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Rarely do I guffaw out loud when I open a press release that has popped up in my mailbox.
But then again, that was before I happened upon the amazing Ms. Abigail Ahern.
You'd think with all the gazillions of design magazines I peruse seemingly without stop, her name would trip off my tongue. It doesn't.
But it will.
Tell me how anyone look at this and not smile with glee?
Or snicker at this posh pelican?
Or be bowled over by this brilliant and bodacious bulldog, my personal favorite.
Ahern, an interior designer and author of A Girl's Guide to Decorating, is a master of mixing bright with dark, high with low, fine with flea market finds, and the blatantly bizarre with the relatively conventional classics. In a word, she's fabulous. Her product lines have been selling in London (her home base) at Atelier and her lamps are now available in the States at the Maison 24 store in Bridgehampton, N.Y. The prices? The poodle is $190, the pelican: $210; the bulldog: $340 (I never, ever picked the least expensive no matter how hard I try.) The shades are sold separately and are in the $65–$78 range. And of course, the toppers are perfect for the artful animals below.
But, as is always the case, search out her own home. You will be awed and amazed. One wall is covered in a wall-sized photograph (could that be wallpaper?) of a trove of books on endless shelves. A shocking pink coffee table. A piece of art which is actually the back of an old sign. Oversize wire chandeliers fit for candles. It's one wonderful detail after another.
And the Ahern philosophy on design? She quotes an Alice, once found in Wonderland: "'If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would.' You see?"
Yes. I see it clearly.
Christy Marshall, editor-in-chief
