Mr. Prof designer home

I liked the home of Kimberly and John Canale over on DesignSponge.  Here's just the two most steampunkish bits.

Cephalopod in the a black and cream bathroom!

Light fixture by Roost.

I'm off on vacation, to the city that is the home of this find by reader Pica Maloria: Smith Tower.

See the little pyramid at the top? Someone lives there!


It's not quite as cool as a clock tower, but it sure has character, with the pyramid shape echoed by the triangular windows.

According to the architect's website, it was a caretaker’s suite and an old water tower enclosure


Find out more at Seattlest or at Castanes Architects.

I'll post again in a week! See you then!

Brian pointed out another clock face living space (it rhymes!). I wonder how many more of these are out there? (and you'll help me figure it out, won't you?) This pushes so many of my buttons -- Turkish rugs, wood floors, old brick, and not a bit of modern furniture in the place.

While we're browinsg the NY Times' crazy real estate features, how about a home in a former sanatorium?


This is the former Holloway Sanitorium, a rambling red-brick hospital built in 1877 in the English village of Virginia Water.

The clover shaped windows are original design.

Laurie sent me this NY Times slideshow about an apartment at the top of a clock tower. Yes, those are working clocks.



Don't you wish you had an extra $25 million lying around?

Someone pointed that I had been remiss in my Halloween posts this year, especially compared to last -- who could forget Steam Pumpkin -- but I did stumble across a lovely set of Gothic Victorian Party Decor on MyHomeIdeas.

I can't get enough of red velvet curtains -- but tying them back with a noose is innovative...

Modify portraits with lace masks, decorate old spools with black lace for candleholders, use tarnished silver for a bouquet...

The best use of apothecary jars I've seen -- to hold creepy crawlies...

Many more photos and how-tos here.

While I was on vacation (sorry for the dearth of posts), the New York Times published this article on "Mildred's Lane", the home of artist J. Morgan Puett in Pennsylvania, which both Mr. Von Slatt and Daniel were so kind to send to me.

A collaborative, handmade home on 96 acres, she considers her home a work of art:

"It's not about nostalgia or re-enacting," she said. "I believe that all of these time periods and histories are pressing in on us at once," contributing to the complexity of our present and future experience. "What I'm really interested in is the future and what it looks like," she said, and "in inventing a future through history and material culture and art."


[I]nterior walls and ceilings are made from blue steel treated with a darkening chemical — “like the kind used in antiquing jewelry,” Ms. Puett said — applied in a drippy, hand-washed style and then sealed with linseed oil. “I’ve always been in love with industrial metal,” she said.



Toward the back, in the kitchen and dining area, there are hand-hammered metal tables and chairs covered with old flour sacks. Cowhides have been stitched together as floor coverings. Stacks of antique white china fill the metal shelves and the floors are made from smoothly polished concrete. High narrow windows on either side of this space make it feel like an old church.


Ms. Puett’s vision reaches even into the refrigerator, which she has transformed into a strange, constantly shifting vignette of fresh food, old textiles and unusual scientific vials. “I buy beautiful and grotesque foods and try to put them in a new context,” she said. A broccoli floret sits on an antique candlestick, a pomegranate and brown eggs in a glass vase, carrots in ceramic pots. All liquids are decanted into glass measuring vessels.



Incredible, isn't it? If you like Puett's aesthetic, you can view more of her work at the Alexander Gray Associates Gallery website. You should also read the article and view the slideshow for many more details.

credit: Photos by Phil Mansfield Photography.