Love Notes

I thought it might be fun to have a little look behind the curtain, into the evolution of Meg Carter Designs.  The year was 2008, and I had just wrapped up a successful showing of my latest collection at NYNOW, but .... many buyers from wonderful boutiques had walked into my booth and said, "I love what you're doing but we can't sell shells".   All while the vast majority of my line didn't include shells.   Hmmm...

After a lot of head scratching, I thought, so what if we serve that up with a silver spoon?   We could take all the classic pieces, oodles of earrings, chains, and pearl necklaces, package them up on an engraved silver platter with nary a shell or even a fish in sight, and put a pretty new label on them.  How about "TOWN by Meg Carter Designs"?!  READ MORE

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Such a funny time of year this is.   One foot is planted firmly in the sand next to a beach chair, while the other sits in the starting block on the racetrack to fall => holiday.   What's a girl to make of it?

I think I'll turn back to something I know - nature.  How fabulous is the floral arrangement above?   I absolutely love it and might even try it myself.  It seems they've plucked all the petals off the sunflowers.  Or maybe the petals started falling of their own accord, and someone just came along and finished the job.  And don't you love the little imperfect apples scattered on the table - almost implying a tree branch lofting above, just outside the frame.  READ MORE

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As I sat on my favorite perch drinking my morning coffee and watching the goings on in Maine's Saco Bay, I chanced upon a Mutual of Omaha moment.  The water was all agitated and swirly due to a fast running incoming tide, and a group of cormorants had just arrived and were settling in to fish for breakfast.   I knew from my younger son, the outdoorsman, that there are diving ducks and puddle ducks.  Puddle ducks, he tells me, make for better eating, as they dine near the water's surface - on a diet full of lovely micro greens, seeds, insects and small fish.  Diving ducks, unlike their salad bar loving cousins, swim down to feed on all sorts of fish - bottom feeders, various crustaceans and all the other slimy stuff that never sees the light of day. 

Cormorants aren't ducks (I was pretty sure of this, just checked, got that one right, small victory accepted).   What I did not know is that cormorants are more than just divers, they're more like scuba divers, going down to depths of 25 feet and more.    I had only noticed that they seemed to be down there quite awhile before resurfacing with their catch.   Apparently I wasn't the only one watching.  READ MORE

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“At one magical instant in your early morning or late afternoon, you will see the light - light so extraordinary that it seems to have come from another world.”

There’s a hush that falls when the day turns the corner toward evening and the light becomes golden - that fleeting hour when a ray of sun slips through the window as if carrying a secret message.  Beyond the glass, it softens everything it touches: the lapping waves on a New England rocky coast, a small Virginia garden gone quiet, a strand of pearls on my studio table catching the glow.

Photographers call it the magic hour - that post sunrise or late afternoon sun that illuminates a subject, almost as if a glow were lit from within.   READ MORE

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Good things come in small boxes.  And sometimes with small price tags too.  Today, we're looking at little treasures.

Are you familiar with the lover's eye?

It all began in the late 1700s, when King George IV (then the rakish Prince of Wales) went to the opera and that evening fell madly in love with Maria Fitzherbert.   She was a Catholic, a widow and a commoner; he was heir to the throne.  Marriage was thrice forbidden.   While this deterred Mrs. Fitzherbert, George was relentless in his pursuit of passion, and in a gesture as secret as it was romantic, he sent her a tiny portrait of his own eye, painted in watercolor on ivory.   READ MORE

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