Designtripper

The first time I heard about Villa Augustus, I was sitting in Studio Aandacht’s studio in Amsterdam’s IJburg neighborhood getting recommendations for a story I was writing about Dutch design. Ben and Tatjana pointed me straight to this playfully designed hotel, promising the most all-encompassing creative experience in the area. I was strapped for time, so I didn’t make it, sadly– but I’ve been following the progress and dreaming of getting back there ever since. I’ve looked at the website so many times, it feels like I’ve stayed there. At the risk of sounding overly praiseworthy and breathless about the place, Villa Augustus represents everything that is right and good in the travel world. It is so inspiring to see such creative care applied to every possible detail: walls with whimsical illustrations and geometrical prints hand-painted by the owner; fresh baked loaves of bread; handmade chandeliers that change every season; custom dinnerware emblazoned with the hare logo; and eclectic, mismatched furnishings handpicked for every room. In place of the typical hotel shop, there’s a flower and vegetable market, which makes perfect sense because the four acres of lush growing grounds surrounding the repurposed 19th-century water tower are dedicated to organic gardens, beautiful flowers, an orchard, and an Italian renaissance garden. There’s even a lemon tree greenhouse.

A testament to the creativity the place fosters, blogger/designer Ingrid Jansen, who makes the coolest wool-covered stools, spends three days a week manning the market shop and raves up and down about the magical design wonderland that owners Daan van der Have, Dorine de Vos and Hans Loos created. ”I’m in love with my workplace and feel privileged to work in such a wonderful place.” There are 37 rooms total–20 in the tower and 17 in garden building–and they’re all different. The interiors were designed by Dorine d Vos, who’s also an illustrator, responsible for the walls as well as a Villa Augustus garden and cookbook. To see some of her work and get a feel for the Villa Augustus aesthetic, check out the website she illustrated. Ingrid tells me there’s a room next to the greenhouse with a secret garden that’s “like a fairytale,” and I think that’s where I’d like to stay. Prices start at $165 and include breakfast, served in the restaurant, which is, of course, located right in the garden.

[Photos: via designskool.net (top, three and five); by Walter Herfst for Villa Augustus; and lilimsadventures.blogspot.com (images four and six)]

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Calling all romantic, aspiring innkeepers: Someone buy this hotel. The Hôtel du Parc, which recently made a heart-stopping appearance in World of Interiors, is going to close in the next year if the owner can’t find someone to take it over. Tim Beddow’s beautiful images show off the hand-painted work of Antoine Barateaud, who was the son of the hotel proprietor’s best friend. It’s a fascinating story that reads like an artistic timestamp of an era: grand hotel particular bought by young couple in love; World War I; recovering, wounded soldier with a penchant for Art Nouveau. You’ll have to nab a copy of the article (February issue) to get all the details, because it doesn’t feel right giving them all away here. And if even if you can’t buy the place, the old beauty is definitely worth traveling for.

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My weekend guests at Honor & Folly were in town from Chicago visiting Detroit for the first time. Of the super-creative, multi-talented group, one is a professional photographer who sent over these images of their trip. I know what my Detroit looks like, but it’s always fascinating to see what other people find interesting and beautiful. Check out his wife Karen’s travel blog for her take on the Conservatory at Belle Isle–one of my favorite places in the city. Their friend told me later it has a Great Expectations-like quality–”kind of creepy and desolate but in a really enchanting way.” I tend to agree. If you stay at Honor & Folly in the spring, summer or fall, I will very likely send you there with a picnic basket. You will thank me.

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Inspired by my good friend Lauren, who is bananas about Hawaii and always stays in some out-of-the way gem (last time it was a treehouse in the north shore of Oahu) instead of a resort,  and Designtripper’s latest sponsor, The Hawaiian Islands, I’m excited to feature what just might be the granddaddy of all Hawaiian vacation rentals. I usually think of quaint, white-washed cottages filled with tropical bamboo furniture, but that’s exactly why this modernist beauty blows my mind — it bucks every expectation. Designed by Craig Steely Architecture, The Robert Trickey house (named after the owner, an interior designer/upholsterer from San Francisco) sits high on a lava flow overlooking the ocean. It’s crazy, right? A lava flow! Look at those hearty, sculptural plantings! There’s also an open-air lanai, glass-enclosed living room, cantilevered stairs made of mango wood, and the most spectacular pool setting I have ever seen. And it gets even better–if you’re the sort who appreciates a  good backstory. But here in the land of molten lava, the landscape isn’t seen as a con; in fact, almost every aspect of the house was designed to appreciate it. Robert keeps his furniture spare and simple, so as not to compete with the otherwordly surroundings, and from the lanai at night, the red glow from the Kilauea crater is visible reflected on the clouds.

The Details
You can’t rent the entire main house, but you can rent a guest room or the full, self-contained guest house, which sleeps up to four. Prices start at $470 or $645, respectively. Says the owner, about the area/landscape: “You’ll be amazed to find such a truly heavenly and unspoiled part of Old Hawaii… lush and green, yet drier and better for outdoor activities than other parts of Puna.” Rent it at vrbo.com.

[Photos via Craig Steely Architecture; This post is sponsored by The Hawaiian Islands, where you could be Living in the Moment on Hawaii Island.]

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One of the things that makes Honor & Folly so special–at least to me–is the collection of stories behind almost every piece of furniture, art and object. Displayed in my favorite corner, the Hair, Pastry, Tobacco tableture tells a great full-circle yarn that starts with a chance discovery 821 miles away and weaves its way back to Detroit. This summer, while we were on vacation in Maine, I took an afternoon trip to Portland while my kiddos were napping to check out a few places, namely  Rogues Gallery, where I heard I could score a pair of Quoddy-made leather loafers for my husband under the Rogues Gallery label (for non-Quoddy prices). And even though it’s a men’s store, I wanted to see the space, which has a very non-gimmicky nautical, rough-hewn New England appeal with a focus on well-crafted, if not hand-crafted, goods. When owner Alex Carleton discovered I’m from Detroit, he told me all about Megan O’Connell, whose beautiful work was hanging in his dark and moody gem of a shop. In fact, the evening before, they had a going-away party for her. Turns out, she was moving to Detroit to be the founding Director of Signal Return–the new, extraordinary letterpress print shop that recently opened in Eastern Market.

When Megan and I met to discuss cards for Honor & Folly, she offered to let me hang her work in the space. I picked this triptych, which was inspired by Virginia Wolf’s Orlando, a fitting starting point for Megan’s tableture and texts crafted from hand-cast, -dyed and -carved paper suspended in Italian beeswax. She’s the founder of two other independent presses, including The Dead Skin Press, which generates cross-disciplinary work across installations, events, printed matter and discrete objects. I’m really excited to see what she does with Signal Return, and beyond honored to showcase her talent in my humble little space.

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I recently started poking around for a new place to go in Mexico this winter, even though I feel a strong pull back to the town we went last year, Sayulita. But so many friends and readers have asked about or gushed about Tulum, I decided to do some exploratory digging. I found a string of no-fuss beachside bungalows that all speak the same understated, bohemian thatched-roof vernacular. And the Coqui Coqui guest house and spa is pretty much right in line with that rustic aesthetic, but it comes with a rare thoughtfulness and exquisite taste. Owned by model Nicolas Malleville and his girlfriend Francesca, the thatched-roof stone buildings seem more residence than resort, every room thoughtfully and simply decorated with local artisan-crafted furniture and objects. These beautiful images by Todd Selby reveal spaces that feel both primitive (no internet or air conditioning or electricity aside from solar panels) and highly curated–a balance difficult to strike. In the budding Coqui Coqui empire of small-scale, authentic enterprise, there are also two other equally magical hotels, plus a cafe, shop and perfumery in nearby Yucatan towns (up to an hour and a half away).

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For New Year’s Eve this year, my husband Ryan and I made a last-minute trip into Chicago to stay at Longman & Eagle. I’ve written about the proper six-room inn above the Logan Square restaurant of the same name–both here and for the magazine I used to work for, CS Interiors–so I’ve had a tour of all the rooms, interviewed the owners/designers, the works, but I’ve never actually stayed there. Being in the space overnight as a guest gave me a chance to really appreciate all the thoughtful little details that make staying there there such a special experience (beyond the fact that the rooms and furniture were all designed and built by one of the owners): handmade wooden drink coins, mixed tapes, custom wooden speakers, chambray sheets made by the local company Unison, hanging terrariums over the bathroom sink, wallpaper in the restaurant bathrooms made from black and white pages of an old magazine, a minibar filled with snacks like Gunslinger beef jerky. Aside from a quick stop at the MCA to see the Andrew Bird and instrument maker Ian Schneller collaborative exhibit, Sound Garden (on its last day), and our favorite haunt in our old neighborhood (The Rainbo), we didn’t leave Longman & Eagle. We didn’t need to. We ate dinner there (a special New Year’s Eve tasting menu) sat at the long wooden bar for an after-dinner drink, and hung out in the room (I read the entire Logan Square Literary Review) before heading back downstairs in the morning for the kind of meaty brunch that makes men out of boys. I opted for the PRB breakfast sans PBR, which felt kind of wimpy considering some of the other, more daring options (spicy brioche with bacon pudding!). But I was craving something simple, and it was damn good.

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One of the many things I love about the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam is that it’s always changing. I was just poking around on the site and noticed they have a new exhibit featuring ceramic keys by artist Anama Ponce Vazquez, who has been intrigued by keys since she walked into a room full of them in an Andalusian house as a child. “For me, keys don’t have to do with locking up, but with opening doors,” she says. This collection of keys was made specifically for the Lloyd–with a color scheme to match–and in order to get the color saturation deep enough, she had to bake some of them up to three times. As evidenced by the logo for Honor & Folly, I also have a thing for keys–really beautiful old skeleton types. Mine were hand-drawn by the talented Detroit-based illustrator Michael Burdick, and I love them.

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