The Well-Traveled Home
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About this ebook
Luxury homes with international panache.
“The essence of my interior design work seeks to reflect the evolving interplay of the domestic and the international, while remaining true to my intent to create alluring family living spaces and home environments.”
Sandra Espinet (pron. Espinay) is a lifelong gypsy whose extensive world travels produce “finds” of exquisitely wrought artisanal furniture, dramatic artworks and exotic accessories that are put to beautiful use in interiors. Blending the fabulous objects culled from particular corners of the globe is a delicate art form. Espinet is a mix-master of eclectic convergence, a specialist in the fearless melding of exotic elements with traditional furnishings into stylish and unforgettable presentations of comfort and calm, exhilaration and extravagance.
Sandra Espinet, ASID, lives between Los Angeles and San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico. She has degrees from the New England School of Design in Boston, the American College of Art in Atlanta, and the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. She won the Reader’s Choice Designer of the Year Award 2010 from California Home & Design and is the international spokesperson for Anderson Wood Flooring. Sandra has been featured in HGTV’s Christmas special; her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, among other design magazines.
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The Well-Traveled Home - Sandra Espinet
Acknowledgments
Introduction
First, a confession: I didn’t come to the life of a transcontinental nomad overnight, or easily or even on purpose. As a child, I was essentially in tow to busy parents as my father practiced his profession across time zones. So, of necessity, I turned the 737s of Avianca and VIASA and TWA into my homes away from home. Everything—from the newspapers and magazines left behind in the seat pockets to the duty-free gift shops of international terminals—informed my young understanding of what I thought was attractive and worthy and exciting in the world. In other words, I simply did what any other bewildered kid does when dragged along on the agenda set by her parents: I made the most of the situation. I watched and learned and took notes and hoped that the future would afford me the opportunity to integrate all of my impressions into something cohesive—a look, an outfit, a group of friends, a suite of furniture, a seaside villa of many rooms. A passion.
You know, when unique objects and found treasures from anyone’s travels are pulled together, they tell an authentic and personal story. As an interior designer, the compelling challenge for me, then, is to ensure that this story is beautiful and accessible to my clientele and their families and friends going forward, that this story is as visually arresting and appealing as it is welcoming and comfortable. I suppose I would say that the essence of my interior design work seeks to reflect the evolving interplay of the domestic and the international, while remaining true to my intent to create alluring family living spaces and home environments.
Blending the fabulous objects culled from particular corners of the globe is a delicate art form. Over the years, I have endeavored to fearlessly embrace the space between our conventional notions of here and there, of home and away, and to make that uncertain terrain my playground, atelier and design forte. As The Well-Traveled Home will illustrate, the outcomes possible in this territory can and should be spectacular—a crossroads between ideas and space, wood and steel, wet and dry, al fresco and enclosure, Frieda Kahlo and Velasquez, you and me.
I describe my role in this process as a mix-master of eclectic convergence, a specialist in the fearless melding of exotic elements with traditional furnishings from our neck of the woods into stylish and unforgettable presentations of comfort and calm, exhilaration and extravagance—in a word, the world. In truth, fitting the right pieces into the right rooms within a plausible design scheme is my ultimate happiness. It is how I process and make sense of the data dump world we all must wade through.
Professionally, I have been navigating this shape-shifting line between the sublime look of the lobbies of the Four Seasons in New York or the Danieli in Venice or the jewel-like riads of Tangier and the fun but misfortunate kitsch of tiki and tapas bars, import/export emporiums, and revival-this and homage-that for the better part of the last decade and change, all across the Americas, in flip-flops with a beat-up Birkin bag. I have accumulated a discerning though exuberant clientele who are au fait with transcontinental hopscotching across the United States as well as Europe, Asia, northern Africa, and both coasts of Latin America. My clients appreciate the spoils resulting from my personal appetite for adventure to the remotest outposts of the least likely countries. I have championed for them a sort of post-expedition take on the incorporation of the exotic and the banal—fewer zebra stripes and Chinatown lanterns, more Moroccan ceramics and Turkish metal sconces and pendants. I have sought out the new, the vibrant, and the authentic from far-flung cultures and occasionally inhospitable marketplaces with quality, design integrity, and beautiful usefulness
as the watchwords of ultimate importance.
As a lifelong gypsy, I subject each and every acquisition to my own contrived litmus test: Will I begrudgingly maintain this bureau or will I cherish