As a holiday treat, The New York Times visits five Gilded Age Mansions in the Hudson Valley (and surrounding area) and shares images of their holiday finery. Pictured above, is the Study in the Vanderbilt Mansion at Hyde Park, New York — while modernists at heart, we'd love to host a holiday party in this room...
Check out the story and Holiday visiting schedules of the homes, plus more pictures: They Had It and Flaunted It and the extensive slideshow.
Pics: Tony Cenicola
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Comments (5)
Very good holiday decor. I wish I celebrate new year eve there.
Oh, not another deer head. They're sooooo over. Especially for Rudolph, there.
How amazing!
magnaverde-I think the head is used in a completely different context here. I mean, this is a f-ing hunting room for god's sake! If anyone is allowed to use heads it's this person.
Loufromlou, I probably should have added the little eye-rolling avatar just to be sure everyone realized I was joking, although I figured the Rudoph allusion made that pretty clear. Not clear enough, I guess. Oh, well.
Anyway, whatever my opinion of the use of animal heads & antlers & pelts as decor in contemporary rooms, let me assure you that I think it's wrong to rewrite history after-the-fact by making a historic room like this conform to the moral/ethical standards of today, and that I find it downright silly to make them conform to today's aesthetic standards, since, these days, those have a shelf-life of no more than a year or so.
In other words, in "objecting" to Rudolph, I was neither making a PETA-like condemnation of taxidermy in general, nor was I making fun of PETA people, who are at least sincere in their beliefs.
No, in referring to deer heads as being "over"--in a historic room, no less--I was making fun of silly people who follow ephemeral trends, since it was only a season or so ago that deer heads--even blue plastic deer heads--were the trendy crowd's objets du jour. Now, of course, ya can't even give the da*n things away. They're soooo 2007.
If that's still too confusing, let me just put it like this: I'd love to have a room like that green room at the top, Rudolph & all.