Peacock Pavilions: and a tale of decorating a Moroccan bathroom

I dream in color.

 
 

 
 
My Moroccan decorating details:  I made the vanity using a Moroccan yellow cement tile I spotted locally with a modern floral pattern.  I found a little porcelain sink with a flower shape in a shop in the Marrakech industrial zone and a faucet that looked like a flower stem in the Marrakech souks.  I then put together a small Norman Copenhagen flower pendant lamp.  The cement floor tile is from Popham Design.  I picked up the pattern from the tile, enlarged it with a stencil, traced it on sticky contact paper, and had it sandblasted on the glass shower door.  Besides the yellow upper walls, the rest of the walls are done in a burnished ivory Venetian plaster that makes the whole room,  glow and bounces the light around.  

Sunny, no?

Peacock Pavilions and a tale of styling (or drowning in) a bar cart

Oh, it's been a sad few days at Peacock Pavilions.  It started on Thursday when our beloved peahen Coco was killed by a rogue dog from the village.  She protected her five eggs -- due to hatch peachicks in just days -- until the bitter end.  Then, shaken by Coco's death, our peacock Karim and peahen Gigi, flew the coop literally and figuratively.  They haven't been seen since.

Peacock Pavilions is now just Pavilions:-( 

Meanwhile in a hastily drummed up incubator in our basement lie Coco's eggs, motherless.  Dead or alive, we're not sure. 

We're all a bit morose.  Let's just say this is where I've been loitering.... 

Vintage repousse pail from Fez.  Collection of French turn of the century illustrations on Morocco.

PS More and more on Twitter these days.  Check in with me here.

Mali photography: and a tale of inheritance

Growing up, my father was not like other fathers.  Other fathers would go to the office in the morning and come back at 6 pm.  Mine would go to the airport and come back in 2 weeks.  When my teachers asked me where he was,  I would simply look up and say, He's in Africa. 

You can imagine, the school thought we were a curious family. 

My father would come back from his trips with bags filled with odd things - bowls and bracelets and bison horns - and curios that had no name but had a scent or a sound or a look that couldn't be forgotten.  He was a passionate photographer and in darkened rooms, we would watch images of what he had seen on a screen emitted from an old slide show projector.  

I can still hear the whirring of that machine.  

And so it was that I grew up
  to be just like him.

 

 





Images of Mali.

Mali: and a tale of African trade beads

The click, click, click sound, as they slide smooth, or coarse, or slick through the fingertips.

The glass shimmering, the beads glimmering. 

The colors.  Like candy. That you want to pop them in your mouth and savor them. 

But instead you wrap them around your wrist, your neck, your waist.

And you become part of the story. 

The story of a hundred hands that had touched them, that had worn them, for a hundred years.  

The antique jewels of Africa.

 
 Oh more please, more.