I’m a design historian by training and a writer by luck. My work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Luxe, LALA, Angeleno, and the Washington Post, as well as numerous other print and digital outlets.
After graduating from the University of Glasgow with an MPhil in the Decorative Arts, I took a curatorial role with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Decorative Arts department. There, I oversaw the Early American galleries and helped organize exhibitions on California Design and the European Arts and Crafts movement. I also worked closely with the department’s fundraising and educational council, which introduced me to such luminaries as Tony Duquette and Desmond Guinness, two figures who opened my eyes to new ways of seeing (and living with) objects. From the museum, I moved to Architectural Digest (it was literally across the street on Wilshire Boulevard at the time), which gave me extraordinary access to the magazine’s vast archive and library, deepening my love of 20th-century design and decoration. My interest ultimately became more about how we live with objects, I suppose, and what makes a home a home. And now it’s a best-of-all-worlds scenario because I get to write about the many aspects of design from the comfort of my own little abode, Chihuahuas on my lap. (Though I do miss the old AD office at times.)
As a freelance writer, I’ve also contributed to many design books, including Craft in America: Celebrating Two Centuries of Artists and Objects; the Museum of Arts and Design’s Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design; and furniture designer Charles Hollis Jones’s monograph, Mr. Lucite. In 2018, I reunited with several of my wonderful AD colleagues and co-authored Paige Rense’s memoir, Architectural Digest: Autobiography of a Magazine,1920-2010, for Rizzoli. What an extraordinary opportunity to work directly with Paige at her home in West Palm Beach, and to research nearly a century of design. Over the last several years, I’ve also done some ghost writing, but mum’s the word on all that.
If you’re here and reading this, thank you, and feel free to send a note. I’m always excited to hear about people, places, or things I should be covering, and am always open to new creative projects. I feel so very fortunate and grateful to work in this field.