Saltbeam

A quarterly review of furniture, kitchens, and the considered home.

Issue No. III · Spring MMXXVI · No. 03

The Editor's Letter

A note from the editor.

Welcome to Issue III. We have been thinking, this season, about the small architectural decisions that quietly determine whether a room feels at peace with itself. The cushion that has settled correctly. The skirt that does not drift. The coat rack that holds the foyer's argument. Issue III takes these decisions seriously, in the belief that the considered home is built less from grand gestures than from a hundred small ones, each made with attention.

We have lived with our subjects this winter. The Hadleigh sofa has been in our drawing room for four weeks; the Sussex wing-back has been in our library for six months; the bentwood coat rack has held an extraordinary inventory of weather. We have written about what they have taught us, including, in a few places, what they have failed to teach us. A magazine that prints only praise is not a review. We have done our best to be honest.

We hope you will read slowly. Saltbeam is a quarterly because the home is a quarterly subject; nothing changes from week to week in the rooms we live in, and there is no honest case for a publication that pretends otherwise. Set the magazine on a side table, return to it across the season, and let the arguments earn their place.

Margaret Holland, Editor

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Photograph forthcoming — Issue III

The cover study for Issue III.

Reviewed

Four Weeks With the Hadleigh

By Margaret Holland

There is a particular quality of light, late on a February afternoon, that asks a piece of furniture to declare itself. The sun is low, the room is undecided, and a sofa either gathers the moment or stands apart from it. The Hadleigh, an English roll-arm in a slubby oat linen, was meant to gather. After four weeks I can report, with some affection and a little disappointment, that it mostly does. Mostly is, of course, the operative qualifier in any honest review of upholstered furniture, and it will recur.

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Inside This Issue
I Reviewed Four Weeks With the Hadleigh by Margaret Holland 18
II Reviewed On the Quiet Triumph of the Banker's Lamp by Henry Voss 24
III Reviewed The Sussex Wing Chair, After a Winter by Margaret Holland 32
IV The Kitchen An Argument for the Marble Pastry Slab by Catherine Bell-Stowe 41
V The Bedchamber In Praise of the Tightly Tucked Bedskirt by Margaret Holland 47
VI Reviewed The Case for a Real Coat Rack in the Foyer by Henry Voss 53
VII The Edit The Drawing Room Edited by the Saltbeam staff 62
VIII The Edit The Kitchen Edited by the Saltbeam staff 70
The Reviewed
Reviewed

On the Quiet Triumph of the Banker's Lamp

A green-shaded library lamp in a corner of a small room, considered. Why a piece of furniture from 1909 still anchors a desk better than anything that came after.

By Henry Voss
Reviewed

The Sussex Wing Chair, After a Winter

A wing-back in a deep claret velvet, six months in. On the sustained pleasure of sitting upright, the failure of a seat cushion, and the small repair that saved the chair.

By Margaret Holland
The Kitchen

An Argument for the Marble Pastry Slab

Carrara versus honed black granite, considered. A defense of the impractical surface, and what it teaches about kitchens that hurry.

By Catherine Bell-Stowe
A Scene From This Issue
Photograph forthcoming — Issue III
A drawing-room corner studied for Issue III: a roll-arm sofa, a banker's lamp, a low side table. The objects considered together, as they are met.
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