early on working in the antique business and starting to design things on my own, i learned the payoff of sticking with your instincts. from our buying trips to france we had at our disposal draperies, linens, brocades, tapestries, trims, tassels, definitely enough to stir up my dust allergies from time to time! i began combining things in different ways, and somehow i think i was trying to make some of these things which were often over a hundred years old, look fresh. i was not juxtaposing colors and patterns a la christian lacroix by no means, but combining french 19th century tapestry fragments with a fabric from the 1940s just gave it a cleaner look, and i thought, i hoped, that our customers would see it the same way. with the pillow above, i just knew that there was no other way to sell a tapestry fragment that must not have been bigger than 6 by 8 inches, than to border it and make it larger.we had just opened our shop in 1992 in the then design area of melrose avenue, and my pillowmaking was going ahead full speed. i had to learn thru trial and error the tricks of the trade. in between the custom orders we were getting we were also making things to sell in the shop. when the small tapestry fragment somehow joined the salmon sanderson solid, something just clicked. i found a piece of wide flat french trim with salmon and green and the combination to me just felt right. my aunt thought the combination was weird, and that the direction of the pillow was more a vertical than a horizontal rectangle, i could tell she thought i was wasting my time. when the pillow sold for $500 i just laughed to myself, that was the best revenge, the best "ha!" follow your instincts, go ahead with something that just feels right.
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