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Design is not about perfection. It's about meaning.
We build
our homes—with our lives—over time. They
don’t just poof, come together, like some magical HGTV home show. The vase you see when you walk through my
front door came from a boutique I fell in love with in Albuquerque on a fun
trip with my husband, then boyfriend. I delivered my first original research on that trip. The top of the vase is cracked because the wind blew it
over while we were trying to load it in the back seat of my BMW coupe. Oh how I loved that car. Oh how I fretted over that vase. It’s glued back together now, and I see a
memory.
We find ways to incorporate our memories into our homes, and
that’s the real meaning of design. The
problem may be that those vases or those knick-knacks we pick up along our journey don’t always look so good
when displayed. But with the
right eye, and the right surrounding elements, sometimes they can all come
together beautifully so that when you look over on a shelf, a wall, or a
dresser, you’re comforted with what you see.
It’s about collection, not about cheap, made-in-China/Taiwan/Whatever
fillers from discount stores.
A few years ago, I went through a design cleanse in which I
boxed up and got rid of all the meaningless decorative pieces I had been
hoarding. I went through a phase of squirreling
items from Ross while building my first household with my husband. The goal was fill, not collect, discern, or
cherish. It was a hurried, yet fun,
effort, but the things I wound up with were just that—things. They were empty. During my quality over quantity baptism, I
made a pact to stay true to my journey when building my home and allow it to come
together over the years. The 1950s
orange and black swirled glass vase stays.
The chintzy orange birdcage I Ross-bought for a vignette goes.
When I was deliberating over outing a Thomasville table in
my kitchen that I didn’t think fit with my style, my mother-in-law told me that
she thought my home was all about “well-made items,” and that it “fit my style
perfectly for that." Ahh, a MIL complement. It’s true. I’m about craftsmanship now. I have even gone so far as to get rid of
inexpensive upholstered furniture whose legs start to wobble in the first
year. I’m replacing those
pieces—slowly—with older ones that I find on consignment or estate sales and
recover. These will be with me forever,
or as long as I want them to. They are
not disposable like so many things in our lives are now.
My latest victim: a Queen Anne’s chair I picked up at a
consignment store while on a road trip getaway with my husband in
Scottsdale--our first since the birth of our 14-month-old son. I talked the price down to
a whopping $64, and at the time, I thought it was a re-make, but I saw such
craftsmanship in the frame and the upholstery job. The white fabric was stained (hence, the
price), but I figured that the upholstery was in such great shape that I would
figure out something.
My mom suggested—aren’t mom’s great?—that I look at buying
fabric paint, and come up with a design to cover the stains. I started looking at images of painted
chairs. I found a few that I liked, but
only a few.
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| From Apartment Therapy |
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www.jenniferrizzo.com  |
I’m sure I’ll be wincing in fear on the first
few brushstrokes.
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| Found on easy.com |
Now this, of course, is more my style.
1st Photo of Gold Gilded Chair with Painted Fabric:
Chair Painted by Benice Horowitz: Roderick Shade
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