My mother passed away peacefully, at home, on June 13 2009 with both Brev and I at her side. She had a brief battle with an all too aggressive cancer. Her death was a shock to everyone. She was only 63. Mum was born, on the 4th of February, 1946 and grew up in Winnetka, Illinois. She was the baby of her family with an older brother, Bobby, and sister, Betsy. At the local high-school New Trier, she was a hard worker and a self proclaimed straight arrow, and was very proud of being picked to be a cheer leader in her sophmore year. She worked incredibly hard to earn a place as an Economics Major at the prestigious all-girls college, Smith College. She would recall to us with a twinkle how she surprised her professors by being ‘not just a pretty face’ but a blond bombshell with all the answers. She made her hard work look easy as she always had a smile, a joke and was ever ready to help out her friends. Her free time was devoted to creating her own wardrobe as her fellow seamstress Gail Flynn recalls ” Toni was the creative genius and I remained the technician." Mum’s eye for color was already in full sway, her friend Andrea Gargulo recalling, “blue and green everything and her closetful of shoes, mostly if not all, blue and green). Mum went backpacking around Europe in 1966 with her taste for the finer things in life already finely honed, dragging her friend to the Gucci shop to spend their stipend on a Gucci scarf each. After college she spent a year in New York as a banker, squeezing into a one bedroom apartment with two other college friends only with the help of 3 specially made, narrow beds. Mum decided she would decorate the small apartment, outfitting their small room with bright purple bedspreads and bright pink curtains. Childhood sweethearts, mum met dad when she was 14. Her college friend remembers mum declaring, "Don't you think that Tom and I look just like Paul Newman and Julie Christie??.” They married shortly after graduating in 1968. Mum sewing her own wedding dress and upsetting her mum by creating her own wedding trousseau complete with pink and orange a-line dresses. Moving to San Francisco in 1969 Toni quickly developed her cookery and hostessing skills, conjuring up frequent and raucous dinner parties, swiftly graduating from green bean and mushroom casserole. She was also a natural at creating beautiful and cozy homes with her artist’s eye and flair for design. Friends recall mum undertaking the total re-do of their Castelli Street house with avant garde Marimeko fabrics; green, blue, pink and orange. The banking profession gave way to co-founding a very successful health care management consulting and architectural firm, where she married her commitment to healthcare with her aptitude in design and her incredible organizational skills. 1980 heralded the advent of a new life in London, and armed with a one year old Brevin, mum took on the task of properly outfitting an English home. Despite initially despairing of the food dinner parties become more sophisticated and as we grew older mum would encourage us to join in, discussing the finer point in life over smelly cheese and cold chardonnay. She would work as a health administrator in the NHS for over fourteen years, developing but never quite finishing her PHD thesis in developing a new health administration system. In the meantime I arrived and she took on raising the both of us with her mixture of being understanding but not in any way restricting, and always supportive. She taught us her ethos , that the most important thing is to follow our hearts. After a stint in hospital and a longtime bed ridden, mum emerged with a couple more quilts and reinvented herself, embracing her artistic side in a professional capacity. She brought her administrative skills to fruition in the world of public art, especially the Notting Hill Improvements Group, which she took on with tenacity and patience, helping to bring an elephant to Notting Hill. Mum’s natural artistic ability and experimental creativity came through in everything she got her hands on, from creating some of the most beautiful sticky-back-plastic building blocks, to producing silkscreen prints and advancing to digital prints. She took on new technologies with her usual aplomb, making systematic notes of all she learnt. She loved the South of France and we spent many an Easter drinking vin plastique, driving through little mountain villages, listening to sixties cassettes whilst she tried to recall her very rusty French. Her love for trying new things and exploring new places gave Brev and I a spring board to the world – she loved putting her studies into context in Istanbul, and finding sympathy in the colors of Guatemala. Mum was always generous with those she was with but walked the fine line of never being pushy, encouraging me and Brev to at least try one bite of any new dish. In 2004 she faced breast cancer with incredible courage and stoicism, not wanting to cause too much fuss amongst those who loved her, preferring her own understated approach to life . She learnt all about breast cancer and kept the doctors on their toes along the way. She always rose to the challenge and afterwards was fitter than ever, quitting smoking and proudly completing the flora marathon challenge. Despite all her trials and tribulations mum was a fighter who managed to keep her heart wide open, and always had time to sympathize with our troubles. Her perspective on what really mattered never waned. Always a passionate student of the arts, Toni became a full-time student again in 1996, focusing on art history and architecture, gaining degrees at several institutions including a diploma at Courtauld Institute of Art(the same time as I got my Masters down the road at Kings) and the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Very recently she was incredibly excited to get her first first in British Art and the world. The past couple of years have been focused on finding a new nest and earlier this year she completed 'the Finstock project,' building from scratch her new home - a testament to her skills as a designer and homemaker. It has all the markings of a Toni production, it is incredibly practical yet very cozy, always gracious, has a lot of style, a keen sense of color and a splash of humor. Sadly it was not to be that she would get spend that much time in it. She will be greatly missed.