Posts from the ‘object’ Category
French 1940’s bar stools, beautiful green leather and details with cerused oak. At Orange in Los Angeles
This set of 4 chairs was nice find for a LA client’s apartment. I love the taper of the leg and the subtle curve at the back.
Yesterday, I went a second time to look at these table and chairs at the Alliance for African Assitance Thrift Store on El Cajon in San Diego. I thought I would buy them but when I went to see them again, I decided to pass. They do hold a certain interest. They have the same chromed frame as the Italian black leather folding chairs that I used to have, which is perhaps why I thought they were leather, but they are not. After a bit of considering I passed as there is really too much to do to make it into something, new seat covers, chromed, and repolished glass edges and even after the work I felt that they would be not quite there. I do still like them, maybe I’ll go back. 
San Juan Capistrano is a charming stop on the train from San Diego to Los Angeles. There is a antiques place on the main road that a dealer friend of mine would describe as being full of brown antiques .
I did like these Italian tole sconces. As I stood there looking at them, I found them most agreeable. I would quite like to see them electrified with with bright acid yellow silk shades on either side of a mirror in a powder room. It seems that as design goes, most people are too concerned with being careful, trying to make the tasteful choice or doing what they think is right–but style, as they say, takes commitment.
My good friend Isabella got so bothered by the designers she worked with that she started leaving out Christmas ornaments in depression era bowls on sidetables all year round. As if she forgot to put all the decorations away. She left the oddly muted orange painted wall in her living room and her collection of mismatched jars and vases grew as well as her piles of books and book shelves. Her bedroom became her own little haven where she painted the walls mauve and left her bird’s cage sitting on top of a high bookshelf after he had gone as a memento. The last I saw it there was Victorian embroidered dressing screen shoved in the corner barely hiding a file cabinet with a pashmina draped over her desk. Her husband, an avid squash player, collected vintage rackets which were displayed down her meandering hallway on a blueish gray wall.
Designers design but not many create. Isabella’s contrary approach created something quite wonderful which was for her natural and well styled, but of course not for everyone, which is really the point.
Mohair I love, but it is somewhat misspent on these chairs. The carving and the Ram’s head already gives interest which goes a long way. The heavy color and texture of the fabric really isn’t needed. A fabric in a lighter color or just in weight would give this chair a new presence. Encyclopedia Mythica tells us that the Ram is the symbol of the Egyptian god, Amun meaning the hidden one as a driving force of the invisible breeze. The original god of wind and ruler of the air; he is shown as a ram, as a man with a ram’s head or with a beard and a feathered crown. The temples dedicated to him are situated near modern day Luxor which was the inspiration, I suppose, for the Luxor Hotel.
The Egyptians seem to be have fond of the Ram as there are also several ram-gods. Cherti, the Ferryman of the Dead whose name means the lower one who had a head of a ram and a body of a man. Also, Chnum the Ram-God who made the Nile fertile.
Then there is the Greek Pelias who sent Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece, and when Jason returned with it, he wouldn’t give up his throne, so Medea told Pelias’ daughters that she could make an old ram into a young ram. She cut up an old ram and threw them into a cauldron boiled them up and out jumped a young ram. The daughters then went into their father’s room cut him up in tiny pieces and took the pieces to Medea for boiling, which resulted in a smelly stew and that was the end of that. As my Greek Mythology Professor used to say, “Are they depraved because they are deprived or are they deprived because they are depraved?” See Encyclopedia Mythica for further details.
If for whatever reason, one wouldn’t want to reupholster these chairs, (just do it, for God sakes, they are ugly) I would at the least replace the white gimp with something that would diminish the transition from wood to fabric as the white overpowers the carving detail. Samuel & Sons for passementerie. -Center 44, NYC.
The drops at the bottom look like bits of sea glass. Cast iron body with small disc shelves around the interior as candle holders. Glass beads at top. I like its naive yet sophisticated look. Solana Beach.
The taupe colored chair I came across on the Bowery. It was sitting in the doorway of a lighting store. I couldn’t decide if it was being thrown out or if it was waiting to be pulled out in the morning for someone to sit–but I took the photo for future inspriation. It’s a pared down version of the french type. The second, fanciful Victorian–scallop inspired back, I can see on a patio under a canopy of bougainvillea in San Juan Capistrano, with me sipping on a Pimm’s Cup waiting for summer.
If you happen to find yourself in NYC go to the Bowery Hotel. The bar off the lobby–one is transported to San Simeon, Hearst Castle, in all it’s antediluvian splendor–the cocktail waitress told us, used to be a gas station.
