I know that many of you, like me, are always enchanted by the vignettes and table settings created by Jonathan Preece, Creative Director and Special Projects Designer at Bunny Williams Inc. Through the years, Jonathan has conjured up fantastical Thanksgiving and Sukot tables for clients not to mention magical holiday vignettes. This year is no different, with Jonathan turning Treillage, Bunny and John Rosselli's delightful shop in New York, into a winter wonderland.
What makes Jonathan's creations so special, and what might also be one of the secrets to their success, is that a great deal of research goes into his work. History, literature, and traditional art forms frequently figure into these tableaux, and this year is no different. For the Treillage windows, Bunny requested that Jonathan include snowflakes. From that kernel of inspiration came Jonathan's clever idea to use magnificent quilled paper snowflakes that were hung throughout the store. Quilling, as Jonathan informed me, is a traditional paper craft in which strips of paper are tightly coiled around a quill in order to shape them, with each strip then being attached to one another to create a work of paper art. (I doubt that I'm adequately explaining the process, so click here to read the Wikipedia entry.) Jonathan eventually found a woman in Idaho who was a fourth generation quiller and commissioned her to make these magical snowflakes that, thankfully, are for sale at Treillage.
Also taking a cue from C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Jonathan designed a snowy scene reminiscent of that in Narnia that the children encounter upon stepping out of the wardrobe. Even the lamp post that figures into the story makes an appearance at Treillage. There is also a Pied India Blue Peacock in one of the windows, although I can't say whether the peacock was a character in Lewis' novel or not; it's been ages since I read the book and my memory of it is a little fuzzy.
Those of you who live in New York have probably seen Treillage's Winter Wonderland this season, but for those of you who have not had the opportunity to do so, I'm including numerous photos to give you a sense of Jonathan's handiwork. I hope it's a nice respite from that last minute shopping that many of you are doing today!
