Column Love – Lauren Liess

I’ve always loved this photo of my mom with my paternal grandparents, Grandma Maestranzi and Nanoo. (I know I’m not spelling “Nanoo” the correct way, but it’s how I’ve spelled it my entire life & I’m not changing it now 😉 I’m not sure where they are but I can’t get over the columns & all the intricate stone & metalwork. I think my mom looks so beautiful and her pale yellow dress always reminded me a bit of the lady in Annie. (the movie)

There’s something so awe-inspiring about big white columns. Do you remember learning the 3 types of columns in art class? They used to drill it into our heads:

{image via chalk.richomond.edu}

How beautiful??? I’ve never visited Greece but am dying to…

{Temple of Zeus photo by DeClan McCullagh Photography}

This is my dream:

{by Bobby McAlpine… if you haven’t read his book, The Home Within Us, get to the bookstore now. It’s probably the one of the best I’ve ever read. It was so good & so true, I got teary; no joke. I have been wanting to write a post since I read it last Spring but I really need to do it justice and it’ll require a lot of thinking. It will change your outlook and/or totally verbalize all those stray thoughts you had running around in your head that you couldn’t make sense of. It’s done perfectly.}

I love drawings of columns & architectural details and could fill my walls & home with a collection of them. Check out this ancient book:

I’m considering this drawing originally by Sir William Chambers for a client:

One of my favorite paintings is by artist & friend John Matthew Moore:

{I love the glimpse of ruins on the mountain in the background. }

And… getting funny, is this drawing by Marc Johns:

{Drawing by Marc Johns}

Speaking of columns I don’t own, below is a photo of my dad’s house in Barrington Hills, Illinois when I was growing up. He designed it & learned a ton in the process. I spent summers, every other holiday and random vacations there. (My parents divorced when I was 2 years old and my mom & I moved to Virginia when I was 4 to be near my grandparents and my dad stayed in Illinois.) My dad remarried a woman who had two kids near my age (whom I absolutely adored) when I was 7 and built the house for us all. Without getting all into the crazy very sad details, my dad & my stepmom divorced seven years later and my dad eventually sold the property when I was in college. But I’ve always loved this house. Seeing it built from the ground up, watching my stepmom decorate it and doing my bedroom (eek- spongepainting!! 🙂 all made me love the design process. My dad built us the best 3-story treehouse in the world and I still dream about it. I could go on & on so I’ll save it for another day. (I have video tours I made when I was a kid so I’m going to try to upload them if I can.) But anyway, I remember playing on the front porch, marching around and around the big white columns singing songs with my stepsister.