PENELOPE ROWLANDS

Just a few of the many articles and posts I've contributed to various magazines, newspapers, journals, and websites over the length of my career...

Some recent pieces:

A deep look into the famously staring Hans Holbein portraits of Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More, long displayed at New York's Frick Collection.

The American Scholar

April, 2022

In the midst of the pandemic, an outdated file folder led me into a precious, near-forgotten world

The American Scholar,

December, 2020

A visit to shoe designer Christian Louboutin's exhibit in Paris. (Graydon Carter's AirMail Weekly, Feb. 22, 2020)

I headed to Chile to research a biography,

then found myself in an uprising instead...

(posted on The American Scholar,

December, 2019)

The story of Aaron Burr's European exile -- and the extraordinary diary he kept in this period. (3.22 MB)

From The American Scholar (Summer issue, 2019).

Designer Alessandra Branca's new atelier by the Seine for ElleDecor (April, 2019)

"The Ambitious Dr. Hosack" A book review for the Wall St. Journal (June 1, 2018) (415 KB)

The story of quiche

-- and my amazing mother --

from the new foodie website

Eat, Darling, Eat

(October, 2017)

And some classic ones:

On the artists Kiki and Seton Smith, for WSJ. magazine (613 KB)

An Architectural Digest profile

of the zany, inimitable

designer Tony Duquette

From the Columbia Journalism Review, a story on the HUGE impact of a tiny ad...

How living in Paris transforms you

(The Telegraph, UK)

Novelist, Essayist, Parisian:

A profile of Diane Johnson

from the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

Joan Juliet Buck, the former editor of Paris Vogue, turns to acting (The Daily Beast)

My wayward youth, as documented in Vogue... (548 KB)

My essay for the

San Francisco Chronicle Magazine

on the outsized influence

of an inherited chair...

A visit to the Maine house of Sister Parish, the iconic American interior decorator, for Architectural Digest

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