Michael Pelkey

I met Michael Pelkey years ago when I had my design business in New York. I was always looking for good crew people, and he was introduced to me by Cheri Wagner. She brought him to my brownstone on 15th Street. I was still working from home then, and the dining room table was the work table.
We were hand wiring a zillion flowers, and I asked Michael if he could do this, and he said sure. So I asked him to make a dozen corsages for a wedding, and he made the most beautiful ones. From that day on, he became a part of my A-team, and a friend forever. Later he confessed that he had never hand wired a thing, or made a corsage, and that is so typical of this man with a myriad of natural talent.

Michael in his kitchen in Key West with a portrait someone did of him

Michael lived off his innate talent (we used to call it living by the seat of our pants). A rough childhood resulting in dozens of foster homes, he learned to use humor as his calling card. And uber generosity. And a tremendous capacity and joy for hard work.

The door to Michael's deck revealing the shell encrusted folly he made

He started collecting antiques when he was sixteen. He lived in the Boston area, where the pickings were fine. He always had a the eye for the hidden gem, the treasure buried under the grime. Eddie Ross and Michael are cut from the same jib when it comes to this.


Besides working for me for many years, Michael was a personal chef before those words ever became trendy. He worked for many interesting wealthy clients, and this took him all over the world, traveling with the people he cooked for. In every port and city, he dug out little treasures to bring home. He had several warehouses over the years of beautiful things.


In every home he worked in, he often did a little redecorating, along with planning and executing the most fantastic parties for his clients. He often used things from his collections, and the word got out. Eventually he accumulated an impressive list of interior design projects and dedicated clients.
Michael eventually made Key West his home. He bought a derelict Conch House and turned it into a show house, and nearly every style editor from Mary Emmerling to Martha Stewart used his home for a photo shoot.
The book Key West, A Tropical Lifestyle, features his home on the cover, along with a great spread inside.


Michael was so ahead of the time, as often is the case with original thinkers, and those with true talent. He was collecting alabaster lamps twenty five years ago. His ironstone collection is dedicated to pudding molds, and is legendary. He also used old ironstone bowls as vessel sinks long before the words vessel and sinks were used together in design jargon. The farm house sink was another one of his ideas that pre-dated it being a catalog item.

He was also first in using Carerra marble, rain shower heads, and so many things that became mainstream in bathroom design.

Note the black and white stripe gross grain ribbon used to extend the length of the shower curtain
The fan light window is an antique especially fitted into the shower

He collected windows and doors of all sizes, always knowing he would find a perfect place to build around them.

This little old stained glass window is hinged to open

When I lived in New York, Michael and I saw one another every day, yakked on the phone, hung out. He moved away first to Key West, then I moved away to New Orleans. We see each other every couple of years, and it is not nearly enough.
Recently he bought a new house he is re-doing in North Carolina. He is working for the design firm Tanda Design, who currently specialize in luxury projects all around hunt country. He seldom gets back to his Key West gem of a house, and often rents it out now. Once in awhile a buying trip will bring him to our open arms in New Orleans.

I don't have many photos of Michael's house. BB, Before Blogging, taking photos of houses was just not something we did ha ha. I found these in a folder tonight, and it made me miss Michael more than ever. Alberto took the bathroom photos the last time we visitied Michael in Key West, as an idea notebook for our bathroom renovation in New Orleans.

Alberto appreciates Michael on every level, but he is enchanted by all the little built-in cabinets in Michael's tiny 600 square foot house.

Michael and Alberto one Christmas in Key West-
I spy a clock that you all seem to love these days
Michael has had this clock for as long as I know him

I hope to do a book on Michael's body of work one day.
Michael doesn't do the internet; he doesn't blog; he doesn't twitter. He rarely uses the cell phone, except for work. So I doubt that he'll ever see the posts I've done about him, but I hope he feels my tenderness reaching out to him where ever he's making beauty today.

The French Woman's Bathroom

Madame Madeleine Castaing

Madame Irith Landeau

Lou Lou de la Falaise

From the book The French Woman's Bedroom: "If the French woman reigns as the world's most alluring embodiment of style, then the French woman's bedroom (and bathroom) surely reveals more about its fanciful and fashionable owner than any other room in the house."

Aren't these wonderful and kind of out there? I mean a sofa in the bathroom is just fabulous and too too much.

Clipping File - Bathroom Sinks

This is a little powder room in Buenos Aires
Love the mirror surround with faucet coming out of wall
Small vessel bowl and broken tile counter are charming

I have a thing for toile

Love the old sink and the chair as a shelf
I put two mini antique chairs under
our new double sink using them this way

Clipping File - The Claw Foot Bath Tub

I have been renovating a bathroom for a couple of years. Don't ask. So I have a clipping file of bathrooms.
We live in an old house, and the bathroom has a small foot print, and there is no room to expand it. So instead of trying to do some depraved spa look we decided to update and clean it up, but still keep the feeling of this old dump.
We also are doing the work ourselves, except for one thing, which was to have new pipes put in. We are on the hideous B word budget, so we are not doing a complete gut job. We managed to keep our tub and the toilet and the walls and the ceiling. The walls were covered with plastic paneling and wood paneling around the tub. The ceiling had acoustic tiles. I stripped all that off to find beautiful old cypress wood paneling on both walls and ceiling, using horizontal boards. It's in pretty good shabby shape. I painted it all white.
We put in a double sink. The hubs made the vanity base, very simple wood, with 4 big chunky legs. I white washed and waxed it. The fixtures throughout are oil rubbed bronze.
There are some nice accessories, a train rack, an old cabinet, frame less oval mirrors, a new light fixture, vintage apothecary jars, an old clock...
The floor is white tile, and it remains. The hubs added tile where the cheap bastards didn't put any under the old sink vanity (which we discovered when we took it out). Again, we did not want to do a gut job. We managed to match the tiles pretty good with the cheapest thing from Lowes.
Still to do: tile tub surround with white subway tile; open up a small window that is over the tub that was boarded up (this means cutting the siding on the outside of the house and building a custom window); scraping and painting an existing built in cupboard unit (and adding new hardware); installing the cutest mini ceiling fan (we already installed the coolest slim heater from Europe - it's looks like a huge white ceramic tile so it mounts flat on the wall); have the tub resurfaced and add all oil rub bronze fixtures.
The laundry room adjoins, so that will be painted, and the floor tiled, and a french doors installed (to replace an ugly metal door that looks onto the patio); install the same ceiling fan as we are using in the bath; install a tank less water heater.
The ceiling in the bathroom has been sanded and stripped and painted, but still vestiges of glue spots remain from the acoustic tile horror show. We found fake tin ceiling tiles that we are going to use, and will use them in the laundry room area too.
We are never bored for lack of something to do.
Oh, we don't have a claw foot tub. I wish we did. But I like the feeling of bathrooms in the photos in the clipping file. If you have an old claw foot tub, keep it and resurface it and get new fixtures for it.