Scroll through Erick J. Espinoza’s Instagram feed, and you might think you’ve traveled back in time to the 1930s — not the Art Deco version, but the version filled with hooked rugs, weathervanes and candlesticks betokening the era’s American Colonial Revival, perhaps with the color saturation cranked way up. “There’s something so lighthearted about Americana. Even really serious and intense works of American folk art are still whimsical, graphic and humorous,” said Mr. Espinoza, who is the 32-year-old creative director at the Hamptons design studio founded by Anthony Baratta. Mr. Espinoza especially loves the geometric patterns of game boards and quilts.

Read More

Between Holy Week and the demands of farm life, it wasn’t easy to get Sister Lily Scullion on the phone in April. (“Sorry for the delay, have been very busy with lambing,” she wrote in an email.) But a packed schedule goes with the territory at St. Mary’s Abbey in Glencairn, where 29 sisters are busy each day with work and prayer; making handmade cards, candles and Eucharistic bread; and tending the abbey’s grounds, which occupy nearly 250 acres of County Waterford, near Ireland’s southeastern coast.

Read More