Building A Room Around A Vintage Find
Rooms often come together more easily when there is one object to respond to. Vintage is particularly good at providing that starting point because an older piece usually arrives with its own colour, surface and personality already established. Once that is in place, the rest of the decisions become more specific.
A timber finish can echo one of its darker tones. A textile can pick up a colour in the glaze. A lamp can soften its shape.
Today, I’m starting with one of the more sculptural pieces currently at Smooth Decorator.
The starting point
The stepped crescent form and iridescent surface shift between silver, petrol blue, green and gold depending on the light. It already contains enough colour and texture to suggest most of the room around it. I would place it somewhere with a little space around it, ideally on a side table or low cabinet where the lustre can catch daylight or lamplight.
Build around it: dark wood
A darker timber gives the pale, metallic ceramic more definition.
The stained birch, rippled top and brass-effect handles give the piece enough traditional detail to sit comfortably with vintage objects, while the dark finish provides a strong background for the lustreware.
Add warm light
Because lustre changes with the light around it, a nearby lamp becomes part of how the object is seen.
The antiqued brass base and dark green scalloped velvet shade pick up the warmer and greener tones in the sculpture, while the softer light would make the glaze especially effective in the evening.
The base picks up the warmer metallic tones in the lustreware, while the deep blue velvet shade relates to its petrol-blue surface. The gold-toned lining should also give the nearby ceramic a warmer light in the evening, when the iridescent glaze becomes particularly effective.
Introduce one deep textile
A jewel-toned textile works well here because the ceramic already contains several saturated colours.
The dark green and burgundy options both sit comfortably with the petrol, gold and iridescent tones of the sculpture, and the long bolster shape gives the room a slightly more decorative silhouette.
Bring in something personal
A small frame gives the arrangement a more domestic note and stops the sculpture becoming too much of a display piece.
Pottery Barn Sedona Frame - £49+
The warm brass finish and clean profile relate to the metallic tones in the ceramic without competing with its iridescent surface. Its organic shape also gives the arrangement a more personal detail.
Ground it with pattern
A rug can carry several of the room’s colours without making any one of them feel too deliberate.
Hug Rug Midnight Paisley Eco-Washable Rug - £205.99+Its dark blue, green, rust and cream Persian-inspired pattern gathers together several of the colours already present in the lustreware, giving the room a richer foundation without making any single shade feel too deliberate.
The finished room would have dark wood, deep green, warm brass, a little pattern and a mixture of smooth and tactile surfaces. All of those choices come directly from qualities already present in the original vintage piece.
That is why starting with something old can make decorating easier. Instead of choosing a room and finding an object to fit it, you allow the object to give you a set of clues.
Every Sunday’s Smooth Decorator drop gives us new objects to work from.
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