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- [00:00]
Michael Boudreau
This is the Cherish podcast and I'm your host, Michael Boudreau. I'll be taking you for an inside look behind the glamorous facade of the interior design industry. At a time when every aspect of the business, from sourcing to trends to marketing to dealing with clients, is undergoing rapid change, there is hardly an issue of any shelter magazine you can name. There's that does not feature at least one home studded with Christopher Spitzmiller's gleaming and boldly colorful lamps. He has crafted lamps for four different White House administrations, Blair House and many other distinguished American homes with mentors like Albert Hadley and Mario Borada. It is no surprise that he's a traditionalist, but he has made tradition appealing to a whole new audience. Each of his pieces is handcrafted using age old techniques, but he updates classic forms with vividly colored glazes and custom touches that make his work instantly recognizable and coveted. He has since expanded his range and his lamps, tableware, platters, planters, garden stools and ginger jars are sold at his own Manhattan showroom, at dozens of high end outlets across the country, and fortunately at Cherish. And he continues to create custom pieces for many of America's top designers. But Christopher is also a social media star. His many posts about the renovation and extensive transformation Dovecoat anyone? Of Clovebrook Farm, the 1830 house and five acre property in Millbrook, New York drew so many thousands of entranced followers that it led to his best selling book, A Year at Clovebrook Farm. The book, which is published by Rizzoli, is full not only of ravishing photographs, but also practical advice, techniques, recipes and insights into how to beautify and enjoy any home. Long before our current maker moment and the recent resurgence of interest in ceramics, Christopher was creating beautiful objects and changing the way designers think about how to bring color, form and light to their rooms. I'm so pleased that he's with us today. Welcome Christopher.
- [02:18]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Thank you so much. You're going to make me cry with such a great warm introduction. You know, everybody says isn't it great how much you've achieved? And I don't think about it. I don't think about it for a minute. All I have to think about is what I need to do next to get get the next fire put out or the next plant planted or the next lamp made. You know, that's all I'm focused on is what today is why you, that's.
- [02:38]
Michael Boudreau
Why you keep moving ahead. But I want to start sort of at the beginning early on, like how did this all happen for you? Where did you go to school? Did you study ceramics? How did that get. Cause I have to say, Christopher, to me, you've always been, like, full blown, like, you know, Venus from the head of Zeus. You've just.
- [02:57]
Christopher Spitzmiller
I wasn't. No. I was a little kid that was lost. I was dyslexic. I couldn't spell, I could barely read. I had, like. My prognosis as a student was dismal at best when I was in grade school. But I found vocation and life in making things. And the idea that you could enrich people's lives by making something, whether it was a little bowl or a plate or a piggy bank, wildly entranced me. And so I took ceramics whenever it was available to me, and it wasn't always available. And then at my boarding school, I got really good at it. And then at my college, I got even and I told my mom I wanted to be a ceramics major. And this is a classic story where she pulled the car over the side of the road at parents weekend and was like, listen, honey, you need to find something to do that's a little more lucrative. And, you know, the joke's on her today. And, you know, I see people like, I have some cousins right now who have kids and they're trying out for the NFL, and I find myself shaking my head going, oh, my God, that's such a hard goal to achieve. And I'm like, look at you. You know, you made it making lamps in this weird profession, and you became the best at it. And it just shows that if you pick your niche and you keep doing it and you keep doing it and you keep doing it because there is failure in the beginning that we all face, of course, and it wasn't all. And poverty. Yeah, and poverty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so, you know, I graduated from school and where did you go to school? I went to St. Lawrence University in New York State and way up in the hinterlands in New York State. And then I took the summer program at risd, and they wanted me to transfer, and I wanted to transfer, but my mom, who was worried about my dyslexia, said. She said, stay, and I'll pay for you to go to grad school wherever. So I figured out that I could go back to RISD as a visiting student. And so I spent my senior semester there. And then I did a program in London where I talk my way into Central St Martin's and in England, they're much more about products and about plates. And dishes. They have the whole Stoke on Trent factory sort of area that they produce. Designers for that, sadly, we don't have much of in America. There's not a lot of American makers. There's small people like myself, you know, who make things. I'm not.
- [05:09]
Michael Boudreau
But it's that English tradition.
- [05:11]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Yeah.
- [05:11]
Michael Boudreau
Wedgwood and Westwood, Lenox, all of that, you know. So I guess they know the schools feel that there is a place for the students to go when they graduate, whereas in the United States, like you said, it was a little dubious what you were gonna do, I guess.
- [05:27]
Christopher Spitzmiller
But they assigned projects that were doable and recognizable. Like, I think you had to do, like a set of plates that could be sold at Barney's or Harrods, you know, which still can happen. You know, a young designer can go into Bergdorf Goodman with a small line of stuff and have them sell it. And they are actually looking for people to do this kind of stuff with. And that's the thing that most people, I think, lose out on is that they don't take out their phone or reach out to people and say, hey, look at me. You know, and be persistent. You know, if you get the no. The first time, you gotta call back, and you gotta. You gotta knock on that door for a while. So I graduated. I moved to Washington, D.C. and I was floating around looking for some job, and I couldn't find anything. And my roommate at the time was friends with the White House intern director, and she said, why don't you come be an intern? And there was a opening in the press office, and there was an opening in the social office. And I said, well, I don't know which one's more interesting. She goes, oh, do the social office. So I work for the Clintons. And I work from Thanksgiving through the Easter egg rol. And it was amazing to be there and to be in that house and to answer the phone and to collect people's Social Security numbers because you can't have any outstanding crimes or anything when you go to the White House. Background checks, little background checks. We don't do it for guests. We do it for your White House visit on a social occasion. Yeah. So I did that. And then I had a show at my work in Washington. I had a friend who offered to give me. And I made plates and dishes back then. And the show went incredibly well. And Mac Hoce was then opening the very first Mecox Gardens in Southampton. And he said, why don't you come out and be Padron resident? So I packed up my Car in kiln. And I drove out there and I had a dismal summer. Like, the pieces that came out of the kiln either broke immediately or soon thereafter. I had to borrow, like, $200 from Mac to get my sorry little butt back down to Washington D.C. so that is the failure and part of the poverty that does affect. You know, I paid Mac back. And the next summer I had started to make lamps, and I put lamps in his store and no back up. Keith Langham ordered some lamps that summer. That summer that what. What I like to say is the. The shining light that came out of that summer with was Keith saying, we yield. We'll make these lamps. So I went back to Washington, D.C. and I started to work on them. And back then I just made the vase. And he had somebody who wired them and put them all together. And I learned all those different processes, like how to turn a wooden base, how to do water gilding, how to get the best electrical parts and how to put them together. And I think Tom Pheasant was my second client, and Albert Hadley was my third. And then Barbara Berry's office called up and she was making things with Baker furniture back then. And they said, we've done all this furniture, but we have no lamps. And so we need, like 34 lamps. And I did my little schedule of getting this work done for the Baker opening, and I got it all done with like one or two days to spare. And so I had to get in my car and deliver these lamps to Baker because I couldn't afford forward back then to FedEx them. And Baker was so impressed by the personal delivery that they got from me showing up myself, making sure that the pieces. So it just shows you that, like, life takes you where you need to go. If you work hard and you do your thing, you get in the car and you drive down to High Point and you deliver those lamps yourself. You know, like, you got to get things done. Like, I tell people in our studio that we sell lamps. We don't sell excuses. And that doesn't mean that we don't run behind sometime. And there aren't moments where we don't get our work done, but in those moments, we lend things out to designers. We say, well, we don't have your pair, but we have another pair of blue lamps that we can send you, and you can have those until they're ready. So we've learned some tricks that make a problem a better solution.
- [09:15]
Michael Boudreau
Right now, I was fascinated because I read up a little, looking forward to this. Would you Describe the process of how you make your lamps. I mean, I know you have mold, but explain the whole process. Cause I think the listeners don't know. I mean, I certainly didn't know.
- [09:28]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Yeah. So I sit down in a pottery. Well, first of all, I find something that I want to do. I shop online all the time. I'm a auction house junkie beyond belief. Like, I just spend so much time, like, looking and searching for new stags and garden things. And while I'm on the way, I see lamp shapes that I like and I take a screenshot picture of it. I feel it's our duty as designers to make things our own and to not copy. That said, everything that I do is derivative off of that I have seen before in some form. I just have made it my own by making a curve a little tighter here, making the base a little wider, maybe picking a different profile. You know, I think that that's our thing. So I sit down at the potter's wheel and I work for a period of like three to four days in the wet, where I'm taking pieces and I'm making them and joining them. And then I let things dry and I throw incredibly roughly, which means, like, if you look at it, it's like a chunk of wood when I get done. And then I go back in with trimming tools and I trim in all the fine lines and all this sort of nice curves that you need to have in a piece, and then you let it dry and it gets fired once. And then we put the glaze on. And in the beginning, I used to do all this myself. And then I turn the base and I gild the bases, and I make like eight things at a time. And now all those different parts I used to do are filled by different people who, like, we have a full time gilder, a couple of potters, they're not throwing all of our lamps on the wheel of cells because people wanted things to be 30 inches all the time and have the curve be exactly the same. So I had to give up control of throwing them myself. And they're now produced out of mold. So you have exactly that size and you can put the piece back on the mold, get all the. The seam lines out of it, and do your sort of my sort of trimming there before we do the glazing.
- [11:19]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah, because I think a lot of people don't realize still in this day and age, how much handwork goes into each item, you know.
- [11:27]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Oh, yeah. Our big battle with our price tag is getting people in the Studio and having them realize that we make these things. On 35th street between 7th and 8th Avenue, we have a whole floor of an industrial old garment building, and there are nine potters up there working and one manager and a couple of salespeople and stuff, but we're up there doing it all. And, you know, especially the husbands, when the husbands get in there and see it, they're like, I'm done. You know, and, you know, if we.
- [11:55]
Michael Boudreau
Gone to Pottery Barn. No, you couldn't.
- [11:57]
Christopher Spitzmiller
I don't.
- [11:58]
Michael Boudreau
No.
- [11:58]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Well, you know, and the way I explain it is, like, you can get there in, like, a Mercedes or you can get there in a Volkswagen. And I have a great person, Karen Harlow, for the home in. In Palm Springs. And she. She talks to her clients and she goes, well, how are we going to fly? Like, I think we're going to fly first class in your living room and in your master bedroom, in your den and those guest rooms. We can fly coach in there. You know, we can get some less expensive things because we don't want people staying around in those rooms forever, you.
- [12:26]
Michael Boudreau
Know, And, I mean, it seems obvious, but you look at your lamps as compared to, you know, conventional whatever, and they're not the same. I mean, the glazes, the color, the richness, the sensibility is very much yours. So how many people now are on your team, would you say?
- [12:44]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Altogether, I think we're 12, maybe 13. I think we have a job opening. If anybody's looking for a job up here in Millbrook, there's an opening. So the city, we find people very easily up here. It's a little bit more of a battle. We do plates and dishes from up here and accessories and then lamps. And the bigger things are made from the city or studio.
- [13:04]
Michael Boudreau
Right, right. And that's interesting to me, too. I didn't realize that you actually, when you were a student or whatever, you were doing plates, because I always thought of you as a lamp person who then went to doing the beautiful plates and. And platters, the marbleized ceramic thing that you do that's so. I think is so special. So at what point did you start doing that, and what was the impetus behind it?
- [13:25]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Well, a lot of the showrooms, like Holly Hawk, Suzanne Reinstein, she wanted to have, like, parties for me. She'd be like, oh, we'll have a party for you. And to have somebody come into a party and buy a lamp that's $3,500 sometimes is a little bit of a reach. But, you know, you can come in and buy A mug or a set of plates, and. And that's a little bit easier. So it helped me to diversify, and it helped me to embrace the things I love, too, because I love dishes, and all that kind of stuff is my favorite. So to design our own and have our own ones, it's like, how good is that?
- [13:58]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah. And they're really amazing and beautiful, and I think they've been a big success for you. No, they have been.
- [14:05]
Christopher Spitzmiller
They have been.
- [14:06]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah. Yeah. So that's something else I want to ask you about, because when you were starting out, I think there wasn't as much respect for ceramics and for handmade things. You know, you're laughing about that.
- [14:21]
Christopher Spitzmiller
That reminds me of a funny anecdote story that I like to tell is when I lived in Washington, D.C. and I told people I was a potter, they looked at me like I farted. They were like, oh, bless your heart.
- [14:31]
Michael Boudreau
What do I say?
- [14:32]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Oh, my God. Yeah. And, you know, from the beginning, I was making lamps for the Bob Bennetts. The Clinton's lawyers were one of Tom Pheasant's clients that I was making things from. I mean, right away, we had very good placement and good. You know, but who else were they gonna turn to?
- [14:48]
Michael Boudreau
There was nobody else making that.
- [14:49]
Christopher Spitzmiller
But part of it was my problem. I didn't know how to convey that, and I still don't convey it in a braggy dose way. You know, Albert Hadley was very humble. He never said, oh, you know, like, I work for the Rockefellers and the Melons or whatever. There was just something about Albert that, you knew was regal and respect, and he demanded this sort of respect without ever saying, you know, do you know who I am? Like, no. No way.
- [15:17]
Michael Boudreau
Never.
- [15:17]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Oh, yeah. You know, Albert never said, like, keep following or like, anything like that. Yeah, he was like, you know, warm and embracing, and he. He went out of his way to find young talent like myself and to push us forward. That was the thing that he did. And so I try and incorporate that in my. My thing. And. And thankfully, I don't have to do much explaining now because people know when they hear my name what I do, and if they don't, I just say I make lamps. And I let them figure it out, because I'm not here to.
- [15:45]
Michael Boudreau
Right. You know, it's like anything else. You can go and buy a jacket at the Gap, or you can buy a jacket from Kiton. It's like everybody has their level. But it was amazing to me how quickly you reached that high level. But like I said, I Think it's also. There weren't a lot of people doing what you were doing. There are more people now. Not exactly what you're doing, obviously, and whatever. But there has been, don't you think, a change and there's more respect and interest in all kinds of ceramics now, both vintage and new.
- [16:18]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Thankfully, yes. I don't think the vintage stuff gets near the credit that it should. I can buy creamware, plates, and old things that used to be thousands of dollars at Bardeth. Now for hundreds of dollars on ebay or cherish, you know, you can go out there and get really good old stuff now for really nothing. But there is a resurgence in craft and embracing that, and I'm really glad to see that because we need to support these young artisans out there that are starting out. You know, lots of them have worked for me. There's a guy, Nick Newcombe, who's gone out and he has his own studio where he does dishes that you can buy at krb. There's, you know, when somebody leaves my studio, I'm always happy to see that they' they've made it.
- [16:59]
Michael Boudreau
So, yeah, yeah, it does seem like, as I said, we're in a bit of a maker's moment now, finally. But this is like, what, 20 years after you got started, Right?
- [17:08]
Christopher Spitzmiller
It's sad because, you know, I would see my mom buy things like she bought some of those Frances Elkin hoop back chairs, and she found somebody in our hometown, East Aurora, New York, this little town in western New York, who could make it and make that little part of the leg that is so important in that design and to get all that, like, she would find these craftspeople out there and give them work.
- [17:29]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah, I think our society has not respected. We did a podcast about this and it's a constant going thing, you know, how do you support artisans? How do you encourage young people? Not everybody should go to college. Not everybody wants to go to college and end up with all that debt. And how do we make trades and craftsmanship more respected in our society? And, you know, it's an ongoing issue and God knows all the designers can't find enough artisans to execute their visions. And, you know, I think you don't have to worry that you're gonna have a thriving business for a long time to come, you know, no, in the.
- [18:06]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Beginning, it's, it's hard, but I, I coach people in saying the only way you're really gonna make it successfully is if you go out there on your own. You know, like, that's the best Way to do it. You know, Anthony, my partner in Covid, opened a shop up here in Millbrook and it's been, it's been a battle for him. It's not always easy. Everybody looks at it from the outside. When you look at something on Instagram, you think it's all, all easy. But Mil is not a big retail town. It's not like Southampton or Greenwich or Darien. You know, it's a, it's a, a different customer out of here. But we, we've created something with Creel and Gow that people get in their car and drive up from Greenwich or they come from Connecticut and then we've made it worthwhile to make the journey up here. So if you do it and you build it, people will come. But it's not like, oh, I just hung out my shingle and like this money's flooding in. You know, it's not been like that. And there's low moments where he knows that like in the middle of summer right now, it's going to be really quiet. And then September comes around and Christmas and it's better again. And then January happens and it's slower and you know, thank God one of us has got a steady job to keep us all going. But, you know, you, you, you figure out how to work it and angle it.
- [19:19]
Michael Boudreau
Hi everybody and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Cherish podcast. I'm Ana Brackway, co founder and president of Cherish and I'm delighted to announce that Cherish is now offering only to the trade the most generous returns policy in our industry. That is a 14 day return window on all our exceptionally curated inventory of home furnishings and art purchased by the trade. Designers asked for it and we listened. This free offer is now available to interior designers on purchases made between now through October 31st. So it's time to get shopping. For more information, visit cherish.comtrade that's C H A I R I-S-H.com trade and now back to our show that brings up, of course, social media and Instagram. Because one of the things that amazed me about you was how brilliantly, how early on and how brilliantly you adapted to Instagram in particular, which is where I been following you for forever. And you know how you used it to sort of build awareness of you and also Clobrook Farm. So I want you to talk a little about what was the impetus behind that. Did you, were you excited about when you started the renovations in particular of your house and farm? Was that something you thought Because I know people say, oh, you know, Christopher Spitzmiller, he's the next Martha Stewart, or, you know, the next. Next Chip Gains or whatever. I don't even know who to compare you to because you're so inimitable. But, you know, was that a plan or was that something that just evolved?
- [21:05]
Christopher Spitzmiller
It just happened. And I had no idea that people would be interested. I did have the idea, especially in gardening, of educating people, which is the same thing that Martha has and holds dear to her heart, is it's all about teaching. And when I do a post, I try and impart the reader and the viewer in some sort of lesson. Like, this is what I learned. I mean, sometimes it's just a table setting, and that's just beautiful. But if it's something in the garden or the progress on the barn that I'm building, it's like, here's. Here's where we are. Here's what we ran into that I didn't expect. You know, it's not about, like, look at me, you know, I've. I've done all this. It's like, it's not all finished pictures. You know, it's not all finished. They're all taken with my iPhone. Occasionally, I'll use one from the book that the Ingalls took. But, like, 96% of what I post are images that I take with my phone. And I do it all myself. Nobody else gets in it. There's a business, Instagram, that's run by the studio that I'm involved with, but they do that part of it. I'm not great at pushing my own product. That's one thing that Martha does say to me. She's like, you should push your own product more than you do. But I'm more interested in what I'm learning and what I can impart in somebody else and what somebody else can take away from it than I am about, hey, look at me. That's not my thing.
- [22:24]
Michael Boudreau
Well, and I think it's very. Your feed is very authentic. It's very you. Like you said, you do it yourself. And people can sense that. But talk a little about how you found the house and the farm and were you intimidated at first? Cause it was a beautiful house, but you had big plans, so. And yet you still have big plans, it seems.
- [22:46]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Yeah. So, you know, I had friends like Stephen Gambrell who had these houses, and I didn't have anything. And I had many houses. Yeah. No. Well, now he has millions. Back then, there was one house in Sag harbor that he had. But now he's gone on, you know, he's gone way, way further. But I decided I wanted my own house. And I saved money. I religiously put some money into an account and I went down this thing and I looked in the Hamptons and that was out of my price range. And through Jamie Creel, I had found Millbrook, which is similar to the countryside in Charlottesville, Virginia, that I spent a lot of time in when I was in Washington, D.C. and I love the kooky people up. And I had a house with Todd Romano, who I dated. And when we broke up, Todd wanted to have that much more money than I wanted to pay for it. And I took some time out, saved some more. And I bought this house that John Robshaw and other friends refer to as the grown up house because it has a big presence. And it's. It's a Greek Revival house. It's not as big as it looks from the outside, is 3,500 square feet. And the living room that I'm sitting in right now is 15 by 15. It's a bedroom up of it, which is mine. That's that size. So it's. It's rather modest in its scale inside, but it has all these big moldings on it. And my friend Petty Madison said to me when I sent her pictures of it where there were honeybees living in it, and she'd be like, it's a good thing you're young. Because I paid $565,000 for a piece of history that I needed to sort of reclaim. And I knew if I did it slowly, it would give me something to focus on and would fuel me to work harder and to make the money. And I did projects like painted the whole outside, and then I replaced the windows. And Margaret Russell would be calling me saying, I want to shoot your house. And I'd be like, you want to shoot the new fireplaces or the new H vac system? Come on up here. But, like, there's nothing going on in this house. And, you know, what I've learned works with editors is saying no to them. They're like, you know. And I wasn't saying no because I was crafting anything. I had no plan up my sleeve. I just was serious. I'm like, there's nothing up here to photograph right now. And then when there was, there was, and you know, it was six years of expensive renovation work.
- [25:04]
Michael Boudreau
Right. Well, that's what, that's the tragedy of anybody who buys a house, especially an old house, is for the first, at least three years. Every. You're spending every dime. And none of it shows.
- [25:14]
Christopher Spitzmiller
None of it shows. None of it shows. I was living with moving objects, and.
- [25:17]
Michael Boudreau
As a visual person, that's a heartbreak break, you know, it is, but I.
- [25:21]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Entertained and I had people over. I wasn't embarrassed of it. Like, it just was where I did. Yeah, well, I wanted to show people where I was on it and, you know, so.
- [25:32]
Michael Boudreau
Right. Absolutely. You, you enjoy your house at whatever stage it's at. I, I, but, you know, it's like, now the boiler, now, you know, the walkway, now the driveway. I got to get gravel. Oh, I, I gotta get there. Trees pruned, you know, all this stuff that doesn't have immediate visual impact. But of course, you know, nobody wants to end up with a show place that's falling down. And I have seen some people do that. You know, they spend everything on the wallpaper, and then the roof is caving.
- [25:59]
Christopher Spitzmiller
That was an Albert Hadley Awesome. That I picked up. He goes, you have to get the bones. Right. Before you do anything else. And it was true. You have to get all that stuff in place and those fireplaces in the kitchen, and then, then you can have fun decorating. But until then, like, you gotta.
- [26:16]
Michael Boudreau
Right, right. So now you've had this house since 2005. Right. So it's been a while. So what was your order? Did, like, did you originally think, I want to have a farm, I want to have chickens, I want to do? Or was that is this all just stuff that you learned along the way and said, you know what? Why don't I have some chickens? Or was it a dream tip from the beginning?
- [26:39]
Christopher Spitzmiller
You know, part of it was a dream, but then the other part of it is it just sort of happened at the right moment where I had the house, and I was in it for long enough, and I had started the work, and then I was like, okay, let's have chickens. And I carved out an area of the old dairy barn that was the old milk room and put up a run, and I ordered some chickens from Murray McMurray. And then I start going to fancy poultry shows and buying really good chickens. And the next thing you know it, you're going to these poultry shows with Martha Stewart, you know, and, like, you're like, how did this happen? You know, you didn't dream that? No. You didn't dream that she'd call you and be like, you know, what fertilizer this morning? What fertilizer are you putting on your myrtle topiary? And I'm like, you know, here's the person who led the light for all of us for years, and she'll at moments, you know, ask me, like, what are you doing? Cause yours are looking better than mine. And, like, that's the thing is, you know, when. I know when both of us. Us have a bad sweet pea year, it's the weather. It's not us. You know, that's what I sort of gauge things on when both of us fail, because we do things sort of sequentially at the same time. And, you know, it just. That's my good talisman.
- [27:48]
Michael Boudreau
Right, Right. So what are you thinking about next for Clover?
- [27:53]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Well, we're still working on the barn. It's not done, and I haven't posted about it. The barn is big, and there were. For the wedding that we had the dinner of, you know, we had the whole front facade sort of sided. Or when I say side, we have the azac put on there. But there's. There's two sides that still need the siding. There's staircases for the inside that need to go up in there. There's. There's other, smaller tasks. I'm just not writing the checks as vivaciously as I used to be because I'm like, we gotta calm down on this for a while. And that's the nice thing about working on projects outside of your house is you can take a break for a while. You know, like with a garden or your dovecote or your pool, you know, you can start it and be like, all right, we gotta take a break for a little bit and slow things down. But when it's your kitchen or your bedroom, you're like, go get the stuff.
- [28:39]
Michael Boudreau
Gotta have a place to cook and a place to sleep.
- [28:40]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Absolutely, yeah. And so we're out of the house now, which is good. And I don't have anything going on in here, so it's easier. And then after we get done with that, I would like a greenhouse. That's the next thing that's on my docket to do.
- [28:52]
Michael Boudreau
In terms of the house, where did you find your inspiration? Because, I mean, you have that incredibly charming pool house. You have the very classic dovecote. I mean, where did you go? Free examples all over.
- [29:05]
Christopher Spitzmiller
You know, I mean, Gil Shafer's architecture influences me incredibly. Old Greek Revival architecture. You know, that building is based off of the pool house. Building is based off of the Temple of Pan at Osterley Park. And the horns on the outside are. Is something that the Bannermans do, which are a husband and wife team in England. And They've done them at Arendale and at Highgrove and at Houghton. You know, you find inspiration everywhere. And Paige, Dick Dickey did a. She's a gardener friend of mine. She did a. A post about the. The Horn Folly at Arendelle, and that's how I found that. And Albert Hadley had a scrapbook that had an oval pool in it, and I was like, oh, my God, I want an oval pool. Everybody's got these rectangles. So inspiration is sort of everywhere. And your friends, like Harry Heisman, helped me decorate the interior of this house. And this is not Harry's style. This is. Is my style. And he'll tell you, you know, this is. I love Harry, having somebody to hold your hand through things. And still I'll be like, should I buy this? And Harry's like, you don't need that, honey. You know, and that's good for a friend to tell you, like, you've got enough. Like, don't get that.
- [30:14]
Michael Boudreau
Right. Right. And I wanted. What about travel? Do you travel a lot in terms of looking for inspiration? Going to England and places like that.
- [30:23]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Or we haven't been to the continent since COVID hit, which I need to change, but I've been so busy in my own life and frankly, content here that I don't want to go right now. So. But inspirations, I don't know, It's. It's endless. I still find it. It's not like, oh, my God, I've seen everything. You know, you. You got to keep your eyes open to nature and to what's around you, and you'll find it.
- [30:49]
Michael Boudreau
I want to get back a little bit to production because you don't push it enough, as Martha said.
- [30:54]
Christopher Spitzmiller
No, no.
- [30:57]
Michael Boudreau
But how do you think about. Because what's interesting to me is, you know, I was looking at your website and how many variations. Now it seems like you've added a lot more variations in the shapes. And like, I look at some of your lamps and I see, you know, classic Chinese forms or whatever. But now you've added lots of different variations in the shapes, variations in the textures. How do you think about expanding your product lines but while staying true to, of course, who you are and your vision?
- [31:29]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Well, one of the things that I did that I'm very proud of was, you know, I partnered with Visual Comfort, and I have a line of things with them which is really good because.
- [31:38]
Michael Boudreau
I give them kind of like a pret. A Porter level.
- [31:40]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Yes. So I give them the design, they manufacture it and they produce it, and they pay Me, thankfully, a very nice royalty from. From the whole process, and nice to not be on the align for all that stuff. It's a lot that they do, and they're versed at it and they handle it all very, very well. So that helped to do. To help expand without doing it myself, because it was hard for me to let go of the control of it and let somebody else make something with my name on it. But I did it, and they're good. And it didn't seem to threaten our business. It seems to go into the other rooms or the younger people who can't afford what I, you know, like, that's the part. So we, right now, we're expanding the most in texture. Texture seems to be the next sort of frontier. And we're doing like this herringbone line thing and this basket weave thing and then putting our rich colors on it. And it takes somebody like 24 hours in the studio of just work time to put all of these lines on. And the price tag goes up much, much more for a piece like this. But people are buying them. You know, like, the more unique the piece and the more different it is, I see more sort of want for it, you know, and that's not that everything needs to be a million dollars. You need to have a variety of prices and a variety of things out there. But the higher end stuff, people seem to be going for.
- [33:04]
Michael Boudreau
And have you seen over the past several years, a shift in the color palette that people want? Because it seems like you have many more colors than I've always. I just wasn't aware, you know, I.
- [33:18]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Mean, I've always had like 75 different colors you could choose from. And then we do custom colors. I mean, we see shifts. You know, like, Prussian blue was sort of our, like, main thing for a lot of years.
- [33:29]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah.
- [33:29]
Christopher Spitzmiller
I was thinking we're moving into sort of like greens now that are. Is client driven. I mean, I like the greens, but we do things for what the designers want, of course, and what Kate Brodsky asked for.
- [33:43]
Michael Boudreau
Right. You never say no to Kate.
- [33:46]
Christopher Spitzmiller
No, you don't say no to Kate. Kate thankfully doesn't say no to me too, which is. Which is great.
- [33:52]
Michael Boudreau
So, yeah, you know, we've done some podcasts on trends and like, people were saying, oh, they're seeing more warm reds coming up and people seem to be more. Do you notice that in your orders that you get.
- [34:03]
Christopher Spitzmiller
I don't notice that so much. I just noticed that we seasonally a little bit, but, you know, I'm happy there. There's more embracing of traditional because while some of the stuff that I make is more contemporary and is more modern, there's a traditional vein throughout the whole thing. And you know, the decorators that I initially started working with are not ordering so much and I am order. I'm working for this whole new crop of decorators that some of them I haven't met and I don't really even know, but they're like buying ferociously and decorating houses with very traditional stuff, which I find to be really, really heartwarming and embracing to see a new group of people come in and be our clients.
- [34:48]
Michael Boudreau
And that's great. No, it's interesting because, you know, God knows there's all sorts of lighting now. I mean with the LEDs and the sun, you know, there's all these high tech and you know, salone every couple years it's a lighting thing and there's like, it's wild. And I find it very reassuring that lamps, that people still want a lamp.
- [35:05]
Christopher Spitzmiller
I like old fashioned light bulbs. I think that they're the most flattering. You know the.
- [35:10]
Michael Boudreau
Well, that's a whole nother podcast on.
- [35:12]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Light bulbs, the GE old fashioned one that are sometimes hard to find. Like that's the light bulb for me. I don't want any LED thing. I don't, I want.
- [35:22]
Michael Boudreau
And with a shade and you know, there's nothing more old fashioned than a beautiful shade. But there's nothing more necessary, you know, so. And in terms of, you know, that brings up. I thought to ask you, but I'm going to ask you now. In terms of shades, you guys make your own shades, right?
- [35:39]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Well, we have them made. Shade maker.
- [35:42]
Michael Boudreau
I'm not saying you're sewing them in the back room.
- [35:44]
Christopher Spitzmiller
No, but allowed lamp. When you order a lamp, it comes with a shade and we send everything out with a vellum paper, warm white glow sort of shade. And most things when I see them photographs are used with the shades that we send out with them. But Blanche Field makes great shades. Kate has great shades at krb. You can get great shades anywhere. Some people have them made and somebody jokes you like, I didn't think the Christopher Spitzer Labs could get any more expensive. And then we were ordered the shades.
- [36:12]
Michael Boudreau
Like.
- [36:14]
Christopher Spitzmiller
One of Ashley Whitaker's clients said that to me and I'm like, yeah, it does. It's, it's law, you know. But the good thing about when you buy something from me, it's going to last for generations. And when I see things come up at auction, they sell for half of what they are, which, you know, it used to be the case if you bought an old sofa or whatever, if you paid 500 for like a DeAngelis sofa, that would, was, that was a lottery, a thousand dollars. And now the sofas are selling at like stair for like 9,000, 5,000. Like there's all of a sudden like this need for like upholstery that wasn't out there before. And this appreciation of like quality and.
- [36:51]
Michael Boudreau
Great quality, you know, that's the thing. Great quality, like you give great quality and it's like, it's so interesting. You know, again, getting back to that handmade thing, there's something about pieces that are handmade that are going to retain their soul, shall we say, over generations. You know, I mean, they're better quality, they last. But they also have something, I think that speaks to you. Like even, like when you were saying when you have a water gilded wood base on your lamps, I mean, that is something that is very unusual and it raises it up. Not that they're not, not the ceramic part isn't beautiful. And it is. But you know, all your fittings, the base, all of that just elevates it, I think to an even higher level. And that attention that you pay to every element of what a lamp does, I think makes it really something unique.
- [37:49]
Christopher Spitzmiller
You know, Miles Red says about it, he's like, you should only cry once in a purchase. And there's few things that I've purchased on the higher end of the scale that I've regretted. There's more things that I purchased on the lower end of the scale that I've been like, why did you get that? Like, you know, but if you, if you know what you're doing, and especially if you're working with a designer who says, yeah, you should buy this, just, just do what they say and buy it. Don't fight them.
- [38:13]
Michael Boudreau
Right? Because they, that's the other thing. When, when designers see the whole market, they, they almost immediately will know the difference between something that's special.
- [38:22]
Christopher Spitzmiller
But yet people fight with their decorators. It's like, I know, don't. I don't fight with my doctor. When my doctor tells me, I sometimes hold my tongue when he's like, oh, you shouldn't do this. I'll be like, cut back on the sugar. Yeah, but I'm not gonna fight with him. I'm not gonna be like, oh, I really think it should be orange or, you know what I mean? And you know, like, you go to somebody for a reason and if you invest in a designer, listen to them and they've been around the block. They know what they're doing. Just sit back and enjoy the experience.
- [38:54]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah. Yeah. And I find it so encouraging that the whole young generation of designers are turning to you, recognizing the value. I think that's really a great thing. So, you know, Christopher, I can't thank you enough. This has been so informative and entertaining, which is always what I love the most. Like you said, you obviously are a great teacher, you know, and in that sense, you're emulating your friend Martha, and I think that's a wonderful thing. And, and just keep up making the beautiful product and doing your great social media feed, because I think it is.
- [39:25]
Christopher Spitzmiller
Thank you.
- [39:26]
Michael Boudreau
Informative and charming and gives people a lot of ideas. Like you were saying, how inspiration can come from anywhere. Believe me, it comes from you. Thank you so much, Chris. This has been wonderful. And thank everyone for listening to the Cherish podcast.
- [39:40]
Christopher Spitzmiller
My pleasure. Thank you.
- [39:45]
Michael Boudreau
You've been listening to the Cherish podcast, brought to you, of course, by Cherish, which was recently voted by the readers of USA Today as the best place to shop online for furniture and home decor. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend or colleague. Or better yet, go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. We appreciate your help in spreading the word and we would love your ideas for future episodes. Please email us at. Podcast the Cherish Podcast is produced by Britta Muller and engineered by Hangar Studios in New York. Until next time.