Now's your chance to own a photograph that was snapped by Martha Stewart, herself! Martha Stewart Living has launched a new venture on its website, selling framed photographs taken by Martha in three different price ranges.

There are three signed, limited edition prints that retail for $1200 each. There are only 100 prints of each photograph and each one is personally signed by Martha.

There are eight limited edition prints that retail for between $400 and $600 each. There are only 900 prints of each of these. And, at a more affordable price, there are four open-ended edition prints that are selling for $250 each.

Each framed photograph is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. This document certifies that this is an approved giclée print from the archives of Martha Stewart’s photographs. Each image is also embossed with her personal Cantitoe Corners insignia, a stylized sycamore tree.

The 15 prints currently for sale are only the first batch. There will be more available in the future, including photographs taken by Martha on her travels around the world. The current photos are all taken on Martha's Bedford and Skylands properties: a sunlit porch at dawn, a cascade of vines over a granite wall at Skylands, horses grazing near the stables and unique sculptures on the terrace at sunset.

Martha Stewart personally selected each frame and mat to best pair with each image. The all-wood frame is crafted and hand-finished using superior quality materials; archival quality Plexiglas is UV protected to resist fading from sunlight exposure; and the matting and mounting materials utilize Artcare™, a patented anti-aging and anti-yellowing technology to maximize the life of the artwork. Artcare™ archival framing technology has been widely recognized and adopted by top museums and art conservators around the world as a protection against pollutants that might harm print longevity.

I'm not sure what the shipping details are yet, but I've asked for more information. The handling of this operation has been outsourced to a new partner of Omnimedia, Neilson Bainbridge in New Jersey. You can browse all the prints at the following link. You can also order a catalog, or download the PDF version to print yourself.

Five percent of the proceeds of these art prints will go towards supporting the Martha Stewart Center for Living in Manhattan.

http://www.marthastewartframedphotography.com/

Home Textiles Today is reporting that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is set to redevelop its e-commerce division on its website, marthastewart.com. Below is an excerpt from the article that was originally published on hometextilestoday.com with information about how the company is poised to bring back its online mail-order service...but with a twist!

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During the company’s presentation at the Goldman Sachs Internet Conference in Las Vegas on May 22, MSLO president and CEO Susan Lyne said the company is preparing to embark in 2009 on “very different e-commerce content that we had before.

“On our old site we did the manufacturing, we held the inventory, the products were great, and we lost an enormous amount of money,” she explained. “It’s not what we are good at.”

But by next year the plan is be able to sell “or at least make consumers believe they are buying on our site” when in fact MSLO will be working with what Lyne described as “a middleman partner.”

“What we are looking to do going forward is to essentially be the front end, the interface for consumers,” she said.

Currently, visitors to http://www.marthastewart.com/ come “mostly for content, interestingly,” she explained. They can view Martha Stewart-branded products but they can’t buy them. The site allows users to connect to http://www.macys/ or http://www.kmart.com/ to shop for the home guru’s wares.

Other soon-to-come new developments from MSLO include a stronger presentation of luxury or better priced items at Macy’s – an unexpected shift that has come in response to consumers’ unforeseen demands for the brand’s higher bracket assortments at the department store.


The original Martha by Mail logo was designed by New York husband-and-wife design team DK Design Partners.

“Overall, we are very much on plan with Macy’s despite this downturn in the economy, and we’ve had some surprises, one of them being [the success of] our luxury or best product, which initially Macy’s didn’t think we would be able to play in,” Lyne said. “But it turns out we fill out in our best , and that’s because people understand the value proposition -- what you can get for $199 from us looks like it would be $400 at Bergdorf’s.”

For this reason, the company is branching out “that part of our business pretty dramatically, and it’s more surprising even because we were known as a mass manufacturing line. To be able to play at that very high level is nice.”

MSLO is also growing other aspects of its 2,000-sku, $3-to-$600 Macy’s home program, which launched in September. It is looking to soon add new categories, such as storage, gifts and more home décor pieces.

By staying focused “within our core” home area, and not in unrelated businesses “like fragrances,” and others, she sampled, “there are areas where we can build this [Macy’s program] pretty dramatically,” Lyne said.

On her show yesterday, Martha had two of her former neighbours on as part of a 'where are they now' episode. The two young girls had grown up with Martha on Turkey Hill Road and had once been on her old television program. The girls provided an update about what was happening at Martha's former home under its new ownership.

The owners have not yet moved into the home as it is undergoing extensive renovations. Martha said she was privy to the changes. She said she is very happy that the new owners have an ambitious and elegant plan for her beloved former home and seemed pleased with the developments. The girls had been in the home to witness some of the renovations and relayed some of the details. The rooms, they say, seem much bigger and they spoke of new additions to the main home. One such addition is a large, gallery-like entrance at the back of the home that links the studio barn to the main house. Martha had seen it and said she was amazed by how beautiful it looked.

I'm hoping that the magazine does an article on the NEW Turkey Hill at some point.

I've had a few requests about locating video footage of this segment of the show. As far as I can tell, it's not been archived on the website. It was towards the end of the show when the two young girls presented Martha with several cords of old cherry wood from the Turkey Hill property. If anyone can find it, let me know and I'll post the link here.