Bookmark This Now: A Bloomsbury Life

By Nandini D'Souza
May 31, 2011

A Bloomsbury Life

Lisa Borgnes-Giamonti of A Bloomsbury Life with one of her embroidery pieces.

Like many who've undergone a transformational experience, Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti divides her life into the "before" and "after." That's before and after A Bloomsbury Life, the addictive, inspirational home- and lifestyle blog she launched in late 2008. Before ABL, she skipped around—advertising copywriter in New York City, London bon vivant and even a sitcom writer on "Will and Grace," where she also had a cameo role as Diane, “the only girl Will ever slept with,” she notes.

None of these gigs, though, seemed to satisfy Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti’s inner wanderlust for travel, literature, kooky characters and, as she describes it, examining "modern life through an Old World lens."

“My poor patient husband could only listen to me enthuse about [mid-century British actor and novelist] Dirk Bogarde’s house in the South of France or the heavenly shade of Farrow and Ball’s Blue Gray paint for so long,” she notes. So she started putting pen to paper—or rather finger to keyboard—on the style blog, A Bloomsbury Life, eventually winning a dedicated following. She's also a self-taught embroidery artist, who through word of mouth and support from her online community, was invited to put on a solo art show in Los Angeles and participated in the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s Incognito art show, an annual exhibition and sale.

A Bloomsbury Life Lifestyle Blog is the perfect distillation of what goes through Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti’s head, be it a funny video on how she and her family stave off rainy day boredom, mini reviews of new interior décor books (she describes her own gorgeous pad as "Anglo Bohemian") or travel snapshots and musings. She even admits to the occasional impulse-bid on eBay, an oft-clicked site for some of her favorite things.

A Bloomsbury Life, a Snapshot

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Time Travelling to Charleston House
For a Los Angeles-area event, an interior designer recreated Charleston House, the home in the English countryside where the Bloomsbury Group lived and wrote. Borgnes-Giramonti featured it on her blog.
Photo Credit: all images from A Bloomsbury Life
"On Priorities"
"I create postmodern samplers which reflect my point of view on society today and offer an opportunity to explore feminist themes. For me, embroidery is a way to physically connect with traditional women's work and at the same time create an intimate and slightly subversive look at modern life today," writes Borgnes-Giramonti.
How To Write A Speech in 51 Easy Steps
Borgnes-Giramonti's newly painted, "bookscaped" shelves.
My Best Of 2010
A few of Borgnes-Giramonti's favorite things.
The King's Speech
Borgnes-Giramonti shows readers how to capture the look of "The King's Speech," complete with wallpaper found on eBay.
Of Hearts and Hearths
Borgnes-Giamonti's office, as featured in a new book called Undecorate.

eBay's The Inside Source caught up with Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti to find out more about her Bloomsbury Life.

The Inside Source: How did you come up with the name of your lifestyle blog, A Bloomsbury Life?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: I have long been enthralled by the artists and writers of the early 20th century Bloomsbury Group (Vanessa and Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf, etc). They broke away from the judgmental attitudes of Victorian London and moved to a house in the Sussex countryside to devote their lives to art, beauty, friendship, wit and emancipated pleasures. Not a bad goal, that. Although I live in Los Angeles, I like to think that I have created my own little Bloomsbury life here…albeit within spitting distance of Hollywood and Vine! I want to be a fearless explorer of life. I want to chronicle the beauty of life’s small moments and, like the Bloomsbury artists, never stop searching for the enchantment in the everyday.

The Inside Source: What inspires your style blog posts?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: I am inspired by everything—by books, by music and by the classic patterns that repeat themselves over and over in nature, in textiles, and random arrangements. When I travel, I take photographs of everything that catches my eye; I don’t try to understand it, I merely compile and absorb. Sooner or later, these ideas bubble to the surface and reveal themselves through my writing, my home and the way I choose to live.

Thus, a photo I took in India of women in line for the Taj Mahal... led me to gradually embrace a more colorful wardrobe... which in turn sparked my passion for arranging my books in vivid rows... and reaffirmed my love for the stripe. And an assemblage of prayer flags in Tibet…inspired me to create a non-religious version in my office, which flutters in the wind (when the French doors are open) with the pinned-up talismans of my life.

The Inside Source: Love all the videos on your A Bloomsbury Life—are you the one-man producer, director and subject?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: After nearly three years of blogging, I felt the need to stretch my legs a little, creatively speaking, and experiment with taking ABL to the next level. “The Domestic Explorer” webisodes are a great way to convey my philosophy of looking at modern life with an Old World lens in a more visual, immediate way. I shoot everything on my iPhone 4 (with the 8mm app) and then edit it on my Mac. This series of little films has re-inspired me to look at old things in a new way.

The Domestic Explorer: Art and Travel: Webisode 106 (via YouTube) This webisode, part of an ongoing series Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti is shooting on her iPhone, features the travel-themed embroidery pieces she created for the Santa Monica Museum of Art Incognito show.

The Inside Source: What top blogs, writers and artists are inspiring you right now?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: Blogs: Indecorous Taste, The Traveler, The Persephone Post, Ancient Industries, Slow Love Life. Writers: Always Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, E. F. Benson, Vita Sackville-West, Beverley Nichols and Evelyn Waugh. Photographers: Tim Walker, Miguel Flores-Vianna, Simon Upton and Ivan Terestchenko. Websites: I get lost in the virtual hallways and passages of the National Portrait Gallery Collection website. They have every work of art and photograph online—and most of them are available for purchase.

Project Gutenberg—hundreds of thousands of rare out-of-print books languishing in university libraries have been scanned by volunteers and are available to read for free. One of the funniest books I’ve read recently (“The Widow Barnaby” by Frances Trollope, Anthony’s mother) was a Project Gutenberg discovery.

The Inside Source: Is there anything you probably buy too much of?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: Books, ultra-fine Sharpies and Fortnum & Mason jam.

The Inside Source: Do you search eBay online auctions for style blog inspiration?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: All the time. Vintage embroidered linens, interesting typography and cover illustrations on old books, the color palette of an old Toby jug, vintage newspaper photos littered with crop marks that make it look like modern art—the list is endless.

The Inside Source: Do you remember the first item you ever bid on at eBay? Did you win?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: Of course! The first item I bid on (and yes, won!) was a child-size replica of a famous midcentury Danish chair. My son was a baby at the time and I had a—I’ll admit it now—pretentious vision of him of drooling over a “Baby Mozart” video in grand style!

The Inside Source: What are your top eBay searches?

Lisa Borgnes-Giramonti: Antique suzanis, Toby jugs, Beverley Nichols first editions, old chairs, ikat fabric from Uzbekhistan, Photos of Winston Churchill, '20s-'30s Black Forest antlers, Charles Dickens-related ephemera.