The Tale of a Table (Part 1)

A detail of a tabletop I marbleized last week. Unfortunately it looks more like a map of America, as seen from the air, during a record winter freeze. My next DIY attempt at faux-finishing the table will be far better, I assure you.

It's just one project after another up at our house. For the past several months my husband and I have been making lists of improvements we intend to make in our six small rooms, from hanging wallpaper in our daughter's bedchamber to having battleship linoleum laid in the galley kitchen to boxing in our clawfoot tub so it looks more refined and less like an Appalachian set piece. Needless to say, most of these projects require significant outlays of money, so we've been approaching them slowly, one by one, as cash is saved and economy-minded workmen are interviewed.

Getting the dining room into order is at the top of the list, mainly because we'd like to start entertaining again in a finished space rather than one that is forever in flux. The plans for the winter of 2010-2011 involve the installation of wainscot; lining the walls with hand-blocked West St. Mary's wallpaper from Adelphi Paper Hangings; repainting the badly worn wood floor (a task now completed); repainting the doors and trim; having new curtains made, et cetera.

Standing about five-and-a-half feet high, the 19th-century German cast-iron stove we found on eBay was recently installed for us by Top Hat Chimney Sweeps of Fort Plain, New York. The base is an old grindstone we found on our property, a former farm. That protective metal heat-shield has to be painted into submission soon.

Recently we installed a 19th-century German wood-burning stove in the form of a Doric column; it was one of my husband's numerous eBay finds. The space is quite cold in winter — our Federal Style residence, the surviving 1801 wing of a house that was begun in the 1760s, is utterly uninsulated — so the cast-iron stove is a welcome addition when the Fahrenheit drops and lake-effect snow blankets our property. As for the round pedestal table, it is usually hidden beneath a series of tablecloths, but when those linens are off being cleaned, its circa-1900 golden-oak ugliness is all too apparent. And, to my mind, it is entirely unacceptable.

I neglected to snap a photograph of our dining table before its recent transformation, but found this representative image on the website of Prices4antiques. Made of golden oak by Kershan Bros., an Ohio manufacturer, between 1880 and 1920, it is a near-match for our dining table, though minus the casters.

A view of our dining table after it was painted; the base was finished in satin black.

Last week-end, armed with directions I adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens website, I marbleized the top of the table as an experiment. A couple of days' exertions with three shades of latex enamel applied to the wood surface with an 18-inch-by-24-inch rectangle of thin plastic sheeting resulted in flamboyant amateur excess — grey faux marble with veins so thick they resemble mortar joints. (I didn't have a sumi brush, as the directions suggested for fine veining, so pressed one of my daughter's watercolour brushes into service.) Not long after the table was completed, I had the chance to visit the regal apartment of one of my idols, interior decorator Howard S. Slatkin, and realized my mistake once I laid eyes on the pair of obelisks displayed in his dressing room. The tabletop should have been painted a deep shade of terra cotta and speckled to resemble porphyry rather than boldly smudged and veined to look like mottled grey marble. That way it would have a quieter, more sophisticated presence, would show off our china better, and live more happily with the intended wallpaper.

Red Chinese porphyry, the actual stone, as seen on the website of Xiamen Orient Rising Imports.

Looks like I know what I'll be repainting in the near future. Simple directions for executing faux porphyry can be found in George D. Armstrong's Painter's Cyclopedia (Frederick J. Drake, 1908), and I'll be following them closely. And, one hopes, with more success and subtlety.

Another view of the dining table.

Well Said: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher." ("It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.")


So wrote aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 — 1944) in his 1939 memoir Terre des Hommes.

Details Count: James Pendleton's Window-Top Fireplace

The living room of Woodland, the Beverly Hills home of producer Robert Evans, with its curious window-set fireplace. Photograph by Jason Schmidt from The New York Times.

In The New York Times this week Pilar Viladas writes about a fascinating California house — and by fascinating I don't mean just because it is the longtime home of legendary rake and movie producer Robert Evans. For me it's far more thrilling that the house at 1032 Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills was designed in 1942 by architect James Wolff for an interior decorator nobody but nobody remembers now, James B. Pendleton (né James Archibald Blakely, 1904 — 1995). A mentor of one of America's great modern-minded designers, Mel Dwork, the Oregon-born Pendleton worked in New York City in the early part of his career and was a great pal of Ruby Ross Wood's before he sought and found fame and fortune in Hollywood, as well as a wealthy wife, Mary Frances (1896 — 1963).

Called Woodlands and wreathed in vines, it is a magical structure well worth coveting, where Hollywood Regency meets François Mansart. It's also on one level, an architecture decision with a practical purpose; a deformed hip made climbing stairs difficult for Pendleton's wife. But what's always struck me as especially chic is the living room fireplace set in front of a window. If memory serves, the smoke is channeled up the sides, an engineering trick that leaves a framed garden view instead of a standard wall. Jayne Wrightsman had one of those window-topped fireplaces at her house in Palm Beach, as I recall, and I know I've seen one in an early-nineteenth-century house in France, built during the reign of Napoléon I.

I do hope somebody's working on a book about John Woolf and the houses he built for so many celebrities. There's a perfect spot on my bookshelf for it.

A pool party at Woodland in 1960, when it was the home of Mary Frances and James Pendleton. The photograph is a classic by Slim Aaron.

Well Said: Vincent Fourcade

“I learned my trade by going out every evening as a young man. I went to every pretty house in France and Italy and other places, too, and I remembered them all, even down to what was on each little table.”



So said interior designer Vincent Fourcade (1934-1992), a master of the magnificent.


Simply put, nothing beats keeping your eyes open.

Details Count: Fillet, Fillet, Who's Got a Fillet?

The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire's drawing room at the Old Vicarage, Edensor, Derbyshire, England. Image from Côte de Texas.

I was thumbing through the September 2010 issue of The World of Interiors last night and came across an illuminating comment from the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who has moved from the family pile, Chatsworth, into an early-nineteenth-century former vicarage on the estate: "One thing I learned from Chatsworth was what a good finish a fillet gives round the cornice, the doorcases, and skirting."

The fillet of which she writes, in case you didn't know, is a narrow strip of fabric, metal, or gilded wood that outlines a room and its architectural features. It is especially useful when one wishes to provide detail without actual bulk, particularly when a room is, well, deficient in architectural charm. In Deborah Devonshire's pale-pink drawing room, show above, the walls and windows are defined by a whisper-thin fillet of plain giltwood, probably three-quarters of an inch in width; its gentle metallic flash adds a touch of animation as well.

One could use grosgrain ribbon to similar effect.

Well Said: Pauline de Rothschild

"The great danger for an American woman married to a Frenchman is to become too French. To assimilate too much of another nationality weakens you. Though on the surface I might not seem to be 100 percent American, I have tried to remain as shaggy inside as possible."

So said Pauline de Rothschild (1908-1976), style icon, fashion designer, hostess, and author.