impeccable charlotte (moss)

5313 George II Japanned Dressing Glass (and Miles Redd)

If you see Miles Redd previewing an auction, chances are excellent that you’ve come to a good place.
Like antiquing and spotting one of the Keno brothers checking joints on the linen press beside you.

Charlotte Moss is to interior design what Martha is to crafting – but without Kmart and catalog tie-ins. She’s written 8-books, she scrapbooks, designed carpets for Stark Carpet, fabric for Fabricut, furniture for Century Furniture.

What else.

How ’bout: Co-chair of The International Fine Arts & Antiques Fair, an honorary doctorate from The NY School of Interior Design, regular designer at the show houses (and not of butler’s pantries – Ms. Moss gets master bedrooms and living rooms), antique dealer, globally recognized decorator on all manner of Top 10s…

Anyway – a preview of the upcoming auction at Doyle New York entitled The Charlotte Moss Collection is suitably impeccable. Her taste is not radical, her favored looks leaning heavily on chinoiserie and french country, but she does it all so flawlessly, with such sure taste and phenomenal attention to detail, that it’s impossible not to be swept up in the eminent perfection of it all.

Yes, interior design can be highfalutin, but when you see the all the fine detail, the painted fabrics and smocked lampshades and perfect pairings and just-right side tables, you start to get the true luxury of it. It’s not just over-priced shower curtains and gilded faucets but something more timeless – designs and finishes in it for the long haul, employing craftspeople whose skill sets are daily less-relevant. As NYT writer Penelope Green said in her article “In Defense of the Decorator“:

(Decorating) remains the support system for an entire industry of makers, the manufacturers, craftspeople and artisans whose skills can stretch back to traditions hatched centuries ago, in much the same way the fashion business used to support those in the garment district.

Or that’s the idea, it remains luxury to the nth. But when I see curtains lined with not only a blackout panel but also sound-proofing and various other extras, I think “Boy, would my kid nap WELL in a room with those curtains” – and am impressed.

Since the items in this sale come from Charlotte Moss-designed rooms and homes, it would be hubris and redundancy to create fantasy boards of rooms with them, so I’ll single out some pieces that caught our eye…

Charlotte Moss’s Purely decorative Chinoiserie Red Lacquered Tall Case Clock

Crazy clock! Loved it, and would ask nothing more of it than to stand and greet guests in an entry hall…Something so pretty shouldn’t have to work…

Charlotte Moss’s Set of Three De Gournay Hand-Painted Silk Curtain Panels

Crazy pretty De Gournay hand painted silk curtains (and rods!). So beautiful you wouldn’t want to leave the room. Luckily, also so opaque (via layers of black-out, sound-out, world-be-gone linings that days and nights would run into one) you could assume full cocoon mode.

And here they are as they hung…

An in-situ – Charlotte Moss ‘Jardinieres Citrus Trees’ on Custom Blue Green Heavy Satin. Photography by Pieter Estersohn

And should mention they have JADE rings – I guess because anything less would be an insult.

Lot 5087
Regency Style Gilt-Metal and Faux Bamboo Chair and Ottoman

Barcelona via Bankgok? (would add tab ties to anchor back cushion to top).

Charlotte Moss Lot 5324 Metal and Linen Lantern Of circus tent form, with interior acrobats

I once decorated the bedroom of a boy named Calder – this would have been his light. (there are tiny stars punched out of the circus “roof” so you’d get a star-speckled ceiling…)