Mahogany

Designing a master suite for a 1950s contemporary in Baltimore City challenged Annapolis architect Jay B. Huyett to come up with a bedroom, bathroom and dressing area that fit aesthetically in a house style he calls a cross between "California, international and Frank Lloyd Wright."The suite was to be part of a new wing created by Mr. Huyett, of Studio 3 Architects, who says, "We wanted to leave the interior space as open as possible, yet at the same time meet all the functional requirements."

Q: I would like your opinion as to the most sensible way of giving my dining room a more dramatic look. It's currently filled with mahogany pieces, including a 7-foot-wide breakfront.A: The photo will give you an idea of how great a transformation can be wrought in an entire room by altering the appearance of its single most important element.In this instance, designer Celeste Cooper singled out a breakfront for unusual treatment. The piece was painted in a faux tortoise-shell pattern with white accents that look like ivory inlays.

In sleepy Galesville, where nodding at passing boats is the unofficial pastime, one boat wins wide smiles and enthusiastic waves.It's the Magic Moment, a sleek handmade craft, certainly the only gondola on West River and perhaps the only one in Maryland."

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Sitting at opposite ends of a cavernous auditorium, under a canopy of flags from around the world, Brazil and the Netherlands waged a polite but emotionally strained debate over a tree that grows thousands of miles away.The chief delegate from the Netherlands -- whose Dutch people are fierce rain forest defenders -- argued that mahogany trees are disappearing so rapidly that trade in the wood must be restricted. Brazil's delegate fervently disagreed, saying his people should control the Amazon forests.

Q: I love wicker and bamboo furniture so much that I want to use it in my living and dining room. It would be mixed with traditionally styled mahogany pieces. The subsequent look would have to be informal, I suppose, but not at all beachy. What's the best way to produce this effect?A: I also love bamboo and wicker, as well as cane and peel, and over the years I've succeeded in sneaking those materials into some unexpected places.It's actually not that hard to do. After all, wicker and bamboo have been used for so many centuries in such a wide variety of settings that they go perfectly well with much period furniture, especially English.

NEW YORK -- She was their blue-eyed, sparrow-boned Lilly, who brimmed with pride at the top-hatted young president and his sweet-faced wife whose satin gowns she tended, so lovingly, back then.Now her Jackie was being laid to rest, and Elizabeth Montgomery -- 92 years old now, three decades after she was personal maid to the first lady and then to the widow, had put on her finest navy suit and tiny gold earrings and bused eight blocks down Second Ave. to say goodbye."I was like family," Lilly said, fighting tears.

YORBA LINDA, Calif. -- Richard Milhous Nixon, dominant, divisive and accomplished 37th president of the United States, was laid to rest yesterday behind the house his father built at the beginning of a century his son did so much to shape.Twenty years after he resigned the presidency in disgrace, Mr. Nixon was eulogized by President Clinton in the presence of all four living ex-presidents.Mr. Clinton sounded the theme of reconciliation that dominated the 75-minute funeral, calling yesterday a "day for his family, his friends and his nation to remember President Nixon's life in totality.

Again and again during the past few years I've been told that Americans are going "back to basics." The claim is repeated so often that I have, of course, come to doubt its veracity.Just what is meant by the "basics" to which everyone is supposedly returning? Is it mashed potatoes and crisscrossed curtains? I certainly hope not.Perhaps this journalistic jargon is intended to suggest that consumers are no longer interested in consuming for its own sake. If so, that's a most welcome development, since good design is never a matter of piling up expensive pieces or slavishly following the dictates of fashion freaks.

ST. MICHAELS -- In the elite company of vintage power boat owners, anyone who dares tout the virtues of fiberglass may end up walking the plank -- and a wooden plank at that.No synthetic decks or hulls for this crowd. Mahogany is their mien, especially in the form of a boat built during the first half of this century by manufacturers such as as Chris-Craft, Hacker Craft and Gar Wood.The lure of the wooden power boat is so strong in some circles that hundreds of people ignored yesterday's heat just to gaze at more than 70 such vessels at the Antique and Classic Boat Festival here.

Setting a dining table with mismatched dishes and glasses is a practice that style maven Martha Stewart has popularized, as have magazines touting personal style. But what about dining in a room where tables, chairs and sideboards aren't part of a matched set?One of the last bastions of suite-style, the dining room is assuming a '90s eclecticism. Even traditional furniture manufacturers have broken out of the cookie-cutter mold, and they're now mixing up finishes and even materials and styles.