A Chic Souvenir

If you’re heading out of town this summer, might I make a souvenir-hunting suggestion? Picture frames.

“Frames are the greatest things to find on your travels,” photographer Pieter Estersohn told ELLE DECOR when we published an article about his Gramercy Park apartment. “It’s a piece of cake to get them home.”

True enough. Frames are usually lightweight and easy to handle, so one or two can be tucked into your in-flight bag. (I’m talking about frames measuring about 11 by 14 inches or less.) Even if you don’t have a work of art in mind to fill the great frame you stumble across in a flea market or antiques shop, buy it anyway. One day a watercolor or snapshot will fall into your hands, and when it does, you’ll be ready to give it a stylish surround.

The design and decoration editor of ELLE DECOR, Anita Sarsidi, once returned from a lengthy stay in Indonesia with a gift for me: an elaborately carved wood frame. About the size of a laptop and glistening with worn gilding, it sat around in a closet for a couple of years. But one day I attended an art exhibition and purchased a watercolor by famed illustrator Ruben Toledo, a depiction of a mysterious woman in profile wearing a tawny turbanlike hat and dark glasses. (The image reminds me of a famous 1950s photograph of supermodel Lisa Fonssagrives.) And as I was headed home with the watercolor under my arm, I suddenly remembered that Indonesian frame in the hall closet. One expertly cut white mat later, it and the Toledo now grace my living room in the country.

And if that art-finding day is a long time coming, take the advice of our executive editor, Michael Boodro: “You can always fill the frame with a piece of mirror and use it right away.”

Mitchell Owens
Editor at Large, ELLE DECOR