From the Vault: Decorating

It’s going to be a big Memorial Day this year in our urban home. Regular readers know that since January, we have been splitting our time between urban homes in New York City and Los Angeles . Memorial Day will be a New York City weekend. Thanks to last summer's historic legislation, same sex couples can legally wed in New York , and that is just what John and I are going to do. As John points out, at twenty one years and counting, we are already married, but making it legally so brings into focus both the irony of living bicoastally – often apart - and the strength of a partnership that can not only withstand the circumstances, but thrive.

Much of the writing, and the living, in 2012 has centered around having not one urban home but two. It goes to the heart of the homestead that where your home is located influences the kind of home it is. Every region of America has its own blend of cultural influences, from the flinty colonialism of New England to the open-space practicality of the Midwest , from the genteel lushness of the American South to the flannel coziness of the pacific northwest. These are encountered not just figuratively through the pens and cursors of lifestyle writers but literally from the boards of architects and the toolboxes of builders. Wherever they are located, homes contain our lives, catalog them, make them sacred, propel them forward.

Whether it is your first time or you’ve lost count, setting up a home reminds you of what you know while alerting you to what you've missed. In outfitting the California kitchen with electronics and tools, we learned that many of the items we had been using for years in New York City could not be improved on, though we also encountered  a few pleasant surprises. This was the source of two of the most popular columns at Urban Home so far this year: a series on outfitting your kitchen with electrics and with tools. But then tools are nothing new to any homekeeper; we use them for every area of our discipline from cleaning house to baking, from gardening to entertaining. As popular as this year's kitchen columns are last year's column on an inarguable necessity for every home: a well-equipped toolbox. In fact, Urban Home is so committed to every home having the best-equipped and -organized toolbox that circumstances allow that we published the column as one of the printable, downloadable guides that are available on the site.

Being a Los Angelino invokes not just the awareness of my Q factor but makes me responsible to it, so it is appropriate to note that, along with memory pieces and recipes, decorating is the most popular content area at Urban Home Blog. It is an area I love to write and that readers seem to enjoy reading - thank you for that. In the few years since Urban Home launched, a few traditions have established themselves. One such is that, every autumn, I devote an in-depth column to decorating. This is because during the summer as culminated by Labor Day, and provided other issues don't command my time and attention, I take advantage of the slackened pace of the season to assess and refresh the design of a room or rooms in our home. In the past this has included updating the dining area and the living room, and last summer's mammoth project of switching the home office and the bedroom. These are very popular pieces, up to the point that last year I got a mention on a favorite radio station as well as an assignment to a quick but satisfying outside decorating project. I am grateful to readers -- and listeners! -- for the positive response to these columns.

It is satisfying to have readers respond favorably to my decorating work and to the writing about it, because it was design that provided my foothold to adulthood as a young man in New York City. I learned to navigate the city as a young design student and learned much of adult living in the process. I haunted the period rooms at the Met with a sketchbook and pencil case in my hands and just enough change for a cafe espresso in my pocket. I cannot tell you how much time I spent there, for if you're sensitive to it, time does truly go into suspension in those rooms. One can hear the rustle of taffeta skirts and the murmurs of experienced lovers in the rococo rooms, make penance in the frigid rigidity of the Gothic worship room, languish in the shimmering wine-scented heat of the Roman lounge, rest profoundly in the tranquility of the Chinese court.

And just walking Greenwich Village was an education. The obvious reasons of bohemian freedom of thought and expression must not be discounted, but history hangs in the very air in the Village, confined by the iron gates, the red bricks, the cobblestones. This was true not just poetically but practically, for the among the ways the eclecticism of the Village expressed itself was in small shops whose pride was in their curatorial nature. As noted last autumn, a visit to LEO Design is an education in American Craft. LEO has survived, but sadly so many others have not. One store on Hudson Street sold perfectly rendered period light fixtures, while another specialized in mid-century ceramics. As a young homekeeper, a piece of Russell Wright serveware from Kitschen was an ironic treat, as many of those very kinds of pieces had been items in my grandmother's homestead. She took good care of them, certainly knew they were "nice," but would have been dubious about the very idea that something you could get at the green stamp store would one day be a highly desirable collectible, or that it should be. To her, as to all of our ancestors who used these pieces, value was measured in usability and style was the bonus. This was equally true of the depression glass at the 26th Street flea market and the figural salt and pepper shakers at Atomic Passion and the patterned textiles at Farfetched and the bubble ashtrays at Las Venus and so forth. It's an important lesson to take into consideration in our own decorating work, for whether we are shopping at the highest-end antique dealer or at the box store, what we like and how it looks are important, and often appreciability is a consideration, but items bereft of usability are destined to become curiosities.

Of course, these curated shops were not just confined to design -- we read about one such as we gorged ourselves on chocolate this Valentine's Day -- and they didn't just tell the story of the Village, they perpetuated it. Unfortunately (and in a path that does point the compass westward) differently than today, the Village was home to weird, arty kids trying to navigate the twisty streets that lead towards adulthood, and the elders who had arrived. For most of us these items, which to our parents were as matter of fact as the shower curtain and the lawn mower, were a common frame of reference; objects of curatorial importance that did, in fact, not just merit but demand that interface between appraiser and object, between object and we who were appreciating, even using, it. That's what design does: it locks experience into time and place, and in so doing, if history allows, the design itself becomes timeless. All of this culminates, in individuals attuned to the vibrations that allow the talent to awaken and flower, in the profound gift -- and responsibility -- of aesthetic.

Nourishing that gift is important for, as with any area of homekeeping, decorating is an area of lifelong learning. But the learning doesn't need to be fancy or formal, and it needn't -- in fact, I would argue it shouldn't be -- confined to rarefication. If any discipline illustrates learning by doing, it is homekeeping. While homekeeping letters are an invaluable and in many ways underserved area of study, think how most people learn to keep house: by watching, by being drafted, by doing.  While cookbooks and cleaning manuals and so forth have always existed, decorating became an arena into which homekeeping shelters (publishing entities that cover a territory of content; for example, Better Homes and Gardens or Good Housekeeping) could introduce specific, brandable expertise to targeted areas. Thus as you build your homekeeper's library, decorating is an area in which you can find titles on pretty much any topic that meets your interests or needs. Last winter, Urban Home recommended some decorating books for holiday presents, and on an earlier winter's day, we rifled the turquoise-edged pages of Dorothy Draper's masterpiece Decorating is Fun for the joy and wisdom contained within them. And for those of you who enjoy and hopefully use this popular area of content at Urban Home, further recommendations for your homekeeper's library are forthcoming.

Like much of homekeeping, decorating is a skill and a talent that is also a contribution. I love writing decorating content because it is an opportunity to share both ideas and their practical application. I appreciate the positive response from readers, both through social media and through real world practice. Just this spring, I completed another satisfying design assignment whose genesis was a reader accessing the decorating content at Urban Home Blog. As John and I proceed into summer as married men (finally!), the travel between Los Angeles and New York City -- as noted last January, literally between time and distance -- will increase. I don't know what this year's summer project will be, but I expect there to be one -- and chances are, it will involve design from both coasts. And as long as there are readers, I will not just decorate my worlds, but write about doing so.