Her pieces—platters, bowls, vases, teapots—are indeed functional but they are also beautiful, the work of an artist at the top of her game. After high school in London, Alison studied ceramics at Textura, a small but renowned artists’ commune in Gijon, Spain, and continued her education at the Rhode Island School of Design, from which she graduated. She apprenticed in Manhattan for three years before returning to the coastal town of her youth, where she currently keeps a studio and gallery.

The ocean is just a few feet from her door and its bounty is wonderfully translated in her work. Sea urchins become bowls, barnacles become candlesticks, clam shells are vases. Especially versatile are her oyster shell platters and bowls. Imagine the white platter piled high with peeled shrimp or crudite and a matching footed bowl with dipping sauce in the center or nearby.

Each piece is hand molded and hand glazed, and, therefore, unique—just like the forms that inspired them.

Pictured above, clockwise from top left: Alison Evans in her Maine studio; sea urchin bowl in abalone and tortoise, oyster platters in porcelain white, and oyster bowl in abalone and tortoise, all available at Digs.

Shop Digs at TAIGAN.com

The song may be a sad one, but we think these blue poseys and handmade bud vases would brighten even the most overcast summer day. The center bouquet is from the book Flowers for the Home, Inspirations from the World Over by Prudence Designs. Written by Grayson Handy, co-owner of Manhattan’s Prudence Design and Events, the book showcases more than 100 arrangements for both every day and special occasions—ranging from gorgeous rose bridal bouquets to centerpieces for a Mexican fiesta—and includes detailed instructions along with a list of suppliers. The arrangement above utilizes blue and purple hydrangeas, scabiosa, and lisianthus, as well as one of our favorite things—an everyday object like a pottery pitcher pressed into duty as a vase.

Not that we have anything against vases—especially when they are handmade versions from Judy Jackson Studio in New York. Available in lovely shades of blue (seafoam, light blue, indigo), they are perfect for the hydrangeas of the season.

Pictured above, from left: Bud vase in indigo by Judy Jackson at Haven; summer arrangement featured in Flowers for the Home, available from Digs; tall bud vase in indigo by Judy Jackson at Haven.

Power grew up in the tidewater of Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, went to a finishing school in Italy, and started off her professional life as an interior designer in Manhattan. It wasn’t until she moved to Santa Monica twenty years ago that she had her first garden. Hers was such a success that friends begged her to help them with theirs and she found her true calling. Since then she’s designed gardens at a private vineyard (Moraga Vineyard, a project she considers her best), the sculpture garden at the Norton Simon Museum, a public park in the center of the Beverly Hills shopping district (the Beverly Canon Garden), and countless private gardens in places as far flung as Germany (for a project with frequent collaborator Frank Gehry) and Australia.

Power’s friend Suzanne Rheinstein, the interior designer and owner of Taigan’s own Hollyhock, says the key to Power’s brilliance is that “she knows how to live. Sunday lunches at her own garden, one of my favorites, are delightful.” Power agrees that she does “bring my knowledge of how people like to live in clusters” into her designs. “Look at the chairs after a party,” she says. “They’re always pulled into a tight circle. Or everyone always crowds around the kitchen table. Those are the perfect floor plans!”

The same, she says, applied to public spaces. “Look at the Beverly Canon Gardens. You can’t be intimate when you are more than five feet away, you have to be able to touch, which is why I love to crowd nine or ten people around a table for seven or eight. Giggling always starts when you play sardines!” The Beverly Canon Gardens include a sunken court with movable tables and chairs so “people can move their seats according to the weather,” and four Tipu trees create dappled light over some of the tables.

The Beverly Canon Project also has a lawn for play or special events, trickling water from a fountain “to calm the nerves and slightly mask the sounds of the city,” and lovely fragrance from the blossoms of potted lemon trees. All three elements are in keeping with her theory that public spaces should be designed for a range of experiences. “One simple way to do that,” she says, “is to provide light and dark places—some secluded and mysterious, others for parading around and showing off, and always a place to gather.”

In her book, Power says that travel served as her university education. Her own garden at “Casa Nancina” was inspired by trips to the Alhambra in southern Spain and to Brazil. To get the right color for her cottage’s exterior, she experimented by mixing some saffron she’d brought home from Morocco with water. “I’d seen this color used so exquisitely in Seville, Spain and Ouro Petro, Brazil,” she says. “It looked beautiful against the sky, and also worked equally well with terra cotta pots and the grays and verdant foliage I wanted to plant in my garden.”

Power insists she doesn’t have a favorite plant or flower, though there’s lots of agave at Casa Nancina. “The agave has become my symbol,” she says. “It provides great living sculpture, and of course tequila comes from it as well!” No matter what plants she uses or who she’s designing for, the one constant, she says, is beauty. “Beauty is still very important to me, though lately it is very unfashionable in design. We all need beautiful, natural places in our lives, and become very uncivilized when we don’t have them.”

The Power of Gardens, available at Hollyhock, is aptly named. There is not a single image in the book that won’t inspire. Power says her job designing and nurturing living gardens still brings her “never-ending joy and wonder.” That passion is evident on every page.

Pictured above, left: Native oaks lightly shade California Lilac along a winding path at Moraga Vineyard.
Top right: A free range chicken on “tapis vert” framed by low stone steps and a wisteria covered arbor at Moraga Vineyard.
Bottom right: A garden “room” featuring Kentia palms and a very long pool at a house in Malibu.

Shop Hollyhock on TAIGAN.

In the aptly titled More is More, Hutton Wilkinson, Tony Duquette’s friend and business partner of more than two decades, takes us on a tour Duquette’s studios, homes, and, most important, his fantastic imagination.

Wilkinson, president of Tony Duquette, continues his mentor’s work as a jewelry and interior designer; he and his wife Ruth even live at Dawndridge, Duquette’s over-the-top Beverly Hills estate. The pair first met when the teenage Wilkinson volunteered to work on an installation Duqette was putting up at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery. Their long collaboration enables him to offer delightful snippets of life with Duquette: the daily studio lunches (always steak and green beans) attended by luminaries from Anita Loos to Clare Boothe Luce; the clients including Elizabeth Arden and Doris Duke; the star-studded parties at Dawndridge; and, of course, the great stories (once, a client commissioned dinner party centerpieces from Duquette, and the brass and glass boxes of fabulously adorned stuffed birds he produced were so tantalizingly gorgeous the guests simply took them home). A whole chapter is devoted to Duquette’s wife of fifty years, Elizabeth “Beegle” Duquette, herself an accomplished artist.

In an introduction, fashion designer John Galliano, quotes Diana Vreeland’s famous dictum, “Never fear being vulgar, just boring.” In actuality, Duquette was neither—he was a modernist visionary with an insatiable curiosity, an extraordinary eye (he likened himself to the phoenix, “the bird of one thousand eyes”), and an uncanny knack for almost divine juxtaposition. In a lecture titled “The Enchanted Vision” delivered at UCLA in the early 1970s, and printed here for the first time, he cites a simple object from nature, a starfish: “Add a precious stone, and viewed truly it becomes the natural object it really is and effortlessly subordinates itself to what Blake has called the ‘cosmos of the shell.’”

Almost all his jewels (he called them talismans) contained an alluring combination of the precious and the humble. Duquette says he found magic in shells, antlers, feathers, “the carapace of turtles,” and “the skins of lizards and snakes and leopards,” just to name a few. He felt that a “piece of rock crystal” (which he used a lot) had as much “serenity as the lotus palmed hand of Buddha.” But he used no material as much as the sublime emerald green malachite. His printed cotton malachite fabric is now available from Jim Thompson fabrics; the Duquette company sells consoles covered in the stuff and much of the jewelry still incorporates it.

Malachite objects were also featured in his tablescapes, which were always, in his words, “dynamic.” He abhorred “lifeless traditional symmetrical arrangement,” which he found “dead in its perfection.” Though Duquette himself died in 1999, there is nothing dead about his vision, which in Wilkinson’s own creative hands continues to have great influence. This book is a must for anyone interested in design—or just plain exuberance for living.

Pictured above, top row, left: A corner of Wilkinson’s house showing off one of a pair of consoles and mirrors from the Duquette collection. The console is faux bois and glued with Duquette’s malachite printed cotton over the surface. The mirror is 18th Century Italian and has been remodeled with the additions of faux coral branches and ceramic pagodas. A pair of malachite eggs is on the console.

Top row, center: More is More by Hutton Wilkinson, a limited edition of which is available at Hollyhock.

Top row, right: A tablescape at Dawndridge featuring a veremeil sailing ship, golden rats, articulated birds and insects, rock crystal votives, and rare porcelains strewn across his signature malachite printed cloth.

Bottom row, right: A malachite covered ashtray from Lush Life, which would be right at home in a Duquette tablescape, as would the store’s rock crystal bowls and votives, and its extensive collection of coral.

Bottom row, center: Duquette with Hutton Wilkinson.

Bottom row, right: Duquette would approve of this malachite encrusted black Lucite box designed exclusively for Forty Five Ten by Eduardo Garza. We think he’d also be drawn to the store’s Kimberly McDonald earrings as well as to Dean Harris’s chunky aquamarine necklace.

Shop Hollyhock, Lush Life, and Forty Five Ten on TAIGAN.

To read Sister Parish Design: On Decorating is to sit in a room with more than two dozen of the most talented designers in both the United States and England—and to be completely enthralled. Designers including Bunny Williams, Jeffrey Bilhuber, and Taigan’s own Suzanne Rheinstein reminisce about storied projects and famous clients, share fresh ideas and strong opinions, and summon influences from Dorothy Draper and Billy Baldwin to, of course, the great Sister Parish herself.

Parish, who started working in the midst of the Great Depression and died in 1994, became one of the country’s most iconic interior decorators. She loved chintz and often elaborate window treatments, and created stunning spaces for such A-List clients as Bill and Babe Paley. But she was also all about using family heirlooms, found objects, and such humble fabrics as mattress ticking. She knew that comfort was the hallmark of good design and that above all rooms are to be lived in.

Authors Susan Bartlett Crater and Libby Cameron run Sister Parish Design, a company that produces a collection of hand-screened fabrics and wallpapers inspired by the designs Parish loved and used in the decoration of her own houses. But their connections to Parish go much deeper—Crater is Parish’s granddaughter and co-author of Sister: The Life of Legendary American Interior Decorator Mrs. Henry Parish II, and Cameron is a designer who worked for Parish at Parish-Hadley Associates for fifteen years.

Among the tidbits they’ve gathered: Parish’s close friend and partner Albert Hadley recalls, in delicious detail, the meeting with Brooke Astor that resulted in her famous lacquered red library and imparts his opinion that “overhead lighting is a tragedy.” Suzanne Rheinstein explains why porch ceilings should be painted pale blue and Miles Redd describes his chic—and cheap—college apartment. Todd Romano tells why it’s okay to ditch Aunt Edna’s Victorian parlor set, while Mario Buatta says it’s perfectly fine to show the TV—“Those things that pop up from the foot of the bed look like caskets.”

The charming tales and useful revelations are matched only by Mita Corsini Bland’s breathtaking watercolors of many of the interiors under discussion. This book is a gem—and a must-read for anyone who is remotely interested in where, and how, they live.

Pictured above, clockwise from left, Mita Corsini Bland’s watercolors of: A lovely blue-and-white bedroom by Mario Buatta; a former artist’s studio in Southampton, NY from the chapter, “Dressing the Window;” the entrance to a circular sitting room in Manhattan.

For copies of Sister Parish Design: On Decorating, shop Hollyhock on TAIGAN now.

It’s hard to believe Elle Décor has only been in existence for twenty years. In those two short decades, the magazine has taken us into iconic interiors (Bill Blass’s Connecticut bedroom, Yves St. Laurent’s living room in Marrakesh) and shown us the work of America’s most important designers (Albert Hadley, Bunny Williams, Jeffrey Bilhuber, Stephen Sills, to name just a tiny handful). We’ve seen how Cindy Crawford lives (in high style, thanks to the work of designer Michael Smith) and where Ricky and Ralph Lauren lounge (next to an idyllic pond-like pool in Montauk). Style and Substance, The Best of Elle Décor collects all of the above and more, and personifies the magazine’s ethos: “We believe that luxury shouldn’t be expensive, and there’s no reason affordable furnishings shouldn’t be chic,” says the book’s author and Elle Décor editor-in-chief Margaret Russell. “And when offered the choice, we’ll take a bit of patina and wear and tear over brand-spanking-new décor every time.”

The book is divided into sections on specific rooms (kitchens, kids’ rooms, etc.) and in addition to the seductive pictures, there is a “Style Guide” in each chapter full of helpful tips. There’s also a “Sourcebook” in the end, which includes Taigan’s own Hollyhock (where signed copies of the book are on sale), as well as John Derian (carried by Pied Nu and Revival). Several brands carried by Corzine & Co., including Waterford, Wedgewood, Christofle, and Baccarat, are also included.

Pictured above, from left: Designer Miles Redd sheathed Mila and Tom Tuttle’s Manhattan dining room in De Gournay’s Sans Souci wall covering and commandeered a vintage suzani for use as a tablecloth (photo by Simon Upton); Decorator Victoria Hagan used a classic seaside palette of blue and white in a client’s Bridgehampton, New York living room that does double duty as the cover of the book (photo by Michael Mundy); It’s full-on drama in a dining room decorator Brian McCarthy lacquered persimmon for a client (photo by William Waldron).