Margaret Moves On

Margaret Roach has left Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to pursue new projects. She has started up a new blog, also. Margaret was the former Chief Editorial Director of MSLO and was a cohost of the gardening show on Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius Satellite. She also headed up the web division. She was part of the top-notch executive team at MSLO, which was named the best in the country by Ad Week last year. She was also responsible for bringing us the timeless, 'evergreen' content to the pages of all of the Martha Stewart Living publications. She began at the company in 1993 as the gardening editor for the magazine and was the editor-in-chief ten years later.

Her position as Editorial Director at MSLO is currently being filled by Kevin Sharkey, Lucinda Scala Quinn and Hanah Milman. It takes three people to do what she did single-handedly, something I think speaks volumes about her capabilities and expertise as an editor and executive.



She will continue as a freelancer with MSLO, according to some of her coworkers there, likely providing magazine articles now and then, and will continue with web development for a few more months. She will then return to her beloved garden, full-time, and embark on some new personal projects, including a new book, I've heard. (Her first book is called "A Way to Garden" and I highly recommend it! Her writing style is so poetic and yet it is completely informative.)

I've met Margaret on a few occasions: once at the Good Things Event in 2006, and a year earlier at her home in Copake Falls, New York, where she tends to a beautiful, hillside garden that surrounds a small, century-old farmhouse. She has another home in Massachusetts and an apartment in NYC - all garden-friendly!


I know her to be a naturalist, a passionate gardener and someone who once described herself as a 'hippie in a glass tower' at MSLO, someone who stuck out a bit as an unapologetic promulgator of unrefined, all-natural landscape design in a company that is very focused on perfecting the art of perfection. I see her return to the garden, and to projects surrounding its beauty, as a natural course of action for her, a sigh of relief and a new start after fifteen years with the company.

Martha Stewart Occasions

Press Release: Beginning on May 23, 2008, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will debut Martha Stewart Occasions, a line of customizable craft products—including invitations, save-the-date cards, favors, decorations, and guest books—designed to make birthdays, weddings, and every celebration more personal and special.

Customizable stationery and decorations from Martha Stewart Occasions are versatile and affordable alternatives to traditional printed products. With print-it-yourself templates at www.marthastewartcrafts.com, customers can design and print their materials easily from home computers.

Created by MSLO crafting experts, Martha Stewart Occasions is an extension of Martha Stewart Crafts and will be available at Michaels stores nationwide, select independent retailers, and at www.marthastewartcrafts.com.

Below you’ll find samples and images that illustrate the breadth and beauty of the Martha Stewart Occasions line, including the Water Lily Invitation Suite, taken from one of our themed collections that feature invitations, response cards, thank-you cards, and party favors. Many of our products can be easily mixed, matched, and embellished to create party accessories that reflect one’s own personal style. Watch for these, and more, this spring!

Seaside Favours with Place Card Labels and Seaside Paper Lanterns.

Guest books and Water Lily place cards.


Floral cake invitation suite and green tissue paper pom-pom kit.

New Macy's Ads

Martha Stewart has launched a new ad campaign for the Martha Stewart Collection at Macy's. I think it's quite innovative. The ads, which will run in magazines like Architectural Digest, Domino and all of Martha's own publications, are portraits of a certain kind of person...without the actual person. The ads use furniture and rugs and paint and accessories from Martha's various collections to a character: The Naturalist, The Curator, The Collector.

Also watch for new Macy's TV ads featuring Martha. In one of the new commercials, Martha is shown readying her department. Upon seeing Calvin Klein model and super-hunk Gabriel Aubry, Martha swoons and drops one of the plates, which shatters on the floor.

An ad that debuted last year featuring Martha and R&B singer Usher also will be rerun this spring: "Honestly, girl, when do you sleep?"

A History of The Domestic Manual

Your mother and grandmother have likely read a few of these: House and Garden, Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, House Beautiful and Good Housekeeping. Today, magazines like Martha Stewart Living, Country Living and Real Simple likely find their place on mom's coffee table - or your own!

The American domestic manual, filled with advice for women about how to run a functional, effective home, began to publish in various forms in the U.S. in the 1830s. The Victorian era, with its emphasis on presentation and etiquette, made it imperative for women in almost every class to learn the latest dictums of household management. The domestic manuals also provided a way for women to express themselves in a public platform that was 'acceptable' to the ruling gentlemen of the day. Many women, such as Catherine Beecher and Isabella Beeton, found new purpose and power in the publishing world as a result of this growing demand for domestic advice. (Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management is still popular today, 145 years after it was first published!)

Books on the subject were numerous and continued to spawn as the 20th Century approached: An Encyclopedia of Domestic Economy, The Concise Household Encyclopedia and Mrs. Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper were among some of the titles.

Many of these early publications combined strict moral standards with household governance. Those who kept 'good, Christian homes' were those who maintained order and simplicity. Elaborate displays of wealth were just as admonished as total disregard for presentation and home care. Nearly all of the women who ran these magazines and wrote these advice manuals were the wives of upper-class men, but they were resolute in their effort to write for the 'everyday' woman. The advice had to be widely useful in order to spread the gospel of the well-cared for home to as many women in society as possible.

Good Housekeeping is one of the oldest magazines in the world, over 100 years old. This one, on the left, is from 1905. The Housewife was another popular publication. This one, on the right, is from 1912.

Current publications have lost their moralistic edge, although lifestyle magazines today do still maintain a certain regard for improved household function, implying that a sense of virtue and discipline can be achieved when the house is in order.

Cookbooks, too, found a much more solid popularity during the Victorian era. The first cookbooks can be traced to the early 1700s. It took the French, however, to come up with what we know today as 'the recipe' - including the formalized measuring system that makes food preparation so much easier. Prior to the establishment of standard measurements by the French, women had to rely on shared advice about the quantity of ingredients. There was surely a lot of trial and a lot of error in those early days!

What all of this desire for domestic perfection meant for American culture is multilayered. It meant the empowerment of women within a field that was respected by men and women alike, that women had a voice. It meant a firming grasp on the house and its central importance to family during an age of incresing industrialization and international tensions. It meant that appearances were increasingly important, that good design was no longer just for the wealthy, that 'good homes' bred good people.'

A 1957 issue of The Practical Householder and a 1936 issue of House Beautiful. The image on the cover of the magazine on the left emphasizes the importance of the family working together to improve the home through hard work and cooperation. The magazine on the right features a luxuriant and beautifully simplistic illustration of a bed of crocuses, luring the reader into its pages.

The subject of domestic advice saw an enormous decline in the late 1960s and throughout the '70s and early '80s. Magazines on domestic aesthetics and cooking plunged in popularity. It was a time of social upheaval; feminists saw the housewife as a treacherous and traitorous individual who was subservient to male forces; even women who wanted to be homemakers were often forced to work outside the home because of the faltering economy; Americans had little time to worry about what was for dinner or what colour the sofa ought to be when men were being shipped off to war, conjuring record numbers of protests in Washington; race relations were in turmoil; punk and pop and disco emerged; there was revolution everywhere.

As American society continues to modernize, the appeal of the lifestyle magazine has enjoyed a resurgence, spreading once again to all sectors of society, including men. With more and more single men on the scene, not to mention a more visible gay community, the timeless advice once meant only for women is finding an audience with the guys. This is both a necessity and a desire, I believe. Men are required to cook and clean much more than they were, even 20 years ago. Wives who work outside the home will no longer stand for the idea that they should do all the housework and raise the kids on their own. More men, too, seem to enjoy the pleasures of cooking, parenthood and keeping house, inside and outside. This desire to decorate and impart a sense of their own style on their own surroundings is a kind of 'coming out' for men who had previously left it all up to the women. It's a sign of growing equality.

The cover of a 1935 issue of House Beautiful features a bouquet of flowers crafted from paper on a green shag rug. Seventy-six years later, Martha Stewart showcases an arrangement of roses from her cutting garden on the cover of the June, 2006, issue of her magazine.

An issue of Hearth and Home from 1917 bears some resemblance to a 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living, 90 years later. It was customary in many early domestic advice magazines to feature the 'woman of the house' on the cover enjoying her surroundings and demonstrating the effective control she had over home management. In some ways, these early domestic magazines were manuals for self-empowerment, launched more than a century before the 'self-help' movement found its roots.

Children, too, had publications of their own, filled with craft ideas, games, stories and projects. One of the earliest was Child Life. The example on the left, from 1931, is an Easter edition with a beautiful illustration of rabbits carrying Mother Goose in an egg-cup carriage. Martha Stewart created a similar magazine for children, called simply Kids. Made for both the parent and the child, the magazine featured fun recipes, craft projects and activities to do together.

Food photography found its artful footing in the 1940s and '50s in domestic magazines, like Good Housekeeping and American Home. Many food and lifestyle magazines today feature the hallmarks of this early photography, most noteably the aerial shot: photographing food and place settings from above to showcase presentation. The look is modern and well designed. Martha's magazines resurrected this form of photography, as seen below, and has influenced countless other magazines to adopt a similar photographic stance in much of their food and organizational imagery.

Imagery from Martha's magazine demonstrates the full effectiveness of photographing details from above. There has been little written about the design of lifestyle magazines (photography, layout, typography, colour, dimensions) and I think it would be a fascinating topic to study.

New domestic manuals, or lifestyle magazines as we call them today, continue to appear on the newsstands, although the market now is saturated with them. Real Simple is one of the most popular ones. Borrowing heavily from the look and feel of Martha Stewart Living, the magazine emerged as a counteraction to the 'fuss and circumstance' of MSL. Its manifesto seems to be: "Get the Martha look without all that work." Its emphasis is on consumerism, purchasing power and time-saving devices to make living as effortless as possible. Personally, I find it void of soul and charm (not to mention a complete Martha Stewart Living parasite) and I think its focus is really quite lazy.


One that emerged last year is Organize magazine. Capitalizing on America's insatiable need to have everything in order - a relatively new, post 9/11 need to exert control in simple ways in an often-maddening world - the magazine's clean design and straight-forward photography imparts a streamlined way of thinking.


As families and household technologies and the dynamics of family continue to evolve, so to will the domestic manual. There is little evidence to suggest that the lifestyle magazine will wane in popularity anytime soon.

Martha Stewart's Cookies

The new book from Martha Stewart Living is released today. Martha Stewart's Cookies is a collection of the best cookie recipes from the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living.

Cleverly organized by texture, the 175 recipes in the book feature classic, nostalgic treats but with more nuance. Chapters include all types of treasures: Light and Delicate (Cherry Tuiles, Hazelnut Cookies, Chocolate Meringues); Rich and Dense (Key Lime Bars, Chocolate Mint Sandwiches, Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies); Chunky and Nutty (Magic Blondies, Turtle Brownies, White Chocolate-Chunk Cookies); Soft and Chewy (Snickerdoodles, Fig Bars, Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies); Crisp and Crunchy (ANZAC Biscuits, Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti, Almond Spice Wafers); Crumbly and Sandy (Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites, Maple-Pecan Shortbread, Lemon-Apricot Sandwiches); and Cakey and Tender (Lemon Madeleines, Carrot Cake Cookies, Pumpkin Cookies with Brown-Butter Icing).

Martha Stewart's Cookies is rich with helpful tips and techniques for baking, decorating, and storing, as well as lovely gift-packaging ideas in standout Martha Stewart style.

It's best selling feature, for me, is the photography. The principal photographer is Victor Schrager (http://www.victorschrager.com/) whose style is clean, crisp and modern. His photographs have been featured numerous times in the magazine, including the special Holiday cookie issue a few years ago. Cookies never looked so good!
Even the table of contents is nicely laid out with a photograph of each cookie that is featured in the book. The design of the book, as usual, is wonderful. It is digest format (soft cover, slightly smaller) and features 352 beautifully-designed pages. I'm not crazy about the cover, though. It lacks impact.

Update: The day after the book was released, it reached #1 on Amazon's cookbook sales list and #39 in overall book sales!

Martha and KB Homes

It should come as little shock to anyone that I like houses. I like them whether they are ‘homes’ or not. I admire the art of designing residential architecture, inside and outside. As a young boy, I remember going to visit ‘model homes’ with my mother on Sunday mornings before grocery shopping. It was our secret indulgence, something we did together. Nearly every Sunday, for about a year or two, it was a different neighbourhood, a different development, a different house. Some boys look forward to going to the ball game with dad on the weekend. I looked forward to going to tour model homes with my mom. (Hey, it takes all kinds!)

While we walked through the homes, I remember noticing all the details: the way the upstairs hallway curved, the placement of a window in an unusual but attractive spot in a bedroom, the grain in the wood of the mantel, and especially the way the house all came together to create a kind of flow and atmosphere. My mom would always ask me what I thought about the space, something that gave me so much pride. She cared what I thought. She asked how I would ‘do it differently’ or what the elements were that I found less than appealing. I enjoyed those Sunday mornings so much.

My favourite neighbourhood, without a doubt, was one called Amberwood, in a rural area of Ottawa called Stittsville. It was heavily wooded and had a very robust creek that ran through it. It was hilly and rocky with winding roads and large lots that backed onto bike paths and walking trails. Our neighbours, the Schiffers, had moved there and my mom and I became enthralled by the development and the houses the developer was building there.

The developer was German (Holitzner) and the quality of the houses was exquisite. They were sturdy and made of the best materials available. The houses were expensive, to be sure, but even as an 11 year-old I thought they were great value. (Did I mention that I was a weird child?)

I have not yet had the privilege of seeing one of Martha’s model homes in one of the ever-expanding Martha Stewart Communities in the United States, but I am very curious about them. I should state, for the sake of honesty, that these days I am not crazy about ‘new housing developments’ or ‘subdivisions’ as they are often clinically called. I see very few today that resemble the quality and attention to detail that was evident at Amberwood.

I think so much of North America’s landscape has been mistreated by developers who raze all the pleasant little hills and happy trees to the ground in order to create a flat-surfaced homage to sameness. Many of them do not preserve the integrity of the natural landscape at all and sacrifice beauty for the sake of space-saving.

Many parts of suburbia look the same to me: state to state, province to province, county to county. The roads are linear. The houses are square and boring and too-closely packed together on squished lots. The planting of trees is an afterthought. Character and uniqueness are lost in many instances.

Since I have not yet seen a Martha Stewart Community, nor toured any of the branded homes she and her team have designed, I can’t judge their effect. From what I’ve seen in photographs, the communities seem to be fairly typical of most American developments. This is not a criticism, really, just a bit of an indication that I was not overblown by what I saw of the exterior of the homes and the layout of the developments.

However, I have had a chance to look at the floor plans of many of the Martha Stewart homes, which are based on the designs of her own homes: Skylands, Katonah and Lily Pond. The plans have some very interesting features that I really like, which I’ll discuss below.

I admire Martha for taking on the KB Home partnership and designing these homes with them. I think it really does make sense, from a business perspective, for a housewares and lifestyle company to expand into the actual housing market itself. It gives Martha an opportunity to showcase some of the best features of her own homes and bring them, through affordable models, to the public.

I may just have to take a drive down to North Carolina with my mom some weekend and visit some of the model homes for old times’ sake!

Below are examples of the Martha Stewart homes designed in partnership with KB Home featuring elements that I like:

This model for the Lily Pond home in the North Carolina community is probably the closest anyone will get to living in the actual Lily Pond. It's 4000 square feet and has the signature teal trim, plus a really nice side courtyard for entertaining. I like where it is situated on the lot with an embankment of trees and a view beyond.

This is a Katonah model, based on Martha's Bedford home. I like the wrap-around porch with its tin roof and the stable doors on the garage. Again, the large trees on the lot have been preserved.

A beautiful colour pallette in the living room of the Lily Pond model. I like the columns and the jutted fireplace. The furniture, paint and flooring is all by Martha Stewart Signature.

This is my favourite feature in the Skylands plan. At the top of the stairs, on the second floor, is a hallway office with a built-in work station for two. It comes fully equipped with numerous plugs for digital cables and has plenty of storage. I like the granite countertop and the high window over the workstation. It's presentable, enjoyable and efficient.

A truly large and bright kitchen in the Skylands model, fully equipped with everything a cook needs, including plenty of storage and counterspace. The details are lovely: the subway tiles on the backsplash, the wainscotting on the edges of the counters, the stainless steel, the hardwood floors. Beyond the kitchen you may notice a butler's pantry, or servery. Love it!

The Twin Lakes community features a number of facilities, including pools, tennis courts and these stables for riding. The stables feature elements of Martha's stables in Bedford.

Books Andrew Recommends

Time, now, for some more recommendations for all you voracious readers out there. I don't really 'collect' books the way some people do, but when I spot one that I find to be beautiful, inspirational and instructional, I buy it. These books are often decorating or gardening books. They are books on architecture, design or popular culture. The books below flesh out most of what I'm looking for in a good book to add to my collection. I hope you'll find at least one or two of them intriguing!

RALPH LAUREN

I've always loved Ralph Lauren. I'm not going to apologize for that, although there are many who feel I ought to. For some reason, Ralph, like Martha, is equally loved and despised. I've always seen very direct links between the two designers; they are both of Eastern European stock - Martha's family is from Poland; Ralph's is from Russia. Both of them have imported last names: Martha's was got by marriage and Ralph's was changed on a whim. (His actual last name is Lifshitz, but that doesn't look good on a label.) They are both from humble backgrounds and have built 'design empires' around American idealism. Ralph uses classic cinema to create his 'worlds' and Martha uses vintage but updated visions of domestic bliss to create hers.

In a new book that celebrates Ralph Lauren's 40 years on the fashion scene, nearly all of his greatest collections are showcased in lavish style. The book, written by Ralph Lauren, contains never-before-seen family photographs and nearly 500 pages of fashion spreads. The book is enormous (30 pounds in weight) and comes with a sturdy storage case. I consider it a collector's item, which makes it worth the $100 price tag.

THE DISTINCTIVE HOME

Residential neighbourhoods these days are...well...boring. They are linear, square, crammed with sameness and sapped of imagination. The Distinctive Home by Jeremiah Eck not only points out America's push towards sardine-like development, he presents beautiful alternatives in his work. The book is a showcase of some of his own designs and the designs of others. He makes excellent use of the space on the pages to demonstrate how a home can be designed, placed on a lot and built to be as dramatic, cost-effective and unique as possible. I love this book. I return to it often for ideas. The homes may not be to everyone's tastes, but the lessons the book imparts are truly important.

TOM KUNDIG: HOUSES

Another gem of residential architectural innovation is found in this book. Tom Kundig is an exceptional architect who designs simple, geometric houses for maximum impact. His style is industrial and modern, but he warms his spaces by using dark and sumptuous materials. Large swaths of glass look out onto gorgeous scenes (mountains, lakes, forests and fields) and take excellent advantage of the surroundings. The book is beautifully illustrated and presents some truly innovative designs.

SOCK AND GLOVE

I've always had a sock fetish, and growing up I always loved the sock toys my Nana would make for my brother and I. The book resurrects that age-old craft and makes it totally modern. Miyako Kanamori presents these cute and cuddly creations in beautiful minimalism, giving the craft the appeal of high art. The instructions are useful, to a point, but for me the allure is just the modern presentation of something so kitsch, something I loved as a child and can now enjoy as an adult.

As a matter of interest to Martha fans, let it be known that Ms. M has a collection of some 200,000 books, most of which are kept in a house of their own on her Bedford estate in New York. Martha had approached town council in Katonah to build a large, circular, Shaker-inspired 'library' on her property to house her book collection but was turned down. Don't worry. She'll find a way!