INSPIRATION: The New York City subway map.
While trying to make her way in the world — specifically, Manhattan — young Celerie Kemble found herself poring over a plan of the NYC public-transit system. “Stare at a subway map long enough,” says the designer and author of the new decorating tome “Celerie Kemble: To Your Taste: Creating Modern Rooms with a Traditional Twist” (Clarkson Potter, 255 pages, $45), “and you just start to see patterns.” Suffice it to say, she really, really stared at that map, always while trying to plot a course to or from the stop closest to her tiny apartment: Bleecker Street.
INTERPRETATION: Flash forward to 2008: Kemble now is the darling of New York’s bright young (moneyed) things. Charged with designing a new fabric line for Schumacher, she drew inspiration from here and yon: the pattern of rain on a windshield, a grate she spotted on a visit to the Smithsonian Institution and … that rather mundane, oh-so-confusing subway map. “Trying to turn it into something that makes sense,” Kemble says, “I guess it just became abstracted, so now it’s this idealized fretwork.” Enter a lovely linen printed with geometrically precise lines and little dots like subway stops (if they were orderly, evenly spaced and beautiful). The name? Bleecker, of course.
WHERE TO FIND IT: $48 per yard, through the trade only at Schumacher, The Merchandise Mart, Kinzie and Wells Streets, 312-527-4650
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cdampier@tribune.com
