February 15, 2023 • 38 mins
Christopher is an artist. He creates one-of-a-kind, timeless, and highly coveted lamps. In fact, he's made lamps for four different White House Administrations, the Presidential Blair House, and many other distinguished American homes. He’s also the author of A Year at Clove Brook Farm: Gardening, Tending Flocks, Keeping Bees, Collecting Antiques, and Entertaining Friends. But how did he become so successful? What drives his passions? Why lamps? Martha sits down with Christopher in this episode to explore his background and hear his stories.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know, you can't be afraid. You know, fear gets
in the way of so many of us, so many oftentimes,
and you just got to push that aside and be like, no,
not today, We're gonna face this. Sitting across from me
today is a very good friend, UM, a colleague and
many similar pursuits. His name is Christopher Spitzmiller. I've known
(00:24):
Christopher for how many years? Christopher six or seven years?
I think six or seven years. We're both interested in
the following. We're both interested in backyard animal husbandry. We
both have lots and lots of different kinds of foul birds, chickens, geese, um, peacocks.
We love gardens, we love all kinds of landscaping, we
(00:47):
love interior design and decoration, and we love many many
other things like cooking and entertaining and building. So we've
our paths crossed in many different in different ways. And uh,
and it's so nice to have you here at my
farm today. I made Christopher drive all the way down
from his farm in Millbrook, New York, because I thought
(01:09):
it would be nice to interview him right here institute.
But were you okay? Oh good? Christopher gets up early,
and he stays up late, and he's a hard, hard worker.
And he is as I said in the introduction to
his beautiful book, which is called A Year at clove
Brook Farm, I I think the best adjective to use
(01:30):
for Christopher is industrious, because he is industrious in many
different fields. So I want to get down to the
to the basics here. I want to know about your education.
I want to know when you first got interested in
your big profession, which is I think your main profession,
which is pottery and the making of some of America's
most beautiful lamps that are on tables in houses everywhere
(01:54):
and even in the White House. So how did you start? So?
I grew up in East Ahore, New York, is this
little country town outside of Buffalo where Fisher Price toys
are made, and Albert Hubbard had his movement of arts
and craft's work. And I love the idea of making
something that could enrich your life in some way, that bowl,
or something that could put your change in or an
(02:14):
order of could be served from it. I love that,
um But I thought that I would have a normal
job like everybody else in my family were bankers and lawyers.
My grandfather had his own business, and I always aspired
to have my own business, which was what what was
your friends? He was in the aerospace business. He did
pneumatic breathing systems for the Alvin that found the Titanic,
and then in the end he did the whole breathing
(02:35):
system for the Space Shuttle. That's a big thing. Wow.
I didn't know that in Buffalo and Buffalo and you know,
my mother's family was also in Buffalo, that's right, and
my grandfather was He was an artist. He was a
decorative steel worker and he made the big, beautiful decorative
steel gates for many of the Catholic churches in Buffalo.
(02:58):
He was honored when he was nine nine years old
by the by his union for his artistry, and U
and I got. I used to visit Buffalo a lot,
and I did not know about some of these other businesses,
but it has been that was a very industrial It
was the biggest industrial city of I think New York
State forever, and a lot of it was built at
the turn of the century. So there's really great architecture
(03:20):
there in these big vass houses. And people complain about
the snow there and I'm like, it's just part of
the deal. You get six or eight inches and you
go to work and you don't let it slow you down.
The planes take off at the airport and it's life.
So you went to school, Grammar school and I went
to school in Grammar's glam Buffalo, and then I went
to boarding school in New Hampshire, went to a little
boarding school called Procter Academy, and then after that I
(03:42):
went to St. Lawrence University way up in New York State,
and they had a ceramics program and they would give
me a four oh and let me do sort of
whatever I wanted. And I wanted to go to Rhode
Island School Design. I had taken the summer program there
and they offered for me to go. And my mom
was determined for me, the dyslexic and me to get
a live arts to grade shows. Just stay there and
I'll pay for you to go to graduate school wherever
(04:04):
you wanted. And I figured I could go back to
Rhode Island School Design is what was called the visiting students.
So I went back there from my senior fall and
it was a real kick, you know, And it was
they signed the same projects year after year, and they
also told us if you can do anything else, you
probably should think about it, because it's a hard career
to make a make a go out of so in pottery.
(04:25):
In pottery, well you've done extremely well. Christopher has I
just visited the other day, UM, because I really wanted
to see what he was really up to in his
in his lamp business. UM. I went and visited his chilier,
which is on thirty and it is the penthouse in
an industrial building away on the west side of Manhattan,
(04:47):
and I was very impressed. You have the nicest group
of people working up there, nice artists. They're all artists
because they are all working very diligently on the perfection
that you exemplify in your lamp basis. Christopher makes lamp
bases on which you put lamp shade, and these are
(05:07):
table lamps. Primarily you do some floor lamps, I guess,
but describe your lamps. So there Asian and influence. I
find shapes all over, mostly at at auction websites and stuff,
and I'll take a photograph or I'll buy something and
I'll make a sketch of it, because I believe it's
our job, is product designers, to take something and make
it our own in some way, to not just repeat
what is out there. I think that's our big obligation.
(05:30):
And all those different jobs that you see being done,
I taught myself. I taught myself how to turn the
wooden bases, how to do the water guilding, and then
eventually I could afford to have different people in the
different parts of it. And so there's three potters who
work working the molds, and I sit down and make
about eight lamps when I start, and I pick out
the best one and we use that one is the
(05:51):
one that goes into a mold and we produce out
of there. How often do you make a new shape
about I would say about like maybe one or to
a month, you know. And how many lamps do you
have in your catalog? Now? It's an awful lot in
there that we offer, and we we discontinue things occasionally,
but mostly if I make them, they sell, thank God.
So I'm happy with that. And your your customer base
(06:14):
is it's mostly decorators. We sell through two stores, and
we have stores all over from Los Angeles to Palm
Springs to Boston and Dallas and everywhere in between. I
was just in the store in New York in the seventies,
k RB, k RB. If you haven't been to this store,
it's a very fun and colorful decorating store. You go
(06:35):
there for your lamps, you go there for your tabletop,
you go there for yeah, pretty much everything. It is
a beauty and you have a whole wall of your work.
It was very impressive and um, and I hadn't seen
some of those lamps before. She had just gotten the
shipment in and she just opened right well, she was
open before she had She's moved around town. She was
on seventy nine Street, and then she's on seventy four Street,
(06:57):
and now she's right on Lexington, and she was literally
you around the block on seventy. But there's a whole
new wave of people who were like, oh, I had
no idea you were here. And Kate's the new sort
of only game in town. She's got a great color
sense and a great style sense. Yeah, I was. I
was very impressed with the color film. I can't go
in there without coming home with something. I have to
be very disciplined about. Like I wanted to buy several
(07:18):
glass things in there, and I cut my I kept
my wallet shut for for now. I'm sure I'll go back,
but a beautiful store. But I love seeing your lamps
all in one place too, because when I visited your studio,
I got to see a whole lot of different size
and shaped basses. Um and these, as I said, our
table lamps for the most part, with beautiful beautiful wooden
(07:42):
or metal bases and um and then and beautiful middle um, middle,
what do you call the tops of the line clusters.
It's a double cluster there that has two lights so
you can run one on or both of them are right.
And then do you also design the finials? We don't
get the finals a sort of I picked it out.
It's a ball finial that you have to be careful
when you take it on and off because it's kind
of like a little bomb, so you gotta be like, okay,
(08:04):
I've got it in my hand. Now it's a pottery ball.
It's brass, and it's crappy brass ball. Okay. But I
I love finials and I've always collected them for lamps,
so I'm always looking for the old old finials that
you can find sometimes. But um, but see here I
am building Christopher's business. I want you to do more finials.
(08:25):
I want you to do more here. You should do birds,
and you know you should. You should do some of
you know, fantastic chicken finials. I'd buy some of those,
you know, pretty pottery you could, you could make molds
in your shop right there. Yeah, so maybe it's maybe
he's going to go making making some finials, but you're
doing so many other things. Christopher's now not only maintaining
(08:46):
this very lively business. Who manufactures your your lamps in
quantity for the marketplace. So we do them through Visual Comfort.
They're my sort of business partner in it. And you know,
I realized that we got the main living room in
the library and the main rooms, but they were sort
of extra bedrooms and stuff that didn't always get my
lamps in it or people who were just starting out.
(09:06):
I wanted to be more available, and Visual Comfort does
a very good job of making them more accessible, affordable,
and more affordable. So a basic lamp through Visual Comfort
would be about how for a lamp, and then your
custom made lamps are about twenty five apiece without the shade.
(09:27):
But no, the shade comes with it a paper shop.
If you want to get a fancier shade, which I
know you're a fan of then that's another Oh I
love fancy shades. But it's getting harder and harder to
find shade makers. UM. I have one friend who makes
beautiful shades and her business is called Shades of the
Midnight Sun, and she has a small workshop on the
(09:47):
Hudson River. UM, and she's in Bronxville. But to go
to visit her and see the shapes of the middle
shapes that she designs for the lamps, it's very complicated
and they have to be the right size and the
right high eat and the right with for the bases,
like you're beautiful, You're beautiful, um, pottery basis. So it's
it's lamps are hard, and that's why I'm here to
(10:09):
make it easy. But that's why you're successful because you
make it well. That's That's the thing is when I started,
I was making plates and dishes and I sort of
steered away from that. Richard Keith Langham came to me
at MeCOx Cards that first summer that I was up
there when I started. He's like, I need you to
make these, And in the very beginning I just made
him the vase and Keith would have a base made
for it and have it electrified. And that's when I
(10:30):
learned how to do those difference parts of it of
turning the base but fit just so and the best
of everything so well. They're beautiful. And I watched the
water guilding the other day. You're at your tell and
it was so pretty to see that. And a very
pretty girl is sitting in a little room all by herself.
Just happen, you know. She just came along like as
people ask of, like how do you get people to
(10:52):
help you? And she has a basic pottery experience, but
really not enough to be a potter. But I thought
she can be a guilder. We'll teacher how to old
and we've taught her what she needs to know, because
you can't just largely hire a guilder. They're kind of
hard people to find out there. But if you get
a person who's got a good attitude and basic hand skills,
you can teach them anything. Which I'm a big family.
(11:13):
I may send Alexis Stewart here because Alexis is busy
raising her kids right now. But she was a fantastic guilder.
She took it up as a hobby. Um, I guess
during during college. And uh, I remember I remember building
a room for her at East Hampton that was air free,
no current, no air current, completely still room because that's
(11:35):
what you really have to have, right, can't have any drafts,
it'll blow the gold gold leave around. But um, I
think I'll suggest to her that she come work for
Christopher's fitz Miller. So the lamp business is thriving, and
(11:57):
you spend how many time, how much how much time?
But with the lamps during the week, I'm in the
city three to four days a week, and then I'm
up in Millbrook the rest of the time. Up in Millbrook,
we have a studio that makes plates and dishes and
accessory pieces up there. Um, when I've been the lucky
recipient of a beautiful set of pinkish, pinkish painted plates
the marble of the marble. Yeah, and I use that
(12:19):
in Maine on my table in Maine because the table
is pink granite and it looked just just looks so
perfect there. And uh, and how many people are working
in that studio too right now, work out there and
they have the molds, they have the kilns, they have
everything you're making. We have a silhouette of the bottom
part of the plate, and then we roll a slab
out and attach it to the mold, and then the
(12:39):
lever comes down and cuts back the foot and stuff,
and then the plate dries on the mold and we
take it off and when we put on one coat
of the white all over it, and then we splash
the color on and move it around, get the right
amount of movement in it and stop or then we
have a whole series of dahius that I've grown at
the far And my rule about plates up there is
I have to grow the flour in order for it
to get on the plate. We have a group of
(13:01):
peany plates, a group of sweet pea plates, and I've
done some mushrooms. And then I collaborate with friends like
my friend Kathy Graham has some um woodland plates that
we do with her and Marion McAvoy. So very pretty, Yes,
and I like your collaborations too, not only on the
plates but also on your lamps. You're us You're working
with one of the best, best, best porcelain flower makers
(13:24):
in the whole. Their porcelain writers flowers, the most beautiful
porcelain flowers you have ever seen. This is museum quality
stuff and and she is just exquisite. How did you
Clara Potters who who has been a friend of mine
now for quite a long time, and you know she
and her name is Clara Claire Potter, And so when
we do things together, it's called Potter Spitzmiller, which is
(13:45):
a nice little anagram to have. And We'll make either
vases or lamp parts, and I'll give Claire the wet
vase and Claire attaches sweet peas or hella bores or
whatever gets her fancy. And she'll ask me sometimes what
do you think should be on here? And I'm like,
that's your bestiness. I don't. I don't get into that,
so she doesn't. She does the picking of the thing.
I mean, the client has something to deal with that
(14:06):
the clients could say, I like sweet peas, right. I
have looked at Claire Potter's fingers and they are so delicate.
And that she makes these flowers that she fixes to
your lamps. And she also just just does individual flowers
for for her artwork that that are display flowers and
you put them, you know, down the center of the
table or something. These are exquisite things. So and now
(14:29):
because of Christopher and because of people like Claire Potter,
I have been looking online on Instagram. I somehow got
into the algorithm of pottery sends these pottery things pottery hole,
you know, and I get the ba weird times and
I'm like, oh gosh, she's not asleep. She I've been
three o'clock in the morning looking at pottery being made.
(14:50):
I don't know, but it's so interesting. Really, I love that.
I love the techniques, but when I saw at your
studio is the most interesting. Really. Um, those heavy le
textured lamp bases that you're making are so exquisite, so
sharp everything. So yeah, there's as that I like to
have in them, which is sort of my version of perfection.
(15:12):
That things aren't perfect because they're handmade, but the lines
are really crisp and the bases are perfect, and it
all sort of comes together and gives you gives you
a really good look. But I did give you an
indication that Christopher is multifaceted. He's not just a lamp
base maker or a lampmaker. He is also an interior designer.
You did you ever work for Albert Hadley or is
(15:33):
he know? He was just a really good friend and
mentor and was really very inspirational, and he was a
good client. He ordered lots of my lamps and would say,
I want you to do this for this person and
that for that person. And so he got behind a
lot of young talent like myself and pushed us forward.
Kevin worked there, Kevin Kevin Sharkey loved working for Albert Hadley.
He idolized him. Everybody did. You can't find anybody who
(15:56):
says anything bad about Albert Hasley. He was. I met
him a few times because he lived in Fairfield. He
loved you, you know, he had those those bumper stickers,
made the Martha for President stickers. He thought you were
the cats me out in a lot of ways. He was.
He was a charming and very talented man. And Sister
Parrish he worked Parrish Hadley. Um, did you ever meet
Sister Parrish. I was gone by the time sister was.
(16:18):
I wasn't on the scene. But by the time Sister
Paris came at around miss meeting her. That's too bad.
She was. She was something. She did a lot of
houses up in Mount Desert Island and Universe for some
very illustrious citizens up there. I've been and stayed at
her house in Ailesboro, and it's like she's alive because
everything is like in its right place, and she comes
out at night and Apple and her daughter or Susan
(16:41):
take really good care of it and lies there. So
it's like a little little dream. That's nice. But but
you love interior design, I do. I love all kinds
of juxtaposition of colors and rooms. I like to be
the pop of color. They're like in my own library,
I have some merrow goold lamps with some light blue
ground in there so that we sort of jump out.
(17:02):
That's what I like. But um, but when you go
through your rooms with when you travel with Christopher through
his own beautiful house, which is a eighteen one eighteen
thirty federal kind of farmhouse, uh set in a set
in a field in Millbrook, New York, with a pond
and a pool and a pool house and a walled garden. Um,
(17:24):
you think, oh my gosh, you know this this house.
But you're surprised when you go inside because every object
has a story. It does. But first of all, the
house wasn't like that in the beginning. It was falling down,
there were big holes, there were baths living in it,
there were honey bees. Then there there was all this
stuff I had just straightened out, and I could only
(17:46):
do it as my finances allowed, and I would get
so far and things like the recession would come along
and I'd have to stop working. But you know, it
was like five or six years of hard, expensive restoration,
like new fireplaces and new bathrooms. In when beating and
architectural DIGESTI concert we want to photograph the house, and
I'm like, well, if you want to photograph the new
(18:07):
chimneys or flues, I just put in your welcome to
But there's really nothing interesting to see here yet. So
the declaration part was sort of easy. That took about
a year and a half. And now it's nice because
all the projects are outside of the house, like gardens
and building the barn and getting that all together. So
it's nice. When you walk around your house you say, oh,
that comes from that auction, that comes from the estate
(18:27):
of so and so so, who else what other designers.
There's a lot of Albert Hadley in the house. Every
room has something of his and at my desk in
the living room was Keith Irvine's desk. There's um, there's
there's pieces from sister parish. There's pieces from everybody in
there are the pieces from you. I like to have
a collection of things that my friends had made or
(18:47):
have been a part of their life at some point.
It's sort of a little bit more meaningful to integrate
them into your your house and have them be there.
But you have your stuff in a lot of houses too.
And most most impressive is that lamps got into the
White House. Now, how did that happen? I wrote, Well,
it happened by I was an intern there in I
(19:09):
believe when I moved to Washington by chance. My roommate
at the time was um friends with the director of
the White House intern program, and she was waffling around
looking for a job, which was an appearance, said why
don't you come be an intern? And so I went
to work for the Clintons. And I could see then
how magnificent that house is and how incredible it was.
And they made a big effort to move Crass from
(19:29):
the Smithsonian over so a table in the executive office
might have a Delta Juli sculpture on it or a
Native American thing. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be
incredible to make something for this house? Someday. And when
the Clinton's left, I made a lot of things for
the house in Chappaqua and their house in Washington, And
when the George Bushes moved in, I made some things
for the upstairs to the White House for them. And
(19:50):
then when the Obama's were elected, I wrote Michael Smith
a letter and said, hey, I'd like to make some
some things. Yeah, you can't wait there likes talking about industriousness.
You've got reach out and say I can do this.
Can I help you with this? You know, you can't
be afraid. You know, fear gets in the way of
so many of us, so many oftentimes, and you just
got to push that aside and be like, no, not today,
(20:11):
We're gonna face this. And Michael wrote me right away,
and he came to my studio in the midst of
that two thousand and eighth Recessions showed me a picture
of the oval office of my lamps at the end.
When I volunteered to make it, I never thought that
I would get such a prominent spot as that, So
I felt really, really lucky and very thankful. So you
do you have you thought about why you focused on lamps.
(20:34):
It just seemed to be the thing. You know. It
worked for me for a lot of years, but I've
I've started to make plates again and more accessory things
and catchpots that you can put flowers in, like we're
we're doing. We do some mirrors, we do all kinds
of different things, anything for around the house. But the
lamps are sort of like the main and bread and
butter of the business. Catchpots, um and those cash poll Yes,
(20:58):
but is that the way Americans say catch pots? Sort
of is I should I should you make it for fun?
Or do you make it for fun? You say it
for fun? Little bit tongue in cheeks that I think
is a cash po is a is like a tall
bowl in which you put a potted plant or um
or flowers or so I like. I like that you
call them catch pots. I like that because they are
(21:20):
catchy catch the different thing. But all of you out there,
they're really cash po So, Christopher, before we leave the
subject of your beautiful lamps, what are the dues and
don't um that you should pay attention to when choosing
a lamp for a room. You gotta think where the
lamp is going to be, Like if you're gonna sit
next to the lamp. You don't want to stare up
into the the light fixture of it. So that the
(21:41):
shade is just high enough that you can get some
light down on your reading, but isn't too too tall. Um,
you want to think about how much light it puts off.
My lamps have double clusters, so you can put two
different bulbs in there, or have double heights for it.
You can see about a dimmer, which is a very
important thing. I love it. Dimm er either on the
cord switch or on the switch itself. And shade come
down how far onto a lamp depending on the height
(22:02):
where it's gonna, say, like if it's going to go
on your bureau, it can be up a little bit higher.
But maybe you won't want the lamp to be so high,
so maybe like a sixteen inch lamp for up there
in your libraries to maybe you have like an eighteen
inch lamp in there. But you don't want to see
You don't want to see the middle party, you don't
want to see the metal part. You want the shade
to hit right across thing. So it's kind of like
I think, you know, our electrical parts are very pretty
and people like to see them, but I like it
(22:23):
to just sort of be right resting in the shade
height where the cap height. This it rests right across
there is I think the proper height right. So what
are some emerging interior design trends that you that you observe? Now,
I'm not a huge trend follower, but I'll tell you
things that I admire. I admire people who can mix
like my friend Ashley Whittaker, who can mix a lot
(22:43):
of different patterns together and have them look right. Everybody
thinks you can only have like one pattern or one this,
and ashually will layer in three or four or sometimes
five different patterns in a room that she's creating. And
what it's about is making somebody feel comfortable. Like, That's
what it is about, more than anything about even more
important than the visual impact. It's that you can sit
(23:04):
down in your sofa, put your feet up on it
and be like, I'm at home. I want to relax here,
I want to spend some time in this room. Who else?
Who else do you do you admire in the world?
And that sort of bright sort of color way. Miles
read is another favorite, and Nicholson who worked for him,
Like they're big in that sort of color sort of
(23:24):
juxtaposition that I like so much, where there's a contrast
trim on all the different pieces. All that kind of
like pizzas and glamour. That's what I'm a fan of. Now,
how many years ago did you start writing? Because your
book came out in what your two thousand and two
thousand and it was during the pandemic. It was in
March so and in the book is called A Year
(23:50):
at clove Brook Farm. It is a big, heavy book
published by Riz Soli. And there's a picture of Christopher
with his two dogs on the front porch or is
that the side porch. That's the kitchen porch essentially our
front door. Yeah, with lots of topiary, uh and beautifully
potted plants and um. And how long did that book
(24:13):
take you to write? It took three years for me
to write it. You know a lot of the publishers
wanted me to do a book about the rooms that
my lamps go into and about what they look like,
and I wanted to do something more like you would do.
You know when your book Entertaining Cab Style, I was
eleven years old and I still remember seeing it on
my mother's kitchen table and looking at it and being like,
this is the life that I want to live someday,
(24:34):
you know, not not exactly Martha's like, but that abundance
of a table with cornercopia of things and the copper
pots everywhere, and there was just a lot of love
and a lot of warmth, and like this is a
place that I said before, like I want to spend
some time, I want to hang out. I never imagined
that one day I would be spending Thanksgiving in her
kitchen and cutting the turkey open with her one day,
(24:56):
but it's just all sort of evolved that way. But
I wanted to do it. We had a lot of
mutual for we have a huge amount of mutual Yeah,
so many and our interests merged so so in so
many different areas. So that's really I think. What happened?
Um and it's uh and now you are happily married
Anthony Bolo? When did you meet Anthony? And how I
(25:17):
met Anthony? Four years ago? A friend fixed us up,
and she initially tried to fix him up with me,
and he went home and googled me and was like, no,
he's far too fancy for me. I don't want to
go with him. He thought you were fancy. It was fancy.
I cleaned the cat litter box myself, and I do
all of this really kind of gross things myself, which
it is part of having a farm, you know, you
(25:38):
have to roll your sleeves up and and do it all. Um.
And so it was Thanksgiving and Emily said to me,
why don't you reach out to Anthony and I did
and we went and had a dinner at Florida Bar
in New York, which is a favorite of both of ours,
and um, sadly closed, sadly closed, sadly no longer. But
I went to the Corner It was so good. Corner Bar,
that's his. Oh you'll love it, you'll love it. And
(26:01):
he made me the omelet the other night that since
Ino with the caviare. It was very good. So um,
so you so you. We had our day and things
went well and it just kept going. And um, I
realized that he had become such an intellgral part in
the farm and what was going on there, Like this
morning he was up early feeding the chickens, even before
(26:22):
I was out of bed. You know, he's really a
very hard worker, just like me. And I had never
dated anybody like that who was more of a partner.
And I remember when I did some of that online
dating and stuff. I said to myself, I said, my description,
I want, I want to find somebody who I could
build something with one day. And I ended up through
a friend finding that partner. How nice and you are
building and Anthony started it. I guess the Arongjurie talk
(26:46):
about the arrangerie because so in Covid he worked from
the farm and he really loved spending most of his
time up in Millbrook and he's a let landscape architect
and friend of ours bought this building at the far
end of town and it had been in atlant escaping
business with a big greenhouse, and it's been divided in
half and creeling Gow is on one part of it
and Anthony is on the other part. And the owner
(27:07):
called me up and said, do you know of anybody
who would like to take this over? And it didn't
occur to me to think of asking Anthony, and I didn't,
And thank god, Larry called another time and said, would
you let know of anybody maybe you or Anthony would
like to do this, And thankfully I said to Anthony,
do you want to do this, and he said yes,
and he started a business selling topiary and flowers and
all the things. I would go to Street and get
and drag up there on the weekends. You can now
(27:29):
get right in Melbo. Yeah, and it is a beautiful shop.
So any of you who are driving around looking for
an interesting place to visit, U certainly visit in Millbrook
or Enerie. Uh. And the whole town has become a
little bit more booming and and boisterous. I like Millbrook
Now it was very very quiet for a long time.
It still is quiet in some ways, but there's a
(27:52):
little bit of retail going on, and we have a
few good restaurants you can go to right now. So yeah,
I like it a lot. And but I really like
going to your to your shop and creol and Out
and Out which is right next door, which has very extraordinary,
very high end antiques and decorative objects. So it's it's fun.
But but Anthony seems to be a really good partner
(28:12):
for you. Yeah, yeah, he is really into it. And
what a nice thing to to find. How old are you?
I'm fifty one, he is fifty one years old. How
How old is Anthony? Anthony is forty three. Oh, so
he's a little younger, but not not that much. Um.
And the name or Ingerie came from, you know, the
glass box sort of English, not English but French, sort
(28:33):
of long, sort of greenhouse. You know. He wants to
have sort of specimeny things that are sort of different
from what every other place will have. So he doesn't
have your sort of regular geraniums. He has like pellegroniums
or weird leaf geraniums that have a rough leaf to them,
and all kinds. And a single camuleia, not a nice
(28:53):
fluffy um um, you know, multipeddled camelia, a single camulity.
How's you're doing? Mind sting? Pretty well? They didn't like
it in the house. I try and bring these things
in the house for a little bit to enjoy them
when they're in. Yeah. I will show you mine and
hopefully get some advice about it. So your book was published,
(29:16):
and you have worked, I think harder than most authors
to promote and to take that book all over the country,
and people love, They have responded so favorably to how
you do it. You give talks, said garden clubs, you
give talks said antique shows, and then you sell your book. Um,
(29:36):
and it's been a very very successful book launch. So
when's your second book going to come out? Well, we
haven't started working on the second book, but I'm going
too soon. I think I'm going to do a book
on entertaining will be the next one, and breaking it
down and showing all the different parts of it, which
this one breaks down things from gardening, things with animals.
It's sort of a broad scope sort of book. Um.
(29:57):
I want to impart in the reader different things that
you can take away from it and do yourself. So
let's talk about our livestock interest. You have the most beautiful,
fluffy Sebastopol geese, thanks to you because in COVID you
(30:19):
came over and you brought me eight goose eggs and
I didn't really want gee. Gees are alloud, dirty, dirty, smelly.
But you know, when Martha gives you something, you smile
and say thank you very much. You know, good matters.
And I thought that I would hash these because I'm
a hatch aholic and I love to hatch all kinds
of little babies and raise them and um find homes
for them. So I hatched these geese and when they
(30:42):
were big enough to walk, outside of the house. They
followed us around like we were their mothers. And we
gave them names like Joan Rivers and Paddle Shall and
Caroline Rome and Bill Blasts and they're really fond. Were
Martha Peacock. Yeah, so there's a you got me going
on peacocks as well too. That was another hole that
you led me down. And you know, four peacocks have
(31:03):
now led to like twelve peacocks. And have you seen
my blues brothers. How beautiful they are, aren't they amazing?
They're so fat, and you know what they thought about
how loud they are and how obnoxious they are, and
they're not all made a noise since the massacre we
had a we had a coyote massacre of some of
my nicest peacocks. But since the massacre, these guys are
(31:25):
so quiet. I don't I haven't heard them make any noise.
I try to talk to them and they're not talking back.
The geese talk back, but these guys do not talk
back to me. So um, so you have you have geese,
and those are beautiful because they're so fluffy and white.
They go into your pond, they go into your swimming pool.
They follow us around and just really are really really
(31:46):
really it's really more like labradors than they are like
piece I think, you know, if you spend enough time
with them and bond with them, they can be your
friends and they can be really like a nice you know,
the chickens and the peacocks I haven't spent enough time
with so we have really got that bond. It's whatever
you invest in you can see or return from. And
that's the nice thing about what I've done with the keys.
(32:08):
And you're interested in cooking when the bets start. It
started when my mom was pregnant. She had a set
of twins when I was fourteen years old, and I
was hungry. So I like learned to cook for for
myself and for her and for anybody who was around.
And um, it's something that I love to do. I
love to share and bring a table together and have
people like you over. And sometimes that can be a
(32:30):
little bit scary, but I know that I burned the
chicken for you and you've enjoyed it just the same.
You know, look burned, but it didn't taste burn you know.
I just think that you've got to entertain and bring people,
you know, offer them something and you know, all of
us want the phone to bring but you've got to
make some phone calls in order to get that to
happen and and sort of make your life be what
(32:51):
it is. And you also like to travel. I love
to travel. Yeah, where's your favorite places to go? Um,
we're going to go to Nashville to the antique show
to see the chicken coops that you And so somehow, somehow,
Christopher's fitz Miller allured me into yet another project um
and asked me to design a simple chicken coop that
would be auctioned off at the Nashville Antique Show. Um.
(33:14):
I didn't really pay attention except that I, you know,
I drew. I drew a model of it for you,
and and then all of a sudden, it's a big deal.
I didn't know what a big deal it was. Contractor
Supply is paying for the construction. They're sponsoring the whole show.
I love Tractors Supply. How Lawton is an old friend
of mine from Home Depot, so so it was kind
(33:35):
of weird that this whole thing came together. So Christopher
of course designs a sort of a great revival chicken coop,
and I designed a typical Martha simple farmhouse looking chicken
coop with a lovely cupola. And they haven't sourced the
fineal yet. They said they would get a local fineal
down their copper. But they're gonna be nice and they're
(33:57):
being auctioned off for charity at the Nashville Antiques Fair.
But everybody's going down there. Stephen Gambril. Yeah, it's a
good show for home stuff. It's good for garden stuff.
And there's something you can buy there for twenty dollars
or two plants too. They had beautiful plans everything. So
if you're planning to go to the Nashville show, always
(34:18):
take a truck with you because you have shippers so
you can send things back with the show. Less sure,
I less sure. I bought some beautiful iron chairs and
I bought some plants which I brought home with me.
And it was a great show. So and and it's
been up going for how long how many years? I
think it's been going for about twenty five or thirty years.
You know. Albert started that show. Albert Hadley started it
(34:40):
and it has had great momentum building around and they
do a very good job of getting speakers in there
and educating people and it's just a fun experience. And
my friends from Alabama and all over the South come
to it and it's a great, great time. And it
happens in early February every year when none of us
really have very much going on. So I really forward
to it and and rarely come home without something. So
(35:04):
oh good. So um, it's been so nice talking to
Christopher as we always talk. We just got back last
weekend from the Northeastern Poultry Love going to the poultry
show every year. Every year. We get up and we
go very early in the morning, and and the chickens
I got are very happy, happy, They're they're happy. I've
I've isolated them with with other like chickens so that
(35:25):
they're they're pretty happy, getting very well fed and getting
fatter every single day. Um. But it's um. But it's
fun to spend time with you. It's fun to talk
to you about all of this. And now that I've
seen your lamp studio, it really really impresses me that
that that the quality of your pottery. UM. I just
want to tell you this from from Kevin Sharkey. He
(35:46):
he's going to be so happy with this podcast because
Kevin Sharkey said, you know, Christopher's always talking about other things.
He's never really talking. I don't do a really good
job of promoting my business, and I should do a
better job. You know. I'm more into like showing people
how to grow a auricula or something bizarre like that,
which is not everybody. They're in sleep. They're an endormitory.
(36:10):
Now we'll bring them in soon and we'll start to
fertilize them and you start to feed them now and
warm them up, and then they start to flower in
the spring and divide them. You know. I sort of like,
look at my business is sort of like the vehicle
that pays for everything, like they pay for the urriculus.
And it's very need to be a little bit better
about the business that I'm going to take over our business.
(36:31):
Instagram pushed it alone. When I when I saw your lamps,
I thought about the lamps. I also designed a whole
line of beautiful lamps, but also chandeliers, and I was
remembering my kitchen green like a fire king chandelier that
I designed and looks like a Venetian glass chandeler, and
I gave one to Gail Tawie. I gave her the
the inspirational one that was the antique, and I saw
(36:54):
it in her house the other night and I thought, oh,
I had to go back to designing chandeliers because people
need chandeliers. Anyway, I digress. It's been so great to
talk to you, um and you are inspirational. You are
so encouraging to so many other people. Keep that up
because I think people look to you for not only advice,
but they also look for it for inspiration and thank you.
(37:16):
That's been a great part of listening to your podcast.
It's listening to pure friends like Charlotte Bearers and Dennis
and imparting some of their knowledge and their wisdom out
there and having people take away something right. Listen to
Allan Legal Advice. He's so smart, very diverse group of
people that you have. Has never written a thank you
(37:37):
note in his life. I got one yesterday. So many
people have colden to tell him how Grady sounded, isn't
it nice? So so it's very fun to be doing
this podcast talking to good friends, old friends and interesting friends.
Thank you so much, my pleasure. Thank you
You know, you can't be afraid. You know, fear gets
in the way of so many of us, so many oftentimes,
and you just got to push that aside and be like, no,
not today, We're gonna face this. Sitting across from me
today is a very good friend, UM, a colleague and
many similar pursuits. His name is Christopher Spitzmiller. I've known
(00:24):
Christopher for how many years? Christopher six or seven years?
I think six or seven years. We're both interested in
the following. We're both interested in backyard animal husbandry. We
both have lots and lots of different kinds of foul birds, chickens, geese, um, peacocks.
We love gardens, we love all kinds of landscaping, we
(00:47):
love interior design and decoration, and we love many many
other things like cooking and entertaining and building. So we've
our paths crossed in many different in different ways. And uh,
and it's so nice to have you here at my
farm today. I made Christopher drive all the way down
from his farm in Millbrook, New York, because I thought
(01:09):
it would be nice to interview him right here institute.
But were you okay? Oh good? Christopher gets up early,
and he stays up late, and he's a hard, hard worker.
And he is as I said in the introduction to
his beautiful book, which is called A Year at clove
Brook Farm, I I think the best adjective to use
(01:30):
for Christopher is industrious, because he is industrious in many
different fields. So I want to get down to the
to the basics here. I want to know about your education.
I want to know when you first got interested in
your big profession, which is I think your main profession,
which is pottery and the making of some of America's
most beautiful lamps that are on tables in houses everywhere
(01:54):
and even in the White House. So how did you start? So?
I grew up in East Ahore, New York, is this
little country town outside of Buffalo where Fisher Price toys
are made, and Albert Hubbard had his movement of arts
and craft's work. And I love the idea of making
something that could enrich your life in some way, that bowl,
or something that could put your change in or an
(02:14):
order of could be served from it. I love that,
um But I thought that I would have a normal
job like everybody else in my family were bankers and lawyers.
My grandfather had his own business, and I always aspired
to have my own business, which was what what was
your friends? He was in the aerospace business. He did
pneumatic breathing systems for the Alvin that found the Titanic,
and then in the end he did the whole breathing
(02:35):
system for the Space Shuttle. That's a big thing. Wow.
I didn't know that in Buffalo and Buffalo and you know,
my mother's family was also in Buffalo, that's right, and
my grandfather was He was an artist. He was a
decorative steel worker and he made the big, beautiful decorative
steel gates for many of the Catholic churches in Buffalo.
(02:58):
He was honored when he was nine nine years old
by the by his union for his artistry, and U
and I got. I used to visit Buffalo a lot,
and I did not know about some of these other businesses,
but it has been that was a very industrial It
was the biggest industrial city of I think New York
State forever, and a lot of it was built at
the turn of the century. So there's really great architecture
(03:20):
there in these big vass houses. And people complain about
the snow there and I'm like, it's just part of
the deal. You get six or eight inches and you
go to work and you don't let it slow you down.
The planes take off at the airport and it's life.
So you went to school, Grammar school and I went
to school in Grammar's glam Buffalo, and then I went
to boarding school in New Hampshire, went to a little
boarding school called Procter Academy, and then after that I
(03:42):
went to St. Lawrence University way up in New York State,
and they had a ceramics program and they would give
me a four oh and let me do sort of
whatever I wanted. And I wanted to go to Rhode
Island School Design. I had taken the summer program there
and they offered for me to go. And my mom
was determined for me, the dyslexic and me to get
a live arts to grade shows. Just stay there and
I'll pay for you to go to graduate school wherever
(04:04):
you wanted. And I figured I could go back to
Rhode Island School Design is what was called the visiting students.
So I went back there from my senior fall and
it was a real kick, you know, And it was
they signed the same projects year after year, and they
also told us if you can do anything else, you
probably should think about it, because it's a hard career
to make a make a go out of so in pottery.
(04:25):
In pottery, well you've done extremely well. Christopher has I
just visited the other day, UM, because I really wanted
to see what he was really up to in his
in his lamp business. UM. I went and visited his chilier,
which is on thirty and it is the penthouse in
an industrial building away on the west side of Manhattan,
(04:47):
and I was very impressed. You have the nicest group
of people working up there, nice artists. They're all artists
because they are all working very diligently on the perfection
that you exemplify in your lamp basis. Christopher makes lamp
bases on which you put lamp shade, and these are
(05:07):
table lamps. Primarily you do some floor lamps, I guess,
but describe your lamps. So there Asian and influence. I
find shapes all over, mostly at at auction websites and stuff,
and I'll take a photograph or I'll buy something and
I'll make a sketch of it, because I believe it's
our job, is product designers, to take something and make
it our own in some way, to not just repeat
what is out there. I think that's our big obligation.
(05:30):
And all those different jobs that you see being done,
I taught myself. I taught myself how to turn the
wooden bases, how to do the water guilding, and then
eventually I could afford to have different people in the
different parts of it. And so there's three potters who
work working the molds, and I sit down and make
about eight lamps when I start, and I pick out
the best one and we use that one is the
(05:51):
one that goes into a mold and we produce out
of there. How often do you make a new shape
about I would say about like maybe one or to
a month, you know. And how many lamps do you
have in your catalog? Now? It's an awful lot in
there that we offer, and we we discontinue things occasionally,
but mostly if I make them, they sell, thank God.
So I'm happy with that. And your your customer base
(06:14):
is it's mostly decorators. We sell through two stores, and
we have stores all over from Los Angeles to Palm
Springs to Boston and Dallas and everywhere in between. I
was just in the store in New York in the seventies,
k RB, k RB. If you haven't been to this store,
it's a very fun and colorful decorating store. You go
(06:35):
there for your lamps, you go there for your tabletop,
you go there for yeah, pretty much everything. It is
a beauty and you have a whole wall of your work.
It was very impressive and um, and I hadn't seen
some of those lamps before. She had just gotten the
shipment in and she just opened right well, she was
open before she had She's moved around town. She was
on seventy nine Street, and then she's on seventy four Street,
(06:57):
and now she's right on Lexington, and she was literally
you around the block on seventy. But there's a whole
new wave of people who were like, oh, I had
no idea you were here. And Kate's the new sort
of only game in town. She's got a great color
sense and a great style sense. Yeah, I was. I
was very impressed with the color film. I can't go
in there without coming home with something. I have to
be very disciplined about. Like I wanted to buy several
(07:18):
glass things in there, and I cut my I kept
my wallet shut for for now. I'm sure I'll go back,
but a beautiful store. But I love seeing your lamps
all in one place too, because when I visited your studio,
I got to see a whole lot of different size
and shaped basses. Um and these, as I said, our
table lamps for the most part, with beautiful beautiful wooden
(07:42):
or metal bases and um and then and beautiful middle um, middle,
what do you call the tops of the line clusters.
It's a double cluster there that has two lights so
you can run one on or both of them are right.
And then do you also design the finials? We don't
get the finals a sort of I picked it out.
It's a ball finial that you have to be careful
when you take it on and off because it's kind
of like a little bomb, so you gotta be like, okay,
(08:04):
I've got it in my hand. Now it's a pottery ball.
It's brass, and it's crappy brass ball. Okay. But I
I love finials and I've always collected them for lamps,
so I'm always looking for the old old finials that
you can find sometimes. But um, but see here I
am building Christopher's business. I want you to do more finials.
(08:25):
I want you to do more here. You should do birds,
and you know you should. You should do some of
you know, fantastic chicken finials. I'd buy some of those,
you know, pretty pottery you could, you could make molds
in your shop right there. Yeah, so maybe it's maybe
he's going to go making making some finials, but you're
doing so many other things. Christopher's now not only maintaining
(08:46):
this very lively business. Who manufactures your your lamps in
quantity for the marketplace. So we do them through Visual Comfort.
They're my sort of business partner in it. And you know,
I realized that we got the main living room in
the library and the main rooms, but they were sort
of extra bedrooms and stuff that didn't always get my
lamps in it or people who were just starting out.
(09:06):
I wanted to be more available, and Visual Comfort does
a very good job of making them more accessible, affordable,
and more affordable. So a basic lamp through Visual Comfort
would be about how for a lamp, and then your
custom made lamps are about twenty five apiece without the shade.
(09:27):
But no, the shade comes with it a paper shop.
If you want to get a fancier shade, which I
know you're a fan of then that's another Oh I
love fancy shades. But it's getting harder and harder to
find shade makers. UM. I have one friend who makes
beautiful shades and her business is called Shades of the
Midnight Sun, and she has a small workshop on the
(09:47):
Hudson River. UM, and she's in Bronxville. But to go
to visit her and see the shapes of the middle
shapes that she designs for the lamps, it's very complicated
and they have to be the right size and the
right high eat and the right with for the bases,
like you're beautiful, You're beautiful, um, pottery basis. So it's
it's lamps are hard, and that's why I'm here to
(10:09):
make it easy. But that's why you're successful because you
make it well. That's That's the thing is when I started,
I was making plates and dishes and I sort of
steered away from that. Richard Keith Langham came to me
at MeCOx Cards that first summer that I was up
there when I started. He's like, I need you to
make these, And in the very beginning I just made
him the vase and Keith would have a base made
for it and have it electrified. And that's when I
(10:30):
learned how to do those difference parts of it of
turning the base but fit just so and the best
of everything so well. They're beautiful. And I watched the
water guilding the other day. You're at your tell and
it was so pretty to see that. And a very
pretty girl is sitting in a little room all by herself.
Just happen, you know. She just came along like as
people ask of, like how do you get people to
(10:52):
help you? And she has a basic pottery experience, but
really not enough to be a potter. But I thought
she can be a guilder. We'll teacher how to old
and we've taught her what she needs to know, because
you can't just largely hire a guilder. They're kind of
hard people to find out there. But if you get
a person who's got a good attitude and basic hand skills,
you can teach them anything. Which I'm a big family.
(11:13):
I may send Alexis Stewart here because Alexis is busy
raising her kids right now. But she was a fantastic guilder.
She took it up as a hobby. Um, I guess
during during college. And uh, I remember I remember building
a room for her at East Hampton that was air free,
no current, no air current, completely still room because that's
(11:35):
what you really have to have, right, can't have any drafts,
it'll blow the gold gold leave around. But um, I
think I'll suggest to her that she come work for
Christopher's fitz Miller. So the lamp business is thriving, and
(11:57):
you spend how many time, how much how much time?
But with the lamps during the week, I'm in the
city three to four days a week, and then I'm
up in Millbrook the rest of the time. Up in Millbrook,
we have a studio that makes plates and dishes and
accessory pieces up there. Um, when I've been the lucky
recipient of a beautiful set of pinkish, pinkish painted plates
the marble of the marble. Yeah, and I use that
(12:19):
in Maine on my table in Maine because the table
is pink granite and it looked just just looks so
perfect there. And uh, and how many people are working
in that studio too right now, work out there and
they have the molds, they have the kilns, they have
everything you're making. We have a silhouette of the bottom
part of the plate, and then we roll a slab
out and attach it to the mold, and then the
(12:39):
lever comes down and cuts back the foot and stuff,
and then the plate dries on the mold and we
take it off and when we put on one coat
of the white all over it, and then we splash
the color on and move it around, get the right
amount of movement in it and stop or then we
have a whole series of dahius that I've grown at
the far And my rule about plates up there is
I have to grow the flour in order for it
to get on the plate. We have a group of
(13:01):
peany plates, a group of sweet pea plates, and I've
done some mushrooms. And then I collaborate with friends like
my friend Kathy Graham has some um woodland plates that
we do with her and Marion McAvoy. So very pretty, Yes,
and I like your collaborations too, not only on the
plates but also on your lamps. You're us You're working
with one of the best, best, best porcelain flower makers
(13:24):
in the whole. Their porcelain writers flowers, the most beautiful
porcelain flowers you have ever seen. This is museum quality
stuff and and she is just exquisite. How did you
Clara Potters who who has been a friend of mine
now for quite a long time, and you know she
and her name is Clara Claire Potter, And so when
we do things together, it's called Potter Spitzmiller, which is
(13:45):
a nice little anagram to have. And We'll make either
vases or lamp parts, and I'll give Claire the wet
vase and Claire attaches sweet peas or hella bores or
whatever gets her fancy. And she'll ask me sometimes what
do you think should be on here? And I'm like,
that's your bestiness. I don't. I don't get into that,
so she doesn't. She does the picking of the thing.
I mean, the client has something to deal with that
(14:06):
the clients could say, I like sweet peas, right. I
have looked at Claire Potter's fingers and they are so delicate.
And that she makes these flowers that she fixes to
your lamps. And she also just just does individual flowers
for for her artwork that that are display flowers and
you put them, you know, down the center of the
table or something. These are exquisite things. So and now
(14:29):
because of Christopher and because of people like Claire Potter,
I have been looking online on Instagram. I somehow got
into the algorithm of pottery sends these pottery things pottery hole,
you know, and I get the ba weird times and
I'm like, oh gosh, she's not asleep. She I've been
three o'clock in the morning looking at pottery being made.
(14:50):
I don't know, but it's so interesting. Really, I love that.
I love the techniques, but when I saw at your
studio is the most interesting. Really. Um, those heavy le
textured lamp bases that you're making are so exquisite, so
sharp everything. So yeah, there's as that I like to
have in them, which is sort of my version of perfection.
(15:12):
That things aren't perfect because they're handmade, but the lines
are really crisp and the bases are perfect, and it
all sort of comes together and gives you gives you
a really good look. But I did give you an
indication that Christopher is multifaceted. He's not just a lamp
base maker or a lampmaker. He is also an interior designer.
You did you ever work for Albert Hadley or is
(15:33):
he know? He was just a really good friend and
mentor and was really very inspirational, and he was a
good client. He ordered lots of my lamps and would say,
I want you to do this for this person and
that for that person. And so he got behind a
lot of young talent like myself and pushed us forward.
Kevin worked there, Kevin Kevin Sharkey loved working for Albert Hadley.
He idolized him. Everybody did. You can't find anybody who
(15:56):
says anything bad about Albert Hasley. He was. I met
him a few times because he lived in Fairfield. He
loved you, you know, he had those those bumper stickers,
made the Martha for President stickers. He thought you were
the cats me out in a lot of ways. He was.
He was a charming and very talented man. And Sister
Parrish he worked Parrish Hadley. Um, did you ever meet
Sister Parrish. I was gone by the time sister was.
(16:18):
I wasn't on the scene. But by the time Sister
Paris came at around miss meeting her. That's too bad.
She was. She was something. She did a lot of
houses up in Mount Desert Island and Universe for some
very illustrious citizens up there. I've been and stayed at
her house in Ailesboro, and it's like she's alive because
everything is like in its right place, and she comes
out at night and Apple and her daughter or Susan
(16:41):
take really good care of it and lies there. So
it's like a little little dream. That's nice. But but
you love interior design, I do. I love all kinds
of juxtaposition of colors and rooms. I like to be
the pop of color. They're like in my own library,
I have some merrow goold lamps with some light blue
ground in there so that we sort of jump out.
(17:02):
That's what I like. But um, but when you go
through your rooms with when you travel with Christopher through
his own beautiful house, which is a eighteen one eighteen
thirty federal kind of farmhouse, uh set in a set
in a field in Millbrook, New York, with a pond
and a pool and a pool house and a walled garden. Um,
(17:24):
you think, oh my gosh, you know this this house.
But you're surprised when you go inside because every object
has a story. It does. But first of all, the
house wasn't like that in the beginning. It was falling down,
there were big holes, there were baths living in it,
there were honey bees. Then there there was all this
stuff I had just straightened out, and I could only
(17:46):
do it as my finances allowed, and I would get
so far and things like the recession would come along
and I'd have to stop working. But you know, it
was like five or six years of hard, expensive restoration,
like new fireplaces and new bathrooms. In when beating and
architectural DIGESTI concert we want to photograph the house, and
I'm like, well, if you want to photograph the new
(18:07):
chimneys or flues, I just put in your welcome to
But there's really nothing interesting to see here yet. So
the declaration part was sort of easy. That took about
a year and a half. And now it's nice because
all the projects are outside of the house, like gardens
and building the barn and getting that all together. So
it's nice. When you walk around your house you say, oh,
that comes from that auction, that comes from the estate
(18:27):
of so and so so, who else what other designers.
There's a lot of Albert Hadley in the house. Every
room has something of his and at my desk in
the living room was Keith Irvine's desk. There's um, there's
there's pieces from sister parish. There's pieces from everybody in
there are the pieces from you. I like to have
a collection of things that my friends had made or
(18:47):
have been a part of their life at some point.
It's sort of a little bit more meaningful to integrate
them into your your house and have them be there.
But you have your stuff in a lot of houses too.
And most most impressive is that lamps got into the
White House. Now, how did that happen? I wrote, Well,
it happened by I was an intern there in I
(19:09):
believe when I moved to Washington by chance. My roommate
at the time was um friends with the director of
the White House intern program, and she was waffling around
looking for a job, which was an appearance, said why
don't you come be an intern? And so I went
to work for the Clintons. And I could see then
how magnificent that house is and how incredible it was.
And they made a big effort to move Crass from
(19:29):
the Smithsonian over so a table in the executive office
might have a Delta Juli sculpture on it or a
Native American thing. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be
incredible to make something for this house? Someday. And when
the Clinton's left, I made a lot of things for
the house in Chappaqua and their house in Washington, And
when the George Bushes moved in, I made some things
for the upstairs to the White House for them. And
(19:50):
then when the Obama's were elected, I wrote Michael Smith
a letter and said, hey, I'd like to make some
some things. Yeah, you can't wait there likes talking about industriousness.
You've got reach out and say I can do this.
Can I help you with this? You know, you can't
be afraid. You know, fear gets in the way of
so many of us, so many oftentimes, and you just
got to push that aside and be like, no, not today,
(20:11):
We're gonna face this. And Michael wrote me right away,
and he came to my studio in the midst of
that two thousand and eighth Recessions showed me a picture
of the oval office of my lamps at the end.
When I volunteered to make it, I never thought that
I would get such a prominent spot as that, So
I felt really, really lucky and very thankful. So you
do you have you thought about why you focused on lamps.
(20:34):
It just seemed to be the thing. You know. It
worked for me for a lot of years, but I've
I've started to make plates again and more accessory things
and catchpots that you can put flowers in, like we're
we're doing. We do some mirrors, we do all kinds
of different things, anything for around the house. But the
lamps are sort of like the main and bread and
butter of the business. Catchpots, um and those cash poll Yes,
(20:58):
but is that the way Americans say catch pots? Sort
of is I should I should you make it for fun?
Or do you make it for fun? You say it
for fun? Little bit tongue in cheeks that I think
is a cash po is a is like a tall
bowl in which you put a potted plant or um
or flowers or so I like. I like that you
call them catch pots. I like that because they are
(21:20):
catchy catch the different thing. But all of you out there,
they're really cash po So, Christopher, before we leave the
subject of your beautiful lamps, what are the dues and
don't um that you should pay attention to when choosing
a lamp for a room. You gotta think where the
lamp is going to be, Like if you're gonna sit
next to the lamp. You don't want to stare up
into the the light fixture of it. So that the
(21:41):
shade is just high enough that you can get some
light down on your reading, but isn't too too tall. Um,
you want to think about how much light it puts off.
My lamps have double clusters, so you can put two
different bulbs in there, or have double heights for it.
You can see about a dimmer, which is a very
important thing. I love it. Dimm er either on the
cord switch or on the switch itself. And shade come
down how far onto a lamp depending on the height
(22:02):
where it's gonna, say, like if it's going to go
on your bureau, it can be up a little bit higher.
But maybe you won't want the lamp to be so high,
so maybe like a sixteen inch lamp for up there
in your libraries to maybe you have like an eighteen
inch lamp in there. But you don't want to see
You don't want to see the middle party, you don't
want to see the metal part. You want the shade
to hit right across thing. So it's kind of like
I think, you know, our electrical parts are very pretty
and people like to see them, but I like it
(22:23):
to just sort of be right resting in the shade
height where the cap height. This it rests right across
there is I think the proper height right. So what
are some emerging interior design trends that you that you observe? Now,
I'm not a huge trend follower, but I'll tell you
things that I admire. I admire people who can mix
like my friend Ashley Whittaker, who can mix a lot
(22:43):
of different patterns together and have them look right. Everybody
thinks you can only have like one pattern or one this,
and ashually will layer in three or four or sometimes
five different patterns in a room that she's creating. And
what it's about is making somebody feel comfortable. Like, That's
what it is about, more than anything about even more
important than the visual impact. It's that you can sit
(23:04):
down in your sofa, put your feet up on it
and be like, I'm at home. I want to relax here,
I want to spend some time in this room. Who else?
Who else do you do you admire in the world?
And that sort of bright sort of color way. Miles
read is another favorite, and Nicholson who worked for him,
Like they're big in that sort of color sort of
(23:24):
juxtaposition that I like so much, where there's a contrast
trim on all the different pieces. All that kind of
like pizzas and glamour. That's what I'm a fan of. Now,
how many years ago did you start writing? Because your
book came out in what your two thousand and two
thousand and it was during the pandemic. It was in
March so and in the book is called A Year
(23:50):
at clove Brook Farm. It is a big, heavy book
published by Riz Soli. And there's a picture of Christopher
with his two dogs on the front porch or is
that the side porch. That's the kitchen porch essentially our
front door. Yeah, with lots of topiary, uh and beautifully
potted plants and um. And how long did that book
(24:13):
take you to write? It took three years for me
to write it. You know a lot of the publishers
wanted me to do a book about the rooms that
my lamps go into and about what they look like,
and I wanted to do something more like you would do.
You know when your book Entertaining Cab Style, I was
eleven years old and I still remember seeing it on
my mother's kitchen table and looking at it and being like,
this is the life that I want to live someday,
(24:34):
you know, not not exactly Martha's like, but that abundance
of a table with cornercopia of things and the copper
pots everywhere, and there was just a lot of love
and a lot of warmth, and like this is a
place that I said before, like I want to spend
some time, I want to hang out. I never imagined
that one day I would be spending Thanksgiving in her
kitchen and cutting the turkey open with her one day,
(24:56):
but it's just all sort of evolved that way. But
I wanted to do it. We had a lot of
mutual for we have a huge amount of mutual Yeah,
so many and our interests merged so so in so
many different areas. So that's really I think. What happened?
Um and it's uh and now you are happily married
Anthony Bolo? When did you meet Anthony? And how I
(25:17):
met Anthony? Four years ago? A friend fixed us up,
and she initially tried to fix him up with me,
and he went home and googled me and was like, no,
he's far too fancy for me. I don't want to
go with him. He thought you were fancy. It was fancy.
I cleaned the cat litter box myself, and I do
all of this really kind of gross things myself, which
it is part of having a farm, you know, you
(25:38):
have to roll your sleeves up and and do it all. Um.
And so it was Thanksgiving and Emily said to me,
why don't you reach out to Anthony and I did
and we went and had a dinner at Florida Bar
in New York, which is a favorite of both of ours,
and um, sadly closed, sadly closed, sadly no longer. But
I went to the Corner It was so good. Corner Bar,
that's his. Oh you'll love it, you'll love it. And
(26:01):
he made me the omelet the other night that since
Ino with the caviare. It was very good. So um,
so you so you. We had our day and things
went well and it just kept going. And um, I
realized that he had become such an intellgral part in
the farm and what was going on there, Like this
morning he was up early feeding the chickens, even before
(26:22):
I was out of bed. You know, he's really a
very hard worker, just like me. And I had never
dated anybody like that who was more of a partner.
And I remember when I did some of that online
dating and stuff. I said to myself, I said, my description,
I want, I want to find somebody who I could
build something with one day. And I ended up through
a friend finding that partner. How nice and you are
building and Anthony started it. I guess the Arongjurie talk
(26:46):
about the arrangerie because so in Covid he worked from
the farm and he really loved spending most of his
time up in Millbrook and he's a let landscape architect
and friend of ours bought this building at the far
end of town and it had been in atlant escaping
business with a big greenhouse, and it's been divided in
half and creeling Gow is on one part of it
and Anthony is on the other part. And the owner
(27:07):
called me up and said, do you know of anybody
who would like to take this over? And it didn't
occur to me to think of asking Anthony, and I didn't,
And thank god, Larry called another time and said, would
you let know of anybody maybe you or Anthony would
like to do this, And thankfully I said to Anthony,
do you want to do this, and he said yes,
and he started a business selling topiary and flowers and
all the things. I would go to Street and get
and drag up there on the weekends. You can now
(27:29):
get right in Melbo. Yeah, and it is a beautiful shop.
So any of you who are driving around looking for
an interesting place to visit, U certainly visit in Millbrook
or Enerie. Uh. And the whole town has become a
little bit more booming and and boisterous. I like Millbrook
Now it was very very quiet for a long time.
It still is quiet in some ways, but there's a
(27:52):
little bit of retail going on, and we have a
few good restaurants you can go to right now. So yeah,
I like it a lot. And but I really like
going to your to your shop and creol and Out
and Out which is right next door, which has very extraordinary,
very high end antiques and decorative objects. So it's it's fun.
But but Anthony seems to be a really good partner
(28:12):
for you. Yeah, yeah, he is really into it. And
what a nice thing to to find. How old are you?
I'm fifty one, he is fifty one years old. How
How old is Anthony? Anthony is forty three. Oh, so
he's a little younger, but not not that much. Um.
And the name or Ingerie came from, you know, the
glass box sort of English, not English but French, sort
(28:33):
of long, sort of greenhouse. You know. He wants to
have sort of specimeny things that are sort of different
from what every other place will have. So he doesn't
have your sort of regular geraniums. He has like pellegroniums
or weird leaf geraniums that have a rough leaf to them,
and all kinds. And a single camuleia, not a nice
(28:53):
fluffy um um, you know, multipeddled camelia, a single camulity.
How's you're doing? Mind sting? Pretty well? They didn't like
it in the house. I try and bring these things
in the house for a little bit to enjoy them
when they're in. Yeah. I will show you mine and
hopefully get some advice about it. So your book was published,
(29:16):
and you have worked, I think harder than most authors
to promote and to take that book all over the country,
and people love, They have responded so favorably to how
you do it. You give talks, said garden clubs, you
give talks said antique shows, and then you sell your book. Um,
(29:36):
and it's been a very very successful book launch. So
when's your second book going to come out? Well, we
haven't started working on the second book, but I'm going
too soon. I think I'm going to do a book
on entertaining will be the next one, and breaking it
down and showing all the different parts of it, which
this one breaks down things from gardening, things with animals.
It's sort of a broad scope sort of book. Um.
(29:57):
I want to impart in the reader different things that
you can take away from it and do yourself. So
let's talk about our livestock interest. You have the most beautiful,
fluffy Sebastopol geese, thanks to you because in COVID you
(30:19):
came over and you brought me eight goose eggs and
I didn't really want gee. Gees are alloud, dirty, dirty, smelly.
But you know, when Martha gives you something, you smile
and say thank you very much. You know, good matters.
And I thought that I would hash these because I'm
a hatch aholic and I love to hatch all kinds
of little babies and raise them and um find homes
for them. So I hatched these geese and when they
(30:42):
were big enough to walk, outside of the house. They
followed us around like we were their mothers. And we
gave them names like Joan Rivers and Paddle Shall and
Caroline Rome and Bill Blasts and they're really fond. Were
Martha Peacock. Yeah, so there's a you got me going
on peacocks as well too. That was another hole that
you led me down. And you know, four peacocks have
(31:03):
now led to like twelve peacocks. And have you seen
my blues brothers. How beautiful they are, aren't they amazing?
They're so fat, and you know what they thought about
how loud they are and how obnoxious they are, and
they're not all made a noise since the massacre we
had a we had a coyote massacre of some of
my nicest peacocks. But since the massacre, these guys are
(31:25):
so quiet. I don't I haven't heard them make any noise.
I try to talk to them and they're not talking back.
The geese talk back, but these guys do not talk
back to me. So um, so you have you have geese,
and those are beautiful because they're so fluffy and white.
They go into your pond, they go into your swimming pool.
They follow us around and just really are really really
(31:46):
really it's really more like labradors than they are like
piece I think, you know, if you spend enough time
with them and bond with them, they can be your
friends and they can be really like a nice you know,
the chickens and the peacocks I haven't spent enough time
with so we have really got that bond. It's whatever
you invest in you can see or return from. And
that's the nice thing about what I've done with the keys.
(32:08):
And you're interested in cooking when the bets start. It
started when my mom was pregnant. She had a set
of twins when I was fourteen years old, and I
was hungry. So I like learned to cook for for
myself and for her and for anybody who was around.
And um, it's something that I love to do. I
love to share and bring a table together and have
people like you over. And sometimes that can be a
(32:30):
little bit scary, but I know that I burned the
chicken for you and you've enjoyed it just the same.
You know, look burned, but it didn't taste burn you know.
I just think that you've got to entertain and bring people,
you know, offer them something and you know, all of
us want the phone to bring but you've got to
make some phone calls in order to get that to
happen and and sort of make your life be what
(32:51):
it is. And you also like to travel. I love
to travel. Yeah, where's your favorite places to go? Um,
we're going to go to Nashville to the antique show
to see the chicken coops that you And so somehow, somehow,
Christopher's fitz Miller allured me into yet another project um
and asked me to design a simple chicken coop that
would be auctioned off at the Nashville Antique Show. Um.
(33:14):
I didn't really pay attention except that I, you know,
I drew. I drew a model of it for you,
and and then all of a sudden, it's a big deal.
I didn't know what a big deal it was. Contractor
Supply is paying for the construction. They're sponsoring the whole show.
I love Tractors Supply. How Lawton is an old friend
of mine from Home Depot, so so it was kind
(33:35):
of weird that this whole thing came together. So Christopher
of course designs a sort of a great revival chicken coop,
and I designed a typical Martha simple farmhouse looking chicken
coop with a lovely cupola. And they haven't sourced the
fineal yet. They said they would get a local fineal
down their copper. But they're gonna be nice and they're
(33:57):
being auctioned off for charity at the Nashville Antiques Fair.
But everybody's going down there. Stephen Gambril. Yeah, it's a
good show for home stuff. It's good for garden stuff.
And there's something you can buy there for twenty dollars
or two plants too. They had beautiful plans everything. So
if you're planning to go to the Nashville show, always
(34:18):
take a truck with you because you have shippers so
you can send things back with the show. Less sure,
I less sure. I bought some beautiful iron chairs and
I bought some plants which I brought home with me.
And it was a great show. So and and it's
been up going for how long how many years? I
think it's been going for about twenty five or thirty years.
You know. Albert started that show. Albert Hadley started it
(34:40):
and it has had great momentum building around and they
do a very good job of getting speakers in there
and educating people and it's just a fun experience. And
my friends from Alabama and all over the South come
to it and it's a great, great time. And it
happens in early February every year when none of us
really have very much going on. So I really forward
to it and and rarely come home without something. So
(35:04):
oh good. So um, it's been so nice talking to
Christopher as we always talk. We just got back last
weekend from the Northeastern Poultry Love going to the poultry
show every year. Every year. We get up and we
go very early in the morning, and and the chickens
I got are very happy, happy, They're they're happy. I've
I've isolated them with with other like chickens so that
(35:25):
they're they're pretty happy, getting very well fed and getting
fatter every single day. Um. But it's um. But it's
fun to spend time with you. It's fun to talk
to you about all of this. And now that I've
seen your lamp studio, it really really impresses me that
that that the quality of your pottery. UM. I just
want to tell you this from from Kevin Sharkey. He
(35:46):
he's going to be so happy with this podcast because
Kevin Sharkey said, you know, Christopher's always talking about other things.
He's never really talking. I don't do a really good
job of promoting my business, and I should do a
better job. You know. I'm more into like showing people
how to grow a auricula or something bizarre like that,
which is not everybody. They're in sleep. They're an endormitory.
(36:10):
Now we'll bring them in soon and we'll start to
fertilize them and you start to feed them now and
warm them up, and then they start to flower in
the spring and divide them. You know. I sort of like,
look at my business is sort of like the vehicle
that pays for everything, like they pay for the urriculus.
And it's very need to be a little bit better
about the business that I'm going to take over our business.
(36:31):
Instagram pushed it alone. When I when I saw your lamps,
I thought about the lamps. I also designed a whole
line of beautiful lamps, but also chandeliers, and I was
remembering my kitchen green like a fire king chandelier that
I designed and looks like a Venetian glass chandeler, and
I gave one to Gail Tawie. I gave her the
the inspirational one that was the antique, and I saw
(36:54):
it in her house the other night and I thought, oh,
I had to go back to designing chandeliers because people
need chandeliers. Anyway, I digress. It's been so great to
talk to you, um and you are inspirational. You are
so encouraging to so many other people. Keep that up
because I think people look to you for not only advice,
but they also look for it for inspiration and thank you.
(37:16):
That's been a great part of listening to your podcast.
It's listening to pure friends like Charlotte Bearers and Dennis
and imparting some of their knowledge and their wisdom out
there and having people take away something right. Listen to
Allan Legal Advice. He's so smart, very diverse group of
people that you have. Has never written a thank you
(37:37):
note in his life. I got one yesterday. So many
people have colden to tell him how Grady sounded, isn't
it nice? So so it's very fun to be doing
this podcast talking to good friends, old friends and interesting friends.
Thank you so much, my pleasure. Thank you
Host
Martha Stewart
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