5Ws of… Gift Guide, Part 3

Wrap up your holiday shopping by thinking outside the box: Please consider donating to a charity.  If someone on your list loves architecture, interiors or design, here are some suggestions.

Whether you donate to charity, select a book (from Gift Guide Part 2) or pick out a DVD (from Gift Guide Part 1), we hope all your gifts are well received. 

We wish you the happiest holidays!

What: Chic Charity… DIFFA

DIFFA: Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS is one of the country’s largest supporters of direct care for people living with HIV/AIDS and preventative education for those at risk.  Merging care and commerce, supporters of DIFFA come from all fields of fine design and the visual arts, including architecture, fashion design, interior design, photography and consumer product design. 

Since being founded in 1984 DIFFA has granted funds to organizations which fight AIDS by providing preventive education programs targeted to populations at risk of infection; treatment and direct-care services for people living with HIV/AIDS; and public policy initiatives which add resources to private sector efforts. 

To donate: www.diffa.org

Who: Women Making a Difference Right at Home…  Traditional Home’s Classic American Women

This signature program celebrates the spirit of volunteerism by recognizing standout charitable women from across the country.  Over the past eight years, Traditional Home has recognized a diverse range of extraordinary women who have made a difference in the lives of their communities.  Honorees have raised funds for public schools, healthcare, literacy, domestic abuse prevention, cancer treatment and much more.

To view honorees and learn more about how to donate: www.traditionalhome.com

Where: From Main Street to Your Street…  The National Trust for Historic Preservation

Historic preservation champions and protects places that tell the stories of our past.  It enhances our sense of community and brings us closer together: saving the places where we take our children to school, buy our groceries, and stop for coffee – preserving the stories of ancient cultures found in landmarks and landscapes we visit – protecting the memories of people, places and events honored in our national monuments. 

PLEASE NOTE: All donations made through December 31 will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $100,000, to fund NTHP’s Hurricane Sandy restoration efforts.  Your gift will help communities impacted by the storm rebuild historic treasures. 

To donate: www.preservationnation.org

When: When you empower design you empower the future…  ASID Foundation

The ASID Foundation advances the interior design profession by drawing upon its resources to promote meaningful collaboration and research, award scholarships and fund projects that broaden the value of interior design.

To donate: www.asidfoundation.org

Why: Because there’s no place like home… The American Red Cross

The Red Cross continues to focus on reaching as many people as possible who need help.  Your help is urgently needed to continue to support relief efforts.  Financial donations make the greatest and most immediate impact, helping the Red Cross provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance.

To donate: www.redcross.org/hurricane-sandy

All info and images courtesy affiliated charities.  

5Ws of…2012 Gift Guide, Part Two

We’re pleased to present the second in our three-part gift guide.  From a complete history of furniture to a behind-the-scenes look at some very chic lives, these cover some of the most engaging aspects of interior design.  Please see the previous post for great videos for design buffs, and please check in next week for gifts that give back to the design community.

What: Stylish and substantive lives, cataloged beautifully… “A Visual Life: Scrapbooks, Collages, and Inspirations”

Interior designer Charlotte Moss has spent years collecting as well as creating scrapbooks—a pastime both meditative and instructive about her own ideas regarding design and style. In this unique book, Moss brings together her own scrapbooks along with those of notable women, both contemporary and historical, whose flair for style inspires us, including interior designer Elsie de Wolfe and society doyenne Gloria Vanderbilt—all never before published. Organized by theme—home, garden, travel, entertaining, and fashion—each chapter includes examples of Moss’s signature style mingled with excerpts from the scrapbooks of these great women.

Who: Designer, starlet, socialite – mystery woman… “Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret and Extraordinary Lives”

Florence Broadhurst founded one of the most influential wallpaper studios of the Twentieth Century.  Her brightly-colored geometric and nature-inspired oversized designs were all hand printed. Technical advances made in her studio included printing onto metallic surfaces, the development of a washable, vinyl-coating finish and a drying rack system that allowed her wallpapers to be produced in large quantities.  Her wallpapers reportedly contained around 800 designs in eighty different colors.  In addition to being a prolific and legendary designer, Broadhurst was a starlet, a socialite… and the victim of a murder that remains a mystery 35 years later. 

Where: Home office or corner office…  “Habitually Chic: Creativity at Work”

Habitually Chic is author Heather Clawson's wildly popular blog about the finer things in life—high fashion, fine art, interior design, and arresting architecture. For Habitually Chic: Creativity at Work, Ms. Clawson has narrowed her vision and using the good will generated by her blog has found her way into the workspaces of the world's foremost cultural generators. The studios, workshops, offices, and creative sanctuaries of top designers, artists, editors, architects, and more are captured and presented in detail.

 

When: From colonial to contemporary…  “The Encyclopedia of Furniture”

It looks like it’s about 100 years old and some of the photos look like they were printed from slides, but this is hands-down the greatest desk reference for furniture styles and history. Not to judge a book by its cover but this one pretty much says it all: “Covering: Every period and development to the present, the designers and makers, the woods and other materials, the architecture and decoration.”

Why: Because there’s nothing like the original… “The Decoration of Houses”

One of America’s most important novelists, Edith Wharton was a refined, relentless chronicler of the Gilded Age and its social mores. Along with close friends Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack London, she helped define literature at the turn of the Twentieth Century, even as she wrote classic nonfiction on travel, decorating and her own life. Her best known works include The Age of Innocence (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921), The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome. The Decoration of Houses, her first book, is of special interest to designers.  House Beautiful declared, “Edith Wharton laid down the rules for decorating in her first book.  The Decoration of Houses was the law of the land, and it led to the birth of a new profession.”

Images and information courtesy bn.com, except Who, When and Why (via previous posts); image for Who via eviekemp.com.