Help save an Oakland treasure!

Posted on | February 10, 2012 | No Comments

Our fellow Artistic License Guild member, Jane Powell, has been fighting cancer for several years and is now in a battle to save her historic Oakland Arts & Crafts home.  Please read more about the fund raiser, (being held, by the way, at her historic and spectacular Sunset House) at the Artistic License Blog.  Spread the word!

 

Category: Arts & Crafts, Events
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Morris textile conservation

Posted on | January 24, 2012 | No Comments

I found this article pretty amazing!  In preparation for The Cult of Beauty Exhibit, soon to open at the San Francisco Legion of Honor (February 18 – June 17, 2012) this article outlines the conservation and cleaning process involved with the William Morris Bird wall hanging.

Bird wall hanging, 1878

What a transformation!  Can’t wait to see it firsthand at the Exhibit!

Category: Events, Textiles, Victorian
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Creating an Art Deco interior

Posted on | September 2, 2011 | 10 Comments

When you’re thinking about decorating in the Art Deco style, the best thing I can recommend is to look at the best of the original ideas that ultimately inspired the many “knock off” ideas you will see when doing an internet search on the subject.  I am illustrating some beautiful original (albeit idealized) interiors to study, all of them French and photographed at the pivotal 1925 Paris exposition. In these you will see so many of the details that inspired much of the architecture, interior and furniture design that we have come to recognize decades later as being “Art Deco”.  Hopefully these photographs will help you to find some of the key ingredients you can use to “spin off” of in creating your fantasy Jazz Age interior.

Clean lines, reflective surfaces, and some bold design elements like the rug here are often found in these original Art Deco-styled settings.  Sconce lighting, wall mirrors and elegant sculptural figures are also frequent elements.

Again, these rooms were meant to inspire and to present the latest ideas when it came to Modern interior design, so don’t feel bad if you don’t have a grand entry way like this one… But there is some good inspiration here.  The mirrored wall, the console table against it, and that coved and “stepped” ceiling might all be incorporated in an Art Deco room design.  Note Edgar Brandt’s iron masterpiece L’Oasis folding screen there on the right… so why not incorporate an ornamental folding screen in your room also?

You almost expect Claudette Colbert to walk into this room at any moment.  Light and graceful furniture, rich wall treatments and lots of filtered light in this room.  Maybe you’re noticing too that not all Art Deco rooms were devoid of pattern or ornament. That is where designers in the Art Deco style in many applications parted company with some of those in the Modern movement who believed that “Ornament is crime”, (it’s not, by the way).

Oh, and speaking of ornament,

Bam! How about this grand “stair hall” designed by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann.  Fluted walls, delicate iron railings and a playing of dark and light contrasts, (even on the piano keys).  And that amazing ceiling treatment!  Here’s a detail of the wall treatment hard to see in that last photo:

This wall treatment incidentally was the inspiration for our “Cyclos” wallpaper.  Notice too the sandblasted pattern above the window(?)

So there are just a few sources for Art Deco inspiration.  I will be posting more, along with some contemporary takes on the style, so please stay tuned.

If you have any great Art Deco rooms you’ve seen please send a snap of them along to info@bradbury.com and we’ll share them.

Category: Art Deco
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RetroRenovation featured in the Times

Posted on | August 19, 2011 | No Comments

Our fellow home restoration friend in the blogosphere, Pam Kueber, received a great plug in the New York Times Home & Garden section.

Read all about it!

Great job Pam and congratulations!

Category: Atomic Age, Events, Mod Generation
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