. Yes, it has its own chapel:

Puerto del Cielo Chapel

One side of the chapel is completely open to the sky ("cielo" ). And no chapel is complete without a view, is it?

View through the arches from the chapel

The grounds are immaculate:

Stairs to two suites, candlelit at night

And the rooms! Oh the rooms made me swoon.....

Fabulous views, 600 count Egyptian cotton linens, and amazing antiques

Each room is unique in size, layout, and design:

The divine Serafin Suite

The owner was able to purchase about 80 percent of the collection from an art museum in town that was closing. The collection of sculptures and paintings represents one of the best collections I have seen outside of the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City.

Common area off the Grand Salon

The beautiful suites, the service, the appointments, the collections.....

San Gabriel Suite

The Angels live here!

Jane Antonacci Interior Design

The Art Sale of the Century!

Yves Saint Laurent in the grand salon of his apartment on Rue de Babylone with model Sibyl Buck, October 27, 1995. They are surrounded by the Surrealist-period Léger painting The Black Profile (1928), sold by the artist’s widow, and Jean Dunand’s 1925 Art Deco brass-and-lacquer vase, among the treasures to be auctioned at the Grand Palais, in Paris, February 23 to 25. By Jean-Marie Perier/From Photos12/Polaris.

The Yves Saint Laurent auction at Christies will present one of the premiere art collections of the 20th century. The auction collection has over 700 items and is estimated to be between $300-400 million in value. The photos I have seen of the apartments that Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge lived in are filled with amazing pieces that are rarely available to purchase. The items could create their own museum, but instead will go,scattered over the world item by item, to be loved and enjoyed by a lucky few individuals. This auction is destined to heavily influence furnishings and interiors for the next 10 years.

The auction will cover everything from Renaissance decorative arts to Modernist paintings and sculpture. The focus is on 18th century French furniture and arts like this:


to the finest paintings of the 20th century:


The paintings and sculpture collections focused primarily on the Impressionists and Modern artists, including Matisse, Cezanne, Monet and a who's who of the 20th century including Leger, Duchamp, Picasso, Gauguin, and Giacometti.

Take a moment to go to the Ecatalogs section and then you too, will be able to enjoy each of the items in the five catalogs.

I especially like the Decorative Arts catalog, which includes quite rare items, like this rock crystal cup:



How big were those crystals???

And the Art Deco furniture collection is representative of the most brilliant designers of the day. Read Frank Pollaros's newsletter and click on the link in his letter to see these pieces. (KM-Franks email that I am forwarding to you)

Although in the photos of the apartments, every surface is COVERED with stuff, the insight I have gained from it is that a thoughtful combination of Modernist furniture and art with the Classical styles of the Renaissance, Venetian, Ottoman and Neo-Classical can work wonderfully together. It would be a matter of how it is done, not can it be done.


With A LOT of editing, a heavy use of reproductions, and a significant amount of bailout money, you and I could make these diverse styles work too!

Jane Antonacci Interior Design

Renovate? Or sell and buy new?

Recently in the Chicago Tribune, Karen Klages reported:

“With existing home sales and home prices in most regions of the country down, it makes sense for home owners to think at least twice about investing in a renovation that will enable them to live better now and make the house more saleable later.”

I have been reading similar opinions in many of the trade news sources I
keep up with regularly. The consensus goes like this: Instead of trying to sell your house and finding a different one that is somehow better for you, it might make sense to consider staying put. And it does make a lot of sense. Many experts say this market will take several years to correct enough that we can assume a profit on the sale of a home bought in the last few years.

So look around. What is it that makes you want to find a different house? Is it that you need more room? A better kitchen? A new bath? More storage space? A home office?

All of this can be accomplished by having a creative team like the one at JAID take a good look at your home and hear your ideas. After a bit of study, we can show you how the changes might be made, give you some ideas of cost, etc.

Perhaps you will be able to turn this:




Into something like this:




This was a remodel we did for a client where we turned an averaged sized, dated bathroom into a “spa bath”, using certified teak for cabinetry, marble slabs designed to look like a single chunk of marble and tumbled tile. Simple, quiet and with a bit of a hand crafted look to it.

Or, you might want to convert that little used playroom:




into a more practical office/conference room for the work you do at home:




Karen Klages report in the Chicago Tribune continues:

“According to a senior NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) researcher, small renovation projects, curb-appeal improvements, energy-efficiency improvements and kitchen and bath remodels all make sense this year. Anything to do with saving energy today in the home are all very viable ideas.

Those who have a bit more of a budget might consider incorporating better lighting and at least one to-die-for gourmet appliance such as a built-in espresso machine, dishwasher drawers or a multipurpose drawer such as the CoolDrawer from Fisher & Paykel (Fisher Paykel). It changes from a simple pantry drawer to freezer, refrigerator and wine chiller with the touch of a button.”

So think about it. What might be possible? In the next few posts, I’ll be featuring some of the remodels we’ve designed and coordinated for our clients recently.

And watch this space. I am putting the finishing touches on a special offer that will help you think differently about the possibilities of your current home!

Jane Antonacci Interior Design

Pollaro Acquires Extraordinary Collection of Genuine Macassar Ebony

If you saw the last post on the blog, I showed you some beautiful museum quality furniture produced by Frank Pollaro. Frank recently sent me some photos showing me the path that the ancient logs of Macassar ebony take to reach his workshop in New Jersey. These will help you to understand how truly rare the wood is that passes Mr. Pollaro’s inspection for his furniture. And you will see why it takes so long and is so costly to make very custom furniture.

Here are portions of his notes and some of the photos that were sent to me:

“Pollaro Custom Furniture has become a major consumer of Macassar ebony wood in both veneer and solid lumber forms. This wood species has a dramatic appearance, with a long straight grain pattern in strongly contrasting light/dark colors. During the Art Deco period, Macassar ebony was the favored wood species for furniture production by master craftsmen such as Ruhlmann. It continues to be revered by today’s furniture designers.”

“True Macassar ebony, Diospyros celebica, is in scarce supply. Only 4% of the ebony logs that wood dealers offer to me are genuine Macassar ebony. And, most of those that are genuine are small in width, reflecting the scarcity of mature trees. The remaining 96% of the ebony we see is a lower grade cousin of Diospyros celebica, with blurred grain pattern, pale color, and large pore structure that produces a coarse finish and a lifeless piece of furniture.”

“We recently had a chance encounter with a wood dealer who travels the world looking for exotic wood species. The dealer described a cache of true Macassar ebony that he discovered in the jungles of Indonesia about ten years ago. An “Indiana Jones” type, he seemed prone to exaggeration, so we decided to proceed with caution. As “Indiana” told the tale, the ebony was discovered on Sulawesi, a remote island that lies between Borneo and New Guinea. The ebony was legally harvested by local lumbermen under “Indiana’s” direction and transported out of the jungle using ox drawn sleds. The ebony was then shipped to the US by boat and slowly dried under controlled conditions for 10 years.”

“We visited “Indiana’s” US warehouse where this ebony was stored. His inventory consisted of 127 Diospyros celebica cants (squared logs derived from 127 individual trees). The outward appearance of these cants was deceiving, since their rough exterior surface had oxidized to an unremarkable dark brown color during their ten years in storage. However, once sliced into lumber, the dramatic character of genuine Macassar ebony was revealed. Not only were the cants perfect in grain quality and color, but they were extremely large in width, resulting in boards up to 14 inches wide and 15 feet long. No single cant was less than 6 inches in width or 12 feet in length. I have not seen material of this quality in my 20 years in the furniture business. As a result, I purchased the dealer’s entire inventory of Macassar ebony."

“The ebony cants were then delivered to the LaSalle Sawmill in Oregon to be converted into lumber. I personally supervised the milling program, spending a week in Oregon’s high desert to ensure that my rigid quality specifications were satisfied. The ebony lumber we processed was of such tight grain structure that the sawmill consumed 63 saw blades just to convert the 127 cants into lumber. More importantly, as each cant was cut, the unique character of each log was revealed. I have never seen ebony of such dramatic color and grain pattern in my life.”

"After milling, each ebony board was washed and restacked in the exact sequence it existed in the tree. The boards derived from each cant were stickered and banded together, preserving the original sequence. This gives me the ability to perfectly book-match boards for each piece of ebony furniture we build."

The result of this adventure is that Pollaro now possesses the largest collection of genuine Macassar ebony lumber in the world. Fortunately, each stage of the process of creating this unique inventory was captured photographically, so I can provide you with the flavor of this unusual undertaking. These photographs are shown below.

In the hands of Pollaro’s master craftsmen, this extraordinary material can be transformed into museum quality furniture. You can refer to Pollaro’s website Pollaro, to review some of his past work with Macassar ebony.

A close up view of the end grain of a cant giving a hint of the highly figured wood inside.


More cants showing the unique end grain of genuine Macassar ebony.


Oxen in Sulawesi preparing to drag the ebony cants out of the jungle.

To the right of center you can see one of the ebony cants tied to the ox drawn sled and several more on the side.


Notice the size of the cant being sawn. It’s 13 inches thick and 12 inches wide.


Here the sawblade is about half way through the first thin cut to reveal the wood inside.


A close look at the classic grain only found in genuine Macassar ebony. Take note of the width which is nearly 9 inches.


This is a good example of the book matching that is possible with sequence cut lumber.


Some of the many colors and grain are revealed when the wood is wet.


One of the Three Sisters mountain range in the background


48,000 pounds of Macassar ebony lumber arriving at our workshop in Union, NJ.


Organizing some of the lumber in our lot and preparing for storage.

Now you know how this very rare wood is discovered, handled and cut. It is a painstaking process that is absolutely required to achieve the refinement of amazing furniture that looks like this:

Another exquisite example of Pollaro's artistry!

Jane Antonacci Interior Design