Well, that is really too bad. It is one of my favorites, though I have to say that the last year has been a bit disappointing, editorially speaking. I'll miss Meyer Rus, both his picks for houses to feature and his end page column. Oh well...

Dang, and I just took a bunch of them to the hospital.

I used to get that one and enjoyed it but over the years I switched to Home and then Garden Design.

http://www.pointclickhome.com/home

http://www.gardendesign.com/

Aw, jeez, not again.

I remember the last time they did this, back in the days before the Internet & fast communication, when, one day, I was just going along, reading Nancy Novogrod's monthly editorial letter in the new issue of the magazine, when, in her next-to-last sentence, she just mentioned, sort of casually, that this was the final issue. I swear, it was like someone punched me in the chest: WHAT? I could hardly breathe. I kept looking for a fuller explanation, but there wasn't one.

And so, now, the only consolation for losing this, flat-out the best shelter magazine on the market, is the fact that H&G already died and came back from the dead once before, like Fannie May candies & Fiestaware & the Mustang. Maybe it can do it again. But that's a long shot, I know, and even if it happens, it probably won't happen any time soon.

Here's the thing: unlike down-market wannabees like the late, unlamented American Home, House & Garden never turned the back end of the magazine into a thin-paper slum of 2-inch ads for lawn sprinklers & mixed-variety flower seeds & greeting cards & girdles, and unlike Better Homes & Gardens--and, yes, I know the latter won an award last year--H&G (not HG, its evil, celebrity-obsessed doppelganger/bast*rd child) never stooped to budget DIY projects, and unlike its conceited big sister Architectural Digest, it never put on airs or embarrassed itself with obsequious fawning over projects remarkable only for their big budgets.

And unlike its closest competitor, House Beautiful (which is even older & which I also read every month, and where a friend of mine is an editor) H&G never got too chummy, either with me or with its subjects. I may be obsessed with design & decoration, but I'm not obsessed with the details of the personal lives of those whose rooms are pictured in other magazines. Then again, half the time I don't even recognize the 'celebrities' who snag the biggest spreads in most shelter magazines. I guess that comes from not watching TV.

No, House & Garden--except, as noted, for that whole lost-in-the-woods HG period--has always been above the decorative fray, and looking at 60-year old issues of the magazine, I am always struck by how well the rooms they featured back then have held up. Sure, they reflect their own period, and no one would mistake those rooms for today's rooms--not even the late 193Os Vogue Regency rooms, the direct source of much that is Jonathan Adler & most that is Kelly Wearstler--but in each of its successive perioods, House & Garden chose the best examples of a particular style, not necessarily the most commom versions thereof. In any historic style (and even in the apparent lack of style from time to time) there are good examples & bad examples, and these folks consistently showed the best, least cliche'd rooms. And even considering the unavoidable lack of hindsight, the rooms they show today have a quality which seems like it will endure longer than the rooms in other magazines, even when both rooms fall within the same general stylistic categories. Let's put it this way: I don't remember seeing any big fake-Tuscan clock faces or a bunch of rusty iron curlicue doodads on any joint-compound-Venetian-plaster walls in the pages of House & Garden

Add that consistent level of quality in the rooms pictured in the pages of House & Garden to the way each month's editorial content opened with the honesty & warmth of Dominique Browning's essays & then finished up with Meyer Rus' tart, ice-cold critiques skewering current-but-stupid design trends, and there was never any danger of closing an issue unsatisfied, even if, occasionally, some of the features were not to my individual taste.

I don't read shelter rags for 'inspiration' or because I need affirmation of my own decorating choices--I say I already know what I like & to h*ll with everybody else--but to see good examples & interpretations of as many different styles as possible, and this has been the best place for that. All I can say is when House & Garden goes away, it's going to leave a huge hole, and I am going to miss not only those rooms but those voices.

Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

I find myself conflicted: on the one hand, I have been growing more and more disenchanted with H&G -- that embarrassing piece they did on Gwyneth Paltrow's Hamptons house really irked me. I mean honestly -- what original thing does she have to offer us stylistically? If I want that kind of crap, I'll read InStyle.

But I kept my subscription for two reasons: Dominique Browning's essays, which were moving and clearly had nothing to do with the often vapid interior of her magazine (which I always found bemusing), and Mayer Rus' insightful and skewering essays. What a scream!

I did like their recent piece on Istanbul, though ... and in all fairness I did occasionally glean a style idea or two (but not three).

Oh well!

Magnaverde,
I hope you send that elegy to the publisher. I love H & G. I believe Meyer Rus is the one who wrote about being sick of hearing people's claims to have stumbled upon (museum quality Louis XIV candelabrum, rococo settee, you fill in the blank) at the Marche aux Puces for a few sous. What a breath of fresh air amidst the hot.

The really unfortunate thing is that the one book by Dominique Browning that I read (Paths of Desire) just didn't hold a candle to her monthly essays. Some, about the growing and leaving of her boys and how that affected her feeling about home and place, actually brought me to tears. Sadly, the tears I experienced reading the book were precipitated by yawning...

I have a file in the basement where I keep articles that I have read that I think are especially well written. The essay written about her boys growing and leaving is tucked away down in that file and every once in awile I read it. I always felt a connection with her because she has boys and is a single parent like myself. I think a few more of her essays are also in that file.