Loiro Studio, Lucca

MUSICA & DESIGN

This is Giacomo Satti. In his shop called Loiro Studio. Lucca isn't full of people like him, creative and enterprising. He's a rare find.

This is one of his book lamps.

Many pieces are inspired by musical instruments. The sillouette, of his design, is fashioned of laser-cut steel.

 Lots of models.

 Why not a framed planter to hang on the wall? "You can make your own art work," he says.

 Or a vase, playing on the idea of a vase.

 Books and music.

Loiro means blond in Portughese.

Some of Giocomo's wall hangings. A grandiose logo on top. Then, playing on the idea of hanging! You can find him at Via del Battistero, 8, in the historic center of Lucca.

Forte dei Marmi Back in Time

 BAGNO DALMAZIA

If you've never been to an Italian beach club then, alas, you can only imagine. The beach is serviced. People don't just throw down a towel and eat a sandwich. They need, for instance, a cabin in which to change. Every customer has one, a cabin and a key.

Perhaps you've arrived by bicycle, as Nicola Donati, owner of Bagna Dalmazia, in Forte dei Marmi on the Tuscan coast, has.

To find yourself here, in this unassuming, old fashioned place where the Forte dei Marmi style of long ago is preserved in the face of enormous change among the competetive beach clubs all around who've gussied themselves up for the new millenium.
 

 Here, its casual; it's the beach, after all!

 No new woven multi-fibre indoor/outdoor furniture worthy of a blankety-blank catalogue.

 The furniture that was always here is more than just good enough.

It's supposed to be a break from daily life in which everything you touch has to be respected.

In this old cabinet the insides of the doors are papered with family photographs showing how Forte beach life used to be.

 A display of the international press featuring Bagno Dalmazia.

 An inner courtyard looks like a nice place for one more caffe! (Only tourists call it espresso.)

 And there's the beach! Just through there!

 It's a beach dining room, under that tent!

Perhaps you've spent the morning lounging about here, where everything you may need is provided.

 But you get hungry round lunchtime!

And Bistro Dalmazia's just a step away.

 Gil's having fun with the artist Karen Diefenbach and the lovely Dedi Gutlich.

With John Diefenbach, creator of American Airlines's fabulous new image, and art collector Rudolf Gutlich.

Spaghetti alle volgole!

And sea bass with homemade mayonnaise. Superb. For an Italian day at the beach I highly recommend Bagno Dalmazia in Forte dei Marmi!

Home

AFTER A WINTER ABROAD

We're back. If you know me then you'll know that we were in Palm Beach for the winter, leaving the dark and the cold and the snow, even, behind. And what an extraordinary sensation to come back to the place where we've lived for more than 30 years. The gardeners have taken the usual excellent care of the place and this awakening of plant life with all the accompanying smells is stunning.

This white wisteria has been here for perhaps 40 years but it's never flowered much because we tended to hack it off in the confusion of pruning but this year the pruning it got was more educated.

It was exactly a year ago that Point de Vue, the French weekly magazine, photographed the garden for a 2013 article which has just come out.

Perhaps you've never heard of Point de Vue—but all of Paris has! And all the royal-watchers and all the nobility-gazers everywhere have. It's a case in which the cover misleads. It's not at all the stupid magazine it might seem, but quite intelligent, really. The 6-page article about us is beautiful!

We're delighted to be back—if only the sun would come out!

A Garden Fragment

AN INNER COURTYARD

I've always loved the concept of an inner courtyard. You enter a house and you feel that you have entered that house, having left the outside outside, and you are surprised and delighted to see that a bit of the outdoors awaits you within.

This is a Moorish, or Perhaps Persian idea: isolating a bit of the outdoors, with its piece of sky and ground, and bringing it in so that it is surrounded by walls, a fragment of open air placed within the house as you might place a caged bird.

This elegant interior garden graces an early twentieth century house in Palm Beach. Up until very recently it was a paved yard and if there were any plants in it at all they were kept in pots. The new, current owners removed the tile floor to find that there was in fact no foundation to the space of any kind, proving that in its original incarnation the courtyard was gardened, perhaps as it is now. The highly successful jungle concept and planting is the work of celebrated garden designer Mario Nievera.

Privacy

GARDENLEAKS

In case any of my readers have wondered where my two most recent posts and your kind comments about them have ended up I thought I should explain that they were intentionally removed. The two previous gardens I'd published were photographed by permission but when I later thought to publish them on my blog I was not in a position to ask if that would be all right not knowing how to contact their creators. When I finally had the chance to bring the penultimate post to the attention of its owners they were not pleased. I have duly apologized and removed the posts, doing so, however, with more than a bit of regret as their garden was absolutely stunning. Too bad. What do my readers think about my perhaps admitted indiscretion in publishing photographs of someone's garden even though I was unable to contact them to ask if they minded? Are gardens not meant to be seen, as symphonies are meant to be heard? Shall I rename this blog Gardenleaks?