Jonesing For Chinese Blue-And-White

I am literally having a Chinese blue-and-white meltdown over here in Paris today. I can’t find it anywhere. I have lived with blue-and-white my entire life and I do not have even a single little ginger jar in my apartment. There was no way my husband was going to let me ship blue-and-white porcelain vases from Santa Barbara to Paris. He doesn’t see the importance. Silly husband. If he had let me, I probably would be a much nicer person.

Chinese Blue-and-white is an absolute essential in decorating. I can’t imagine a house without some. Where are you going to put your flowers in for God’s sake. Every color of flower, every type of flower, every shape of flower works in blue-and-white. Orange tulips, pink peonies, super tall cherry blossoms, lavender lilac, white anemones, blue delfiniums, red camellias, yellow ranunculus, green ferns, succulents, topiaries, everything. Every color of the rainbow.

Do you know what I hate though? I hate when people have bad blue-and-white and think it’s good blue-and-white. It takes a trained eye to see the difference or just someone with good taste. My aunt (on my father’s side, obviously) had all this blue-and-white all over her house and thought it was so great but it was so not great. As a rule of thumb, don’t buy your blue-and-white from Marshall’s, Pearl River Mart or Tuesday morning. Let’s look at the difference…

 

 

So, my mother has this friend named Kathy Hansen. She has exquisite taste. She’s one of those women who is the perfect combination of beauty, fun, warmth, little bit of cuckooness, great cook and interior decorator. I have known her since I was in seventh grade. She had an antique store in Newport Beach that I worked at. She taught me so much about furniture and antiques. She was a Chinese blue-and-white fanatic! She would never ever reveal her source. Finally, finally years later she told me her source. She then took me to her source. We were driving and driving and driving in Los Angeles and I thought she may possibly be driving me somewhere to kill me and stash my body because I did not know where the hell we were. This was uncharted territory. It turns out we were just in Alhambra, California.

 

 

Now, I could be the responsible ethical designer and protect my sources. But, I think the world needs to know where all this blue-and-white is coming from. Share the wealth is my motto. Wouldn’t it be funny if I kept a secret source list of everything relating to interior design and then had it distributed postmortem. It would be my gift to everyone. Ha ha Ha. I think I will do that. But for now, drumroll please… I will give up one source. The blue-and-white source.

 In a stinky three-story gigantic warehouse in Alhambra California is every piece of Chinese blue-and-white that you will ever need. It’s called Olde Peking Antiques. Ask for Jenny. You’re welcome.