Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Interior gardens

Long stretches of cold weather like we're having help me realize why people have decorated the interiors of their homes with flower images for centuries: reminders of warmer weather! This exuberant wallpaper panel is all you need: I feel warmer already! It is paired with 18th century painted furniture which bears more of the same fruit. Hopefully this will help warm you!
photograph taken at the Louvre's Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 18th century floor, click to view in detail.

7 comments:

Karena said...

Very interesting, I am considering a mural in my staircase. Just deciding what theme to use.
Karena

Blue said...

Delightful, Stefan. I love the way the papier-mache furniture glints and glows in the twilight. This is precisely what the early modernists despised and though I like modernism I do not despise decoration like this. This kind of wallpaper (probably hand-blocked) together with painted, mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture and seen by fire light must have been a delight to the eye on a cold winter's evening.

La Petite Gallery said...

That is lovely, could use that in my living room with this snow everywhere.

M said...

Well great minds think alike, Stefan: Love this post and the milder weather the images conjure up, and I was thinking along the same lines in posting my little piece on Verona yesterday -- I simply have the urge, now, for al fresco activities, but it's freezing here in Europe so needless to say the whole al fresco thing is just not happening. Yet.
Take care,
Michael

lady jicky said...

I think I will need some wallpaper with fir trees and a dash of snow my way :)

Hels said...

I might have thought this was a bit of a cheap way to achieve an expensive goal, but now I have changed my mind.

As I read more and more about tulips in 17th century Netherlands, it became clear that people who couldn't afford real tulips bought large paintings of flowers. They placed the painting opposite the front door so that the first thing visitors saw where flowers.

Australia doesn't have really cold winters, but I certainly would feel depressed if there weren't flowers and warm colours to lift the spirits.

many thanks
Hels

home before dark said...

Years ago when I converted to gardening, I made a pair of folding screens for my dining room using Redoute's 100 Most Beautiful Flowers. And even now with my garden still under snow, the flowers seen in the flickering firelight help soothe.