Peonies!

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Hello everyone! Happy Sunday!! I should be out weeding but I couldn’t resist posting a few peony photos! A bouquet in a bucket…almost two dozen herbaceous peonies in my favorite colors…deep red Kansas and Sarah Bernhardt

garden peonies

A paler pink peony mixing in the border with a red rose and linaria purupea…aka Toadflax…a rampant self-seeder. garden peonies

Kansas again with Vivid Pink…backed by espaliered apple and my striped bourbon rose Honorine de Brabant and a broad leaved salvia. 

Here…while still in bud in the border…dusted with rose petals…Erigeron (Santa Barbara daisy) gambolling about …
garden

A real show-off in the garden…love all the bright beauty against galvanized metal and stone grays. In the midst of all the outside work we’re doing, and since I’m still deciding on a new computer, I decided to take advantage of being in limbo to have my office gutted and rewired, the ceiling raised. No more trailing extension cords!  The little round window was a happy surprise behind the walls.

home office

The limewash color I’m using on the walls is called “”Old Stone Wall” from Sydney Harbour Paints here. (I seem to be always in the garden…whether inside or out!). To be continued!  FYI: I’m testing out an ad program that WordPress allows. Normally I pay WordPress to NOT advertise on my blog. So we’ll see. Busy week ahead but I’m getting the hang of using my husband’s editing software. My strategy is to make him so sick of me taking over his computer that he succumbs to my demands!…and yes…I am thinking of the going over to “the dark side” (his words…not mine)…switching from PC to Apple).

Roses

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Antique roses

Antique roses

Antique roses

Antique roses

antique garden roses


Antique roses

antique garden rosesAs a bookend to my antique floral textile obsession…here are some early old roses.   Amazing how they dress up the simple painter’s canvas thrown over the kitchen table. The earliest of my Bourbon roses: Madame Issac Perrier, Madame Ernest Calvat, Souvener de Malmaison, Deuil de Dr. Reynaud …and a glimpse at an early peony.

Antique Textile Dealers

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18th c textiles

I’d like to thank a few of my favorite textile dealers for helping me get through a long winter and rainy Spring!! I couldn’t have done it without you!!! A few years ago, in Toile de Jouy Rouge here I first discovered “Les Piliers Fleuris”, showed you a few scraps I had found from UK textile dealer Sallie Ead in Rose Diet here…and was able to get both of these pelmets from Sallie a bit later from her Ebay site Lucia’s Wardrobe here.

Sallie also has a Ruby Lane shop called Lucia Collectables here. As is the case with most textile dealers….Sallie is wonderful! Besides selling big, incredible pieces, she always has alot of little affordable bits to assemble into sachets or pillows, to frame or to file into sample books (along the lines of these antique beauties here). While it lasts…you should check out this incredible rare French 18th century toile she has that tells the story of the French Revolution …here 

The piece above Sallie’s toile is a lucky Ebay find from a few years ago from a non-textile dealer…probably the point at which I first fell in love with the blue/red combination. 

I found this beautiful pillow from another UK textile dealer… Katharine Pole here and here. She backed a perfect piece of this toile with a 19th c French stripe…edging each corner with pompoms. Love Katharine’s finds! I’m always waiting eagerly for her latest offerings…love her assortment that includes clothing as well. Again, a lovely person to deal with! 

The subtle backdrop to all this floriferous beauty…Wendy Lewis’s 19th century linen bed sheet. While Wendy’s Textile Trunk here is know for incredible antique pelmets, quilts, curtains…she is my go to place for bolts of linen, and this sheet is as lovely as her photograph of it was below. The blue ticking is a temporary fit…in my dreams someday Wendy will find another set of drapery panels like these blue striped ones here from a few years ago that so many of us fell in love with!

It’s hard to “see” and “feel” these incredible antique textiles online…but her linen always has the most incredible texture.  Owning her textiles teaches me what to look for at the Alameda flea market.  I envy those of you who can trot over to Brimfield or Chelsea or Battersea and see the textiles from all these dealers in person!

antique ticking

Very early ticking piece that Wendy just listed here…early 19th or possibly 18th. Just love ticking with toile…

My good friend Karin from La Pouyette has posts on linen that are incredible here and here. An antique dealer for over 30 years, at times showing at Battersea, her blog is full of gardening and antique information. She can occasionally be talked out of seriously beautiful linen and other textiles…like the initialed piece above that I’ve shown you several times. Another Sallie Ead quilted toile piece is temporarily cast over a Bella Notte pillow. Which brings me to the last item: for all you Bella Notte linen fans. Their outlet sale is this Friday and Saturday info here

Spring Warehouse Sale Hours

 Friday May 4th &  

Saturday May 5th 

10am – 5pm

61-E Galli Drive, Novato, CA 94949 

Outside…and roses…at last….

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