Genteel ideas from a lovely region
What do you get when you add a dash of Southern style to one of France’s culinary national treasures? Macaroons upsized to whoopee pies. Molasses Grill in South Boston offers these beauties occasionally through the year in luscious flavors like blackcurrant, pistachio and orange. MolassesGrill.com
A shingle-roofed apiary at Prestwould is a charming souvenir of the nearly lost art of beekeeping. Although traditional woven hives have been replaced by modernist boxy designs with breakaway sides for harvesting honey, skeps are a hot garden accessory and a nostalgic nod to a utilitarian past. MecoxGardens.com
Ditch the doilies and posh up your table with a riot of paper rosette, scroll and hotel flatware motifs. Robbie and Angie Cook’s papers will add some swish to your tablescape and may even help the guttersnipes in your life polish their manners. Williams & Sherrill, Richmond or CakeVintage.com
The Prestwould Foundation maintains the legacy of the Skipwiths and their lime-sandstone Georgian house on the Roanoke River near Clarksville. In the 1990s the house and its magnificent examples of 18th and 19th c. decoration became a project for Scalamandré, and reproductions of Prestwould patterns still grace their custom line. The house is open from Thursday to Sunday, April 15 to October 31. 434-374-8672
Warrenton designer Cynthia Bapst’s recently launched clothing line, Union of Angels, is acquiring a following of Nashville songbirds and St. Barth’s denizens. Her cotton lawn chemises are part Byron, part Austen and all heroine%u2014a sublime solution for steamy Southside summers. UnionofAngels.com
The spirit of Lady Jean Skipwith infuses Prestwould Plantation with a sublime grace, and a harvest gathering is still thrown in her honor every year. Why not take a page from Lady Skipwith’s journals for your own spring style and emulate the gracious gardens and pastoral British overtones of her estate and the surrounding counties of Virginia’s glorious Southside.
