The house, its keeping, and its pleasures.
Everything for the home and the life around it, organized by room and rhythm, from the kitchen and pantry to the table, the games, the garden, and gifts. If it helps you live well, it lives here.
Kitchen
Cookware and bakeware, knives and boards, the kitchen textiles and the small tools. The Coffee Counter opens here with its Three Methods, the household’s morning: Equator through Blanche’s Chemex, Dean’s Beans through Hazel’s Hario Switch, and Café Bustelo through Luisa’s Purity, brewed twice as strong as anyone intends.
The shelfPantry
The beautiful everyday foods. Olive oils and vinegars, tea and coffee, honey and chocolate, preserves, salt and spices, and the baking shelf.
The counterSpecialty
The fine-foods counter. The cheese and the charcuterie, the caviar and the tinned fish, the olives and the crackers that carry them. The board a house sets down when people come over.
By occasionGifts
The right thing to bring or to send. The boxes and the sets already made to give, gathered from across the house, for the person you do not want to send another candle to.
The tableDining
Everything around the table. Dinnerware and glassware and flatware, the linens and the serving pieces, the table candles and the napkin rings.
DisplayedThe Extraordinary Objects
The largest room, the room for things displayed rather than worn. Throws and pillows, baskets, frames and clocks, the diffusers, and the decorative objects that came across from Boutique Gramercy. The Fox House and Herbert candles open the proprietary shelf, the Fox House scented for each quarter, with Diptyque and Flamingo Estate as the affiliated companions. The Loro Piana boules set anchors the room, and it lives on the Vineyard terrace.
How a room is litLighting
The light a room is built around. Table lamps and floor lamps, sconces and picture lights, the warm bulb and the dimmer, and the shade that softens all of it. Bevolo of New Orleans is the signature house, the hometown lantern in copper. Blanche’s one rule holds the category, never the overhead light.
The seatFurniture
The pieces you live on and around, indoor and out: chairs and lounges, and the larger objects a room is built around.
OutsideGarden
Pots and tools, watering and seeds, gloves, the outdoor decor and the bird feeders.
The gatheringEntertaining
Very Blanche, the gear for having people over. Barware and cheese boards, trays and ice buckets, the picnic kit and the tea service.
The scented roomCandles and Home Scent
Candles and incense, the scent a room is dressed in. The considered ones only, chosen the OLYL way.
The eveningGames
Four games across four registers. Croquet on the Vineyard lawn, backgammon in the Gramercy drawing room, mahjong on the second Tuesday since 1982, and Dungeons and Dragons at Ana’s gallery after closing. The Geoffrey Parker sets carry the owned games, the croquet box brass-latched with its dent from 1988, with the Aerin mahjong and the travel backgammon as the reachable tier. The antique 1930s Bakelite mahjong set anchors the room.
The deskStationery
Journals and pens, cards and wrapping, the correspondence shelf, bookmarks, and the desk pieces.
The libraryThe Big Books
The great coffee-table books, kept as objects you live with rather than books you read. Art and photography, interiors and gardens, fashion and architecture, travel and the museum catalogs. Read it in the Reading Room, cook from it in the Café, live with it here.
The soakBath
The bath as its own room: caddies and trays, stools and brushes, the considered objects that live beside the tub. The furnishings of the bathroom, kept apart from the beauty products of the Beauty Hall.
The floorRugs
The rug a room is built on. Kilims and flatweaves, antique and new, the floor as the first decision a room makes.
The linenLaundry and Linen
Sheets and towels and blankets, the considered laundry products, and closet care. Branch Basics, The Laundress, and Redecker, Luisa’s honest corner. The beautiful half only, never the utilitarian.
Herbert presidesPets
Cat and dog both, the beds and bowls, the toys and the grooming. A warm room, given the household that reads this magazine.
Ways to shop
Two easy ways to shop the whole house, by occasion and by season.
Seasonal
Christmas and autumn, the spring garden, Easter, and the summer porch. A view across the house for the visitor who shops by occasion rather than by object.
The quarterly boxes
The Recipe Box
Four printed recipe cards a quarter, on heavy cream stock, shipped from the Mercantile. Luisa’s salsa is the first. Annette’s brioche is the second. Blanche picks them, and half the fun is not knowing what’s coming.
Dinner and a Movie
Seventeen pairings now, a new one every other week. A quarterly box carries two recipe cards, a film note in the curator’s voice on heavy cream stock, one beautiful table object, and a Fox House candle scented for the season. The most complete object in the Mercantile.