The Enchanted Home: An interview with Lisa Borgnes Giramonti of A Bloomsbury Life

There are some women so utterly awesome that  even sitting in the backyard with a big pot of tea and a plate of scones promises to be an unforgettable adventure.  As the author of A Bloomsbury Life, Lisa Borgnes Giramonti has opened her home to her devoted readers and shared her enchanting, eccentric point of view on books, design, and lifestyle.  It is always an adventure.  Come on, how could you not want to be best friends with a woman who turned a tree trunk into a side table?  Never stuffy, always witty, her posts inspire and exhilerate.  I am absolutely thrilled to feature this interview and extend many, many thanks to Lisa for her thoughtful answers.

One of my favourite things about your aesthetic is it seems rooted in your love of literature.  How has your love of books influenced your home and lifestyle?  What books do you find especially inspiring?

Dining room with Bowness wallpaper (All images courtesy of A Bloomsbury Life unless otherwise noted.)

Oh, it’s ALL about books, Sariah! They absolutely define me. My deep love for English authors such as Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, George Eliot, William Thackeray, E. F. Benson and Evelyn Waugh (to name just a very few) has definitely lodged in my head the idea of a home being a sort of modern-day coaching inn where neighbors are always welcome to pop by for a “pint or a cuppa.”

Books belong in every room; even my dining room has hand-tinted “Genuine Fake Bookcase” wallpaper by Deborah Bowness.  Books are my refuge, my solace and my inspiration. For laughter, I recommend “Widow Barnaby” by Frances Trollope, which I just finished and want to buy for everyone I know. Or “Merry Hall” by Beverley Nichols, if your taste runs to fussy 1940’s aesthetes who buy broken-down manor houses in the country and then write about the trials of redoing them (mine does). For inspiration, Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” is pretty fabulous, as is Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift From the Sea”, a series of meditations about youth, age, marriage, contentment, peace, simplicity and solitude.

 Your blog is called “A Bloomsbury Life.”  It’s such an evocative title.  First, what draws you to this period?  Second, as there is a very thin line between creating a costume drama or museum re-creation and creating a livable, modern home, how have you managed to capture the spirit of Bloomsbury while remaining thoroughly modern? 

Living room

The Bloomsbury Group (Vanessa and Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, et. al) fascinates me because they created a domestic refuge in the middle of the Sussex countryside devoted to art, friendship and learning.  Virtually every surface and corner of Charleston House (where they lived) was decorated by them — frescoes on the doors, hand-blocked curtains and wallpaper, exquisite needlepoint pillows, painted furniture, not to mention all the paintings by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant which record their colorful day-to-day life. 

In decorating my home, I definitely wanted traditional touches such as wallpaper, tattered oriental rugs, George Smith-ish sofas and of course, the ubiquitous Aga stove, but I chose patterns and styles that drew upon modern life so that the house wouldn’t feel like a relic from the past. It’s all about tension — the juxtaposition of old and new that makes a home feel alive. Too many antiques and it feels stuffy no matter how wide open the windows are, and too many modern pieces and it looks like an exhibition at MOMA. I wrapped a door in a tarnished green-gold fabric a la Gosford Park and then studded it with gold nailheads, but because I have a young son and a swimming pool, I chose faux leather instead of the real thing. I also have a treasured 1940’s horseshoe bench that I bought at London’s Bermondsey flea market, but to make it less precious, I upholstered a cushion for it in white goat fur so that it feels like Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup, or at least it does to me!

Philippe Starck stool holding a tower of toys

Horseshoe bench with goat fur cushion

You recently wrote about  a trip to Las Vegas. Your son never wanted to leave and you couldn’t wait to return home.  It was a delightful post and spoke to the slippery nature of style when it comes to children. You have a very definite yet expansive style; how has it changed in the time since you’ve had your son?

Oh, it hasn’t changed that much, really. In the beginning, we went for the whole hand-crafted wooden toys thing and I toyed with making his bedroom neo-Scandinavian; but when you see that all he wants is a plastic truck with lights and bells and music, really, how can you say no? Kids love color. In his room, I put two lipstick red cowhide rugs that were originally made for Tommy Hilfiger, a couple of Philippe Starck’s gnome stools, Pottery Barn surfboard bedding and painted the walls Farrow and Ball’s “Oval Room Blue.” Over his bed hangs a massive pterodactyl kite that never got off the ground in real life, but now protects him in his dreams. In terms of our house, my husband and I buy what I like with the realization that furniture can always be recovered and walls can be touched up.

Many people, especially parents, feel torn between practicality and frivolity.  You seem to have hit the sweet spot. How have you managed to make your home so inviting to both children and adults?

 That’s very sweet of you to say, thank you! I am strongly influenced by the stories of enchantment I read as a child (The Secret Garden, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, The Faraway Tree) and also from my childhood in Scandinavia, where I grew up convinced of the existence of elves and trolls (my uncle Otto has the best story about nearly running into one in a mountain tunnel.) Perhaps this fascination has seeped into my aesthetic.  I love wallpaper that is brambley and wild and redolent of a secret forest; I love animals, but I live in Hollywood, so I have a wooden sheep instead of a real one; I believe in the protective power of talismans, so I have a gnome in my garden. I want to make my house beguiling for my son. I want him to sit on the hall stairs and read Harry Potter surrounded by Clarence House’s “Flowering Quince” wallpaper and feel like he’s a million miles away from Hollywood, California. I want to stir his imagination, make him think, and teach him to appreciate color and pattern and beauty.

Stairway papered in "Flowering Quince"

Be-goggled Garden gnome

 You create modern, witty needlepoint art (a phrase many, who haven’t seen your work, may consider an oxymoron.) What drew you to this medium?  I particularly love your piece “Perky Boobies;” do you think that we are returning to an appreciation of the “home arts” like entertaining, embroidery and gardening?

Oh, Sariah, I hope so. I think this recession has forced us all to turn inward and to realize that the It bag we all had to have five years ago is a hollow substitute for the pleasures of a meaningful life. In the last year, I have been much more conscious of living large on a small scale. Friends come over, we cook, we entertain, we talk, we laugh and we have a deep appreciation for each other’s company.

In terms of my textile work, my embroideries and postmodern samplers are a compulsion; I can’t not create them. My mother and grandmother both embroidered, and I grew up watching them, but they always worked from kits and that never appealed to me. When I saw the Bayeux Tapestry, I had a sudden epiphany that I needed to embroider MY life and my words instead of someone else’s. And that’s what I’ve done.

"Purly Wurly Takes a Picture," 1998

What are your necessities? A fluffy duvet; a pile of books by my bed; a bottle of chilled Prosecco in the fridge for friends who stop by; flowers; a great lipstick; Noxema face cream; a stack of almond firewood in the hearth; Fortnum and Mason rose petal jelly; Stella McCartney’s “Nude”  perfume; and the prospect of exotic travel in the near future.

Nothing smells better than my kitchen before a dinner party.

Nothing tastes better than a box of marron glacés.

Nothing feels better than a hot bath with Santa Maria Novella Sapone Liquido “Relax”, a heavenly combination of cinnamon, orange, lavender and rosemary

Complete the phrase:  I’d rather be listening than talking.

If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?

Max Beckman, “Paris Society”, 1931. At that time, Paris was the cultural home for the bohemian avant-garde. Think about it — everyone from artists such as Picasso to Dali to Cocteau to crazy socialites like Nancy Cunard and writers like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Jean Rhys and James Joyce made the City of Lights their home. I want to dive into Beckmann’s scene of decadence and rub shoulders with the cognoscenti until the wee hours of the morning…and then stumble into the nearest cafe for a caffe latte while I relive the night all over again.

"Paris Society." Image courtesy of the Guggenheim Collection"