Designers Sharing Their Most Treasured Items from Their Mothers Will Make You Cry
This Sunday is Mother's Day, an annual occasion to shower your mothers with gifts, affection, and all-around appreciation. But all good sons and daughters know that moms should be thought of much more than once a year-it's only natural to have some items that remind you of her in your home. Ahead of the holiday, we asked 9 interior designers to share the things in their homes that they treasure for one particular reason: They're reminders of their mothers.
Marika Meyer: a Gold-Leaf Mirror
"My grandmother had a flair for design, with a penchant for Neo-Classical mid-century pieces, and collected items on her travels around the world with my grandfather," says the Washington, DC-based designer. "This gold leaf Italian mirror, circa 1940, hung in my grandmother's entryway for as long as I can remember. It was passed on to me, and has hung in my own home ever since. She was an inspiration to me, which seems fitting since she and I are the second and fourth in a long line of Marikas in my family!"
Jamie Drake: a Miniature Sculpture
"As a child in Woodbridge, CT, I was more fascinated by the shelves above the T.V. in our lower level family room than on the big box below," jokes the partner at Drake/Anderson. "When a particularly dull episode of Gunsmoke or the like came on, my eyes would wander the artfully arranged array of books and objects in the pickled pecky cypress storage," he recalls. A true designer, Drake was fascinated by decorative objects even at a young age: "Antique books, the Encyclopedia Britannica, my long deceased maternal grandfather’s antique beer steins, various vases and boxes, art books-the shelves were a cornucopia of fascination to me," he says.
Now, years later, one of these items lives in Drake's own New York home. "It's a quite small, bright, jade green glazed ceramic bust of a woman. My mother sculpted this elegant and serene sylph in the 1940s while attending the Yale School of Art. As a child it was out of reach on a high shelf, but as an adult it is on the dresser behind my bed, keeping a watchful eye on me as I sleep."
Michelle Gerson: Antique Platters
"My mother has a collection of platters that she’s collected over many years and I always admired them from afar, the New York designer says. "One day I told her that I loved them and she couldn’t believe it because she didn’t think they were my aesthetic." In a true display of motherly generosity, Gerson recalls, "the next Mother’s Day she gifted them to me and I have treasured them ever since." They now live in Gerson's kitchen, where she can see them every day.
Caroline Rafferty: Brass Palm Trees
"After my grandmother passed away, my parents gifted me with these incredible palm tree sculptures that used to stand in the living room of their Michigan home," says House Beautiful's May cover star. Palm Beach-based Rafferty was close with her grandmother, who she called Dearie (she was the inspiration for a store the designer opened with her mother this year), and the trees are a fitting reminder of her.
"They have bronze trunks, brass leaves, amethyst beds, and ostrich egg coconuts. They’re conversation starters for sure and make such a statement in the room without taking themselves too seriously-just like my grandmother.
Lee Ledbetter: Wedding China
"Twelve years ago, following my father’s death, my mother surprised me with the gift of their wedding silver-a marvelous set of Allan Adler hand-hammered sterling flatware from the early 1950s," says the New Orleans-based founder of Lee Ledbetter & Associates.
To Ledbetter, it was the perfect gift. "She knew that I’d admired the modern design with its subtle nod to neoclassical shapes, and she suspected that my boyfriend (now husband) Douglas and I would use it when we entertain-and we have. I treasure the quality and weight of the Adler set and think of my parents whenever we host a dinner."
Nicole Fuller: a Vase Passed Down Through Generations
"I have a rose-colored, hand-blown glass vase from the Czech Republic," says New York designer Fuller. The item has a long history in Fuller's family: "It was originally my great grandmother's who passed it down to my grandmother, then to my mother and now it’s with me, in my home in NYC," she explains. "It is one of my most favorite keepsakes from my mother. I always fill it with fresh cut flowers or branches (depending on the season). It’s magical and whatever I fill it with looks beautiful."
Amanda Lantz: a Passed-Down Painting
"I have a print of a little girl praying within an ornate frame," says the founder of A Lantz Design and Consulting. Like Fuller's vase, the painting has a meaningful past: "It means so very much to me as it hung over my great grandmother’s bed, my grandmother’s bed, and my mother’s bed," says Lantz. "Now the little girl prays in my bedroom.”
Janie Molster: a Collection of Plates
"In the guest bedroom of my house I have a sweet little old-fashioned vignette with my mother’s favorite bird plates surrounding an Audubon print of my mother-in-law’s," explains Richmond-based Molster of her tribute to not one, but two mothers.
Muffie Faith: a Bronze Sculpture
"My mother has given me many things that I cherish," says the designer at Elizabeth Stuart Design. In addition to a ring that he mother gifted her just 10 days before she died ("She didn’t wear much jewelry as time moved on, but she wore this ring all of the time," Faith says), the designer also cherishes a sculpture her mother gave her as a wedding gift. "It has so much meaning to me," she says. "It’s a beautiful sculpture of a woman that belonged to my mother and was in our home growing up."
Plus, she's found her view of the image changed over time: "When I was a child I looked at it as just an old lady. When I was a teenager, I thought she was fat; and when I became a woman, I realized she was beautiful and perfect."
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