Susan Sully

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24/04/2025

No trip to Charleston is complete without a stroll on the seawall of East Battery, with grand mansions facing an expansive harbor view, lapping waves, and sailboats gliding by. Have you noticed what's missing in this photo? People! During Covid, I took advantage of the deserted streets to take images that allow the eye to focus solely on the city's beautiful architecture and urban design. Nowadays, visitors are back and I'm enjoying guiding them through tours that weave along the city's grand avenues and back lanes. I've been down these streets many times, but I always discover something new! susansully.com/tours

23/04/2025

I've spent 25 years prowling the streets of Charleston on the hunt for fascinating houses and entrancing gardens. I've shared many of my discoveries with readers in three books about the city. I'm excited to announce that I am now offering walking tours that offer real-time, 3-D, full sensory experiences of the historic district south of Broad. Guests can attend weekly public tours or schedule a private one for a more intimate encounter with the most beautiful city in America. Visit my website susansully.com for details. Coming soon--a weekend in Charleston including tours of two historic neighborhoods and the new International African-American Museum, visits to well-known and rarely visited plantation house museums, a meal of traditional West African cuisine at Atelier Bintu, and more. Hope to see you soon!

20/04/2025

Not surprisingly in semi-tropical Charleston, sunny yellow is a favorite shade for stucco facades. Many visitors are fooled by the scoring of the stucco, which makes the houses appear to be made of stone. In fact, stone was hard to come by and expensive in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. Brick was easy to make and a sensible choice for a damp, stormy climate and place vulnerable to fire. In addition to adding beautiful veneer to Charleston's facades, stucco provides another layer of protection from the weather. One of the things I love most about tinted stucco is how it gains color variation and irregularity over time, creating an intensely tactile as well as colorful environment.

19/04/2025

Shutters are another way Charlestonians add color and animation to the streetscape. Always painted a tone that contrasts with the surrounding stucco and wood, they boast shades of blue, green, pink, red, yellow, and gold. When you see black, don't be fooled. These shutters are most likely painted Charleston green--a deep, dark green that is almost indiscernible from black. Originally, Charleston green was much lighter and brighter in hue. In fact, it was a vibrant color tinted with copper verdigris, and that was the problem. Like copper, which darkens over time, so did the paint. I hope someone will develop a new Charleston green paint that replicates the beauty of the original hue...and won't turn black!

18/04/2025

The camellias, cherry blossoms, and azaleas have come and gone. We have another month at least before the crape myrtles strew their petals across sidewalks like colorful confetti, but one thing is a constant in Charleston--the pastel hues of its houses' stucco facades. Pink has been a favorite since colonial times, revived in the 1930s when Dorothy Legge painted the row houses she purchased from preservationist Susan Pringle Frost a rosy hue inspired by Caribbean architecture. As others moved into neighboring buildings on East Bay Street, they painted them a variety of vibrant hues, earning the expanse of buildings the name Rainbow Row.

04/04/2025

Springtime in Charleston offers a dizzying array of colors, none more brilliant and varied than the azalea. The brilliant shrub was first introduced to the outdoor landscape in the 1830s at the rice plantation Magnolia-on-the-Ashley in Charleston, South Carolina. Williams Middleton planted a vast mound of azaleas at nearby Middleton Plantation in the mid-19th century. Middleton Place's azaleas also include swaths of pink and white shrubs that line a canal afloat with graceful swans. If you're in Charleston, hurry to Middleton Place! There are only a few days of azalea magic remaining.

03/04/2025

This lavish ruffle of wisteria may be one of the most photographed sites in Charleston in springtime. Those dazzled by its purple hue and heady fragrance may not realize that they are also featuring one of Charleston's finest single houses in their photos. Located on Meeting Street and built in 1800, the Timothy Ford house bears the classic single house hallmarks of a narrow end facing the sidewalk, a formal front entrance leading to a porch, known as a piazza in Charleston, and a one-room deep configuration designed to maximize airflow in the low country's torpid climate.

11/11/2024

Interior designer Marie Flanigan will be in Charleston at the Ballard Showroom at 1128 Market Center Blvd in Mount Pleasant this Thursday 11/14 at 5:30 pm to launch her new book The Perfect Room from Rizzoli. As coauthor, I will be part of a conversation as we discuss the book’s contents which celebrates every room in the house, describing all the attributes that make them ideal for what transpires within. Please join us. Here I share some of the bedrooms she designed and her thoughts about them.

19/10/2024

Last night, Marie Flanigan and I celebrated the publication of our new book, The Perfect Room, with a book party at the Rizzoli Bookstore and dinner at The Smith. The Thone bentwood chair, a furniture classic, provided the perfect frame for our portrait.

18/10/2024

Interior designer Marie Flanigan just launched her new book at the Rizzoli bookstore in New York in a panel discussion with Gracie wallpaper’s principals. As you will see from these photos, Marie loves lusciously, patterned and colored walls for dining rooms and also excels at creating kitchens that delight the eye as well as the tastebuds. Whether you love to cook or to dine in style,her book The Perfect Room will give you insight into creating the ideal environment for magical living.

14/10/2024

I’m delighted to announce that Marie Flanigan’s new book, The Perfect Room: Timeless Designs for Intentional Living is now available from Rizzoli. I had the honor of co-authoring the book with Marie as she explores the home, room by room, and shares ideas for inspired and soul satisfying living. She’s traveling the country to share the book and among other places will be having an event this Friday, October 18 at the Rizzoli bookstore in New York and here in Charleston on November 14 at Ballard Designs in Mount Pleasant town center. Here are a few of my favorite living rooms from the books section entitled Gather.

25/08/2024

And for one more glimpse into New Orleans lighting designer Julie Neill's home, I invite you into her dining room. Julie's imagination doesn't stop at concocting gorgeous chandeliers like the one hanging above the table . She designed the table by repurposing legs made from pieces of one of the city's much-admired cast-iron balconies. The Chippendale-style china cabinet was a wedding gift from her grandfather. For years, she tinkered with the idea of painting its dark mahogany and finally took the plunge into a pail of pale pink paint. So pretty!

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