Photograph by Joel Benjamin

A checkered skirt mixes with diamonds on the wall at Paris Ceramics. Boston fashion designer Luke Aaron dressed model Kacy Emmett in a crossover top in silk crepe de Chine and a layered organza and taffeta ball skirt.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

It is a design move that may seem reserved only for the brave, but mixing bold patterns and prints has leaped from the elite fashion runway to the home. The trend is showing up in every room, in exterior facades, and even in landscape design, as we demonstrate in our Selections feature in our May/June issue of Design New England.

To inspire us, we turned to Boston fashion designer Luke Aaron, who brought his talent, and luxurious clothing from his Spring/Summer 2013 collection, to the Boston Design Center where we spent the day with photographer Joel Benjamin trying to create the perfect visual to open our fashion-forward Selections. Yes, it took all day to come up with the final shot. In the process, we got plenty of photographs that are way too gorgeous to leave on the cutting room floor.

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A rendering of the Ola Bench Diseńo Neko of Mexico City, Mexico, designed and constructed for Design Museum Boston’s international Street Seats competition is among the 20 designs that are installed on Boston’s Harborwalk.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

If you’re in Boston this weekend, take a walk along the Fort Point Channel and you’ll notice 20 public benches installed along it. They’re the work of students and design firms who entered their urban seating ideas in an international design competition held by Design Museum Boston, which, with more than 170 submissions, had a panel of judges choose the 20 semi-finalists that received funding for construction. The museum will offer tours of the benches and announce a $5,000 grand prize-winner, a $2,000 runner’s up, a $2,00 people’s choice winner at its free opening celebration Saturday April 27, starting at 1 p.m. The people’s choice will be chosen by the festivity's attendees, and we will post the winners next week.

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Leicht is a German brand of sleek, contemporary kitchens and Leicht Boston is among the new showrooms at the Boston Design Center.

By Kelly Anne Clinton

What a lovely way to spend a spring afternoon. After we worked tirelessly on wrapping up our May/June issue, the editorial team at Design New England ventured out to the Boston Design Center’s spring forecast luncheon, which offered details about the BDC’s newest endeavors, both inside its showrooms, and on top of its roof.

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Photograph by Jim Westphalen

A contemporary farmhouse compound in rural Vermont and how it satisfies the differing design wishes of a husband and wife is the cover story of our May/June issue (in homes and online next week). In this picture, photographer Jim Westphalen captured the architectural geometry of three structures — main house, garage, and design studio — coming together to form a courtyard. Contributing writer Nancy Humphrey Case reveals the complexity of creating a house that reads like a simple farmstead, but offers modern efficiency and style. Also in this issue, admirers of Andy Warhol will be fascinated by a Rhode Island home inspired by the famous 20th-century Pop artist’s island getaway in Montauk, New York. Then, we explore a lush Connecticut garden that evolved with the expansion of the one-time A-frame house it surrounds and we visit a city penthouse where family and breath-taking views are center stage.

Always on trend, Artefact Home|Garden is constantly weaving in new merchandise, which includes an impressive array of home and garden wares designed and made locally.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

The Design New England Spring Design Salons got off to a great start this week with a capacity crowd at Artefact Home|Garden in Belmont, Massachusetts. The topic was “Fifty Shades of Green,” and the presenters were a wealth of information on the latest in sustainable practices and technology.

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We’re on a winning streak! After receiving the news last week of our two Silver Achievement Awards from the Garden Writers Association for photography, our confidence that our garden writing is equally deserving of accolade was confirmed. Contributing writer Carol Stocker won the GWA’s Silver Achievement award in the magazine category for her fascinating story Fantasy & Folly, which ran in Design New England’s September/October 2012 issue. The piece is about Rhode Island garden designer Louis Raymond and his bold landscape work, which involved a berry folly and glass sculptures glowing with gasses, for a couple’s vacation cottage in Connecticut. Stocker begins the article with “Call it a win win win.” Turns out, GWA agrees.

Time to celebrate! Design New England’s March/April 2012 cover and corresponding story Almost Heaven were awarded Silver Awards of Achievement for photography from the Garden Writers Association. Our contributing photographer Lynn Karlin (who also won for cover photography in 2011), did the exceptional work. Her images of design maven Bunny Williams and her Connecticut garden won over the judges this year in both the magazine category and the cover categories.

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In the Palm Springs, California, home of Andy Williams, an abstract painting turns a room furnished with traditional American furniture into a space that is lively, inviting, and at once current and timeless.

By Gail Ravgiala

It’s no secret, we love this show. As we said in this issue’s Take Note column, AD20/21 Art & Design of the 20th & 21st Century it is a modern achievement.

So we were delighted to moderate a panel of experts at incorporating Modern and contemporary art into homes large and small. Our A-list of areas designers included Kate McCusker of Theodore & Co., the Beacon Hill design firm featured in our show house section of the March/April magazine.

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By Courtney Kasianowicz

We were so fascinated with the exotic quilling techniques used by Maine artist Lauren Fensterstock that we featured her work in our March/April issue (Black Magic). So no wonder we were stopped in our tracks at the recent Boston Gift Show at the Boston Convention & Exposition Center by delicate quilling found on these sweet greeting cards. Quilling Card, based in Framingham, Massachusetts, was founded by Huong Nguyen Wolf, who moved from Vietnam to her husband’s native Bay State, but each card’s curled paper decoration is crafted by Wolf’s own artistic family in Vietnam. (A video on her website shows how they work!)

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A round moon gate with chrysanthemum decked dragon and bamboo bridge designed by Jim Donahue, horticulturist for Rhode Island’s Preservation Society of Newport County, is a show stopper at the Boston Flower & Garden Show.

By Carol Stocker

Carol Stocker, garden writer for Design New England and The Boston Globe, is presenting a special lecture, “A Rogue’s Gallery of Invasive Weeds: How to Recognize Them and Send Them Packing,” at the Boston Flower & Garden Show Thursday March 14 at 3:30 p.m.

The threat of snow is never too far here in New England, but an early spring is guaranteed at the 2013 Boston Flower & Garden Show at the Seaport World Trade Center, 200 Seaport Blvd, Boston, through Sunday March 17. The show's unofficial mascot has to be the jaunty topiary Chinese dragon festooned with white chrysanthemums perched atop a traditional round moon gate. This Asian inspired display was designed by Jim Donahue, horticulturist for the Preservation Society of Newport County and created by the Preservation Society’s staff. The display promotes the Society's 18th annual Newport Flower Show held at the magnificent Rosecliff mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, June 21 to 23.

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Photographs by Rob Cardillo

At garden designer Michael Trapp’s Connecticut home, a slender pool is tucked between cracked curbing and finely sculpted shrubs. A poolside grotto, accessed by ducking under flourishing wisteria, is a folly used for entertaining.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

A beautiful garden is a balance of labor and love. Yes, you have to dig, prune, plant, clip, nurture, pull weeds — all in all get dirty — but you also have to wait, simply watch, and let go, allowing time and nature run their course. In One Man’s Treasure in Design New England’s March/April issue, writer Tovah Martin brilliantly tells the story of landscape designer and antiques dealer Michael Trapp and how his love for all things timeworn infiltrate his West Cornwall, Connecticut, home, shop, and garden, which is both gracefully romantic and curiously mysterious. Photographer Rob Cardillo’s stunning photographs capture the garden’s moody earthiness and there are plenty to share.

We hope this virtual journey through a magical garden will whet your appetite for the Boston Flower & Garden Show, which opens March 13 at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, and runs through Sunday March 17. The theme of this year’s show is “Seeds of Change” and we certainly are ready for that.

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Photograph by Bruce Irving

The rusticated masonry and arched windows on the 1875 Hayden Building in Boston’s Chinatown is typical of the Richardson Romanesque style that put architect Henry Hobson Richardson on the map.

By Bruce Irving

Historic Boston Incorporated has done it again. We featured the nonprofit, whose mission it is to rescue the city’s most endangered properties, in our March/April issue for the outstanding work they did on the 1859 Eustis Street Fire House in Roxbury. Now, we’d also like to give HBI a shout-out for another significant project it recently spearheaded and completed, the renovation of the Hayden Building in Chinatown.

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Photographs by Eric Roth

Author and historian David McCullough and his wife, Rosalee, call Boston’s Back Bay home as they settle into an apartment they refurbished and furnished with Boston designer Mike Witt.

By Estelle Bond Guralnick

Readers beguiled by the tale of David and Rosalee McCullough's new Back Bay apartment in the March/April issue of Design New England might wonder just who is this Boston interior designer Mike Witt who handled the plum assignment so deftly.

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Self-Portrait, 1889, from the Galleria deghli Uffizi in Florence, Italy, is one of the 24 paintings in the exhibit of Anders Zorn’s work at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

Swedish artist Anders Zorn took America by storm in 1890s. Apparently, American art patrons couldn’t resist his modern edge and with Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America, now at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, we couldn’t either. (With a title like that, who could?)

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Photograph by Rob Cardillo

We’ve seen a lot of fabulous landscapes in the pages of Design New England, but none are as romantic or mysterious as the Connecticut garden of landscape designer and antiques dealer Michael Trapp. Beautifully captured in images by photographer Rob Cardillo, it graces the cover of our March/April 2013 issue (in homes and online next week). Inside, there is more of Trapp’s one-of-a-kind genius revealed through the insightful writing of DNE contributor Tovah Martin and more of Cardillo’s stunning photos. From there, we take an exclusive look inside the new home of Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian David McCullough and his wife, Rosalee, a charming “Second Honeymoon” apartment in Boston’s Back Bay. Design mavens will also appreciate the best of last year’s show houses, while fans of Modern architecture will see a fresh new take on the style set in coastal Maine.

Heart Parts designed by Fatima Fazal in New York City function as a fork, knife, and spoon.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

This Valentine’s Day, we’d love to share the Heart Part, a simple yet cleverly designed heart-shaped plastic device that snaps apart to become stylish portable cutlery. It’s part fork (when apart, fork tines are revealed), part knife (the heart’s bottom has a serrated edge), and part “scoop” (the heart’s rounded sides). Designed by Fatima Fazal in New York City, these hearts use 66 percent less plastic than standard cutlery and are 100 percent biodegradable. Fazal says her intention is to instill the romance of enjoying food and the comfort of family dining to those inevitable quick meals or take-out dinners.

On the Heart Part’s website, Fazal writes: “So, before you ‘open’ your Heart Part, I hope you think about something you love. Maybe it’s the perfect pairing of steak and jazz. Maybe it’s your dad’s spaghetti Bolognese. Everything just tastes sweeter when you think about what you love before you eat, because now you are eating with gratitude.”

Great idea. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Look again. These flowers from West Elm are paper made to look like (from left) red roses, paper whites, hellebores.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

It might be the dead of winter, but Boston’s West Elm knows how to keep our sights on spring. The Fenway store was recently transformed into a lush greenhouse — of sorts. The flora of the hour was paper, an intriguing alternative to plastic, silk, or other faux flower material. West Elm stocks a variety of the species — roses, paper whites, hellebores — and in a demonstration of ingenious mixing and matching, floral and event designers Rose Mattos and Erin Heath of Foręt Bespoke Floral & Installation of Somerville, Massachusetts, created arrangements that combined paper stems with their own fresh-cut blooms. Talk about the best of both worlds, we'll definitely try this at home.

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23 Beaumont Street on Carruth Hill: Captain Eugene Thomas House by John Fox from 1889. A post-Victorian study in masculine angularity by Fox for Civil War veteran Thomas.

By Andrew F. Saxe

Some people were surprised when real estate website Trulia recently crunched the numbers for 24/7 Wall Street to determine the nation’s 10 “hottest neighborhoods” and listed Boston’s Dorchester section as Number 5. Not surprised were the 130 audience members who turned out on a recent Sunday afternoon for “Dorchester’s Hidden Treasurers: The Ascent and Revival of the Railroad Suburb,” a lecture given by me and hosted by the Dorchester Historical Society at the Carpenters Center, that sleek new building designed by ADD Inc., whose oversize digital billboard flashes above the Southeast Expressway between Exits 15 and 16. FULL ENTRY

Nic Lehoux

Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was recognized as most beautiful by public votes around the world.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

The votes are in! Thursday night at the Boston Society of Architects 2nd annual awards program, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum addition, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, won over the public’s hearts and was honored with the People’s Choice Award sponsored by boston.com. They voted on the four buildings nominated for the Harleston Parker Medal, an award founded in 1921 and co-sponsored by the City of Boston to recognize “the single most beautiful building or other structure” built in the metropolitan Boston area in the last 10 years. A jury of 10 design professionals saw things differently, however, and selected the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, designed by Fumihiko Maki and Leers Weinzapfel Associates, for the Harleston, proving that though architecture and beauty go hand in hand, beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. What the public considers beautiful often interestingly differs from what experts in the field consider worthy of note.

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SkLO’s wall of decorative glass reflects the opaque color showing up in today’s hottest designs.

By Courtney Kasianowicz

We are winter weary no more. This week, we made a visit to the New York International Gift Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and had my spirits lifted with the bright colors and fresh ideas from designers unafraid to create innovative products that are also easy and/or compelling for the eye. Here are a few of our favorites.

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