Lamplady Speaks

WHILE I’M NOT as schizy as Toni Collette in that new show, United States of Tara, I also have an alter ego.

She’s known as Lamplady, and she is particularly fond of kitschy 1950s lamps. Lamplady even had a space at the Showplace on West 25th Street for three months one winter, where she sold, or attempted to sell, wild and crazy mid-century lamps.

The ‘atomic style’ ones, sputnik chandeliers, and Majestics — those black wooden zig-zags with parchment shades shaped like flying saucers — flew out of my booth. The plaster ballerinas and Asian figures did not. I still have about 40 of them in storage.

I love all types of lamps and lighting; to me, it’s the most important aspect of a room’s decor. If the lighting is bad in a restaurant, I can’t enjoy my meal. If the lighting is wrong in someone’s home, I think nothing of doing what I can to change it on the spot, switching off a harsh, glarey overhead and turning on a table lamp instead, or dimming a too-bright fixture over a dining table. I don’t care if it’s annoying.

Yesterday I went lamp-shopping at Rico on Atlantic Avenue with my friend Becky, who was visiting from Georgia. We were taken with a shiny red/orange drum shade (under $350) that would totally make her dining room; or perhaps she’ll end up with a ring-type chandelier, an open wheel rim with  trendy Edison-style naked-filament light bulbs evenly spaced around it (about $575).

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If you are a lamp-lover, Lamplady recommends these fantastic sites:

RewireLA for vintage modern European lighting, below

Lum of New Orleans has vintage lamp bases, below, freshened up with black or white drum shades. Super stylish.

For shades to match existing bases, I’ve spent many a happy hour in Just Shades on Spring and Elizabeth Streets in Nolita.

You can find reproduction Fifties-style speckled parchment shades with lanyard lacing at Deadly Nightshades.

The Hanging Gardens of Brooklyn

A FEW YEARS BACK, this 25′x30′ Brooklyn Heights backyard was basically a dog run, with a broken stone patio and a canopy of ailanthus trees.

Now, with the help of garden designer Nigel Rollings, who teaches the popular Urban Garden Design course at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it’s a verdant oasis on several levels, with one bold, theatrical stroke: a circular wall fountain.

On September 11, 2001, this space was covered in ash and debris. Soon after, the homeowners called Nigel and asked him to create a “healing garden” with a dining area, water feature, and seasonal flowers.

He chose a circle for the unusual 12-foot-diameter wall fountain because it’s a universal symbol of unity and healing, and it complemented an existing, gracefully arching Japanese maple.

Raised beds diagonally bisect the space, making it appear larger. “Hanging gardens” vertically extend planting space on either side of the fountain, with cascading mandevilla, fuchsia hybrid ‘Autumnale,’ ipomoea ‘Blackie’ (sweet potato vine), and abutilon.

There’s a ‘bistro deck’ big enough for two outside the kitchen door, with a box for culinary herbs built into the railing.

Plantings are in wet and dry zones. Astilbes, cimicifuga, huechera, and long-blooming annuals like coleus (about  $2,000 worth each season) are drip-irrigated. The central bed and terrace garden flanking the waterfall are filled with drought-tolerant annuals like Algerian ivy and liriope.

Shrubs, including oak leaf hydrangea, Japanese plum yew, and bridesmaid mountain laurel are living screens and space definers.

During excavation of the old patio, workers discovered an archaic food storage chamber, possibly native American. Once uncovered, long-dormant fern spores sprouted there. It’s now covered by a thick piece of plexiglass and lit at night, adding a mysterious dimension to the garden.

Flower$, Flower$$, Flower$$$

LAST WEEKEND of winter (YAY!)  The stores that survived the dismal season were full of people, including even the 17 new yogurt shops on Court Street. Bruno’s Hardware was schizoid, half snow shovels and rock salt, the other half barbeque grills, camp trunks, and tomato cages. Above, the scene at GRDN on Hoyt Street in Boerum Hill.

Purple and yellow crocuses have suddenly exploded in front yards, and the Korean delis are abloom with hyacinths and daffodils in pots, cheap.

From low to high, here’s what I saw today in the way of local floral offerings:

Want a single hyacinth in a tiny ceramic pot for $3.29?  You can get it at Trader Joe’s.

Below, outside and inside GRDN, a lovely off-avenue shop, florist, and nursery dedicated to the urban gardener, where prices have always seemed reasonable to me.

Then there’s Atlantic Avenue’s posh and precious Opalia, in a new, larger location on the north side of the avenue between Hoyt and Bond. More power to them!

Contract Remorse

THIS WEEK I went to contract on a 1940s shingled cottage in Springs (or is it “the” Springs? I guess I’ll find out). It’s a hamlet a few miles north of East Hampton, on Long Island’s South Fork. I should be celebrating, right? Instead I’m worrying.

The seller took two weeks to return the contracts with her signature, after I had scraped together my down payment and sent my signed contracts to her attorney. As the days passed, I began to think she had changed her mind about selling (even though the house was on the market for almost a year before I came along), or had gotten a better offer. I decided that wouldn’t be so terrible, and began to feel relieved.

—————————————————————-  Then yesterday I got word that the seller’s contracts were signed. Now I have to start worrying in earnest. Not about getting a mortgage. That’s looking good at 5.375%.

Here’s a sampling of things I’m worried about:

• The location. Will I like Springs? I’d never even been there before the January day I saw this house. I wasn’t even looking on the South Fork. I was on my way to the North Fork. What about the busy-ish  road it’s on? Two people (a rival real-estate broker and a friend who lives on a better road) have called the road ‘blue-collar.’ True, there is an auto-body shop nearby (but a very high-end one, full of Porsches) and a tavern I can only hope becomes a chic ‘eatery’ one day. Well, somewhere I read that the market tells you where you belong. Clearly, I don’t belong on Georgica Pond.
• The house itself. The front door doesn’t close, there’s at least one roof leak, the boiler is presently non-operational, the second bedroom is a closet. There’s an excess of skylights and no air conditioning. The floors are kind of slanty.
• The garden. It’s neglected and overgrown. The garage was smashed to bits by an errant branch of a giant cherry tree and needs to be hauled away. There are lots of broken trees that need to be professionally dealt with. How bad will the deer and mosquitoes be?
• The money. Will it over-stretch me? Will I be able to rent it this summer? Will I be able to rent it in the off-season if I need to? Will I ever be able to use it myself?

Now you’re thinking, Fool! Why did she sign that contract?!

OK. Here’s what’s good about it:

• The house itself. Of all the houses I looked at, and I had been ISO my next property for about a year, it felt the most “right.” Something I could handle, space with good feng shui, a potentially wonderful gardening property
• The location. Despite the busy road, the property has a feeling of seclusion. It’s backed by protected town land, woods that can never be built on. It feels very country, yet it’s a short walk to a gorgeous bay beach (Maidstone, bottom) and a 10 minute drive to the ocean. It’s near Jackson Pollock’s and Lee Krasner’s home and studio, which is cool.
• The property. Nothing compared to the mountainside you could get in the Catskills for the same money, but in terms of 20′x100′ Brooklyn brownstone lots: more than EIGHT of ‘em.
• The money. Having done all that house-hunting, I think I’m getting a good deal at 320K (the house appraised at 400K; does that count as equity yet?)

Beyond all that, I’ll have fun fixing the place up, and it doesn’t really require that much. And I’m gonna LOVE the garden – working in it, sitting in it, looking at it.

At this point, I don’t have much choice except to close my eyes and jump, and hope everything turns out all right.

1 Hour in Red Hook, N.Y.

I’m always amazed at how much there is to see when an old-house (and barn) fanatic really looks.  All these pictures were taken Wednesday in the course of an hour’s drive around the Dutchess County town of Red Hook.

Click on any image to enlarge and get a description.