"Real" vs. "Kitsch"

As you know, I'm constantly trying to define my style, hone my skills & figure out what works & what doesn't work in spaces. Well, a concept I often think about is real or authentic design, art & accessories. vs. what make something kitsch or scripted or forced or "decorated."

I used to be THE culprit of kitsch when I started out. I wanted my college apartment bedroom to feel like a conservatory, so up went a huge painting of a conservatory & palms & a whole dollar store's worth of fake flowers along with it. eesh (I've mentioned this room before & still haven't found a picture of it- my albums are in storage!)

Anyway, since kitsch is often one of the easiest & cheapest things to do and one of the most readily available, we see it a lot in real life. Picture the person who wants their house to feel like a farmhouse so they buy farmhouse dinnerware:

When instead they could do something more authentic, like this home from Country Living, below:

Using materials & details that would possibly be used in a true farmhouse make this space authentic. The cow print is a fun playful addition to the room & it's not trying to be anything more than it is. The white ironstone is appropriate & beautiful.

Or picture the person who wants a Tuscan-feeling kitchen & fills it with an unusable amount of bottles of oil in the kitchen,

or dishcloths with winebottles on them, wine bottle artwork and throw in a mass-produced Tuscan scene or two. Now I do not mean to judge here, merely to get us thinking. I have been the culprit of this many a time. I think it's a really easy way of designing to get into for the inexperienced & I've SO been there. (how do you think I can describe this room so perectly?! ;)

But the interesting thing is how to figure out how we can evolve out of it, to figure out ways to create the spaces we desire without being inauthentic. To really evolve & become better. I like this styled buffet from Pottery Barn, below. It gives the Tuscan feeling without being as obvious:

Why show a picture of a bottle of wine with no intrinsic artistic value when you can simply have a wine rack? (This isn't to say that I think art with wine in it can't be beautiful, because I've actually very recently seen some amazing art with wine bottles in it) And, why have a picture of a potted palm when you can just head to Home Depot & grab a real one? (yeah, I know, you have to keep it alive ;) And I'm not talking about botanical prints of palms (which I love & I do think of as authentic), I'm talking about the early 90s looking artwork:

If you have stuff like this home, don't feel bad. Just maybe take a minute to reevaluate it. Ask yourself if you actually love the piece or if you just picked it up because it was inexpensive & came in 4' by 3' & fit the "theme" and in the blank space above the sofa. If those are your reasons, I'd say ditch it. If you actually look at it & do love it, then work with it. Thomas Kinkade (below) is one of America's top-selling painters & his name is also one of the first that pops up when you google "kitsch art." A lot of people love his work & the happy feeling it gives them. I say that if you really love something even if it is considered inauthentic, then keep it. If you love it, it's authentic to you.

I also do think it's possible to be ok with certain aspects of kitsch. For example, check out this space in decorator Kirsten Hollister's kitchen (below image from turquoisechic.com) where she uses a bunch of kitschy little paintings of flowers & groups them together casually, irreverently & has fun with them. She's using them for the pops of color & fun they add to the room and it's not displayed as precious art:

And I totally have a thing for really cheap old paintings of landscapes, boats, people & the water. I get them for around $5- $30 & I absolutely love them. I know they're not great art and are considered kitsch, but something about them makes me happy. I think the key is to just display them casually or en masse. The way you display art says a lot about it. (Is it lit up & in a $400 frame? Then that baby better be art in your eyes!) Image below from interiordec.about.com:

Here's a $5 cheapie I love (below) that I have on my mom's mantle right now. It's just causually leaning there & it's not a permanent fixture. It doesn't speak to me in any profound way, it simply added the color & feeling I was on the mood for in the room. It's more to create atmosphere than to be gazed upon as a work of art.

On this road also comes the fabric question. There are those who say that flowers belong in vases & not on fabrics. I really do see the logic & realness to this idea, but I'm still not there yet. I still love a pretty floral on a pillow or blanket. (I'll write more on this later)

One thing I am learning through all of this is that I don't believe in absolutes when it comes to design. Make your rules, but if something comes along & doesn't jive with your rules & you're okay with that, break 'em! I just think it's important to be aware of why you're making certain decisions & to be aware of why you're breaking the rules.

("They're more like guidelines anyway." ;)

The Washington Post Santa!!

I wanted to thank Terri Sapienza so much for putting Pure Style Home on Blogwatch today in the Washington Post!! (For the recent post on my client's dressing room, 2 posts down.)

I was just sitting down for breakfast & opened up the Home Section to Blogwatch & was so shocked to see it on there!!! I started yelling because I was so excited & totally freaked my husband out because he thought something had happened with the baby. oops!

Anyway, it's like Christmas morning for design bloggers & Terri, thank you so much for being Santa! (Do you know how exciting this is for us?!!) I really appreciate it & can't tell you how great it was to call my grandparents & have them open up the paper to H2. ;)

ps- my dad read this post & was like, "I think you should tone down your excitement." Come on dad, do you know me?!!

House Love: Rice Cottage

I know I say this a lot, but I LOVE this house:


[Please forgive my limited use of vocabulary in this post which consists mainly of: "love," "perfect," and "beautiful."] The living room has almost all of the elements that I love: natural elements, (the linen!!) the color scheme, the something pretty, the sculptural table, it's light & airy & relaxing, comfortable, it's got an amazing mix of fursnighings & styles, the texture = I LOVE IT. :)


It belongs to Diane & Jay Speakman & is located ont he coast of Maine. They recently turned it into a seasonal rental cottage.

The wallpaper is beautiful & timeless. (And how great does the painted white mirror look against it? = So easy to do with a cheap flea market find... I'm considering this for my bathroom.) Below, I'm loving the rough natural stones against the ornate lines of the mirror & candlesticks:

This image below is perfection to me: White, wood, nature, light & airy. And I think drop-leaf tables just add so much interest & age to a space. (And I'm going to pretend they just found those moose horns, ok?)

Here's the lucky lady, Diane, enjoying her kitchen:

Oh wow. (below) You know I can't get over the fern on that table in the gorgeous glass vases. Again, I love everything about this space. All the white stoneware against the wood of the hutch... Then mixed with all the white & against the pale blue of the kitchen!!! = perfection

Here's the eat-in kitchen (below) & while I think it's really pretty, I'm not AS obsessed with it as I am with the main living & dining areas of the house. It's missing some of the rawness & layers that's in the other rooms. It feels more "cute" to me than the other spaces but I'd still take it! (Maybe pull off the table cloth to reveal rough wood & switch out the white shades of the chandelier with burlap ones?? Get some contrasting hardware on the cabinets?? I'm only picking this room apart because of the sheer perfection of the other rooms in my opinion. Normally I'd never do this to such a pretty room! ;)

The bedroom below is the perfect coastal getaway bedroom. The roman shades & striped pillow add just the right amount of color into the space to keep it relaxing & totally vacation-feeling. (a word?? ;) I also love how the silver accents to kick it up a notch:

And here's the kids' bedroom. It has more of that sweetpea feeling that the kitchen table did. It feels so clean & pretty & I'd love to tuck little ones in here at night on my vacation!

On another note, we have a snow day today!!! (My husband's a teacher so it's a big treat!!) We took Christian (our year & a half year old out in the snow for the first time yesterday & it was so great- especially when we showed him he could eat it too!!!)

photos by Keller + Keller

Enjoy your day!!

xoxo,

lauren

Pure Style: Dressing Room

A dressing room: one of the ultimate luxuries. A client of mine came to me with the idea to change a spare room of hers into her very own dressing room and that's what we did.



She loves to shop & attends all kinds of parties & galas and has the most beautiful collection of ball gowns & cocktail dresses!!! Her shoe collection is amazing. The problem was she has nowhere to store her ever-growing collection of clothing. She used to keep her things in the guest bedroom (the guest bedroom I just recently showed pictures of), but that closet wan't big enough & we demo'd it for the bathroom renovation. So, the spare bedroom was the perfect solution.

Here is the room before: an office/ workout room/ catch-all. With her crazy-busy schedule, she was unable to get a handle on the room.

Here is her mother's adorable vintage tufted chair in need of some TLC:

My client requested an organized space that felt traditional & luxurious with some earthy elements. Nothing too feminine, but a space with just a touch of with subtle glamour. And, finally (below) here are some shots of the finished room:

(The colors are a little off in the pics- sorry!) I had the chair reupholstered in a green nubby fabric very similar to the original pink fabric but with a little metallic sheen. We did that walls in a faux-linen finish with a subtle gold sheen again emphasizing that natural-glam feeling. The custom cabinetry houses dresses & hanging items in the cabinets above & shoes in the drawers below.

And, below, you can see again that combination of natural & elegant in the juxtaposition of the natural shades with the silk Greek Key draperies:

And against the rough wooden mirror too:

Below, a celabratory glass of wine for the completion of the project!! (I thought it looked too perfect on the stool with her tiger striped heels!)

A here's a pic of a great little exposed shelf in the corner of the room for purses:

We went with oil rubbed bronze fixtures & hardware & the shots of black really added some needed contrast to the calm tone-on-tone space.

My client found all these great prints on Ebay (below) & Iwe had them framed in a series of gold frames. (I was so proud of the hanging job: we did it as a team & the laser-level is key!!!) The glass bubble lamp from Currey & Co is topped with a linen shade & sits on a cool transitional pedestal table.

Below is a picture of my awesome & very happy client. She's worked so hard for & waited a long time for this dressing room & she totally deserves it!!!

One last picture: (I'm definitely a little envious of how organized & functional the space is!! my closet is jam-packed! ;)

Soon-to-come will be finished pictures of her guest bath, master bed & bath & living room. (Our original project definitely grew!! :)

Florida Flea Market

This antique Chinese console at the 2007 San Francisco showhouse was dressed up by Suzanne Tucker of Tucker & Marks. If you'll remember, it's from that same "Neautrals" issue of House Beautiful that we all loved so much. Of course this vignette totally jumped out at me because I loved all the white, the mix of the rough antique Chinese altar table & the refined brass dolphin hurricanes, the cement spheres (we know how much I love to decorate with balls), the greenery, the modern element of the charcoal print and finally the adorable white frog planters.

The frogs really made this table for me. They add that little quirky element I love. Anyway, since I saw this image I never really got them out of my head & look what I found this weekend at a flea market in Florida!!!!:

There was only one & he was $4 and the first purchase of the day! Below, I cleaned him up & thought he would make a great little addition to the kitchen to put herb cuttings from the garden in. He could just stay under the sink & come out for fresh herbs.



I also found some other copycat items at this crazy Swap Shop Flea Market in Fort Lauderdale, which is huge:

The furnishings & home accessories seemed to be few & far between to me but I still had some luck. Check out all the goodies:

Do you remember the lion print from Lucketts? (Below):

Well look what I found for $2.50!!

And check out this beautiful drop-leaf table! If had been near home, this baby would be mine!

Below, I found this crazy vintage chandelier for only $8!!

I didn't really have a place for it so I gave it to my cousin & suggested she put it over her bed. She has promised to send me after pictures so I'll post them when I get them :)

And I had to have this great little chrome stool for $8. I sent it home with my dad (who had his SUV) to Illinois to go in our lake house, I think in my bedroom there :) I'll be reupholstering it & will post 'afters' on the whole room when I've finished it. (almost!!!) I think it would be a great with a tray on it for drinks, books, or at the foot of the bed for luggage &/or a pretty throw.

I thought this china was really beautiful. I didn't ask for the price & I totally forgot who makes it (sorry Eddie! :) but isn't it just really special? (haha it's hard to keep coming up with adjectives for pretty & beautiful when you're blogging!! ;) The blue was so gorgeous though.

And finally at the end we got our coconuts!! (Christian, of course, was fast asleep under his blanket in the stroller- Momma trained him well!- so he's not in the picture ;) My husband, Dave, loves these & drank 2 himself.