Linens ‘n Things!

Soniat House Revives Vintage Designs in a Customary Practice

Ah, springtime!  The first smells of cut grass and blooming buds herald the season of freshness and light.  In the south, you’ll also find traditional households engaging in one of their most time-honored customs:  dressing the house for warm weather. 

In New Orleans, along with the deep spring cleaning, that means rolling up the dark wool carpets and laying down cool woven mats in their stead; taking down the heavy velvet drapery in favor of breezy linen curtains; and even dressing the upholstered furniture in light cotton slipcovers – all practical measures to protect priceless textiles from summer’s heat, humidity, and crawling critters.  In the most stylish households, the most charming custom is the changing of the bed linens.  Out come the crisp white cotton coverlets, as predictably as the seersucker suits worn by the man of the house.  And since the early 1920s, those coverlets have come from the same source.

Leontine Linens is based on the foundation of a company developed in the 1920’s with roots reaching back to a gentler time when handcraftsmanship was honored as much as family heritage and every fine coverlet was destined to be an heirloom.  To this day, each commissioned item is made by hand, to exact customer specifications, in the same southern workshop. 

Not surprisingly, come springtime, a crisp white coverlet from Leontine Linens tops every bed at Soniat House, the most elegant hotel in the French Quarter, and each coverlet is in turn graced by a distinctive “SH” monogram, the hallmark of the Leontine couture style.   The rooms and    suites at Soniat House, each uniquely decorated and furnished with fine French and Louisiana antiques and high-end textiles, range from the grand (a suite of restrained elegance whose  opulent peach silk sitting room curtains complement the floral motif of the crewel-worked canopy and curtains on the imposing four-poster bed in the adjoining room,) to the charming (a cozy room fully upholstered and curtained in a historic mustard-colored toile, anchored by a whimsical   Directoire iron bedstead with an exposed ticking-wrapped box-spring,) yet despite the variety, they each are transformed by the refreshed bedding of spring --

Unfurled over a bed, the coverlets make each bedroom feel instantly bright and airy.  They impart a pristine comforting goodness to the atmosphere, much in the way a tall pitcher of iced tea brings relief to a summer veranda.   So bring on spring and the heat of summer:  Soniat House has it covered.