There is a place that captured my heart and imagination, and it is where this brand began. Islefield, also known as Almondbury, an estate outside Philadelphia with a history stretching back more than a century. It was built in 1911 by the architect Horace Trumbauer for the Darlington family, and it passed through only two families after them. Mine was the third.
Islefield was more than a house. Three roads met and held an island of green between them, with a field inside — which is how the Darlingtons came to name it. The landscaping was designed by Oglesby Paul, framing the house in a natural embrace, and the details went all the way down to the original silk curtains, a nod to the family’s involvement in the silk trade.
Trumbauer’s use of space was the thing that first drew me in. Generous closets, a sizable kitchen, and a living room that had once been a two-car garage for vintage automobiles, fireplace included. Window seats tucked throughout, cozy nooks made for sitting and thinking. And a perennial garden that bloomed every year and still sets a fresh seasonal palette.
I worked in the barn. It had been a rehabilitation space for the owners before us, and it became mine — stone floors that held the cold into April, soft carpets thrown down over them so I could stand all day, and an old farmhand table long enough to lay out a whole collection at once.
The house has brushed up against some remarkable people over the years. The stories in those walls made the place feel alive with the past while it kept becoming something new.
The buildings are no longer ours. But every piece still begins there — in that barn, in that cold, at that hour. That is the world I’d like to welcome you into, through the brand and the things we make.
