Coco Chanel, Marc Jacobs On Who's Who Of The Most Famous Owning Lalanne Sheep

Coco Chanel had a flock of them grazing in her living room. Designer Marc Jacobs includes his nestled in with other art and art-as-furniture pieces.

Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne's highly coveted object d'art sheep (that are also benches) have recently become hotter than ever in the States and for sometime before that, owners of Lalanne sheep have been among a who's who of the most famous.




Oh - and, check out the July 2009 cover of Architectural Digest!




Original Lalanne ewes are beyond the budget of the average person wanting to collect art. But if you are on the lookout to purchase a reproduction, the following may fit the bill.

The online catalog Source Collection has a knock-off Lalanne Gentle Ewe Bench available for $525. This ewe is amazingly true-to-life and as a bench, sturdy enough to support a 250 lb person. These are not just decorative pieces these sheep are art as furniture!

I also enjoy the latest Anthropologie Catalog's colorful, whimsical sheep. I'm not sure these double as benches, but The Anthropologie Catalogue has some delightful little ewes.








Art and objects d'art should always be personal choices. Surrounding yourself with the things that you love will bring untold pleasure. It also is essential in personalizing your home.




Sometimes developing an interior design style for your home, can be overwhelming. If you are in need of some professional interior design assistance, our Directory of Designers can help you locate a professional in your area. Working with an interior designer helps assure you get the look you desire while helping eliminate costly mistakes.

Art And Decorative Items (Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder)

As a follow up to the Lalanne Sheep article, I thought I'd share another fun object d'art or decorative item - the little paper mache burro.

This house style is called Ethnic Meets Chic Style (see prior article "Santa Fe Style Hooks Up With Exotic & Indulgent Chic "). It's a highly-colorful look with many many ethnic items, such as the old, hand-painted blue trunk seen here. This 100 year old adobe house house has integrated with phrou-phrou pretty, traditional stuff, also collected over the years.

The highly-colorful, pink pom-pom fringe-edged pillows with paisley and dots from Pier One Import on the white wicker settee are perfect with the little burro and the antique blue trunk.

Can you even get over it? The little burro that belongs!

Cheers to you and your special and unique decor objects as you integrate them in your home and how they make you smile!

Decorating With Art And Objects D'Art

I hang art everywhere and every type of art everywhere, including some highly unusual places. If I had my druthers art would surround me from the ceiling to the floors. Enjoy these examples of art and objects d'art displayed particularly well.

What I see in the above photo - my eye is pulled to see both the U.S. flag and the framed oil painting portrait. They're inseparable. I see that when the portrait is hung with the flag as a background, the intent is one big, oversized artwork.

The horizontal stripes, in the portrait, and the color in the woman's jacket, and in the chair she's sitting in, serve to reinforce the flag.

The quirky table lamp doesn't get in my way, I am still able to enjoy the vignette and rather the lines of the lamp highlight the woman's face. The lines of the table base add to the whimsical feeling of the room.

Mantles are perfect settings for displays of art and decor items. It is suggested that the width of the art piece or grouping equal the width of the hearth. I like here that a white floral has been placed in front of the hearth opening because without it the opening would seem to have a big gap, like a missing tooth in a pretty smile. The floral arrangement also serves to guide the eye, causing us to see the art work and then we are drawn to go down and around and then back up.

Author, cosmetics mogul and co-chair of the Republican National Committee Georgette Mosbacher draws attention to her library ceiling with an antique map affixed to the ceiling. It may help in your decorating to consider that ceilings are actually just fifth walls of a room - don't overlook your ceilings. You can decorate ceilings with art (as Mosbacher has done), paint it a contrasting paint color or paint something more elaborate such as cloud-filled skies, or other theme trompe l'oiel.

By working the ceilings into your design scheme it pulls the eye up; and if you have especially high ceilings (as does Georgette Mosbacher, who's Fifth Avenue apartment is directly across from the Metropolitan Museum Of Art), decorating them is a good way to help keep the ceiling in scale to the rest of the room. (Photo of Georgette Mosbacher's apartment is from Breaking the Rules: Home Style for the Way We Live Today ) A note for fun: notice in the above photo, Mosbacher has a fur throw that appears to be casually laid on one of the two upholstered chairs. This is probably the fun type of decorating one does when their windows open up the the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attendees to functions look like small figures milling about the esteemed Museum of Art.


Don't just fill your shelves. Consider that a wall covered with bookshelves continues to be a verticle place to hang pictures. Color your bookshelves. Decoratively arrange your items on the bookshelves. Decorate & dress them - personalize them. The books you store on your shelves are just the beginning. Just as any verticle surface, the final dressing can be hung framed artwork. From Elizabeth Mayhew as published in House Beautiful. You can read more decorating ideas by Elizabeth Mayhew in her new book, Flip! for Decorating: A Page-by-Page, Piece-by-Piece, Room-by-Room Guide to Transforming Your Home . Interior designer Elizabeth Mayhew is listed in our Directory of Designers.

The homeowner here was very tricky. By hanging these artworks on the back of the door, the closed door looks like any other wall.

I have used artwork to cover indoor items that are not so attractive, such as an indoor electrical box that didn't need to be visible, rather it only needed access from time to time. A big ugly electrical box in my kitchen, uh uhhhh... no sir'eee, never gonna happen.

Going clockwise, a handmade, antique cross; an unframed, small original oil painting; an outdoor sign I painted that says, "All Of This And Heaven, Too;" a gold-leaf framed art with matting (that I painted blue with acrylic paint) that is a sheet of three-hole punch notebook paper with a penciled thesis about life; and finally a framed and matted floral print. I enjoy this grouping next to the wicker chair and ottoman. Sitting in the chair, the art grouping gives you 'something to think about'.


The large poster is actually of my daughter Sarahjoy and it was so tattered we used duct tape to serve as matting.







Santa Fe Meets Chic Style - Update of Decorative Painting

Purple Room Update: (See original article "Master Bedroom Gets Its Paint Color").

I painted the headboard in an artsy-fartsy, random-patchwork, quilt style that is delicious with the colorful bedspread (which as I've said, is from Anthropologie).

It is such a happy, feel good place!



La Cocina Decorative Painting Update - You may remember the kitchen (click here for original article).


Previously paintings and other art had been hung at this kitchen wall area, but we were experiencing a need to change up the look, an update; and this time the motivation was to bring in more fun. The result is the decorative painting of, "eat what you want, where you want."

Previously, the trompe l'oeil between the stove hood and range was painted when change of homeowner and appliances found this small but still important focal point area needing some form of treatment. The entire kitchen - except this area - had a beautiful backsplash of varied colored tiles, but here was blank wall. The painted trompe l'oeil (the words are from French meaning to 'trick the eye') is of a flower vase and tile and grout, all painted and meant to look real, matching the tile and grout elsewhere.

The painted words, "Mi Cocina Es Su Cocina," have been here awhile, what is new and shown here is additional floral and leaf borders completely surrounding the door opening. Again, it is all just fun.






More fun: The previously white Ikea clock with its simple to read numbers got a makeover also. Additionally, some numbers with little wings, were painted, creating the visual joke which is also sometimes part of trompe l'oeil, here we could call it, "time flies."














This photo shows a painted decorative border of flowers that was also recently added. You get a glimpse of the existing beautifully colored tiles that made up 99 percent of the backsplash (except over the oven).








 
Clicky Web Analytics