2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 10,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 17 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

A Place to Weather the Storm

After two cold and windy storms right in a row, I can imagine curtaining myself off from the draft in this bed.  Light would transform at dusk and dawn in this room.  Don’t you feel better just looking at it?

 I do!

Enjoy the weekend and I hope the weather is nice to you wherever you are     : )

-A.

Fine Art Photocrappy

I have had an internal debate regarding modern fine art photography’s use in interior design for the longest time.  Stemming from my own preferences towards painted works, I can’t seem to make the jump to using straight images from everyday life/pop culture un-softened by brushstrokes and interpretation.

Janet, for example, would never make an appearance in any of the work I do…

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Stranger still is imagery that I can’t understand wanting in any part of my house.  Ever.  I realize that as art, these images are intended to make the viewer think.  The designer in me still feels that anxiety inducing need to maintain a… feeling (at the very least).

That photo makes me physically uncomfortable, like I’m choking.  WHY???  Why put THAT photograph there??  An incredible antique vessel sink (originally part of a fountain), solid slab counters and stone floors, and that beautiful wood screen – give them something exotic.  Give them seductive.  Give them tranquil.  Hell, give them humor!

Give them anything but an old t.v. in the corner of an ugly room!!!

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(Deep breath)

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On the up side, I do enjoy family photos.  Just not the ones straight from the point-and-shoot.  I am a huge fan of Photoshop.  Crop, edit, enlarge – manipulate away!  Make it black and white and I’ll put it just about anywhere.  

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Since I have known for some time that fine art photography and I are not always real chummy, I’ve been practicing.  I created a board on Pinterest where I collect images of anything I can imagine framing and hanging in a room someday.  Favorites…

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(this cracks me up!)

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This one I found and fell in love with while living in Newport, RI.  The photographer is Alexander Nesbitt.  I didn’t know that before I moved away so I only recently re-found the photo…

See it matted and framed at Sapo Freaky Burrito at 16 Broadway in Newport, or click the image to purchase a print.  Believe me when I tell you that in person, this is amazing.

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I react when I look at these images with feelings ranging from fondness to love, experiencing awe and hilarity and wonder.  This is my pre-requisite for art in someone’s home.  They must react positively.*  Professional artwork is an investment (read: freaking expensive) so it better mean more to you than just a pretty picture!  And if it makes you feel like you’re choking (the way that stupid tv does me), or repulsed, or depressed, or self-critical – drop that thing like a bad habit (metaphorically – remember this stuff is expensive), because who wants to feel like that every time you look at it?

Do you know what I mean, people?  Can I get an amen?!

What’s your definition of photocrappy and does anyone respond to art like they’re choking?  This one really took me by surprise.

-A.

*So, I am aware that art is personal and subjective and that not everyone would look at a photo of a tv in an ugly room and react like I do, but I just don’t see how you couldn’t.  And I really hope that the designer of that bathroom or the photographer that snapped that photo never happens to land on my corner of the blogging universe.  I mean no disrespect!

Set the Table

        Thanksgiving is so close and I was remembering I adopted the job as a kid (and favorite task to this day) to set the Thanksgiving table.  I got really Martha Stewart on everyone the year I pulled out my Mom’s leaf-shaped cookie cutters, traced and cut them out of earth-tone colored paper.  Then I lightly decorated them with colored pencil and wrote everyone’s names in my best script.  Perched next to my Grandmother’s Johnson Brother’s English China, antique sterling, and burlap and linen table runner, they looked pretty darn spectacular.

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Comments from onlookers ranged from “she’s crazy” to “well, aren’t you creative!”  It might just be the plight of every creative person on earth to teeter on crazy in other people’s eyes.

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Moving on… I was flipping through our Match Pewter book and realized that this company may as well have been created to set Thanksgiving tables.

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And host Fall-time parties.

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Can’t you just imagine how great this footed casserole would look overflowing with Roasted Butternut Squash with Caramelized Onions, Gorgonzola and Crispy Fried Sage…

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The Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Grapes with Walnuts sat next to it in here…

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And this Mushroom Bowl piled high with homemade dinner rolls…

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The turkey cradled by roasted potatoes and onion, rosemary and sage beautifully staged here…

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And, because I am a fabulous hostess, one of these little trinket boxes to go home with each of my guests…

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There are punch bowls and cocktail shakers and jiggers.  Pewter stemmed wine glasses and delicate flatware for every occasion.   I’d love to set the Thanksgiving table this year with Match and possibly even more leaf-shaped place cards.

Maybe next year since most of what I would want to use will land on my Christmas list before the table.

-A.

PS:  I did those cookie cutter leaf place cards before Ms. Stewart did.  My mom called me a couple of years later when she saw Martha copying my idea.  I just thought you should know.    : )

Kitchen Display

We are working on a new kitchen display for the showroom and it really is screaming for a decorative slab backsplash, don’t you think?  I think marble, in any state, is a natural work of art.  Add curves and a snazzy faucet and you get Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.

We aren’t quite there yet.  Still need the curvy splash.

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Yes, that is an integrated sink.

Fabulous.  I know.

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{Click the drawings to expand.}

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I’ve been gathering ideas for possible shapes from Pinterest and just about every blog I have bookmarked.  Here are some of my favorites…

I love how the slab mirrors the lines of the hood and then continues to be stunning all the way down.  We don’t have a hood so this is out of the question, but it caught my eye and I wanted to share.   I do wish they’d skipped the tile and used the slab throughout.  The bowed front sink and cabinet are pretty wonderful, though.

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This sink and backsplash are in a home just outside of Paris.  How appropriate.  This happens to be the same faucet I have drawn in.  More on that later.

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I’d stretch out the high arch part for this one and leave just a few inches of the lower backsplash.  Simple yet effective.

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These next few aren’t stone, but the lines are worth considering…