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Honour and Dishonour

Wednesday, November 17, 2010 by Chris

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Further to this week's posts, I immediately discovered that the downside of my new Falcon Chair is that it makes an excellent coat rack. Very bad. The photo above is the first and only time I shall allow this to happen; there is absolutely no excuse with a coat cupboard immediately behind the chair. My second addendum is to the Judy post; while I was in the country with my folks we dropped into the weekly tag sale at Waddington's Brighton where the tie-back below was going for a buck. When I got it home it seemed appropriate to dress the photo of Judy in my entryway; it just feels right, like a mourning gesture, to see her draped in black but also honoured. God, how I miss her.

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Decorating Detectives

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 by Chris

3 Comments

You and I would tour Spadina Museum and not have a clue (or a care) that this wallpaper or that drapery wasn’t absolutely accurate but the project’s chief curators, Karen Edwards and Neil Brochu, take authenticity very, very seriously. Spadina reopened to the public last month after a nearly year-long restoration that took the grand old mansion back to its glory days in the 1920s and '30s. From now until the end of November special tours of the house are being offered that examine the enormous challenge of recreating rooms like the library, below, featuring this digitally reproduced wallpaper.

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I Covetous: Monumental Brass Chest

Saturday, November 6, 2010 by Chris

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This is the worst photograph I've ever run on styleNorth, please forgive me. But I'm so thoroughly captivated by the beauty and mystery of this gargantuan and richly embellished brass chest that I just have to post about it. The chest is about 4' tall, nearly as deep and at least 5' wide; it stands in the window (hence the glare) of a would-be antiques shop at 3045 Dundas Street West in Toronto's Junction neighbourhood. I say would-be antiques shop because in five years of spending time on this strip I have never, ever seen the place open -- mornings, afternoons, weekends, weekdays, never open. Consequently, I have no idea what the chest would cost even if it could be purchased.

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A Woman After My Own Heart

Wednesday, October 20, 2010 by Chris

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I love posting great finds and sales on styleNorth but your encouraging comments aside, it sometimes feel likes like I'm shouting into the wind. And then I hear from a reader like Rosanna who found exactly the dining chairs she was hunting for thanks to my post about Skypad. Well, maybe they weren't exactly what she had in mind, the avacado green leather and corduroy probably wouldn't have been anyone's first choice but by God, she's made them work. What I love about Rosanna is that she uses Craigslist, Kijiji, blogs and Google to hunt down not just what she's after but the cheapest possible version of what she's after.

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Upside Down? Or Rightside Up?

Monday, August 9, 2010 by Chris

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While surfing 1stdibs.com today I came across this coffee table, which I instantly recognized from the August 2010 issue of Canadian House and Home (photo by Stacey Brandford). In my opinion, it was the most glamorous shot in the mag that month and I was crazy, absolutely crazy about the coffee table, which belongs to journalist Karen Von Hahn and her husband Thomas. I love that 1stdibs displays the table one way, like a letter M, and the Von Hahn's present it the other way, like a W. What's your preference? The M's a bit golden arches don't you think?

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