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April's
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The Rich Cupboard
Last week, I met with Jeremy Braude and Rodney Benson of Danica/Now
Designs in Vermont. The sun had warmed the place up, and the Vancouver-ites
(Vancouver is the Florida of Canada) made their way east for our
annual meeting.
These two characters, originally from South Africa, have pedaled
beautiful table linens for almost 40 years now. April Cornell
and Danica have graced the majority of artful tables in Canada
over the past decades. In the USA, Danica goes under the name
of Now Design, but there is decidedly a difference between the
two collections—while Danica moves to clean and contemporary,
April Cornell is lush and detailed; while Danica provides crisp
wovens and modern designs, we provide painterly florals and imaginative
palettes; while their tables are highlighted with a single striking
vase, ours are decorated with nature's cornucopia: mushrooms,
moss and nasturtiums in fall and full blown peonies, complete
with bleeding hearts, in the spring. While Danica could be said
to be a minimalist—April Cornell has a healthy dose of “more
is more.”
We are stylistically a study in contrast, but we also have much
in common—we both have a passion for textiles, we both have
a passion for trade, we both have a love of India, and we both,
with our Canadian roots, have a certain shyness (OK—I'm losing
mine) and are a little in awe of America.
I called my collection this fall The Rich Cupboard Of Life,
and in a massive, old, wooden, carved, teak, Indian cupboard,
I displayed all of my textile jewels—brown and gold, teal
and olives, reds and corals, ivory, and then bronzes and brocades,
block prints, silk screens and matalasse’s too! And yes,
I loaded up that massive cupboard and poured my design heart into
it. Jeremy and Rodney, luckily, loved it too. Our meeting was
all about celebrating the differences and the similarities between
our companies.
Rodney also touched me deeply when he told me that Danica will
be participating in The Giving World—helping to give a hand
up, not a hand out, to people in need. That is certainly filling
up the rich cupboard of life, and making life richer for others
too.
Speaking of filling up, we did have to fill up, of course, and
took the boys, along with our licensing team, Mark Timm, Hannah
Sachs and Donna Larrabee, to our newest local eatery—the
Green Room. Deep red, schug wine and bison in puff pastry, were
the hits of the evening. Conversation was intense and animated—and
that is such a great sauce!
Looking back in my notebook, I see the last meal that I had with
Rodney in Seattle (after a Sur La Table visit) featured heirloom
tomatoes, yogurt chicken, garlic smashed potatoes and blueberry
sorbet—actually, it looks like we have a lot in common—we
love great food, and fabulous linens to show it off.
Burlington, Vermont
April |
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