Tea for Two with Justin and Michelle Nussbaumer

good afternoon and welcome back to my kitchen in gloucestershire where it's a lovely late summer's day and i'm very excited to be back um we've had a little break last week thank goodness i went out to our workshops in portugal where we hand make a lot of our furniture and thank goodness because portugal went back onto the red list which means that i can't go again so i have got to do a bit of rescheduling of flights and things to make sure that i can um that i can go back um when it reopens so i was very lucky to get out there and do some wonderful mixing of colors and all sorts of things so we're going to run till christmas um with these t42s which have been so wonderful and so well received by so many people and so thank you very much for that it's been really fun for me as well during our lockdown process to do the tea for twos we're going to be joined today by michonne aspalmer and well i don't think she needs any introduction but she's the author of wanderlust the most beautiful book on design that is inspired by travel and she famously says her mother said that she was born under a wandering star which i think is such a lovely sort of expression of that's so visual of about her she lives in texas she has a home in switzerland she does wonderful beautiful layered crazy designs and if you had a look on my instagram earlier this week you'll see that she has an i-cat covered truck and as she said in the post well why why would you not why would you drive gray when you could drive icat so i'm very excited that um to be joined by michelle who i met in paris at the wonderful collaboration which we did together um quran si madun which takes place every year at deco off and she was exhibiting some stuff and she was simply her fabrics and jewelry and we were using some stuff furniture and things and we had this fantastic um connection and it started with are you south african do you know serena crawford and that's that's the heart began and we have been friends ever since and we've met in all over the world all these different design shows and i'm enormously fond of her and it was a highlight for me when she just popped up into my showroom in london a couple of years ago and she was like hello and i was like wow what brought you here and it was this really really special thing that work our design work brings us to so many different places and when you look at the people who you've met in other places it really can make it really lots of fun so i'm going to check if michelle has joined yet and i'm hoping that no she hasn't yet joined but i'm sure she will because i it is 11 a.m in texas and she's preparing for the kip's bay um the kids space show house and the kids bay boys and girls club is the famous show house that happens every year um and it happens all over the us now they did one include and there's one in dallas which is about to start and she's i'm going to be doing i think a virtual dinner but she'll tell us all about that when she joins um we've got a great lineup between now and christmas which is going to be lots of fun um we've got robert passle we've got frank to be rc we've got michael cox we've got jeffrey anna marks we've got um i'm sure i'm missing some people out but we've got a really lovely lineup of people which i'll keep you informed we're going to try and keep it um two tuesdays um tomorrow is the kip's bay michelle has just joined says hello darling um so michelle i'm going to request you to join us uh you there you are i'm going to request you to join us and then and um we're going to talk about all sorts of fun things so i hope everybody can see me i hope the connection's good enough this year hello i feel like i'm on a vacation already how are you i'm locked down are you so not me it's so not you it's it's so not you to be locked up oh not me oh well how are you i'm great i'm really good we are we've gone so slightly out of lockdown and then i rushed off last week to all our workshops and then lockdown happened again and i can't go back it's back on the red list um well in a way that's good maybe right yeah and it's not free our government hasn't been particularly clear on what we aren't allowed to do my daughter this morning who lives in london and she said that they're getting ready to lock down again is that true yeah i think there may be a local london lockdown um hold on there we go i think there's going to be a local london locked up now michelle tell me about kip's bay what's happening tomorrow so tomorrow i'm installing so you know what that's like nightmare nightmare so anyway yeah installing tomorrow we open on the 25th officially and we have a couple of parties before then and it's really the only gig in town or in the country i mean everything else has been canceled so yes i'm actually so excited that this is going forward and we kept thinking any moment they're going to tell us it's off but it's not yeah and what have you done so i've done the turkish writer's lair which is very up your alley yeah so it's um i kind of got stuck with a really non-descript room that i have to tell you i was not excited about and so i knocked out a closet and made sort of this arch and you know when you do keep spay you just get what you get so you never know right absolutely and are they doing virtual parties darling i've turned lemons into lemonade darling well you do that that's what you do right that's what we all do isn't it yes exactly and michelle are they doing virtual dinners virtual parties what are they doing how are they doing it was already one virtual dinner and we're having i think another virtual dinner and then we're lucky enough to have a few real dinners i know i'm having a dinner with miranda and a dinner that cornelia guest is putting together and i think mark d sykes is having a dinner so and maybe i'll have a dinner i don't know we're just happy to do anything well exactly now how bad does your lockdown be um actually texans are not very good rule followers so not as badly as one would think we wear masks and we can eat and restaurants sort of socially distance which i'm not really sure what that means because some restaurants are packed so i don't know my son had actually the the covid and thank god he's fine but uh he's really the only person i've known who's had it so it's apparently really bad but yeah it's bad people um a lot of people i know who've had it have struggled with respiratory issues down the line and a lot of fatigue later i really hope that doesn't happen because my son had asthma sort of his whole life but he was really only sick one day so i'm just praying that that's all it's going to be but it was really terrifying for us sure and michelle who's been home all my children moved home from all over the world so two of them bought houses which makes me think they're maybe staying and um i know and one left and went back but three are here three are here so yeah i know your mother's happy when you come home yeah she's thrilled when i come home michelle wonderlust your mother said you were born under a wandering star and i just i just love that image it's it's and when i read it on your blog i last week i was like oh my god that is that's michelle i mean that is just that's just you and why why wunderlust why then why why calling you why call your book wanderlust well you know i married a swiss and strangely swiss the swiss nationals are swiss people are the people of the country that has the most people with passport in the world yeah people don't really realize this but so swiss people travel a lot and um i married my husband all my father said to him is whatever you do don't take her away and yes you may marry her he immediately moved me to rome which was made me quite happy but not my father and ever since then we've sort of traveled the world together and we've lived um in far-flung places and we both loved that so he was the right one i don't know but he's just you know it's so great because he will travel with me and both of our jobs can sort of coincide together during travel and so we both love that my children are a bit displeased because they don't really know what's home europe or america and they've all complained to me about that probably you feel something like that between south africa and london yeah i've been in london for 20 years and you i kind of don't know which which i think they're sort of both home but michelle surely for your kids home is home is where you guys are because you have this incredible i mean you won't mind me saying you do have you have this a wonderfully happy marriage which um is just infectious when when when we're around you guys and um so for your children you know just wherever you guys are you must make home and we're certainly wherever you are you make fun that we do that we do yes it's been fun having everybody home because on my children one's getting married and um and three have the other three have a significant other so we've had sort of our crew you know that comes to each other's houses for dinner and sort of we do cook-offs and like so many families i think during this time um it's been sort of a reset that has been good that part of it now michelle tell me about something that i know absolutely zero about aloha wonder well so i'm just going to read here quickly your mother quotes you you have quote your mother saying that you're born under wandering star which i've said and a description that i love which is which i have but tell us your kindred spirit is what you call aloha wonder world what is that who is that what is that okay well she was this amazing woman she called herself aloha that wasn't her real name i don't really know what it was but she was a woman in the 20s 30s like that who traveled the world went she was sort of like a modern day um like a modern day lawrence of arabia or something like that or richard burton you know something like the traveler and women didn't do that so she went all over the world and met with all kinds of shakes and especially was instead in the middle east which i find really close to my heart and i just love the aesthetic of middle eastern culture and design so beautiful i love all the tile work anyway so she was just an amazing woman and i found her one day wandering through um a bookstore and just have you know been sort of intrigued by her ever since amazing how wonderful and um you have a home in switzerland yes yes and a home in texas how obviously you haven't been there this year but in a good year how do you divide your time well i also have i have a hacienda in mexico so normally i'm in mexico right now is mexico your heritage no no i'm a texan you're attention so what's the tie to mexico i think amazon's come for the 25th time today i'm so sweet so i grew up going to mexico with my family since i was a child and with my grandmother and we always went there every year um several times a year so i just have always loved it i speak spanish and my children grew up there as well off and on so it's just a place that we love and really we moved here um after living in rome for quite a while in los angeles and you know in both of those places you can drive an hour and be in some other place spectacular in texas you can drive five hours and be in houston it's huge isn't it i mean it's just massive yes it's like probably bigger than europe or something it's like a country within itself but um so mexico was really the right choice so we could get on a plane be there in you know an hour and a half and it's a totally different experience and if i were to stay tuned we don't have the hamptons or palm beach in texas so if i was to say to you i've lived which i've never been i've never been to texas three things i've got to do i mean to mexico to mexico three things i want to do mexico okay well you have to stay with me first of all so that's number one and um you have to hire mariachi band do you mean any mexico or just my mexico no you're messy you want to go you're mexican okay well i mean i'm in the mountains which is bye guys sorry was on the phone god that was awful um anyway oh yeah so you have to have a meal at my house i usually have big parties with 30 people like every single night when i'm there which i love so much and maybe you have to go riding in the country with me horses you're a rider so it's you know mexico where i live is very similar to the bush it's very much like you would like it quite a lot so um and the people are sort of similar too you know they're very colorful wonderful people so i really need you to meet those people the real mexican people you know the sort of compo people they're amazing i ride with all these people a lot and you and you talk about the bush because you had a trip to africa what 18 months ago yes with my dearly friend um trisha do you know trisha tricia she has the most amazing place called zinguei lodge in south africa and um it's just glorious she's an interior designer as well she's kind of given up now but she did all hotels the biggest hotels in the world i think and her lodge is unbelievable it's so beautiful and she's on a hundred thousand acres that no one else is there so i got quite spoiled because it was really only us and lions would be you know right next to us i wanted to go on a um horseback safari but she said absolutely not but i see serena does it all the time probably you do too dorina's in safari at the moment i've never done a horseback safari but they are amazing there they are safari barbie i love that what have you seen him she's kind of hit her head her in animal print which is a neutral as we all know and she's she's just inspiring and that's how i was telling people right in the beginning that's how i met you you know we bumped each other in paris and you were south african do you know serena and they were like hey of course which was wonderful her daughter came to visit me this year in texas she's so lovely she's a mini serena yeah yeah turtle mini serena um your mother autistic and creative am i correct she painted your stairway is that right yes beautiful stairway i'm here what is your influence on you was it the kind of shape you know i think my mother taught me about color so my mother's a wonderful colorist and people can be wonderful painters but it doesn't mean they're necessarily a wonderful colorist yeah and so just mixing colors my mother always taught me how to mix colors i mix every paint i do so any job people are always texting me going what's the name of that paint and unfortunately i always mixed it myself so i never buy a paint out of the can ever what's the trick well the trick is to get colors and what i do is i have a big palette and then i mix them to match a fabric you know however you what color you're looking for and then i take that and have whatever effect whatever paint company i'm using you know reproduce that and i know you've done that too but uh the trick is watching paint dry that's probably the biggest trick so you have to watch it dry because it's never the same so takes quite a lot of time and it can be quite boring so what do you do while you watch it dry i usually use a blow dryer good trick good trick and four children yes are they creative um they're all four in the arts sadly at least for and and how how did you ex how did you expose them just through living eating breathing your world or was there a specific i mean i would ask them what they say is the specific thing that you expose them to well you know it's really a huge compliment because they told me recently one of them said you know it wasn't the most traditional family but we always knew we were loved and so i think that's the most important thing is there was always lots of love in fact i probably love them a little bit too much i would sometimes keep cool and say oh don't go to school today we'll just have fun together so it was hard for me to send them to school and just when i sent them to boarding school it was really awful but um yeah i think just i enjoyed them so much i kept having more of them i guess well four children is a lot it's a lot and what have you missed the most about switzerland this year everything absolutely everything just the nature i mean here in texas i have gone out to people's ranches quite a lot but i really miss all my friends and going on hike and the river and just it's so beautiful nature there is so lovely you tend to go in the spring don't you i go every winter and every spring so i really like the spring the best though because i have a beautiful garden there and my daughter's there now she was sending me pictures and we have a huge vegetable garden and so many flowers and you know here in texas and in mexico nothing really grows so well you know it's not a very lush i mean it's green but it's too hot for really roses or dahlias or peonies and i have all of those so it's a massive explosion of flowers there so pretty how wonderful and is that the creativity like england i did a job in england a few years ago in the cotswolds and i was just amazed by the flowers do you just throw a seed out and you have to cut it back so fantastic i know we're very and we've had the most incredible incredible growth spurts in the summer they've been absolutely amazing and you're right you know you can put a daily don't you think it was that you were home to really tend to your flowers and really take care of everything yeah it was it wasn't look living in a in a place like this the the the opportunity to really tend our garden and the one thing is that you know in england you can put a dahlia in the sandiest worst bit of your garden and next thing your dad is the size of your head it's a it's amazing i love that switzerland's rather like that too so yes i really miss my flowers and geraniums i have geraniums and all window boxes hanging down so it's so lovely i really miss the you know what i miss so much i think the most is just the lunches in the garden you know big lunches with friends and family and yes you're all about you're all about community aren't you and your people and your i am i really am you know we've been going there since i was 24 years old and my husband his whole life so my husband has four brothers and so we're a big family there and it's just really fun it's fun to see all those people yeah and michelle tell me about celeb tilton i've been which is it's extraordinary salone thank you well i'm sitting here now so you can see my fabric line there behind me part of it i don't know what happened here i've messed up oh well i don't know what i've done can you still see me yes oh i can't see you okay well whatever um so i have a new fabric line out by the way with uh clarence house that i'm super excited about yes i've seen that thank you very excited yes these are sort of like treasures that i've collected and found around the world i usually go on three or four shopping trips a year of course not this year to stock the store and um it's just i really love it i really started out more doing this in the beginning oh really so the shops also came first yes the shop started well you know i studied set design in university so i always loved every aspect of design but i love collecting and i love um in fact that's when i came to visit you i had gone to that lots road antique auction right down the street from it's just so just so fun i love enough and why the name celonetsi well i don't know you know it was before instagram so i think i would have been easier if i'd done something more pronounceable for americans i suppose but i sort of wanted that sort of like british trading kind of vibe so and i go quite a lot to france so sort of turned it into india meets france which is really what the store is about there's a lot of ethnic things here from africa and asia india quite a lot from india and morocco and then i also love you know what i really love i guess my aesthetic would be what i'm very much inspired about is sort of a 19th century traveler you know that a british traveler that sort of is wandering under a moroccan sky probably and you were following you wondering star now you you this i love if you interiors are so full for youthful spirits ageless yeah what do you look for what's your trick when i'm starting a project yeah um it kind of comes to you what do you what do you look for you know it's funny because i think people think i have a very specific look but really because i come from the background of set design i mean probably the jobs that get published more ones that are more wonder lucky but what i really like is a good challenge so when someone comes to me with something that isn't necessarily everything that i always do and working within sort of a parameter of they want something very contemporary or whatever works for their family i love doing that so i really start with a very extensive interview of what my client needs i mean if it's something that i don't think i can do or that i don't enjoy doing then you know i don't take it on but i like very much kind of collaborating with my clients and looking at everything as a new kind of almost film if you know what i'm saying so yeah so i like i also like sort of a high-low thing and um you know i like i like working with with artisans quite a lot so i might use you know an 18th century piece of furniture and something that's completely faux that we came up with but looks like something from the 18th century so i very much like sort of creating that way i like sort of a high low so you mix it up i do mix it up um and i think you know i mean i'm not comparing myself at all to cecil beaton or tony duquette but i like very much the way that aesthetic is sort of evolves i would i would i would i would compare you two to them particularly the chinese kids i absolutely absolutely would um i saw that cecil beaton's reddish house is for sale right now can you imagine i know it's funny it actually comes up for sale quite often um it does and why i wonder i don't know and i think that people just battle to i mean it's got that incredible conservatory and and drawing room i mean it's amazing just i mean it's so yummy yeah it's lovely it's lovely you should move to england you should get a house in england i know someone sent it to me and i thought oh what a dream i hope someone wants it and it doesn't ruin it and michelle so you study set design and then and then did you and you lived in rome did you do design in rome or were you too busy yes well i found my own house in rome and i lived in a villa on the epi antica and um i had so much fun doing that and then just friends and neighbors would ask me to help them so that's sort of how that started um and then also since i speak italian i would take american designer shopping in italy which you know this was the 80s so no one was really doing anything like that in fact they had the regatta rosa where like bombs were going off in front of the embassy all the time so it was really quite different than it is now but um it was an amazing experience and fellini made his last film with my neighbor um so i got to know him quite well and i think it was the last moment of the dolce vita really and that was the 80s in rome and then you moved to l.a then i moved to los angeles yeah which was also a great time in los angeles and that's where i really got more seriously into design on it on a bigger level and then what took you back to dallas um o.j simpson was my next-door neighbor and we had an earthquake you have lived and we did carpool so my husband was like uh we got to get out of here it was a little crazy we had judge ito blocking off the street and it just got it wasn't very it didn't feel like very family oriented so we moved back to texas oh goodness and so you you and you and your you're back in texas would your children say they are texans probably not um no i'm in fact we were looking at a ranch a couple of weeks ago and my daughter was getting a little freaked out by all the grasshoppers jumping in her hair and the rancher who was a real good old boy was like your daughter sure isn't a texan is she so i don't know maybe they're not i think they might be more european and if i've never been to texas what are the three things i've got to do and i've got to go to round top till people are drawn on topics great they would love to have you speak there i have to put that together whole girl ottinger puts that together and she's actually british and lives in i think she lives in the cotswolds i have to put you together with her but she would die for you to do that would be lovely um round top is great tell people what that is it's so much fun so it's a huge flea market where just thousands of vendors come and it goes on for two or three weeks i mean it's just never ending like there's enough time for me to go buy things come back to dallas and go back so it's just insanity and where is it when is it darling where is it oh it's out in the middle of nowhere outside of austin so you have to you have to sort of sleep in the tent or if you're lucky enough to get a hotel or in your car it just depends on what your level of desire is and how hardcore you are about finding a good antique but i have known of people sleeping in their cars luckily that hasn't happened to me there are few there's sort of some bed and breakfast it's very iffy though um but it's great and there's all these cute sort of pop-up restaurants that happen with great chefs and people dance in the streets and they have bales of hay out there that you sit on and people will eat and dance and eat barbecue and it's just kind of crazy and as you know antique dealers are sort of all eccentric so quite a lot of eccentrics out there it's fun wonderful so what are the other two what are the other two things that have to do in texas well you have to stay with me um everyone will be massively jealous um what else must you do you must eat some barbecue but you've already done that in round top so well you have to go shopping you know we're big shoppers in texas there's a lot of shops a lot of shopping opportunities so i hate to tell you that but i think you might have to do that and then you probably need to go to fort worth and see a rodeo oh wow like from dallas yeah they bring in the cows and the whole thing so texas is very um texas is almost like its own country you know no one from texas would ever say i'm an american they would always say i'm a texan so and i think we were the only state maybe louisiana i think we're the only state in the union that was actually our country so we were and only recently did we sign something where we can no longer succeed the union but for the longest time we still could so texans are very proud wonderful i'm going to come do a rodeo and go to roundtop at the same time i think that'd be fun um your jewelry collection thank you so much fun yes i'm making it in mexico in india and they sell it right now at 45 10 my shop and then um oh this is one of them this little chain i can't see it okay wait let you drop your drop your screen a bit i can't figure out the screen like why is this happening alex can you come help me with this understand why the screen won't go down something's really wrong here hold on it's kind of filled in here and i don't know what won't go down um hold on that's perfect my tech support's coming in that's that's perfect this is her tech support what's wrong with this hi um do we need to do that why are we doing why is this happening it was perfect it was oh i had perfectly checked oh my gosh alex fixed it sorry yes there you go thanks alex the jewelry line and i have these scarabs that hang off of it but i'm not wearing one today but i love the jewelry and i originally just made it for myself and then everybody wanted it so i started making it and we sold it in paris when i first met you yes that was it i know and they're statements they're statement pieces they're all rather sort of large and bold yeah and fun so i really have a lot of fun with it it's been really great it was at 45 10 it's in a place in south so i'm only in like three or four places other than my own shop but that's great because i just have one work room really in both places that make it and so it's all handmade so nothing i really kind of don't ever do anything twice you know it's sort of just all very different and and single pieces it's wonderful absolutely wonderful um what's next i'm working on another book i'm working on a line of wallpaper that you'll see debuted in um in the show house which i'm really excited about and i have so many projects that i really have never had this many project people coming to me which i feel like right now everybody just wants to redo their house so i guess since we're all nesting at home everyone's decided they need to redo so never had so many requests and i have quite a few projects going on in fact i have after this zoom three interviews i'm hiring some new people but um yeah business is great and i'm really having a lot of fun with it i'm excited about your design and i'm working on book number two and already planning book number three so lots going on there's no stopping you at all what another i have to ask this what have you been eating in lockdown what have you been feeding your family way too much i don't know [Laughter] well you know what i really got my garden going this year so i did actually grow some things so we tried to eat those but it wasn't enough to feed very many people um what did you grow i grew tomatoes and watermelon can you believe it watermelon watermelon i have bananas growing i didn't even know this existed bananas through the summer uh squash cucumbers tomatoes and every herb and maybe i had a few peppers but i think the birds got most of those um so and one of my dog i have a new puppy we call him our corona puppy so we got him during that time and when he sees me working in the garden he comes behind me and tries to help and he eats all the tomatoes off he sees me picking them and he starts eating the green ones he doesn't get it but i think he's i think he's trying to help so it's kind of sweet i can't really get too mad at him um this is the best thing about lockdown that has happened is that my children are all great cooks and we go to each other's houses or they come over and we sort of do a cook-off and one of my son's makes homemade pasta from scratch we love her he can never break up with her so once a week makes homemade linguine or what we're we're getting just well i'm not the only person gave that everyone else is probably too skinny fantastic and michelle chicken we've done a lot of roast chicken oh i like that and i yeah so i do me i do a lot of one part stuff i do great i do a really killer um seafood stew um which is great yeah it's in a bit of a cheats but it's it's it's very good i i love shepherd's pie when i'm in england it's a staple it's so good what they call nursery food yes i love nursery food and michelle not going to take much more of your time but you have to tell us about your dogs i really shouldn't it's quite embarrassing i'm like that i'm that person that can't know you know i see the dog and i just bring it home i don't know they're all rescues and i have nine dogs so if you didn't hear that i won't repeat it so quite a lot of dogs three of them are great danes one is sort of a jack russell mixed thing i don't know what he is but he's hilarious fred and balthazar is the latest addition who eats the tomatoes um and usually i have a couple of them with me at work today but it was sort of a big day so i didn't bring them but how do you choose who's gonna come to work well it's usually one of the danes because they're um they just like to lay around the other dogs are sort of more rambunctious like the little ones run all over the place the danes will just lay down and be there all day and never move yeah so they're super easy work really danes are i think the easiest dog in the world i've had labradors and it seems like they're always chewing a leg off of furniture or something you know have you always had dogs yes and so is my husband because i guess otherwise he would have left me absolutely wonderful just seeing your face and making me laugh and and having a wonderful time with you thank you so much so i've been on a trip to somewhere so thank you so much for inviting me into your home today turtle pleasure now you're well you're off to in store and then holla will you be going for how long have i gone for yeah um well i'll be the rest of the day i have an interview and then i'm off to install so i'll probably be there until like 11 o'clock at night tonight because it's uh you know it's people are playing all-nighters right now and watching the paint job on wednesday and we all have sort of set schedules because of covid um everyone has only a certain time they can be at the show house so yeah you want to take advantage to whatever time they kick you out well brilliant have a fabulous install i can't wait to see it all over the instagram and thank you so much for your time thank you darling cindy love and to you well if that wasn't just a hit to kick off the new season um it's ridiculous to say a new season but um ladies and gentlemen michonne osborne that was absolutely wonderful if you didn't see the whole thing i'm going to put it up onto the igtv we'll be back next week um we've got a great lineup do you enjoy the interview i'm doing do join us again when we have um our next guest it's going to be really really fun i'm going to post it on to igtv now michelle thank you for your time you were an absolute dream i love love speaking to you spend time with you ladies and gentlemen thank you so much and be well be safe and i will see you again next week bye

Channel: Justin Van Breda London

Views: 761

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Id: M6c4AimPOBQ

Length: 36min 38sec (2198 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020