Ellen Kennon - STV: 2

See the Ville is taking a short summer hiatus. While we’re away, Marc will be sharing some of our favorite episodes. We’ll be back this fall with new guests, new stories, and new conversations. Thank you for being part of the See the Ville family. Have a wonderful summer, and we’ll see you this fall!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Greetings y'all, I'm Mark Charbonnet, legendary New York interior designer, rock contour, and baker extraordinaire. And this is See the Ville, a podcast about antiques of JDR, jewels, history, and small town Louisiana Live. See the Vill, see the Ville, C the Villanne. Greetings, y'all. This is Mark Jarbonet, and this is See the Bill. Today we'll talk with Ellen Kennan, a very good friend, and truly a person who changed my life. For she worked for Peter Merino Architects, major designer then, and the only designer now, the designer to the designers. Google him, Peter Marino. Anyway, I wound up as his shopper, and what a whirlwind experience that was. Because when he asked me to find something, it wasn't Omar, go find a silver terrine. It was Omark, go pick up that Peter the Great Silver Turrine. And I don't mean Peter the Great style, I meant it was gracing Peter the Great's table. This was a remarkable experience for both of us. And you'll hear his name pop up, so I thought I'd give you a little heads up and tell you, look him up. He's terribly interesting. And what we're going to talk about is just as interesting. Conversation starters.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

How about some conversation starters?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Greetings, y'all. This is Mark Charbonnet on See the Ville. And this morning we have a very special guest and a very dear friend, Ellen Kennan. We met years ago in New York, where we both worked for Peter Marino, and we have been friends ever since I followed her to St. Francisville, long after she had set up home here. So let's say good morning to Ellen. Hi, Ellen. Good morning, Mark. How are you doing today? I'm great.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Oh no, no. Yeah, it's you're right. For once we have some beautiful, sunshiny, cool weather, and I can't believe it's mid-May and it's 60-something degrees.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Well, all these years later, I just finished mentioning Peter Marino. Ellen and I both worked at that office. We were alumni from the office of Peter Marino. Alan, tell us some of your most vivid memories of Peter Marino.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Well, do you want good ones or bad ones? Oh. Well, no, actually, most everything was just incredible because I learned so much. But I have to say, one of the toughest things I did was when I was project manager for Ronald Perlman's East Hampton House. And we were hired to just decorate it for the season because the next fall they were going to tear it down. And so he they made up this big party that they were having, and it was going to be on the 4th of July. I mean, I'm sorry, Memorial Day weekend. And they and you know, they said they invited Calvin Klein and Barbara Walters and some princess I'd never even heard of. And we had to have it ready, you know, by seven o'clock that Friday of the Memorial Day weekend. And I had people working round the clock, you know, just trying to get it finished. And anyway, um, and then of course, I call it the Pearlman party trick because they did not have a party. They made the whole thing up.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Yes, I recalled in my tenure there, they were they were pretty rough characters to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, yeah. They ended up not paying all the all those nice local people who worked on their house, so you know they weren't those people did not come back to work for them again.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

No surprise. Well, East Hampton is beautiful, but we're in a place that's just as beautiful, and that's St. Francisville, Louisiana. And uh tell tell everybody how you wound up coming back here from New York.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Well, when I was living in Baton Rouge, my um daughter's dad, Ken Woodkinnon, was in a newspaper as being one of the sexiest men in Baton Rouge, and so I tore his photo and article out, carried it around with me for two weeks, telling everybody, you know, do you know this man? I want to meet him. And then one night I was out on a date with someone else, and he just came up behind me and tapped me on the back and asked me out. And then on our first date, he brought me to St. Francisville, and I'd never even been here. It's just like, you know, 30 minutes from Baton Rouge. And it was just so hilly. I'd never seen hilly country in in uh Louisiana, and he had Shade Tree, which was up on a four-acre hilltop in the historic district, and then he so he it was a shop at the time, he brought me there, and then he brought me for dinner that night to Como, which was on the Mississippi River, you know, where there's no levee, so you just stand out on the veranda and you know, overlooking the Mississippi River.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah, and it just made a strong impression. So when I missed nature after living in New York for three years, I just thought of this as the quintessential Mayberry, but with beautiful, you know, nature.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Well, it's funny because I had no intention of falling in love with St. Francisville. I was coming here for architecture digest to do a story on you. And I got here, and all of a sudden I just knew some way, somehow, sometime in the future, I would be living here. And who knows what happens in life, but here I am, and I'm delighted to be here.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Oh, and everybody's crazy about Mark. I'll laugh and say he has a hair on all my girlfriends are just crazy about him.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

That's cute, thank you. Listen, um, you are an interior designer, and you headed the interior design office for Peter Merino, and uh that was quite a job. And you later turned into, I call you the paint lady, because of your magical paint business. You have the most beautiful colored paints, and they're so warm and welcoming. Tell us a little bit about that and how you got into the paint business.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Well, when I was living in New York, I went to visit my friend Peggy Pierpont, who had this uh townhouse in the village, and I walked into the foyer and said, Oh wow, I love this paint color. It was very unusual. It was like you couldn't tell if it was green or taupe. Anyway, I just was raving about the foyer paint color. And then when we walked in the living room, I said, Oh, and I like this color too. And then she went on to explain that they were full spectrum paints that her friend Donald Kaufman, who was her neighbor in California, um had was creating these paints, you know, called full spectrum paints. So then I started hiring Donald to create paints for my clients. And then, you know, after I moved down here, we couldn't get his paints, and right about that time he had a book that came out. I think the name of it is just color, and in the back of the book, he talked about how to make a full spectrum formula for the perfect beige. So I took that book down to my local paint store that a f another client had told me to use. He wanted a custom color, and I said, we're gonna, you know, create a color and make it full spectrum, and then it just started from there.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Well, as a huge fan of your paints, and I love the fact that you named one after me, which is classic Mark. That's such an honor. I am always amazed by your colors because although I know I'm a talented interior designer, it's so nice to work with people who actually know more than you in in different areas, and I certainly have uh put that accolade on you because you've always come up with the most perfect colors for me and my clients. As a matter of fact, my clients love the fact that occasionally the the color was actually named for them. But one of my favorite stories is you had just created a a muddy color that was beautiful. It was a uh a brown that was quite lovely. And I suggested you'd call it Paris Mud, which was a color Marie Antoinette invented after stepping out of a carriage in Paris and looking at the puddles on the ground, and she said, Paris mud, and it it became a color. And you you did that. I think that's so clever.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Well, you're the one who came up with the name, and it is a really beautiful brown. It's kind of a silvery brown that I actually copied. I took a chip off of our friend Marshallindsey's house. It's on the outside of her house. So it's a great color if you have a house in the woods, you know, it's just a real pretty dark silvery brown, very earthy.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

What a lot of people don't realize is, you know, Marie Antoinette did not particularly love blue or pink, although you would imagine those being her colors. She loved orange and brown. And I was reading a uh autobiography, um, excuse me, a biography on Marie Antoinette, and they talked about how the youngest prince who was known as the Dauphin had just had a bow movement, and she wanted to name that a color called La Caca de Dauphin. And uh that was an orangey color, but I remember when I suggested that you said that would be going a little too far.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Oh, yeah, no, no, no, we can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

So, Ellen, you are now an author as well with all of the other things you've done. And The Color of Magic is a wonderful book about your life. I keep telling Ellen, I think it could be a fabulous mini-series on one of the pay-per-view streaming channels because it's just amazing. It's it it takes you all over the place from her very beginnings in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to New York, and then back to St. Francisville and talking about everything in her fabulous life. Ellen was, and I always tell people this, an it girl in Manhattan. And uh she's still an it lady here in town. So tell us uh about that experience.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

What living in New York? Yes. Oh, so fun. Imagine being in your early 30s, you know, you that's the best you look in your life, and just it was so exciting to get a job at Peter Marino because I had never worked for anyone before. I was I started my interior design business as a um newly single woman. I'd just gotten my first divorce, and uh I had to support myself, and I knew if I went to work for someone else, it I just wouldn't make enough money, you know, to support myself. So that's when I started my design career.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

How interesting. That's really mine is my story, is very similar, which I won't go into right now, but it's funny how I wasn't schooled or or attended any classes. I took a history of furniture class, was the most I ever got into the subject. But we were both very lucky to be as successful as we were.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Oh, I know. It was such a great atmosphere working at Peter Marino. Uh, you know, he hired me mainly as head of the interiors department, you know, not because I was so talented or I had this fabulous portfolio. It was really more because I had actually run my own business for the three years prior to that. Plus, I brought um my little K-Pro computer that my daddy gave me. It was one of the first computers that ever came out, and everybody at Peter's office, they were using correcting selectric IBM typewriters. And so I brought my little K-Pro computer up there, and uh and and the main reason Peter, you know, hired me is because so much money went through the interiors department that's where you know all the purchases for clients.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

25% on everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and we're talking, you know, like for the Pearlman's townhouse um on East 63rd, there was a pair of armoires that he bought that were a million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yes, I remember those budgets. They were something to really make your eyes pop out.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Oh, and then he I what I loved is he would have people who worked for us in my department make mock-ups out of plywood, the exact size of the armoires before they had them shipped over from Europe.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Remarkable. Listen, Alan, tell us a little bit about the color of money and how you came to write a book. Oh, you mean the color of magic? Oh, I'm so sorry, the color of magic. Well, I like the color of money as well. But it's hey, tell me about the color of magic.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Um well, for so many years, I just have, you know, I've lived a really fun life, and it's very I've been very lucky. It's a magical life, very serendipitous, and um I call it a synchronistic lifestyle where you just put out to the universe, you know, what your intention is, and then you look for all the guideposts and signs and just follow them along the way. And so um it's really more of a memoir, but I weave in, you know, my spiritual experience because I was on quite a spiritual journey for where for at least 20 years, I didn't read anything else but spiritual books, you know, New Age, that was very popular at the time. And so uh, and then the reason I moved back is because after living three years in New York, it I just missed nature. I would find myself peering through the bars of Gramercy Park just, you know, when I'd get stressed out looking at the shrubs and the beautiful greenery, and so and then the you know, the steam heat pipes burst around Gramercy Park right at about that time.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

I remember that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, so I just it just seemed like a good time to come back, and that's when I, you know, bought this property in the woods and built this little cabin.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Well, I want everyone to know that The Color of Magic is available at Amazon, and it's a wonderful book that's an easy read because it just moves so rapidly. Her life is a remarkable story, and anyone that reads this would find it entertaining and actually kind of heartwarming too, the way things turned out.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Well, thank you, thank you. I and if you do read it and you like it, I would love a review on Amazon. I'm up to 30, let's see, 34 five-star reviews.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Oh, that's a lot of reviews, I have to say.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

But my marketing uh publisher, you know, my publisher's marketing um advisor told me I need 50 on Amazon to get noticed.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Well, you hear that, folks. If you buy the book, make sure to leave a five-star review. Now, Ellen, I'm sitting in your beautiful home, which is just an enclave of magic itself. Tell us about this house and how you came to build it yourself and design it yourself.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

I I had never designed a house before, and so I I you know found the property. This it I love this property. It's like a little peninsula in that there's a ravine on each side of the house, and each ravine goes into Alexander Creek, and we're about 35 to 40 feet above the bottom of the ravines and the and the sandy bottom creek, and then across the creek is the Girl Scout Camp. And it has, you know, had natural dogwoods, magnolias, a live. We're looking at a live oak, you know, out of my living room window. But I'd never designed a house before. And so, you know, within a week, I started with a floor plan, and my bedroom in New York was really small, so I I and I wanted to keep my square footage down, thinking that you know, this was just gonna be a house that I would always want to be able to have and come back to, never knowing that I'd never want to leave. They're gonna have to carry me out in a box. It's understandable.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

It it's just a magical place.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Well, it's got lots of porches and lots of windows and and high ceilings, like uh Sunbear, who was this Native American um Indian chief, uh, said the reason they had teepees with the high soaring ceilings is because it let your spirit soar. So that's what I tried to achieve in the living room. I never knew that. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's why I didn't put beams. I really lucked out. I had an um engineer come look at it, and he said, if I would have gone just one foot wider in my living room, I would have had a problem.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Well, it's a wonderful living room. I feel like anyone that gets to come here is very very lucky because I've never known anyone that has visited this place that hasn't uh said what a wonderful, warm and uniquely uh designed space this is. It's just wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Well, that when you say that, uh that's one thing I should have you know pointed out about my my book. It's really about the energy of a space. I've always felt that it's not how a place looks, it's how it feels. And so, you know, if you try to create this a certain energy, that's why you'll see everything from you know, I'm I'm not a religious person, I'm very spiritual, but I have everything from you know Kwan Yins to Buddhas to you know Marys and Angels all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

And it looks just wonderful. Alan, tell us about growing up in Lake Charles and what made you move to first Baton Rouge and then New Orleans, right? Yeah. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Well, I I mean, Lake Charles was a wonderful place to grow up as a kid because we had two lakes and my dad always had sailboats, so I would sail with him, and um, and then you know, as teenagers, we would build rafts out of barrels and wood and float them in the lake and have parties, you know, with you know, ice chests of beer and things like that. But of course, you know, after a while, it's a very blue-collar town. And so after a while, um, I just really, you know. Wanted to spread your wings. Wanted to spread my wings. I mean, ever since I my parents took us to New York when I was 14, and you know, as soon as I read about it in 17 Magazine, I was dying to go live there, you know.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

That's funny. And then you moved to New Orleans when you married your first husband, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Well, I left Baton Rouge because Kenwood, who is, you know, was my third husband, and my daughter's uh dad, who owns Shade Tree and brought me to St. Francisville in the first place, he was just quite the bachelor. I mean, he was dashing, and he he anyway, we dated off and on for five years, and my parents were making me feel like I was gonna be an old maid. I mean, this was years ago, imagine this is back in the late 70s, or well, or actually early, yes, early 70s is when I met Kenwood. But anyway, after dating Kenwood for five years, I said he's never gonna get married, and I'm gonna move to New Orleans and find a husband, which I did, and then I met Fritz. Well, I'd met Fritz before um in Baton Rouge, but he lived, he was an attorney in New Orleans, and um anyway, we were married for three years. He's a wonderful man, it was great, but I I I, you know, I just felt forced to get married. It was that kind of a woody atmosphere at the time.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

I understand. Let me ask you something, because you just mentioned it. It's one of the most incredible things about you. It which it's although it is your farmer husband's property, you have so much to do with it. You've made it into just an incredible space, and it's now rented as an Airbnb. Well, it's not Airbnb, it's a Oh sorry about that.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

It's it's well it's it's it's it's leased by the Louisiana Hospitality Group. Yes. I mean, not least, they manage it.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

And they also own the St. Francisville Inn, so they do a wonderful job.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Tell us about Shade Tree, because that was once a home goods and and decorative objects shop that you had, and that's why I originally came here with architectural digest.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Yes, Shade Tree, Kenwood opened it as an antique shop in 1973. And then when I moved to St. Francisville, we later became partners in that shop. And then when we got, you know, when we had Alex, our daughter, we opened it as a bed and breakfast, but there was still a shop downstairs in the front part of the main building. And so when we got divorced, I asked him if I could have that shop space because I needed to restart my interior design business. So I took over that space and opened a shop called Ellen's at Shade Tree, and that's the shop that you got in Architectural Digest for me.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

One of my favorite stories, and I want you to tell the people listening, because it's such a great story, is about your party when you had it catered, but the food didn't show up.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Oh, yes. We used to do these guest chef dinners. And the first one we had the the Gerard Maris, who was the executive chef from Mr. B's Bistro, part of the Brennan family in New Orleans. They came and did our first one. So then for the second one, we hired um our friend Eugenie Kate's, she now lives in Natchez, but she owned a place called Flagons, and it was a wine bar and restaurant on Magazine in New Orleans. So she um the chef was coming, you know, with all the food, and then she came up with my good friend Susan Benedict. Thankfully, they had the French bread and the wine because the the van with the chef and the waiters and the food got stuck in some accident and they had to turn around and go back to New Orleans. So they didn't make it. Yet, all our guests, we had sold like, you know, 50. It was kind of thing, we weren't making money off of it. We just wanted to have some fine dining in town, so we would figure out how much it cost, and then everybody would just pay, you know. So we had like 50 people who had come to this thing. And um, so anyway, Kenwood ran out to the local catfish place and got a bunch of fried catfish and hush puppies, and Susan took the French bread and turned it into bruchetta, and we had plenty of wine, and so everybody, I mean, had a great time, and we gave them the option of, you know, getting their money back or coming back for the next one, and they all chose to come back for the next one. But by the end of the night, there were sixty year old women standing on a s a ladder swinging out over the hill on the rope swing that Kenwood had set up. Oh, funny. Yeah. That's great. So luckily nobody got hurt.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Everybody had a wonderful time that night, I'm sure. And you've hosted many other parties. I remember when I moved to St. Francisville eight long years ago. I can't believe it's eight years?

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

You hosted a party and I and you invited all of the people in town that you thought for sure I'd have to meet, and I've become friends with all of them. Ellen is so warm and welcoming. She does that for people when they move to town. It's like the Ellen welcome wagon.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I just love to throw a party, and it's always fun to, you know. I mean, if I were new in town, I'd I you know, I wish somebody would have thought the party for me.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

That's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Oh, yeah. Well, I like to entertain, and so that's um why, you know, I have three sets of French doors that open onto the big screen in porch.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

You know, um what I'm doing now, as you know, is a tour through see the com and it's a tour of the ghost of Bayusera. And the reason it's a ghost story is because, as you know, St. Francisville did not have a lot of homes because it was a cotton field for Congrove Plantation. But after the Civil War, the buildings from Bayusera were moved up and populated the town. And I learned all of that since I lived here, and I just love that. I'm so grateful to you for having your shop and having me move here because I would have never known any of that, and it's my new favorite thing to discuss with people.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Well, everybody loves your tours, they're really great. If you if you come to St. Francisville, you definitely have to go on Mark's tour because it's very entertaining.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

It's something I love, I really do love.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

And uh is that my lawnmower going out there?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Yes, I think that's Mr. Wallace.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Oh Lord, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

We're experiencing technical difficulties. Francisville where she had to do some community service, and the town had never, ever known about anything as fabulous as what turned out from that situation. Tell us about it, Ellen.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Well, my friend Owen was chairman of Christmas in the country that year. So she came up with this great idea that we put on an art show. And it just so happened I had recently met Giuliani Chesare, who lived in Lafayette, who had placed uh works in the White House, and I had been to his gallery in Lafayette where he had original Winslow Homers and original Rembrandt and these beautiful 15th-century painting, you know, religious paintings. And then also I was good friends with Diana Assetti in New York, who was an art dealer, and she represented, you know, some of the top modern artists, including her husband at the time, Jim Gingrich, uh, in New York. So it was a we had it in the Old Town Hall, and I invited Ashton Hawkins, who I had met through my friend Brent Arnold, and Ashton was on the board of the Metropolitan Museum.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

How fancy.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah, so I invited Ashton to come down, and he brought a couple of friends, and he gave, you know, came and gave a talk, and we had a fundraiser, you know, party the night before a preview party, and then you know, the big exhibit, and it was really successful. And of course, they asked me after that if I would do it once a month. I'm like, no, I I mean, you know, we had to spend money having paintings shipped from New York, and it was quite the ordeal.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I like that funny line. You were not going to jaywalk any longer because you didn't want to have to be involved in community service.

unknown 25:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Well, quite frankly, I had been to a party um at our local attorney's office. It was and and I was still building my house, and it was I was just under so much stress. Oh my gosh, I had a terrible time with the builder, but you get what you pay for. I got a you know, great price. Anyway, and uh I had too much to drink, and so I got a DWI. Thank goodness um it ended up, you know, that community service was my community service.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

And a good time was had by all.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Well, Ellen, I want to thank you so much for being here today and letting me come to your home to tape this uh segment. And I know that you people out there are gonna love listening to future podcasts for See the Ville, and I look forward to having you. And Ellen will be back because she's gonna be a regular, I hope, and uh she won't have to get any community service for that.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Well, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Well, thank you all for listening, and we will be coming to you soon. Thank you. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of See the Ville. To follow us online, book a walking or driving tour of historic St. Francisville, order a batch of my coveted designer bread pudding, or find out more about this week's guest, won't you please visit us at see the Ville.com. See the Ville is produced by Brian Pearson and Mark Charbonnet. Thanks again, and see you next time on See the Ville. See the Ville see the Village.