Rêve d'Automne

I know that we are in the hottest part of summer. Granted, we're just a five weeks away from the beginning of September -and the beginning of my own very favorite season. And pumpkin spice everything. This is the time of year that I shoot our Autumn photographs of antiques from France, think about Autumn features on our FrenchGardenHouse blog, and more. And get really, really excited about all the autumn deliciousness to come.

It is the summer’s great last heat, It is the fall’s first chill: They meet. –Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

I get through the hot summer month of August by dreaming of fall. Our FrenchGardenHouse studio is filled with the colors and textures of fall, and a whole container filled with French antiques. {I won't make you really crazy by mentioning that all my antique articles for magazines are due in the middle of August - it's already been Christmas in my studio!} Autumn doesn't officially begin until September 22, the autumnal equinox. The word equinox means “equal night” - night and day are almost the same length of time. During the equinox, the Sun crosses the “celestial equator” {the line that marks the equator on Earth extending up into the sky} from north to south. Until it does, I'm living in autumn splendor already at FrenchGardenHouse, and thought you might want to join me, visually, at least! I am so excited about the antiques I was able to bring from France for autumn you. Not just for fall, one of my personal favorite finds are these old, old hemp aprons from a now-closed cooking school. My imagination goes in overdrive about what students learned there, how many tarte aux pomme they made, and tasted. How many of them actually went on to fulfill their dream of opening their own bistro, restaurant, or became head chef at Le Meurice? {obviously I'm a romantic, it's why I am an antiques dealer, every single thing I buy and sell has stories, mysterious, and have been touched by human hands and hearts.} Each one of the 20 or so I was able to bring to FrenchGardenHouse has history. Some have hand sewn mending, some have stenciled numbers, some have carefully removed stichting that used to be a student's monogram, ready to be used by next year's class? None are perfect. They have some weathering here and there, and slight areas that show when Maurice spilled a pan of hot abricot confiture all over the floor. That's precisely what I adore about them - they've lived! Little intact antique French gardener's sieves like this are getting so difficult to find, that I rejoice when I find one! Made of bentwood long ago by village craftsmen, each is hand made of bentwood and fitted with a screen. At harvest time, when the summer garden had spent it's luxurious blooms and was preparing for autumn, a French gardener would "sift" flower heads with one of these, catching the small seeds below. The seeds were then categorized and placed by variety in its own paper envelope to use for next year's garden.

Autumn has caught us in our summer wear. –Philip Larkin, British poet

I could go on and on about the autumn, the French antiques that have arrived for our favorite season here at FrenchGardenHouse. For now, it's enough to know that fall is happening in our own little FrenchGardenHouse studio...soon to arrive layer by layer in the shop. Here's a preview of our Rêve d'Automne in Garden and Kitchen departments. The Rêve d'Automne Gift Collection is coming together beautifully. I can't wait to share it with all of you in a few weeks! WHAT EXCITES YOU MOST ABOUT FALL?