A Hundred Years of Elevating the Simple Pleasures of Home
“When we make a home, we honor life and we honor all of its blessings,” Dominique Browning wrote when she became editor in chief of House & Garden in 1996. This fall, the magazine is celebrating its 100th anniversary. As the staff struggles along with the rest of New York to cope with the Sept. 11 attacks, her words are truer than ever.
The House & Garden century began in 1901 when three Philadelphia architects conceived a scholarly design journal. A 308-page October special anniversary issue, on newsstands now, takes a sweeping look over the magazine’s archives of evocative photographs and writing.
Vintage covers show how the magazine portrayed design history as social history. A book by Browning and her staff, “House & Garden Book of Style” (Clarkson Potter; 240 pages, $45), a compendium of houses today, from minimalism to Bohemian chic, is due out Nov. 6.
Browning spoke last week as she was writing her editor’s column for the December issue in a friend’s office after a bomb scare had closed the Conde Nast building on Times Square.
Question: What is the health of the shelter-magazine industry these days?
Answer: We’ve been very lucky at House & Garden, but there is a glut and a growing sameness to lots of magazines. I try to make the magazine a bridge between the decorating trade and translating to the consumer. We try to demystify the pretty pictures.
Q: What effect have places such as Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn had on design in the past decade?
A: They have been a huge force for the democratization of design. It used to be impossible to find things; now there are so many stores with affordable, accessible design. People say it makes everything the same. This is not true. Now you can decorate your house like you’ve spent years in Asia, but you never left the country.
Q: How has the Web affected the selling of furniture?
A: Marketing is fine over the Web, but buying didn’t really work. People who tried to sell furniture on the Web suffered extravagant losses. People want to feel the carpet and touch the upholstery. It’s a touchy-feely business.
Q: How will the tragic events of Sept. 11 affect your world?
A: I’m sitting here trying to tap into the emotional reasons that we decorate, beyond the simple level of materialism. ... I realized that all our lives have changed because of this, but home remains the most important thing. Those mundane activities that hold you together --making dinner, working in a garden, setting a table, making your bed--every single person who has lost somebody wishes they could have yesterday back with all those little mundane activities.
I’ve gone full circle, and now I realize this is so important. Chintz is not what we are thinking about today or tomorrow. But we are thinking about home and the deeper meaning of home.
