Photography by Alassie

It’s as essential—as elementary really—to the vintage witch as a broom or flowing skirts. No, even more so. Much more than pointy shoes or a black cat familiar, the tall, peaked hat with the big brim has come to represent magical and mysterious women, women of immense strength and a certain undeniable wisdom who connect deeply to the earth below and the stars above, harnessing the infinite energy (with cauldron or without) in the service of what we lesser mortals cannot guess. In pop culture, the witch hat is everywhere, from television’s Bewitched to Terry Prachett’s Discworld novels and, of course, beloved films like The Wizard of Oz and Practical Magic, not to mention all over Instagram. Gandalf wears one in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, proving that, yes, other humans, nonbinary or not, top their heads with them, too. But they seem much more typical of women witches.

Witches long ago may have donned hats as a way of concentrating their sacred power or simply to denote their otherness. Perhaps in some times and places, they were imposed on them by a backward and foolish society, fearful of female ferocity. The hat’s long history, tangled and wild as a spellcaster’s curls, provides no verifiable answers to its bygone use (or if it was actually used at all), but of this we can be certain: If its takeover of popular culture is any indication, the pointed witch’s hat is here to stay.

For Alassie, the Barcelona-based designer whose handmade hats grace these pages, witch hats represent an “iconic element in the classic witch’s fairy tales that inspire us.” Alassie and her team of fifteen create and market her hats, along with, as she says, “all kinds of garments and accessories that can be combined to build a lot of witchy outfits: capes, dresses, skirts, bags, headdresses, belts, and even jewelry.”

Currently, Alassie’s brand, Costurero Real (roughly translated as Royal Sewing Box), produces about a dozen different witch hats made of 100 percent wool felt. Many feature whimsical touches such as mushrooms, constellations, lights, snails, leather, little bottles, spells, and even squirrels that are crafted from materials like leather, resin, foam, and fabric.

Alassie’s creations are the latest in a long line of conical caps. The earliest known evidence of humans wearing them are the witches of Subeshi, three female mummies unearthed in China that date back to between the 4th and 2nd centuries BCE. They are wearing tall, pointed hats, though there seems to be no proof they practiced enchantment. Later, Jews and Quakers, both persecuted groups, came to be associated with similar hats, as did “alewives”—women who served beer in medieval Europe. Whether any of this actually somehow led to the enduring image of witches wearing the famed headgear, who knows—the answer has been lost to the ages.

Perhaps actual witches of old simply had been wearing them all along. In any case, it’s believed that the first artistic representation of a witch in her now emblematic pointed hat comes courtesy of a woodcut from the early 18th century. The scene depicts a hat-wearing witch riding a broom, followed by a horned, winged devil and what appears to be a wizard, also atop a broom but missing the peak on his hat. Through the centuries, the stereotype of the evil old necromancer in the tall, pointy hat would be passed down from generation to generation, culminating in Margaret Hamilton’s memorable, green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz.

Today, hat or no hat, witches are more often acknowledged to be agents of good rather than evil, thanks in part to the efforts of people like Alassie. It is clearly through the tender eyes of sisterhood that she sees witches.

“From the beginning, witches were usually represented as women who live apart, who are independent and powerful, and are distanced from the traditional family role, fertility or home care,” she says. “They are always related to something wild, unknown, and uncivilized. They are also capable of breaking the rules of nature and at the same time live in harmony with it … The history of witches can be understood as one of those women who did not conform to the systems created by the men who wrote history. And I feel that they represent us, that their struggle is still our struggle in other contextual conditions. But we continue to fight, and we continue to burn.”

Find Alassie’s online shop at costureroreal.etsy.com.
Follow Jill Gleeson at gleesonreboots.com.

Photography by MARK SHELBY PERRY

Imagine if you will: You arrive from New York City, blindfolded, at a country manse on a wooded lake somewhere in upstate New York. Your hostess is artist Cynthia von Buhler, as well known for her imaginative theatrical stagings as her lauded graphic novels, children’s books, and illustrations.

The bindings over your eyes are removed and there before you stands Pig King, a man wearing an elaborate three-sided mask, the center of which is porcine in nature. There is a strange, fantastical dance with other masked creatures—a mouse, a cow, a monkey, and more—and then you and the twenty or so people who arrived with you are led inside to the dining room. As an opera singer tucked between the tables starts serenading you, aerialists wrapped in crimson-colored silks descend like exquisite spiders, slowly and soundlessly, from the ceiling.

You’ve been here at this provocative, deeply alluring affair for less than ten minutes, but already you recognize that this could turn out to be one of the most memorable nights of your life.

So began the original incarnation of The Illuminati Ball, an immersive theatrical experience conceived of and made reality by von Buhler, one of the country’s busiest and most inventive Renaissance women. In addition to producing graphic novels, children’s books, illustrations, and paintings, von Buhler has staged a half-dozen successful productions of her own works, including The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini and Speakeasy Dollhouse: The Bloody Beginning. But The Illuminati Ball, which ran for more than three years in von Buhler’s own home and later in secret locations in New York City, may be considered her greatest achievement thus far.

Von Buhler drew her inspiration for The Illuminati Ball from a somewhat peculiar source, the surrealist ball Baron and Baroness Rothschild held at their French chateau in 1972. “My choreographer sent me pictures of it,” von Buhler says. “And they were so intense—people were wearing these animal masks, and even Salvador Dalí attended, and Audrey Hepburn, who wore a birdcage on her head. They dubbed it an Illuminati party because everyone always said the Rothschilds were the Illuminati, but that was really tongue-in-cheek. I saw a picture of Marie-Hélène de Rothchild wearing a stag head with diamond tears and it made me think about the plight of animals who are adversely affected by the human race on this planet. I had been wanting to do a project about animal rights so I merged the two themes.”

Potential guests applied online to attend The Illuminati Ball, where, the story went, they would be inducted into the centuries-old secret society formed to oppose religious influence over everyday life. Depending on their deepest desires, guests at the original event at von Buhler’s home were grouped into cabals led by half-animal half-humans who had escaped from a laboratory and pretended to be the Illuminati in order to obtain power over humans.

They were given masks corresponding to their animal kinship and then, as von Buhler describes, “all of the kinships broke into groups and did different things on the property and experienced different parts of the storyline. There were morality tests that were written into the night, and the people who made the correct choices were given a key. They received special privileges and were able to experience certain things that others might not get to experience.”

Throughout the evening the alcohol flowed freely and sublime vegan food, created to mimic meat-
based courses like duck, were served. There were esoteric rituals completed and visits from fire performers and burlesque dancers, as well as an appearance from von Buhler’s pig, Persephone, who arrived in a baby carriage and performed mind-reading tricks. Some guests bathed with von Buhler or shucked their clothes and swam naked in the lake with actors portraying mermaids.

“It was very intense, and we became very close with each other because of the storylines,” von Buhler, who is vegan, says. “Part of the point of it was to make people have an emotional reaction to the plight of these animals. Some people said it was the best night of their lives, that’s the kind of night it was, but there was also a message involved about animals and human nature written into the storyline. So it wasn’t just having fun. There were so many different levels to it, and I’ve even had people tell me that they became vegan after going to the show and that was really amazing.”

While The Illuminati Ball took its last bow around the time Covid-19 struck the United States, there are ways for those who missed it to experience at least a version of it. A gorgeously illustrated graphic novel by von Buhler based on the show is currently available on Amazon and in bookstores.

And she continues to pitch a The Illuminati Ball reality series, which would put contestants through a series of morality tests much as the show’s guests were. But no matter whether the television program materializes or not, The Illuminati Ball remains a singular theatrical event that pushed boundaries as much as buttons and was, von Buhler concludes happily, “really special for everyone who was involved.”

Connect with Cynthia on Twitter @cynthvonbuhler or Instagram/Facebook at @cynthiavonbuhler.

It sits grandly in the ancient and mysterious highlands of Scotland, its stalwart exterior refusing to give hint of the shiny, sexy glamour of its over-the-top interior. Once known as Loch Lann House, now more commonly called Couthy Home, the structure is located on what its owner, Eilidh Sutherland, calls “the fringes” of Culloden Wood. History buffs—and Outlander fans—will recall the forest as a slice of the site of the infamous Battle of Culloden, re-enacted in the season-three opener of the hit Starz series. The bloody final confrontation between government troops and the Jacobite army of Bonnie Prince Charlie, it was the last battle to be fought on British soil.

The original section of Couthy Home, a round tower that is more than three centuries old, is said to have housed a secret Jacobite escape tunnel dating to before the battle. Three octagonal rooms just off the tower are nearly as old, but it is not the history of the house, as enticing as it is, that has Sutherland’s 25,000 Instagram followers clamoring to see photographs of it. It is what she describes as Couthy Home’s “maximalist eclectic” aesthetic. The house and its acre of grounds, all of it designed by Sutherland, are quite simply stuffed to the rafters with decadent fabulousness.

Sumptuous and quirky, funky and stunning, this is the sort of place where chandeliers drip from ceilings in room after room, feathers are a design motif, and a faux zebra with wings in a top hat leaps from a purple-hued wall. Then there is the gold soaking tub, one of Sutherland’s favorite pieces, which sits under a glinting disco ball beneath a gilded mirror hanging on an ebony-colored wall. The tub, Sutherland will tell you if you ask, “was from an antique dealer who salvaged it from a Parisian hotel. I source items from everywhere, the internet, salvage, antique and junk shops. Facebook Marketplace is my new best friend.” Sutherland bought Couthy Home with her husband, Rory, eighteen years ago, while pregnant with the couple’s sixth child. The family spent years living in the original house before receiving permission from the cultural preservation agency Historic Scotland to build an addition connecting it to the gardens. After a long decade of planning and building, the project—which includes a curved-glass extension leading to an open-plan living room, dining area, and kitchen and the couple’s new en suite bedroom—is now complete.

Among the new construction’s many delights is the Sutherland’s private bathroom. Decorated with leopard-print wallpaper and what Sutherland identifies as discontinued tiles, it features the washstand from the 1967 spy parody film, Casino Royale, sourced from Sutherland’s favorite salvage yard. “It was designed with the least amount of thought,” she says, “but it’s one of my favorite rooms in the house.”

Another favorite space is the snug in the older part of the house, which offers a cozy purple velvet couch and is, Sutherland says, “just the most charming room to sit in on a Sunday afternoon with the papers and copious cups of tea.” But she just might be most thrilled by the new extension, which finally lets enough light into the house to allow plants to thrive. “I love plants, and before the extension was built we couldn’t keep them alive,” she explains. “Now in the new glass corridor, it’s a jungle. I firmly believe for a room to feel grounded it needs flowers and foliage, real or faux.”

Outside the home, Sutherland’s love of greenery also becomes obvious. Along with outbuildings that include two greenhouses, a barbecue hut, and a Japanese gazebo, the property boasts a series of themed garden “rooms” divided into a cottage garden, a natural garden, a Japanese garden, and a white garden. There are also five ponds and a new woodland walk and lawns, all of it presided over by a half-dozen or so ridiculously adorable French bulldogs, who frequently make appearances in her Instagram feed. “Yes, all the Frenchies are ours,” Sutherland says with what seems to be typical good humor. “As our children grow up and leave home, they’re replaced with a Frenchie!”

Couthy Home in all its perfect, decadent splendor may now be, at last, finally, finally finished. But it most likely will forever be a work in progress. Sutherland—who studied art and interior design in college but counts no great design influence, simply doing whatever takes her “fancy”—says her home is “constantly changing.” The older part of the house, she explains, was designed around the requirements of accommodating six children, and the new extension will likely be subject to further evolutions.

“We want to be surrounded by things we love and cherish,” Sutherland says. “I think this quote by William Morris should be the mantra for anyone who wants an individual look: ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’”

For more images of Couthy Home, visit Instagram @couthyhome. 

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE PARKE

Even among visionaries, artists who can create a reality for themselves as rich and lovely and magical too as their dream life, Cynthia von Buhler stands apart. A painter and playwright, graphic novelist, illustrator, impresario, and more, she both seeks inspiration from her environment and carefully crafts it to suit her artistic needs and whimsies. In von Buhler’s life, personal space becomes public and central to the creation of her work. It may not be too much of an overestimation to liken her estate outside New York City to a fantastical stage set; after all this is where she orchestrated one of her greatest triumphs, the legendary, long-running show The Illuminati Ball.

Here, in the sprawling structure von Buhler shares with her husband, the acclaimed jazz violinist Russell Farhang, crimson-colored aerialist silks hang from the soaring, wood-beamed ceiling of the great room. Here, on the seven-acre property, dozens and dozens of doves—symbols not only of magic or peace or love but also their mistress’s commitment to animal activism—fly free during the day, returning to the comfort of their coops at night. Here, a lake and wetlands enwrap the German Tudor-style house on three sides, exactly the kind of landscape an artist would want to muse over from the tower she is building simply because her home “needs it.”

“I’ve set up a few houses in my life,” von Buhler says. “I’m a little house obsessed. When we came to see this place, we were blown away by it. It has this massive fireplace, so big you could cook Hansel and Gretel in it, and it’s in the middle of the woods. The driveway is a mile long, so to get to the house you have to drive through these great big creepy trees.” In what must be her trademark speaking style, so fast it’s almost breathless and full of good humor, she adds, “I’m working on a middle-grade book right now. It’s a graphic novel, about a girl who is half-tree and half-human, and the reason I started working on that is because I’m surrounded by the woods and the woods are just speaking to me.”

Although she’s known for tossing fabulous parties and her high-powered collaborations with people like Amanda Palmer—for whom she illustrated the 2011 graphic novel Evelyn Evelyn: A Terrible Tale in Two Tomes—von Buhler calls herself an introvert. She can spend months and months alone, surrounded by animals and nature, engrossed in the act of creating. This could explain her drive to create a tower for her home, a place where she can lock herself away, a modern-day Rapunzel of sorts, producing scads of beautiful, provocative art rather than locks of golden hair.

“The inside is going to be a library,” von Buhler says of the architectural feature, which is still under construction. “It’s quite tall. It’s going to have an opening in the ceiling that goes all the way to the top, with a chandelier hanging down, and a spiral staircase. But the first floor has double-height ceilings, and that will be the library, and it will have a fireplace and books everywhere. And then up the stairs will be a sort of parapet, looking down into the library, and that room is all glass, with beautiful arched windows, and there’s a deck off that facing the lake in the back. That’s going to be my little art studio where I can draw and paint and do those kinds of things.”

A fan of old materials, both for the histories they carry and how well they tend to be made, von Buhler is using mostly reclaimed supplies in the tower’s construction. That includes antique diamond-paned, leaded-glass windows purchased from flea markets and the owner of a Long Island castle where they once hung and, what may turn out to be the structure’s showpiece, a stunning arched silver-sided door that resembles something one might have seen in the Bastille. She bought the tower door, which is by Peer Smed, a famous Danish silversmith, off Facebook marketplace. “It has a little speakeasy peephole, with a Tiffany window inside that opens,” von Buhler says. “And then the other side of the door facing into the house is all beautiful wood, so I’m going to match the wood on the inside of the library to the color of the stain on that side of the door.”

If it all seems almost overwhelming, this endlessly intense dedication to art and beauty and spaces that seamlessly combine both, von Buhler comes by it naturally. One of six children born to deeply creative parents, she grew up in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, a milieu dense with summer stock theatrical productions. (Her high school graduation was held at Tanglewood, a live music venue known for being the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.) As soon as von Buhler could hold a paintbrush or pick up scissors, she was doing so, often in the service of family art projects, like a massive papier-mâché witch she recalls them all making one Halloween.

According to von Buhler, rather than posters of kiddie favorites Barney or SpongeBob, on her bedroom walls growing up were taped prints by Old Masters like Raphael and Michelangelo. To this day, her painting style—save for the application of mixed media—evokes the Renaissance period. Of course, it can only have nudged von Buhler’s interests further in this direction to hear from her grandmother that the family is descended from the Sforzas, a Medici-like clan of Italian royals. “I would assume because we’re not rich aristocrats, we’re related through an illegitimate line,” she says, laughing. “There’s this famous painting, Lady with an Ermine, by Da Vinci. It’s a portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, who was Ludovico Sforza’s mistress, and so I always felt like maybe we’re related to her.”

Whether or not there is an actual familial connection to the fabulous Sforzas, von Buhler is on occasion called Countess by the press, a title bestowed on her following her college days, which she spent studying illustration at London’s Richmond College and the Art Institute of Boston. The story of how her lofty appellation came to be is, like most of von Buhler’s tales, engaging and slightly outrageous. Born Cynthia Carrozza, she took the surname of her first husband, Adam Buhler, which morphed into von Buhler after friends began calling the couple’s rambling, Gothic-style Boston home Castle von Buhler. From there—perhaps, one imagines, with a little nudge from von Buhler herself—the noble designation Countess was soon added.

In the years since her salad days, von Buhler has produced clients ranging from The New Yorker to Rolling Stone and The New York Times; a half-dozen children’s picture books; cover art for comic, children’s, and adult books, as well as the CD An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer and a steady array of solo art exhibits and street art. Most recently she has concentrated her prodigious talents on writing and directing immersive theatrical productions, including The Illuminati Ball, which ran for three years in both her home and in Brooklyn, New York, and also took form as a graphic novel.

At its heart a mediation on animal rights, the play was inspired by a 1972 surrealist ball thrown by Baron and Baroness Rothschild at their French chateau. von Buhler’s attendees, who paid $350 for tickets, were blindfolded and then driven to the location in limo buses and fed a vegan meal masquerading as meat. Cues—some subtle, some not—to the event’s real agenda were everywhere. “I had these deer heads on the wall because my house is sort of like a hunting lodge,” von Buhler says. “I don’t believe in taxidermy anymore, but I needed them for the story line. I put long crystal tears hanging from the faces, so they were all crying. They were distressing because they’re sad, but they were also beautiful in their sadness, and they also taught you something. With set design I like to educate a little bit.”

While von Buhler has no plans to reboot The Illuminati Ball, NBC has come nosing around about transforming the play into a reality series. So, as she says, “never say never.” Another network has also shown interest in von Buhler’s The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini, a 2018 graphic novel and play that stars the indomitable Prohibition-era detective character, Minky Woodcock. For that work, von Buhler learned Houdini’s infamous—and dangerous—water-torture trick. Who knows what esoteric knowledge von Buhler will pick up as she crafts her next Minky Woodcock effort, The Girl Who Electrified Tesla?

In the meantime, von Buhler continues work on her latest passions, including wildlife rehabilitation, for which she is licensed in the state of New York. A true animal lover, she shares her home and property with not only the aforementioned doves but two potbellied pigs named Nini and Panda; a posse of cats; a dog; a rabbit, Agatha, who was named after the mystery novelist and co-starred in The Girl Who Handcuffed Houdini; and a brood of chickens, which includes a rooster with the obsessive habit of peering into her bedroom window. All are rescues, including the fish swimming in the gorgeous stone pond in front of her house.

As for her tower, von Buhler believes construction on it will be wrapped up around spring of next year. The tower and pond are both being built by Roman Lojano and his sons—
R. Lombardi Masonry LLC, as they’re known—whom she adores. As much as anything she has ever done, it promises to be a work of enchantment, the kind of space that causes visitors to involuntarily sigh at its splendor, as if seeing fireflies on a sultry summer night. “I love entertaining people, so I think of my life as showing them a bit of magic, showing them something special,” von Buhler says. “In my theater I do that, and in my art I try to do that, and in my life too.”

After a short, uncharacteristic pause, von Buhler adds, “People often ask, Would you make art if you were on a desert island? I’ve thought hard about that, and I think what I’d probably
do would be make something that would be intriguing and entertaining to the animals on that island. I think of everything as art, my life is art, my home is art—it’s just all art. I really
do love entertaining people and having them come into an environment and be changed by it and learn things from it.”

Find more at cynthiavonbuhler.com.

Photography by KRISTIN REIMER

If you ask Gregory Henderson how he and his partner and husband, Joseph Massa, came to build a beyond-bespoke fairy-themed cottage at their inn in the Catskills, he just might tell you the wee people made him do it. The pair, who were considering expanding their delightful pop-culture-themed motor lodge, had come to look at a property about two miles down the road from it. The land was graced not only with a stunning white Italianate mansion built in the mid-19th century but a gleaming, glittering five-story cascade called Stratton Falls. As Henderson tells it, the place worked its magic on them almost immediately.

“We were walking through the property, along the riverbed that leads to the waterfall, looking up at these rock formations and the forest and the sunlight shining through the trees,” Henderson recalls. “We turned a corner and there was the waterfall in all its glory, and I thought in my head at that moment, If fairies exist, they’re here! Later, I said something to Joseph about how I felt like I was in a fairy tale when I saw the waterfall, and he said, ‘I was feeling the same way!’ So from that moment on we both felt that we had to somehow bring the Roxbury at Stratton Falls to fruition, and we knew it needed to have a sense of being in a fairy tale. One room in particular needed to be dedicated to fairies.”

The Stratton Falls expansion of the original Roxbury motel—which began in 2014 and is ongoing, with a bar still to be added—includes five rooms in the mansion and five
“tower cottages,” so named for the soaring ceilings contained in each. Three of the latter are actually duplexes, but all feature whimsical black and white exteriors with lime-green highlights (a Roxbury trademark) on architectural features like doors and windows. Some resemble bungalows straight out of a fairy tale, some castles, but all, according to Henderson, are designed “so that literally wherever you turn, whether it’s inside the room or outside the room, you’re almost bombarded with something new to take in that hopefully brings out the sense of wonder that we all had as a child.”

Each cottage offers its own distinct pleasures, but among the most fantastical is Dracula’s Fang, a cottage inspired by Bela Lugosi, the original celluloid vampire. Dripping with crimson-colored red velvet, it boasts stunning red crystal chandeliers and a sweeping grand staircase leading to the master bedroom, where a towering ceiling with gothic arches awaits. Next door to Dracula’s Fang is Crown of the Pendragons, a King Arthur–themed cottage that features an eighty-five-gallon circular bathtub right in the center of the stone turret room. Over it hangs a three-tiered, twenty-foot chandelier.

For guests who want to literally stay inside a fairy tale, the Roxbury at Stratton Falls offers Cinderella’s Gown. In addition to an eighteen-foot ball gown studded with 11,117 rhinestones that acts as the downstairs bed’s canopy, the cottage provides another jaw-dropping element: a massive, sculpted-pumpkin carriage, which contains the upstairs bathroom facilities. Massa, who built sets for Broadway and the Metropolitan Opera during his and Henderson’s theater days in New York City, made the showstopper himself. To add to the magic, there’s a fairy wand on the nightstand next to the bed with a switch that turns on the pumpkin’s golden carriage lights. According to Henderson, it even “makes a noise not unlike a fairy godmother’s wand.”

While crafting their vision of the cottages—and make no mistake, it took visionaries to make such grand and glorious fantasies manifest—Henderson and Massa also went to work on the waterfall. Hiring a team with experience building new pathways at Niagara Falls and the Appalachian Trail, the pair spent three years overseeing the creation of a new system of cedar, black locust, and stone walkways, walls, decks, and stairs to take guests safely down the fifty-foot gorge to the base of the cascades. No new soil or plants were brought in, and all that had to be removed was relocated elsewhere along the trail.

“We don’t allow people to even walk along the riverbed, because there’s so much beautiful flora and fauna that’s indigenous to the area,” Henderson says. “So we’re very specific in the trail policies, that you have to stay on the trail itself and not venture out into other areas, because that’s all to be left pristine. The whole area in a way is like a nature preserve … after all, we don’t want to disturb the fairies!”

Speaking of the wee folk, the cottage-inspired by them, the last to be completed at the Roxbury at Stratton Falls, was finally finished in October of last year. Dubbed the Faerie Forest, it features an interior almost entirely crafted by Mazza, though one of the most eye-catching elements was purchased by the pair. “I found these eight-foot-tall golden fairies,” says Henderson. “They look like they hold up the staircase, but they’re not structural—they’re made to look that way. They were our first purchase of the whole project, so I like to say that fairies have been behind us since day one.”

“Wherever you turn, whether it’s inside the room or outside the room, you’re almost bombarded with something new to take in that hopefully brings out the sense of wonder that we all had as a child.”

Whether fairy goodwill or simply stupendous luck, Henderson and Mazza had much of it during the creation of the cottage. The balustrade that lines the curved staircase leading to the interior balcony is composed entirely of wood sourced from a dead cedar grove in the Catskills. In other words, not a single tree had to be felled to create one of the space’s most stunning architectural features. Even more incredible, the gorgeous railing that curls up the entire length of the steps is formed from one solid piece of wood, an enormous tree limb that, as if by magic, matched the turns of the staircase exactly.

What Henderson calls “the set dressing” in the Faerie Forest—everything that isn’t structural—took almost a year to complete. Two months alone were spent lining the interior of the cottage with the rich, dense faux foliage that makes the walls a three-dimensional wonderland. Then it was all overlaid and entwined with hundreds of tiny lights specially created to blink at various speeds at different intervals—all the better, says Henderson, to mimic “fireflies on a July evening at dusk, that random feeling, which is what I’ve felt fairy lights must be like.”

And then there is the false window in the living room, cleverly painted to look like a giant eye is peering through it. The idea, according to Henderson, is to give guests the feeling of being one of the fairies in the forest, “and there’s a child that has stumbled upon this little tiny building and is looking through the window at you. It’s our hope that people leave the Faerie Forest cottage feeling like they were magical fairies for a few days.”

Learn more at theroxburyexperience.com.

Sit in sweet wonderment gazing at the work of British artist Ed Org and you will be transported to another world, one of mythical, magical women—powerful, capable, but all the more graceful for it. With a style that lies somewhere between Alphonse Mucha and the Art Nouveau movement and Pre-Raphaelites like Edward Burne-Jones, Org’s magnificent art often imagines lush woodland queens enwrapped and embraced by the forest. Draped in twining greenery, they wear crowns of peacock feathers or fantastical animal horns, their flowing hair woven with flowering blooms. Around them rest their animal subjects: swan and hare, butterfly and bird.

It’s fair to say that Org’s aesthetic—his fascination with both the natural world and the mystical—can be traced to a youth spent in Shropshire, England. Legends and folklore always interested him, as did the surrounding woods that he says he was free to roam as he liked. “Though it was a heavily mined area in the early 19th and 20th centuries, nature had reclaimed everything,” he says. “I could explore dappled woodlands, ruined barns, secret pools and streams, disused railway lines with hidden apple and pear trees, and ruined cottages with secret plum trees. Above all it was a landscape rich in wildlife, which was a paradise for village kids like us.”

Although art didn’t precisely entice him as a child, Org’s early talent must have been prodigious. Family lore has it that his primary school headmaster told his father that Org would become an artist in adulthood. Fate took its course a decade or so later, and Org entered Cheltenham College of Art. There he discovered the work of Mucha and the English book illustrator Arthur Rackham, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien. He was so influenced by the Lord of the Rings novels that he based his B.A. art show on them.

After a spell as a graphic designer, Org returned to his personal work in 1992. Today he is famed for his mysterious, ethereal pencil drawings as well as newer art made in pen, ink, and watercolor. “I find it frees me up stylistically,” he says. “I perhaps experiment a bit more with watercolor, as I use colored pencils, chalk, and pastels to get the various effects. However, I always return to the pencil … Different pencils leave their own distinctive mark. I use engraved strokes, smudging, graphite powder mixed with gum Arabic, random squiggles, and hatching. It is the mosaic-like buildup of various pencil marks and patterns, the finer detail, that I find interesting.”

With a home in the celebrated natural splendor of England’s Cotswolds, Org can roam as much as he did as a child, finding inspiration in what he calls “the wonderful bird life and butterflies in summer.” But his studio sets his imagination free as well, chock-full as it is of books on shelves and inspiring items like colored glass bottles draped with jewels of all kinds, vases holding beautiful peacock feathers, and mannequin heads adorned with handmade floral headpieces. With their help, he says, “I can re-create a variety of themes such as medieval, Arabian Nights, or numerous fantasy scenes with furniture and props.”

As he prepares to enter the third decade of the second phase of his career, Org says that first and foremost he “strives to create and perpetuate beauty. My work may be influenced by art from a bygone era,” he adds, “but I hope that it has just as much relevance today. It will be for others to decide whether my work has any value in the future.”

See more of Ed Org’s work on Instagram @ed_org_art.

Styling and photography by TRICIA SAROYA

This is where we first meet Shakespeare’s Titania: deep in the ancient forest, lying on her floral bower of sunny-hued oxlip and nodding violet, surrounded by wild thyme. A mist creeps beneath the luscious woodbine canopy that arches over her slumbering form. Her skin glints in the moonlight. Her eyes flit beneath her closed lids. Here and there fireflies dance like tiny stars, sometimes landing on the luxurious foliage that surrounds and protects the sleeping queen.

Were she to awaken, she’d alight on a downy soft carpet of moss and lichen to address—and dazzle—her faerie court. Instead she sleeps on, the light breeze bringing with it the scent of the sweet musk roses and blooming eglantine.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have such a place for ourselves, to retreat to the enchanted (yet ultra-glam) forest when we need a respite? Luckily, we can create our own faerie hideaways fit for a queen, no matter where we are—and even indulge in some faerie queen glamping.

Artist Tricia Saroya is an expert at creating magical spaces on the fly (and has done so for several previous issues of Enchanted Living, as well as for the Faerie Handbook, Mermaid Handbook, and Unicorn Handbook, not to mention countless fairy-tale weddings). She created the two ideas you see here as some Titania-esque inspiration, but you can use your imagination to craft your own faerie queen vibe.

First, if you have some space in your backyard or even a corner of your city apartment, you can conjure your own royal haven. The look and location are entirely up to you.

“My entire home is like the vignettes that I create,” Saroya says. “I choose to be surrounded, as much as is humanly possible, by all things that bring me inspiration. I’m about the polar opposite of Marie Kondo. For me, more is better. I have beautiful rugs and textiles and stacks of books and mystical things around me. I encourage people to do whatever it is that helps them step into that place of magical possibilities. Because that’s them, that’s their soul, that’s who they really are.”

A faerie queen who finds inspiration in Saroya’s lush, lavish imagery might begin building an alfresco boudoir by searching out a piece of furniture that practically demands a lazy afternoon of luxuriating. Explore swap meets and estate sales for some kind of outdoor chaise lounge or perhaps a fat, pillowy wicker chair and footstool—anything that allows you to sink within its environs and deeply relax.

Then add layer upon layer of gauzy textiles, which can be as straightforward as mosquito netting or scrim—a sheer, inexpensive cotton material easily found online. If you have a tent-type frame, festoon the fabric around and over it. Lacking that, you can staple fabric to the top of your backyard fence or wall, pulling it out and away from the structure and fixing it to the ground with a post.

The main thing, Saroya says, is to drape material everywhere “so you have these rich, luxurious folds of fabric that just puddle on the ground. And then repeat that kind of feeling on the chaise lounge or whatever you’re working with—layers of fabric. Then you can find inexpensive carpets on Craigslist or in thrift stores. I put a little piece of plastic down on the ground and place the carpet on top of it.” Equally important are the twinkle lights, of course, modern-day will-o’-the-wisps. “They’re magical. They take us back to being a kid, to Christmas trees, to Disneyland, to faerie lights. The first time I ever saw fireflies I just about lost my mind!” Saroya says.

You might even create an indoor sanctuary decorated with twinkle lights and gauzy fabric—in a corner of your house, in your boudoir, even in your bathroom. Light candles. Bring the natural world indoors with plants like climbing ivy. Let your imagination run wild as you design your queenly escape.

If you prefer your faerie glamour on the move, pack up some mosquito netting; a small, simple carpet or woven mat (rattan works well); and a few pillows and head out to a local park or public forest. Drape the netting over a tree, scatter the pillows over the carpet, and recline, gazing at the sky as you allow your thoughts to ramble in any direction they choose.

That’s what Grace Nuth, Enchanted Living’s senior editor, does when planning her ideal retreat. In her mind’s eye she sees it on a friend’s property, which abuts the Olentangy River in Ohio. She imagines a bell tent painted in symbols and shapes sacred to her, like foxes and hares. Celtic knots, too. Outside the tent is a dusky, muted gray, but inside? She envisions layers of velvet blankets and pillows heaped upon an air mattress, with rugs scattered beneath—all of it, every bit, in rich, vibrant hues.

“I think it would be wonderful,” Nuth says, “if the outside would blend in with nature and then you open up the tent doors and inside you see a jewel box of deep reds and greens and purples, very sumptuous, medieval colors. And obviously you want some twinkle lights, but I also think twining vine would be beautiful around some of the tent poles. And I’d probably have a couple of wooden, X-frame, medieval-style folding chairs too.”

Elaborate or simple, indoors or out, crafting your faerie queen abode is about “being intentional about creating a magical space,” Saroya says. “It’s being conscious about creating a space that you physically step into, so that in your awareness you take a deep breath and settle in and daydream or do something that brings you joy—just taking a moment to connect in with your soul.”

What you do within your enchanted empire, even if nothing at all, is as important as the look of it. Sip tea from a lovely set like the one in Saroya’s photographs. Write letters in longhand to your loves. Bring faerie queen friends along, creating an entire encampment, and tell tall tales into the night. Sing songs to the forest and each other, or simply listen to nature’s music, the sound of the trees as they sway in the breeze, an owl’s hoot, the soft padding of a night creature as it passes by just out of reach of the campfire’s glow. Drink elderflower wine; eat small, sweet desserts and allow the crumbs to fall to your feet, feeding the forest floor.

Lisa Gill, Enchanted Living’s art director, says she would bring beautifully illustrated fairy-tale books to her special space and read them quietly to herself. “Another thing I would take,” she says, “would be some seed or nuts for the squirrels and the birds. And if I were lucky, I’d see a deer or something else—raccoons or a little fox, who knows? I like to just observe and not disturb wildlife, so I would just be as quiet as possible out there in my beautiful little bed with my velvet pillows, hoping to invite some magic into that scenario.”

You might also consider a few precious moments of meditation. Bring some essential oils with you, natural scents like lavender or geranium, peppermint or cinnamon, to aid in relaxation and help keep the biting insects at bay. Mist the air, or spray the oils into a silk handkerchief and inhale deeply. Himalayan salt balls, when warmed in a campfire, can be rolled underfoot, a treat for aching hiker’s feet. Or simply dip your toes into a nearby creek for a cooling, soothing respite.

As you dress your queenly chamber, don’t forget to pay equal heed to how you dress yourself. This is not a place for binding blue jeans or scratchy sweaters, says Enchanted Living editorial consultant Rona Berg. “I would envision myself in a very soft, flowy, organic cotton nightshirt or something like that. Some gorgeous fabric that is going to drape beautifully and just give me texture. You want to bring a very soft throw, maybe something that is warm like an angora, or velvet. In the spring, maybe an organic cotton. Things that you can really wrap yourself in and hug and cuddle yourself.”

Suitably adorned, tucked within the place you dreamed of, it’s time to finally and simply stop. “There’s nothing wrong with taking a moment in quiet reflection or to enjoy something,” Saroya says. “It invites a sense of calm and peace inside and lightens up the stress levels. It brings down your cortisols and allows you to breathe deeply. It gives you an opportunity to connect with your intentions, with your intuitions, with a deeper knowing inside yourself.”

It’s in doing this, Saroya continues, that you start noticing the world around you, in all its specific beauty, and “that’s when you see magic. If you don’t slow down and take the time to notice magic, you’ll never see it. It’s there with you, all the time around you. If you want to call it faeries, God, spirit—whatever! It wants to play with you! This world is delightful and beautiful, and we’re so busy running that we don’t stop to look and take it in. Creating an intentional place to do this as often as you can, to me, is just as important as exercise or brushing my teeth. It’s essential for a life that’s full of love and a life well lived.”

Before creating your faerie queen hideaway in a public space, please check regulations regarding camping, the use of fire, alcohol, etc. Even queens have to follow a few rules.

Don’t feel quite ready to create your own faerie queen boudoir? There are a host of luxe camping rentals that have done it for you.

Sandy Pines Campground

Tucked away in the chic coastal enclave of Kennebunkport, Maine, Sandy Pines lies within a sheltered beach forest boasting stunning sea views and refreshing ocean breezes. Quarters include large wood-framed glamping tents for couples and families complete with air conditioning, lighting, fire pits, and linens. Open mid-May through Mid-October. sandypinescamping.com

Collective Yellowstone

Glamping takes on a new meaning at this tony retreat in Big Sky, Montana. Located in the backcountry of the poetically named Moonlight Basin, Collective Yellowstone offers lush amenities—including 1,500 thread-count linens, down comforters, and designer-curated blankets as well as private, en suite bathrooms with rain-style showers, full flush toilets, and hot running water. In-tent massages are also available. collectiveretreats.com/retreat/collective-yellowstone

Dunton River Camp

This former cattle ranch in southwest Colorado offers posh safari-style tents set mere feet from the banks of the Dolores River. Goodies include an en suite bathroom with a six-foot soaker tub, double vanities, and towel warmers. Each tent comes with two mountain bikes with which to explore the camp’s 500 acres of untrammeled meadow and forest. duntondestinations.com/river-camp

Little Raccoon Key, Georgia

Perfect for anyone who has ever dreamed of getting away to their own private island, Little Raccoon Key is home to a single glamping tent on an ancient bivalve reef off the coast of Georgia. Accommodations consist of a 26-by-15-foot solar-powered canvas tent heated by a wood-burning stove and featuring a memory-foam mattress. Be sure to keep an eye out for pods of dolphins on the boat ride to the island and back. littleraccoonkey.com

Sinya on Lone Man Creek

Perched in the heart of Texas Hill Country, Sinya on Lone Man Creek offers a massive, safari-style tent for two. Look for one-of-a-kind comforts like a century-old claw-foot tub and hand-sanded pine floors, along with Turkish cotton towels and a king-size bed lined with a goose-down comforter and pillows. Don’t miss the spectacular hot tub on the back deck. hillcountrysinya.com

Follow Jill Gleeson at gleesonreboots.com.
See Tricia Saroya’s creative projects at triciasaroya.com.

You might be forgiven if, at first glance, you think the images contained in the Instagram account @blackbirdandgoose are part of an advertorial campaign. They seem too perfect to reflect reality, offering a dreamy, pastoral look at a lovely couple as they ramble through garden and forest, immersing themselves—and us—in the bounty of the West Sweden coastline where they live. There are swoon-worthy shots of fresh-picked berries and bundles of flowers, fuzzy baby ducks and a kitten in a crown made of posies, and what must be blessedly silent, shaded wooded paths, plus beautifully dressed dinner tables, steps overrun with autumnal pumpkins, and apples so fresh and gleaming you can almost smell them, bursting from baskets used in the day’s harvest.

The couple in question is Olivia Hansson and Anton Wijk, who live about ninety minutes north of Gotëborg, in a home that sits tucked within a little community of row houses. Built in 1927, the buildings once sheltered the quarriers and stone masons, including Hansson’s paternal ancestors, who pulled and worked granite from the ground. The pair garden on about a half-acre there, growing tomatoes, winter squash, different varieties of peas and beans, radishes, herbs, and much more. They also tend the plum, cherry, and apple trees and red and black currant and raspberry bushes that Hansson’s grandmother planted long ago, and gather honey and wax from twenty beehives located next door, on familial property her great-grandfather purchased.

Well-spoiled chickens—the local children love to stop by and give them treats—Muscovy ducks, and kitties (at last count, three) dash about underfoot. During the growing season there are flowers everywhere, which the pair sometimes sell to local vendors. Dahlias are their favorite. They make ends meet by working at jobs that suit their sensibilities, Hansson in a garden center, Wijk as a charcuterist and butcher. They say their fondest wish is to own a small farm where they could keep more livestock and sell their produce. Theirs is a quiet, simple existence, which is just how they like it.

“We try our best to appreciate the small things in life,” Hansson says. “An eager bumblebee burrowing in pollen gives us as much joy as a new iPhone would give to someone else. We find life better if you look beyond everyday problems and worries and focus on the beauty of nature around you. What could be better than a walk in the woods in autumn, with a small shower of rain followed by sunshine? The birds singing in spring? Watching new life being born or seeds sprouting out of the earth? Capturing these precious romantic moments is what our Instagram is all about.”

Hansson grew up spending her summers in the house where the couple now lives, cultivating sweet peas and helping her family preserve fruits and make cordials and jams. Wijk was raised in Vimmerby by, as he describes, “gardening parents and a father that dreamed of being a farmer, who taught me about fertilizing crops, animal husbandry, and more.” The couple met in 2009 at the University at Gotland, where she was studying antiques and he archeology. It was love at first sight, though a shared passion for the history of the 15th century helped bring them even closer. They still enjoy cooking the food and making the garments of that period, taking part in the historical re-enactment held every July at the medieval fortress Glimmingehus.

The couple take many of their own Instagram images, though photographer friends like Nathalie Greppi sometimes drop by and snap shots of their picturesque life. London-based filmmaker and designer Tanmay Saxena so fell in love with what he saw of Hansson and Wijk on Instagram that he produced a collection inspired by them for his brand, LaneFortyFive. “The idea of deep and wide pockets in one of the jackets,” he wrote on the company’s website, “stems from their habit of foraging berries and fruits and collecting them in the pockets of the jackets during their walks through the forest and gardens.”

Hansson and Wijk’s days are full but are what they term “slow.” A day in early autumn might begin, Hansson says, “by letting all the animals out with fresh water and feed. Then we take a tour of the garden, to see what needs watering and try to spot new flower buds, new baby courgettes and see if the tomatoes are blushing a bit more. Then it is time for our own breakfast, usually a sturdy oat porridge with homemade jam and a big cup of steaming tea with a small spoon of our honey in it. As we eat, we plan the day, setting up tasks.”

They could include, she continues, “tying up plants heavy with produce, cutting armfuls of dahlias for delivery, harvesting basketfuls of fruit and veg, perhaps pressing apples for juice
or perhaps a batch of cider, gathering mushrooms in the surrounding woods, picking wild berries. Simply harvesting, gathering, foraging, preserving, brewing, cooking, and just basking in the bounty that our early spring efforts have brought.”

Along with each other, Hansson and Wijk say they love old houses with preserved interiors, natural materials, seed catalogs in spring, visiting museum archives and libraries, hot cups of tea, and the life they’ve carved for themselves from the land, its slow pace, and, Wijk adds, “the closeness to nature as you notice each and every shift in season. We love how the year is broken up into tasks, month by month, season by season. Everything becomes natural, and you feel day by day what needs to be done.”

About the Feature image: Engraving of Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, 1846, by Samuel Freeman, after John Comerford. Image courtesy The National Photographic Archive, National Library of Ireland

If there is any comparison to be made between Sydney Owenson and other creative people, past or present, it’s not to her better-known contemporaries like Maria Edgeworth or, heaven forbid, Jane Austen. Those immensely talented writers would have hated to be lumped in with the canny, bold Irish novelist, who wrote nationalistic tales dripping with romance. Instead Owenson might better be likened to Madonna, a pop star who, by most critical accounts, took an average talent and rode it into the stratosphere.

So famous in her day that she even influenced fashion, Owenson was a fervent feminist, both in her work and the life she led. It was a dauntless choice in a time—her first book, St. Clair, was published in 1804—that was not especially kind to fiercely independent women. “She’s such a fascinating character both in terms of her work and who she was in society,” says Colleen Taylor, who holds a Ph.D. in 18th century Irish and British literature and is a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork in Ireland. “I have her in two categories: the writer Sydney Owenson, and the public persona that was Sydney Owenson. She was always kind of performing herself out in society and parties, but her popularity really stems from The Wild Irish Girl.”

Published in 1806, that novel concerns the blossoming love between Horatio, an Englishman banished to his father’s estate on the Emerald Isle, and the titular character, Glorvina. The princess of a lost Irish tribe, she is charming, flirtatious, beautiful, and, perhaps above all, wild. And yet, as Taylor adds, “She’s also educated. She reads London newspapers, she’s articulate, she plays harp. So she was this intensely romantic bun. It didn’t take long before both became wildly in vogue, de rigueur for those able to afford them.

“She made the early-modern Irish dress feminine chic,” Taylor says. “If you go back to the 15th and 16th centuries, you’ll see people like King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I making Irish dress illegal. The chieftains wore mantles, and they were considered quite dangerous because they were used as a sort of battle armor. So the mantle was outlawed, and that’s one element Owenson brings back. In The Wild Irish Girl, Glorvina’s mantle is really sensualized, and she also wears a veil, so there’s this fusion of Catholic and Gaelic-Irish sartorial imagery that she represents.”

Bodkins—said in old Irish tracts to have been used as stabbing weapons—received the same treatment in The Wild Irish Girl as Glorvina’s mantles. But it was not until the year after the publication of the novel, at an event at Dublin’s National Theatre, that Owenson was able to prevail upon some of her well-heeled friends to begin wearing the pin. Mass-produced as the Glorvina ornament, the bodkin, like the mantle, became a hit with Irish women.

If Owenson might be accused of having outsize dramatic flair, it seems certain to stem, at least in part, from her childhood. The daughter of actor Robert Owenson, she would have spent time backstage during his Dublin performances, according to Taylor. It must have been a nontraditional childhood, one filled with great creative energy. Owenson’s younger sister, Olivia, also grew into a writer, penning poems and plays.

Owenson continued writing novels for decades after The Wild Irish Girl, though none achieved the same level of popularity. She died at age eighty-two or thereabouts. (Owenson fibbed about her age with great gusto, also occasionally telling people she was born on a mail boat during a crossing of the Irish Sea, rather than providing her more pedestrian birthplace of Dublin.) Though she married a surgeon, Sir Thomas Charles Morgan, in 1812, she remained a feminist to her last breath, in life as well as in print, arguing capably with her publishers for more pay and fighting her many misogynistic critics.

“It wasn’t that other writers couldn’t do what she did,” Taylor says. “It was that they didn’t want to sacrifice a sense of decorum, perhaps. Some of her characters, especially in her later novels, were very openly feminist. She wrote a novel, Florence Macarthy—it came out in 1818. In it her heroine says something like, I’m going to write my own story, I’m going to be the spinner of my own story. She just had this feminist ethos … people like Austen and Edgeworth were much more conservative. Owenson was really radical, especially in her later novels, in the way that she was expressing a feminist voice.”

Less a writer than a force of nature, Owenson was driven to express herself from what Taylor calls a deeply political standpoint. She was one of the first novelists to adapt a postcolonial voice in English, taking up the cause for Indian independence in 1811’s The Missionary, and exploring Ireland’s involvement in the wars for independence in South America in later works like Florence Macarthy and The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys (1827). Like her heroines, who become ever more cosmopolitan, ever more global, so did Owenson herself. An inveterate adventurer, she wrote travel literature as well as novels.

Owenson might have been a fascinating personality, but by today’s critical standards, she doesn’t stack up against her contemporaries. Of course, that never really was the point of Owenson’s work.

“She was ahead of her time, and I think that’s why she received such backlash,” Taylor says. “People read her novels now and they are hard to get through sometimes because they aren’t exactly the great literature that we’re used to. But it almost doesn’t matter, because her messages and the person that she was and the ideas that she created that endure are so resonant now. It’s like, Who cares about the aesthetic execution of them, you know?”

Kelly Louise Judd is just as mysterious as her fantastical work and, one might reasonably suspect, similarly eccentric. She’s hard to track down, like one of the many felines—leaping or sleeping, sitting or slinking—that appear in her delicately rendered illustrations. There is little personal to be found about her online, and when Judd finally agrees to an interview she asks that it be through email. Her replies are precise, concise, and thoughtful. She’s expansive only when discussing the nature and folklore that inspire her.

Judd might not be eccentric so much as simply busy. In addition to her own drawings, paintings, and prints that she sells through Etsy and her Society 6 online store, Judd’s work has graced everything from magazine covers to product labels and even the summer 2020 issue of Enchanted Living. She has illustrated two books, A Year of Nature Poems—an anthology of nature poems by children’s poet Joseph Coelho, released last year—and 2018’s Urban Arboreal: A Modern Glossary of City Trees. Of the latter, Judd says, “I painted the flowers, fruits, and foliage of seventy different trees for this book. As a tree lover this book was a really exciting thing for me to be a part of.”

And then there is the spectacular Spring/Summer 2020 collection from Austrian fashion designer Lena Hoschek. Entitled Season of the Witch, it features dresses, T-shirts, scarves, skirts, and more, much of which is emblazoned with Judd’s delightful flora and fauna. Her now almost-signature hands make an appearance on many of the garments. Sometimes holding medicinal herbs and plants, often traced with arcane details, they’re delightfully peculiar and not a little bewitching. There is a folklore-ish feel to them and to much of Judd’s work, as if they might be the product of an artisan hailing from far Eastern Europe, one steeped in the old fables found there.

Judd, however, grew up outside Kansas City, Missouri, an introverted child who felt most at home under old oaks in the company of the family pets.

She still lives in the Midwest, on what she calls “a fair-sized plot of land,” with her “incredibly supportive husband, four cats, two dogs, and a flock of chickens.” It’s here, at her home, where she finds much of the inspiration for her art. “I have a mixture of overgrown cottage garden and woodland with many large mature trees that create a secluded canopy,” Judd says. “I love to sit outside on a hammock and sketch in the soft, filtered light beneath the trees.

“My studio has windows that look out into my garden room, which is my favorite and most used room of the house,” she continues. “I am always staring out at plants, it seems. Sometimes I’ll go back and forth between the two rooms, sketching and mind-wandering until I plant myself in one spot to work more fully on an idea. My cats and dogs are always around me and a constant source of inspiration and also entertainment. Their likenesses often find their way into my paintings. Of course, my dogs will always let me know when it’s time to take a break and go outside.”

Animals grace many of Judd’s illustrations—not just dogs and cats but rabbits, wolves, stags, foxes, and swans. (She says she dubbed her brand swanbones because she wanted a name that “could convey beauty and fragility but also strength.”) But plants garner equal attention, appearing front and center as well as appearing as decorative and background elements. And many of them are not the obvious, typically beloved posies.

“I have a particular fondness for what some may refer to as weeds,” Judd says. “I embrace many of the plants that emerge in a crack or dark corner and lay claim to that area with a kind of relentlessness that I respect. I enjoy what I consider to be controlled chaos, and I think those elements are always finding their way into my work. Like the honeysuckle and bindweed vines, they just creep in and take a hold of me. I also love large tropical plants, such as palms, cycads, and elephant ears, with foliage that feels like it could just swallow me up. Of my many gardens the Moongarden is probably the one that gets the most attention. The smell of moonflowers, nicotiana, phlox, and roses on a humid night is truly intoxicating.”

When asked what she hopes viewers of her work will take away from it, Judd answers with the kind of loveliness implicit in her work. “There is a lot of anxiety in living but also so much beauty,” she says. “There is something good to be found even in the shadows. I am doing my best to tiptoe through both the dark and the light. I am out here shining my little light hoping there are others that can share in it and shine a little light back.”

See more at etsy.com/shop/swanbones and kellylouisejudd.com as well as at lenahoschek.com.