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| A dining room in a house decorated by Asheton Langdon. |
Genius is in the eye of the beholder. One man's bright idea is another's been-there-done-that. That being said I continue to be impressed by the do-it-yourself gusto of New York interior decorator Asheton Langdon, who died earlier this year, aged 82.
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| The dining room of the New York house, which has a countrified Regency flavor, is lined with pickled-wood wainscot. The upper sections of the walls has been stretched with a nubby fabric divided into panels with woven-jute upholstery webbing. |
Recently I visited a house Langdon decorated and came back elated, my digital camera loaded with snaps of inspiring details. Several of them record the Brooklyn-born designer's creativity with, of all things, upholstery webbing. You know what I mean: the woven jute strips that keep one from falling through the seat of a chair. Typically this humble material is hidden beneath fabric, stuffing, and springs. Langdon, however, recognized that webbing could be a decorative element, particularly when deployed as trim and utilized in the creation of trompe l'oeil paneling, as shown in the dining room shown at the head of today's post.
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| A close-up of one of interior decorator Asheton Langdon's do-it-yourself boiserie, as seen at a house he decorated in New York. Measured and mitered, common upholstery webbing has been applied to a nubby fabric to create panels. |
In the same house, Langdon transformed upholstery webbing into smartly tailored passementerie, trimming portières in a book-lined corridor that connects the public areas of the house to several spare rooms (see below). The red-black-and-buff color scheme was taken from ancient Greek ceramics, examples of which are displayed on brackets, along with related antique engravings.
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| Upholstery webbing trims the curtains that flank an interior door. The panels of the wainscot were created with gaffer's tape. |
