Amy Meier Design

Journal

Inspired By: middleton place

Inspiration can come from anywhere.  Today, the deep South.  Welcome to Middleton Place! AMD_MP_GH

My husband and I have always wanted to visit and explore Charleston, SC, and last week, while visiting my parents in Savannah, we sneaked away for an overnight.  While researching the trip, Kevin found an image of Middleton Place and thought that I would love it, so he planned for us to stop while en route to Charleston.

Middleton Place is an antebellum rice plantation that boasts "the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States".  And while the finely manicured gardens were amazing, it was the more subtle, less formal details that really captivated and energized me.

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This place, with its both glorious and repugnant past, causes you to look inward as you observe and feel your surroundings. Spring was just on the precipice of springing, and the color pallette was soft and soothing, with such a deep range of textures.  Though mostly outside, I could not help but be flooded with thoughts and ideas about how these images and feeling could be worked into designing interiors... the subtle textural difference between the velvety camellia petals , the waxy leaves, the dry Spanish moss...  It feels like a fabric story!AMD_MP_Camelia

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The soft light playing through the Spanish moss is like the perfect sheer fabric draped across a window.  (As a side note, Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor a moss.  Discuss.) AMD_MP_Sheep

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What wonderful inspiration as I now trek four hours inland to Atlanta where I am beginning a new project.  I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to see and explore a part of the South and its history, for a home's surroundings inform the design and give it a sense of place.  The Atlanta project is a handsome,  Tudor style home with gorgeous stone, dark Georgia bricks contrasted by crisp, white mortar and cedar shake. (See the architects rendering below.)  I see layers of grays and soft celadon, with pops of grass green, purples and yellow.   I am feeling texture and light, and warmth. I am feeling inspired.

 

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Rendering by Michael Swiley Residential Design

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