Q: Start again?
Carter: Find something else that moves me. And for all of them. And for me it had to do with making them smile, making them happy. Then you can start talking about uniqueness and your personal style and money and space. I mean, there’s so many issues. Why did I write that book? I’ve been writing this story. My first book was like 1988, American Family Style, and that was the most personal because it reflected the way I was brought up in a large family of nine, living through a couple of devastating fires, losing everything, starting over again, watching my mother and father recover from something like that.
Q: Can you tell me about the fire in the first house?
Carter: So that fire happened on February fifteenth, like ’55, I think, so I was probably about ten years old. And that night my mother came up and got me, and she saved me, pulled me down. But my great-aunt and grandfather and aunt were all—all perished that night. So eventually we lived—we don’t need to go into a lot of this, but—
Q: That’s OK . . . .
Carter: We eventually—we actually lived in a convent. Right across the street was a beautiful old house that had been the convent where the nuns lived, and it wasn’t any longer. But they owned the house, and they gave it to us to live in—until we figured things out. And then I think it was—it wasn’t so long. I don’t even think it was a year. My mother, she just—she was just very—the memories and it was just so hard. So she and my father just decided—we had this house down in White Stone that was our summer house. It had been a barn. We called it River Barn. And we packed up and moved down there. And I guess there were probably seven of us maybe at that point, or six. And we moved down there and started all over again. And then that house burned down.
Q: Did they lose everything again?
Carter: So five or six years had gone by . . . so the fire in White Stone—the house—everything was gone.
Q: Wow.
Carter: Everything was gone. It was an old wooden house.
Q: Oh, gosh.
Carter: They put the fire out. They thought they had. And I woke—we were sleeping on the floor of the next door neighbor’s. And something woke me up, and I saw the fire, and it had started up again. The next morning when we walked over, there was nothing. It was like a sand pile of ashes. Everything was gone.
Q: Oh, my God.
Carter: Everything was gone. So for about another year maybe we were nomads trying to figure out—I was away at school. And then eventually my parents decided to build. And that’s when they started—since we lost everything, they had to start over again. And so we didn’t have the paintings of the aunts of our family. So Mother would find paintings of other people’s families, and the ugly ones were my father’s side of the family. And they started to collect. And maybe at this point they really—because it was an old house, and my father loved old—they both loved old houses. And they were in the real estate business, and their specialty was selling beautiful old houses. And so now, since they were in this seventeenth-century house, they started to try to find things that felt like they belonged in the house.
Q: The fire—did losing everything have an impact on you? Did the fires have an effect on your personal style, having all your things taken from you?
Carter: Of course. Of course. I mean, I think what you learn is everything is disposable, and what’s important obviously are the people. That’s what matters.
Q: Yes.
Carter: So people say to me, Well, why do you have all this stuff? And I said, Well, first of all, everything in our home has some kind of meaning. And I’m trying to build this comfortable—not a refuge—but I wanted this home to be comfortable and personal. My God. First of all, we’ve lived here for forty years, so things do pile up. But my children come in here and they say, Mom, you know that little clipboard, the banana clipboard and the shutter, that’s been there since I was like six years old. I don’t change things too often. I like things to stay. But—what was your question?
Q: I was talking about—it was about the fire.
Carter: Oh, the fire. So the thing is, of course it did. But I think that you lose everything, but you didn’t lose your family. So there’s an optimism and a hope. And then you just go out, and you need a table. So you find a table and new chairs to sit on and beds. But I always loved country. I love painted. I love worn and weathered things that had a history and a patina, whether they had a provenance or not.
And that’s what I—when I came to New York and had my little—I lived on a five-floor walk-up. What did I bring with me? I brought a couple of old patchwork quilts, a rocking chair. I didn’t have a lot of space, but I wanted something that connected me to where I’d come from. But I think as time has gone by, my style has evolved, and I love finding just the personal junk that has no—absolutely no value. But I love the color. I love the texture. I love the contradiction of the way a funny little elf will look next to an old primitive cupboard. And this little pine table has been sitting here since we moved into this apartment. I bought it down on Bleecker Street. And it’s so bad. It’s falling apart. But we’d eaten every meal here and [so have] our four children. And eventually there were nails popping up. I had to put the oil cloth on it. But I would never get rid of it. It’s like an anchor.
Q: One thing I noticed in your books, and I’d be interested since you’ve interviewed so many people who have so many different ways of living with their junk, is many were European. Is there a difference between the way Americans look at the things in their homes and their lives and the way Europeans do?
Carter: I had a couple—I had a friend of mine, Nathalie Lete, in Paris, and Elena who’s French but Russian, and her big family. That was the first time I had gone outside the borders. I wanted to see if there was a difference. Maybe a little bit in the style, but I don’t think that the inclination to collect and live a cluttered, poetic life is that different. A flea market, you know, for me it was fun to go to the Paris flea markets because you’re seeing different stuff and maybe a lot older.
Q: You mentioned your mom. I wanted to ask about that. And you told me here and I read it in your books that you learned a lot about your junk and things in life from your mom. What did she tell you? What did she teach you about the things that surround us?
Carter: Well, she never taught—I mean, lessons learned, of course, just by living with her and my dad. I guess she—I was talking about my mother the other day. She’s ninety-three. My mother was like the most creative person, and she was so bold. She had no training. She wasn’t a decorator. But she had an instinct for what she loved, and she—then we had beautiful American furniture and English furniture. She would find something kind of offbeat and just bring it in the house next to the beautiful French chandelier. So I guess the biggest lesson from my childhood and from my mother and my father was that they created a home. It wasn’t a home of things. It was a home. It was comfortable and warm, and we were always—it was always about bringing people into our home and making them feel at home and being part of our family. And so sometimes if that meant we needed more chairs—like Thanksgiving, and we didn’t have enough tables and chairs—so she brought the picnic table in. She said, Bring the picnic table, that big old weathered picnic table. So we brought in that and put it in the middle of this seventeenth-century kitchen. And it never left.
Q: Just stayed?
Carter: And she would put maybe pewter candlesticks on it. But it was kind of whatever you needed, you found it, and you made it part of it. But it wasn’t about—there were no velvet ribbons over chairs. And we had some really beautiful—we still do have some beautiful furniture that was wrecked by people leaning back on the chairs and this and that. But she just felt, you should find things that you love, and then you should use them and make them part of your life. Use the silver every day. Let it get tarnished. But so I guess—and that’s what—people always wanted to come to our house. First of all, it was an instant party because there were so many of us.
&
nbsp; Q: There were nine of you?
Carter: Nine, yeah.
Q: Wow.
Carter: Seven girls and two boys. So there was always a lot of us there and friends. And so it was always some kind of activity, and people love that. But also there were—Mother, she loved candles and fireplaces, and she knew instinctively how to create a kind of feeling and warmth that made people just love it. And plus her personality, just everyone loved my mother. Sometimes you got jealous because all my boyfriends fell in love with her.
Q: Your husband has great energy
Carter: Oh, yeah. He’s amazing—forty-four years we’ve been married.
Q: Does Howard get a lot of surprises?
Carter: Yes. But sometimes they’re surprises that he doesn’t even notice right away. Where’d that come from? We’ve been married forty-four years, so what do I need to say? But he has always just supported most of the time. All he wanted was one comfortable chair. He said, Just give me one comfortable chair. He’s got an ugly black desk chair.
Q: That’s his.
Carter: And I’m not allowed to touch that. But that’s all he’s cared about. Can we hang the TV up on the wall? And I get, Don’t touch my TV. But other than that, it’s like he loves it.
Q: Clearly he loves you. He loves you and this is you.
Carter: This is me, yeah. Absolutely.
Q: How much of being a southerner do you think is part of your full junk aesthetic?
Carter: Well, I would say certainly I have that thing about a tradition, a family, and the past. My father loved old—yeah, I think it’s definitely in my blood, that sense of heritage and tradition. But as I’ve often said, there are things about my southern background that I’m not proud of. Not in my family. My family were, you know, whatever. But, yeah, definitely, coming from a place and living in old houses, and I certainly have an appreciation. I could have rejected it totally. But I didn’t. I embraced it. I think particularly in the city, I’m always amazed that you walk into someone’s apartment or home, and it doesn’t feel personal. I’m just overboard on personal. Definitely. Definitely. I mean, I’m thinking about there’s this hat rack that’s been there for years that we’re always tripping over, and it’s falling over. And I’m thinking that, I don’t know, maybe it’s time to get rid of it. But it’s hard for me.
Q: Do you curate what’s in your home, and you move it around? Does it move around, or is it once it finds a spot, that is its home for eternity?
Carter: Well, let’s walk in. I’ll show you. Do I curate? I mean, we’re actually getting this sofa recovered, so that’s why it’s sort of like this. But a lot of things have stayed in place and, as I said, I’ll just add to them. I’ll get a new painting and maybe move things around. But—
Q: Where is this post, this lattice from, this sort of—I don’t know what to call it?
[Floor to ceiling wood posts made into a fence-like screen separating the room]
Carter: So one of the problems when we moved in here, I mean, I love cozy, small rooms, and the books are usually piled under this table that are out of control right now because we have been working on this sofa. I felt like this room was kind of like a bowling alley, and I wanted to break it up a little bit. But I didn’t want to—I had to pay attention to the light because I didn’t want to block the light.
Q: Right.
Carter: So these, this idea, when my mother—when we moved to the final house, the Cedar Point Farm, Mother used to collect—and this is a great story about her. She would see these. These are trap stakes that the fishermen use in the waters of Virginia to put their fish nets. They’re long pine trees. Pine trees grow to these ridiculous heights. And so they take them, and they put them in the mud in the waters, and they attach their nets to them. And then when they turn to driftwood, and they’re really no good anymore, they would just abandon them on the beaches. And Mother saw these things. She thought they were so beautiful. And so she started to get them and build beds out of them—
But I would say this dresser has always been here, and I always want to camouflage this. But the main pieces have kind of been here, and then I’ve just—actually, that piece, that dresser I got just a few years ago.
Q: Do you remember the story of every piece?
Carter: Just about. . . . This was a sampler that my friend Jan did for Howard and me when we got married. And recently my sister Carrie did these little watercolors.
And sometimes I do themes. Like here they’re all like lots of—I think because the children lived here—I have sort of paintings with children and the childhood kinds of things. Yeah. So the one story I’ll have to tell you, I have so many stories. I don’t know. You have to ask me the questions.
Q: Found objects, objects you’ve just found at some shop that just you’re so happy you have?
Carter: For me I guess I just love it all. Let me just think for a second. I just have to walk through. Well, I mean, I love this painting of the fried eggs. I got it in a thrift shop in Millerton for probably five dollars or something like that. I thought it was just so modern in a way. And then just so weird the way the perspective and everything is just like so totally wrong. I love the—I have a big collection of Infants of Prague, little baby Jesus. You saw a couple of them. Howard says I’ve got bedrooms turning into a religious shrine. I started collecting these because I think I’m a Catholic. And so I remember as a little girl always seeing the little baby Jesus dressed up like a king, and it was kind of fascinating. And when I had my junk conversion in Millerton at the Rummage Shop, the first thing I bought was this little Infant of Prague, little white Infant of Prague. And his head had been glued back on. And because his head had been glued back on, I loved him even more. I love things that have been chipped and tattered and repaired. I have things that I loved, and they’ve been broken, but then they’re glued back together. Somehow you love them even more.
That’s the thing about collecting. When you do land on one thing that you love, and for me a lot of it are these paintings, but things like the Infant of Prague, you start off, and every time you see one at a flea market, you have to have it. It’s a little bit different from what you have. And then you start to get your eye—you get to be a little more discriminating. That one’s not so great, so you leave that one behind.
But definitely, there is this obsession when you start to collect these things. Those Infants of Prague, I’m definitely a sentimental slob, so I know the things that mean the most to me connect me back to a person or a time in my life, my family.
Q: Does this help your creativity to have all your things around you?
Carter: Yes. Here’s one of my Infants of Prague. And then this was a little statue when we had the junk shop, American Junk, and Dad came in one day and he—his office was around the corner, and he loved this little statue of George Washington. So we gave it to him, and it was on his desk. So after he died, I brought this back.
Let’s sit here for a minute.
[We sit on a couch draped in textiles across from a table piled high with books and stacks underneath.]
Q: I wonder . . . you have such great style. I mean, it’s your own style and personal style, but I’m imagining this is somebody else’s house who doesn’t have your style. It would look like a crowded place where things don’t [go]—or [work] in concert. But somehow it’s all in concert. What advice would you give somebody who would aspire to be able to put it all into some sort of [order]?
Carter: I’m not so great at advice about how to do it. I guess it starts with, I mean, it starts with just learning. Listen, I’m almost seventy years old. OK. I’ve lived in this apartment for over forty years. So this didn’t happen overnight. I look back at pictures of what this apartment looked like in the beginning, and it was much sparser. And so I filled it with things that I/we love. So sometimes it’s taking time, but I think the thing is I’ve never—it starts with, give yourself permission to fall in love with something. Yes, there are basics that you need—I bought a tr
aditional sofa, but then I cover it with odd pillows and blankets. So I try to personalize it. So even though I want to have a comfortable sofa for my friends to sit on, there’s a way to personalize it. I just think that you want to create some kind of your style, but it comes from you and your family and, oh, creating a certain kind of warmth. And I think eclectic is fun. I mean, I have a beautiful English bench in the hall, but then I have a junk shop pie safe that was falling apart, and I painted it green one day because it’s not worth anything. And I’ve even thought of painting that old English bench, but I probably won’t do that. . . .
I guess just in terms of the advice I would give is it’s great to have a few big pieces that sort of anchor a space. Like this cupboard with all the pewter in it. I don’t have a fireplace. I always wanted to have a fireplace in this apartment, but there are no fireplaces. So that’s sort of my fireplace.
Q: Sure.
Carter: Because you walk in and there’s like this big kind of piece to me that anchors the room, and then it’s filled with pewter that my family gave us when we got married. And then I don’t know. It’s just an odd assortment of things that have meaning. And I love, I think, rugs. I love these kilims because I think that they have—I love the color and the pattern, and I love a mix of pattern and texture. Like this lamp next to you is this ugly owl lamp. We have this thing every Christmas called Nasty Christmas, and a lot of people play that. And everyone puts something in. And one of my nieces put that—I mean, and I didn’t—when I opened it, I was so excited. And then I got this shade from Anthropologie, this funny bird shade. And then there’s a beautiful old Swedish clock that doesn’t work behind it. It’s like such a mix of old and new. When I did my Big City Junk book, I was in Chicago, and I found that cityscape of Chicago, which I thought was just so gorgeous. And the tiger painting behind it I found someplace else. And the carved Native American I found in a shop down in—that was carved by this guy down in the Outer Banks. Everything is just—and when I get it, I just bring it in. Like last night I just brought some new things in. And it’s so much fun to find a home for it.
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