Happy Birthday Claire McCluskey!

Since I have only (4) brothers, my cousin Claire is all the more precious to me. Today is her birthday, so I thought I'd post images that will mean a lot to her... really, only she will actually "get" them, but they are kind of cool, so I hope you like them too. These harken back to our childhood frolicking on the Gulf Coast and in Savannah.

Happy Birthday Claire!

Amie's wicker couch... now happily in Claire's

adorable home in Savannah

Amie and Bompoon, so very long ago, on

Coffee Bluff in Savannah

great aunt Kate's chapel in St. John's

Cathedral in Savannah

carved detail from the fireplace in the dining

room of the house in Apalach

chandelier in the dining room of

the house in Apalach... we used to watch

as the bugs got trapped in the points of

the glass and the housekeeper had to

empty them out every week!

the fort named for our grandfather in Apalach

a peek inside the fort shows this old,

crazed mirror where girls used to check

their appearance before going into the

WWII era dances

I know Claire would love a bed like this!

and living by the sea, she would adore a

table made from seashells

Claire loves blue and white

Claire, you know who this is, you and I will end up striding

by the sea just like her when we are 93 too!

***

Love you lots on this

very special birthday

of yours!!

***

beautiful beach house decor by Anne Selke

found here

***

Do you have someone special to you

whose birthday is coming up?

How would you celebrate that person?

***

thanks for visiting...! Kit

Lowcountry Lowdown

If you don't really know what Lowcountry means, that's OK; you're probably not from Savannah, Georgia. Lowcountry is a good thing. It means you have a house made from wood (in case there is a hurricane, wood is good) circa 1905 with at least one porch, if not four (to catch the breezes and the latest gossip). It means your ceilings are high (heat rises), your overhanging eaves are deep (shade from the blazing subtropical sun), each room in your house has a ceiling fan (to keep that still air moving) and your old wooden floors are painted glossy white.

One of Four Porches on this Tybee Island Former Franciscan Convent

Lowcountry Cottage, Circa 1905

A Lovely Old Wicker Couch Inherited and Made Fresh With

Blue Pillows and Cover

Ten Foot High Double Door Entry to Circa 1905

Lowcountry Cottage on Tybee Island

A Beach is Never Far Away in the Lowcountry

The Front River, One of Dozens that Spill into the Atlantic

in the Lowcountry Around Savannah

Twelve Foot Ceilings with Cypress Walls in Circa 1905

Lowcountry Cottage on Tybee Island

It means your furnishings are simple (antiques inherited, found, made to work again), your decor clean and inspired by the surrounding beaches, marshes and rivers. It means that outside grow palmettos, palm trees, crepe myrtle, wisteria, dogwood, magnolia; with lots and lots of Spanish moss hanging around. It means you can probably hear the ocean, or at least throw a stone in any direction and hit a waterway of some sort: bayou, river, stream, bay, ocean.

Series of Oyster Shell Paintings Found at

One Fish Two Fish in Savannah

An Oyster Shell Lamp Found at Paris Market & Brocante in Savannah

The Carmelite Monastery on Front River on Coffee Bluff

Near Savannah

The Chapel of St. Mary in the Cathedral of St. John

the Baptist in Savannah

The Cathedral of St.John the Baptist in Savannah,

Founded by French Nobles Fleeing the

French Revolution in 1789

It also means you just might also have a city home half an hour away....in downtown Savannah. This home is situated down the square from the magnificent Cathedral of St. John the Baptist...founded by French nobles fleeing the French Revolution in 1789. This home can be Georgian or Regency, and can be splendid by anyone's standards. It sits proudly on a street paved with cobblestones and with sidewalks of herringbone brick made 300 years ago.

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Kit Golson Design

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

Chic Provence Interior Design

Ambling On Down to Savannah Today

"Savannah wears her past like a fine old cape,

draped in Southern graciousness,

pockets filled with treasures of a rich, proud history."

An Early 19th c Mansion on One of the Twenty-Two Squares in Savannah

Arched Gateway to One of Savannah's 18th c. Plantations

General James Ogelthorpe's Plan for the City of Savannah, c. 1733

The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Founded

by the French in the Late 1700's

"The most beautiful city in North America,"

is the way Paris's famed Le Monde newspaper describes Savannah

Today I make the eight hour journey across America from San Francisco to Savannah, Georgia, the city that General William Tecumseh Sherman, the father of modern "scorched earth" warfare, thought was too beautiful to destroy during the War Between the States. (It was the only place in Georgia he left untouched.)

I'll wander through the wide open streets and moss-shaded squares laid out by General James Ogelthorpe in 1733. I'll visit the grand mansions that grace the squares including the Owens-Thomas House, considered one of the finest examples of English Regency architecture in America. I'll check out the cutting edge contemporary art at the Jepson Center for the Arts while enjoying the Jepson Gospel Brunch on Sunday with live performance by area church gospel singers.

A Map of Bonaventure Cemetary.."The Garden of Good and Evil"...

in Savannah Where My Ancestors are Buried

I'll pay a visit to my many ancestors in Bonaventure Cemetary in this, the place where my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and my great-great-grandmother were born.

I'll go out to Coffee Bluff, the site of my ancestors' home, and visit my dearest and nearest cousin, Claire McCluskey, a lovely, funny, intrepid Savannahian who built a home for herself and her two strapping sons, Will and Ben English, out there on that spit of land near the shelter islands.

There I will design a new kitchen for Claire that speaks to her, that draws on her spirit and her place on Coffee Bluff. I am so excited to do this; there is nothing more fun for a designer (me) than to create a unique space that resonates with the area and the inhabitants.

Especially when you consider that my great great grandmother probably stood on that very spot trying a century or two ago to decide just where to put the hearth and just where to put a window looking out onto the garden.

It's good to know just how deeply my designer roots grow.

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Kit Golson Design

for elegant, sustainable and pragmatic

Chic Provence Interior Design