Skylands Menu and Stationery

From 2007 to 2008, Lila Symons worked at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia as an Associate Art Director for Corporate Communications. Though her job consisted of using her talents to assist the Art Director on various design projects for the communications department, the art department slowly got requested by other departments to help with some other projects. Lila spoke to me about one such "other" project she was asked to work on: designing the menus and stationery for Skylands, Martha's summer home in Maine.

Because of the company's wide-reaching artistic ventures, Lila's role was never limited to one particular department, as she explained to me: "One day we could be working on the printed materials and visuals for an event, and another day we could be working on a wordmark for one of Martha's television shows. It was definitely an unusual job, because the average person assumes that graphic designers are only hired at MSLO to work in publishing, web, or merchandising."

Below are examples of her beautiful Skylands creations with explanations from Lila about the process. (Thank you for sharing with us, Lila!) You can visit Lila's website here.

"When I was first assigned the project, all I had to work with was the existing Skylands wordmark, and this large, beautiful map of her property and the land surrounding it. Martha wanted to incorporate the map into the menu somehow. As I started working on concepts for the menu, I took a good look at the map, and found where the Skylands home was. Then, I placed map at a larger scale so the viewer could see where Skylands was marked. Though you only see part of the map on the menu, you get to see all these wonderful details that you wouldn't see if the whole map was featured on the front cover." "Inside, it only felt right to incorporate Martha's faux bois pattern. Then I took elements I liked from the map (such as the sailboats) and make a bunch of different name card concepts. I remember feeling very nervous about showing Martha, because these concepts were a departure from what is usually done. However, she loved everything!" "After designing the menus, we decided to keep her stationery simple, by incorporating the faux bois pattern in the back of the notecards."
"I no longer work at MSLO, so I'm not sure if Martha is still using everything I designed. However, I have a feeling she may be, because the intention of creating stationery and menus for Skylands was to design something that she can use for years, and still look current. Though I would have never turned down an opportunity to visit her Bedford home, Skylands is my personal favorite!"

Jens Jensen and Skylands

Occasionally I receive an email from a reader that just blows my mind and sends me reeling into the throes of excitement. One such email came from Michael Fus, the preservation architect for the Chicago Park District. In 2005, Michael had the good fortune of visiting the grounds at Skylands as part of a group tour for landscape architects. The focus of the tour was the work of Danish landscape designer Jens Jensen, who designed the grounds of this marvelous Maine property for Edsel and Eleanor Ford, a property currently owned by Martha Stewart.

In Michael's email was an offer to send me a disc of his personal photographs from his walk through the Skylands acreage as well as an academic thesis on the history of the Skylands property written by Jane Roy Brown - a marvelous study of Jensen's work with Edsel and Eleanor Ford, who commissioned Jensen in the 1920s to landscape the property. The thesis, entitled "Skylands - A Jens Jensen Landscape in Maine" is fascinating, compelling and revealing. Brown was able to attain original plans, documents and letters written between Jensen and the Fords, tracing the formative ideas behind this great property, to write a splendid independent project on the early development of Skylands.

Michael and I agreed to share these photographs and some of the more interesting points of the thesis with the Martha Moments audience. The landscape is too beautiful, too alluring and too fascinating to keep it all to ourselves. It must be shared and experienced. Thank you, Michael, for this opportunity. We hope you enjoy the photographs and the information.

This sign on the property was likely put up by the second owners of the house, the Leedes. According to Brown's thesis, the origin of the name "Skylands" is a mystery. Nowhere in any of the original documents obtained by Brown is the property referred to as Skylands, nor in any of the letters she was able to research. The name Skylands does appear on some of the postcards from the area from the 1950s, however. Jensen's landscape at Skylands is unique for several reasons. First, it is the only maritime landscape project he ever undertook, making it all the more special for the region and for the history of American prairie landscape design. Jensen was initially taken aback by the rugged wildness of the property. He was used to midwestern landscapes of flat expanses of terrain, deciduous forests, grasses, prairie flowers and gently flowing streams. The crashing waves of Seal Harbor, the dense coniferous forests of pine, spruce and hemlock, the proliferation of rocky outcrops and promentories presented quite a challenge to Jensen's philosophies. In his book, Siftings, Jensen writes this about the Skylands property:

"It is far from the prairies of the west to the rocky coast of Maine, to a different landscape with its different beauty - a new world for the prairie mind to understand and to learn to love. The general tone of Maine's landscape is rather dark in comparison to the sunny openness of the prairies. In Maine, spruce predominates on the granite bluffs, and granite appears like black loam of the plains. There was much about these hard, rocky precipices that fascinated. Plants strange to me clung to the bold rocks, and beyond was the sea with its changing colors and vast horizons."

Among his main concerns for the design of the property was the great swaths of coniferous trees. In some of his letters to Ford, he referred to non-deciduous forests as 'drepressing.' Prefering the seasonal evidence of trees whose leaves change colour in the fall, and that disappear in winter, Jensen called for the planting of numerous decidious trees on the property, including sugar maples, red maples, lilacs and ash. Above is a photograph of shad (Amalanchier), planted on the property to provide ornamental contrast to the predominance of spruce, pine and hemlock. The moss, which grows naturally on the forest floor was encouraged and kept clean of debris to create a carpet of green underfoot.

The architecture of the residence, designed by Duncan Candler (a darling of Seal Harbor's elite communities during the 20s) is Italian Renaissance in style. Built of pink granite quarried on site, the facade of the home is imposing. A slate roof with wide oak beams and rectilinear windows of leaded glass give the home a geometric solidity against its rugged backdrop of undulating hillsides and deep forests.

Flanking the front door of the house, Martha has planted two beautiful copper planters with enormous fiddle-leaf ferns and native mosses, creating a planted microcosm of the Skylands forest.

One of the enormous fronds is about to unfurl.Martha has also planted hostas, one of her favourite shade-loving plants, along the front of the home. Several varieites are in evidence.In the center of the circular driveway in front of the house is a field of ferns. In Jensen's original plan, he had called for asters and prairie flowers but Martha prefers the feathery monochrome of these lush ferns, punctuated here and there by strategic boulders.
Pink granite is everywhere in evidence on the property. Meandering, pine-needle-covered pathways that hug their rugged edges highlight the beauty of their forms. (To me, they almost look like barnacle-covered whales, an allusion to the sea just beyond the trees.)

Here is a great view of the house from the mountain meadow. Architect Duncan Candler had originally called for an enormous terrace in this location, but Jensen had it removed to allow for more sunny openness on the property. To the left of the photograph you will see the dining room windows. Candler did a beautiful job designing a room with windows on three sides to capture all of the available views: the sea, the forest, and the 'cracked ice' terrace on the other side.The 'cracked ice' terrace is a massive outdoor space designed for large-scale entertaining. This small portion of it, shown above, showcases Martha's numerous potted plants and two terra-cotta sphinx sculptures by artist Emile Muller.Above the terrace and the entrance to the Great Hall is a vertical sun dial, surrounded by prolific kiwi vines.Majestic granite staircases lead visitors to all the various terraces and sections of the landscape that immediately surround the property.The stone railings of the pergola off the living room look almost Mayan in scale.Perennial kiwi vines (Actinidia) and dark purple elephant ears (Colocasia esculenta) soften the edges of a granite wall and staircase.One of the few flowering plants Jensen called for in the landscape was lilies. Here they feel quite at home in planting niches that line one of the stairways connecting the terraces to the grounds.A painterly use of plants on this stairway leading up to the south terrace. Pathways of pine needles (cleaned of any debris) connect the various sections of the property. Jensen was a great proponent of 'circulation systems' outdoors that guided the explorer gently and easily through the landscape.

Jensen designed the landscape to be emblematic of the Maine coast itself: rugged and lush. Martha installed a subtle lighting system to help illuminate the pathways for treaders at dawn and dusk.

The playhouse on the property is one of several outbuildings. Designed by Candler, it features a massive stone fireplace and squash courts.

Water features are key to almost every Jensen landscape. Skylands was no exception. Jensen believed the sound that water makes as it trickles over stone has inexplicable healing powers for the human soul. As such, he designed several natural pools, ponds and fountains on the property. One of Jensen's signature elements is the intersection of flowing water and a main pathway. This feature is found at several other properties designed by Jensen for the Fords, including Fair Lane, in Dearborn, Michigan. The philosophy behind such a design is to interrupt the walker and cause him to pause and reflect, to be aware of his surroundings and the inherent beauty. A cliff at the edge of the mountain meadow is topped by a crenellation of large boulders, similar to the "Rockefeller teeth" that line the property's crushed-granite driveway and the routes leading to Acadia National Park. A large pond plays centerpiece to the meadow's curves and hillsides.
Reflecting pools along the edges of pathways catch raindrops and form miniature ecosystems. A beautiful wooden gate, left unstained and gorgeously aged by the elements, opens to the service entrance. Crushed pink granite covers the driveways of the property. Each fall it is collected, cleaned and stored and for the following year.
Originally designed to be used only by the staff and servants, the service area of the house is actually a favourite of Martha's. She frequently uses the expansive outdoor space for entertaining and is often where she enters and exits the home. Not far from the service entrance is the council circle. Originally in Jensen's plans, but not constructed by the Fords, it is another feature much loved by Jensen. When Martha purchased the property in 1997, she had the council circle built. Its circular shape encourages conversation and a feeling of equality among its visitors. At its center is a fire pit for warmth and the inspiration of imagination. Along the granite benches is a firebird motif, also in the original plans. Jensen explained the design to the Fords in one of his letters:

"The story is of the firebirds going into the sun for the fire for the hearth. You will notice two birds flying towards the sun; the smaller dots are the stars. It is the humanity that dances around the hearth rejoicing for the fire, the first symbol of civilization brought there by the fire birds. I think it is a lovely story for the children and it does not hurt us either. The more imagination, the sweeter life."

The stables on the property, also designed by Candler. A vegetable and cutting garden on the property, adjacent to the stables.

This portion of the property was adjacent to the location of a tenant cottage for Eleanor Ford's mother, which is where she stayed when the main residence was being built. After the completion of the home, however, the cottage was razed and only the foundation remains. This portion of the property is located at the edge of an extremely steep cliff overlooking the ocean. Eleanor had asked Jensen to plan an elaborate cutting garden here with benches for seating, shown above, but it was never completed. You can see a glimpse of the plans below, formal in its layout and designSources:

Jane Roy Brown's thesis: "Skylands: A Jens Jensen Landscape In Maine,"

Photos by TJD&A and Michael Fus, Preservation Architect Chicago Park District

The Grounds at Skylands

Martha's insatiable lust for flowers is nowhere in evidence on the grounds at Skylands, her summer home on Mt. Desert Island in Seal Harbor, Maine. Moss, leafy vines, towering conifers and ferns create a verdant tapestry around the estate, leaving little room for fussy florals. And this is entirely by design.

Danish landscape architect Jens Jensen (1860 - 1951) designed the grounds at Skylands for the home's original owner, Edsel Ford, in 1926. Jensen, who moved to the United States in 1884, once worked for the West Park Commission in Chicago as a designer and gardener and was an avid promulgator of the Prairie school of thought, shared by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright. He began to take on private commissions from America's burgeoning industrialists and soon became a well-known name in residential landscape architecutre.

The prairie philosophy is one of sparsity, clarity and unpretentious fixtures, meant to highlight nature's original plan with careful, well-considered tweaking to enhance and refine it - never to outshine it. Prairie landscape philosophy meant plenty of open space, meandering pathways through wooded patches, mass plantings of one particular garden specimen and the repeated use of stone to create foundational structure.

At Skylands, Jensen was at his best. The house, designed by Duncan Candler, is rustic Italian revival and stands in perfect contrast to the hilly landscape with its solid square shapes and long, rectilinear angles. The grounds are undulating with rocky outcrops, strategically highlighted and shaped to create a feeling of discovered natural beauty. Throughout the 63 acre property, which straddles Ox Hill, overlooking the harbor, pathways lead wanderers to hidden treasures like beautiful reflecting pools in the forests, a Georgian guest house, an old chapel, a counsel circle with a fire pit, a greenhouse and restful vistas in the woods where glimpses of the sea can be enjoyed in the sun-dappled shade.

The large terrace at Skylands can comfortably accommodate 300 people. An adjacent pergola is ideal for more intimate outdoor gatherings. Kiwi vines climb the pink granite of the home's facade in summertime.

This plan of the grounds at Skylands highlights some of the original features, including the many pathways, the multi-level terraces, a mountain meadow, kept intentionally bare of trees to allow sunlight through, a fountain and a counsil ring.

The driveway at Skylands is layered with crushed pink granite and lined with a feature known as Rockefeller teeth - those large stones in the background flanking the driveway. These rocks, officially called coping stones, were a feature of many carriage roads in Acadia National Park, which were a gift from Mt. Desert resident John D. Rockefeller. Cut roughly and spaced irregularly, the large slabs of granite create a rustic feel and act as a safety barrier.

The driveway curves graciously where it meets the front entrance of the house. In the center island, Jensen had originally intended mass plantings of asters. Today, the island is made up principally of fern species. The pink granite on the driveway is gathered up each winter, washed and stored for the following spring.

Another view of the driveway reveals the height of the fern island and the rocky wall that lines the entrance. The 1958 Edsel station wagon was a gift to Martha from her daughter, Alexis.

An outdoor table at Skylands is set beautifully with a sunken centerpiece of succulents. Jens Jensen had specified in his original plans that nearly all of the potted vegetation on the terraces should be tropical: palms, cycads and ferns. Martha has kept that tradition alive.

Deep in the woods surrounding the house, the moss and fern tradition continues.

Closer to home, Martha planted these antique cement goat troughs with varieties of moss from the adjacent forest.

Pathways on the property are carefully lined with fallen pine needles from the swaying hemlocks and pines overhead. This creates a visual cue for explorers. This reflecting pool, above, is located just outside the dining room window.

A pair of glazed terra cotta sphinxes, designed by Emile Muller, stand guard at the entrance to the living room.

This sculpture by Aristide Maillol, called La Riviere, rests on a luxuriant terrace that Martha converted into a moss garden.

In fall, the kiwi vines become a golden hue.

The landscape at Skylands is incredibly steep. The photograph above looks like an ancient Mayan ruin, but it is, in fact, the foundation wall of the Skylands residence. To minimize upkeep on these steep and sunken regions of the property, the grounds are heavily planted with ferns.

Martha encourages moss growth anywhere she can. It looks almost primordial on this granite staircase leading from the terrace above.

A spectacular view of the harbor at sunset from the upper terrace.