Accent Pieces As Conversation Starters

Placed on a love seat or nestled into a couch, a decorative pillow should be more than just an accessory. It should be art, a conversation starter, a centerpiece, according to Ox Bow Decor founder Laurie Grossman.

Ms. Grossman says she has it covered with her Maps of Summer line that launched last summer. This year, it features three East End locations—Southampton, East Hampton and Sag Harbor—circa 1873.

“Pillows are more than design,” she said during a telephone interview last week from her company headquarters in Massachusetts. “It’s an interactive piece, something to look at and respond to. With the maps, it’s fun to compare what was there then versus what is there now. What’s changed, what’s stayed the same. It’s fun to know some of the history.”

Each pillow comes with a decorative card explaining the backstory—and folklore—behind each location.

For example, East Hampton, the pillow’s card explains, was the third Connecticut settlement on the East End and released from its governance only once four British frigates captured, what is today, Manhattan. Also, the card states that in 1658, Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk was established and continues to be the oldest operating cattle ranch in America.

“I’ve never seen the tags done with other pillows out there and it was something I wanted to do from the beginning,” Ms. Grossman said. “The whole concept of the line—it began as a print line—was to kind of reinvent the old-fashioned botanical with a new twist, with a new wave going about it.”

All of the maps needed to be comparable in age, so Ms. Grossman collected them from old atlases, she said. The East End maps are more detailed than most of the others in her line, which includes Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Maine and Lake Eerie, among others.

“The script on them, as you can imagine, is very, very tiny, so you have to look carefully,” she said. “They show homeowners and where they lived on certain streets, where they actually were. I was looking for attractive maps, and not all maps are beautiful. These, I liked the shape of them, the format of them, and I love that they’re so detailed.”

The East End is just one of the facets of the line, which also incudes a newcomer, Fenway Park, just in time for the oldest Major League Baseball stadium’s 100th anniversary. As of April 2012, the Red Sox have had 717 consecutive sellouts—the longest streak in Major League Baseball history, the pillow’s informational card reads.

“That was a fun one,” Ms. Grossman said. “This is a map of the area where Fenway was constructed in 1912.”

The 20-inch-by-20-inch pillows are designed, printed and sewn in Massachusetts, Ms. Grossman said. They are an eco-friendly option in the marketplace—printed with water-based inks on pure linen stuffed with down-filled cotton inserts—with a knife edge finish.

They are available in antique white—a tea-stained, historic-looking color—or oyster—which is a deeper, pale khaki—and sold exclusively through home furnishing stores, including Hildreth’s Home Goods in Southampton and Bridge Street Gifts on Shelter Island. Prices ranges from $98 to $125 per pillow, but New York stores tend to lean more toward the expensive end of the spectrum, Ms. Grossman noted.

The map line is one Ms. Grossman will continue to explore, she said. It’s new, but it’s mushrooming, and the company is getting new requests all the time, she said. There has been interest in Savannah, Georgia; circa-1950s Houston, Texas; and even the home of one of her retailers: Shelter Island.

“There might be a map coming out of the island,” Ms. Grossman said. “That would be a perfect map. It’s fun when it’s an island surrounded by water, like Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. You have all the boats there. It’s a really pretty map.”

In terms of design, Ms. Grossman has always been drawn to coastal areas, such as Sag Harbor, which is known for its whaling industry, she said. In the late 1700s, the village was known as an international port with more tons of square-rigged vessels engaged in commerce, than Manhattan, the Sag Harbor pillow’s tag reads. At its peak, 60 whale ships were based in the village, employing 800 men, which Herman Melville referenced in his classic “Moby Dick.”

But no matter the location, or its history, these are pillows sure to pique people’s interest, Ms. Grossman said.

“It’s a fun thing, a conversation piece,” she said. “I don’t know where to go to next, but there will be more. We just started selling to Australia, so who knows. Maybe we’ll do one there, too.”

For more information on the Maps of Summer line of pillows, visit oxbowdecor.com.