This asian influenced rosewood sofa I found at Little Paris Antiques piqued my interest. It is a unique piece but it also has great possibilities as a DIY piece.
The sofa is based on a box frame with cushions set in. A similar piece could be constructed using one side of a set of waterbed pedestal drawers as the base. An old captain’s bed could also be salvaged for the drawer base. The back and side arms could be created with a wood frame and covered with furniture grade plywood or upholstered and padded. The seat cushion could be created using thick foam sheet available at fabric and upholstery stores. An old futon mattress could also be cut down and recovered to fit. The remaining cushions are pillow style cushions filled with sheet foam and polyfill to round them out. The brass accents could easily be recreated using pre-cut strips of hobby brass available at most hardware stores. Other brass corners and findings are also easily found at places such as Ace Hardware.
This DIY sofa would be ideal for a small apartment or other extra spaces like a family room or basement where additional storage is needed.
Restoration Hardware recently introduced some rather industrial looking offerings. The warehouse cart table, spotlight lamp and leather steamer trunk all have an arcane found objects look to them.
Find more at RestorationHardware.com
This roaring 20’s styled
bar in Baltimore’s Federal
Hill neighborhood
features magic shows
throughout the evening
(Friday & Saturday).
The stage is part of the art
deco oak bar in the main
room and a variety of 20’s
inspired drinks are on the
menu.
Find out more at their website.
illusionsmagicbar.com
Royal Steamline offers something truly
different for your wedding invitations.
The four styles of invitations could be
used for themed weddings and many
styles are suitable for more traditional
weddings. The offerings include
Steampunk, Vintage, Gothic and
Rockabilly styles.
See all of the invitations at their site.
RoyalSteamline.com
This French designer’s hotel designs are well known around Paris. His iconic style of layers, dark colors and lighting adornes many five star hotels.
What turns this style into something great rather than a design mistake is proper execution. The layers work on two or three colors done in a multiple of ways. The texture or pattern differences of each layer create the depth. One room pictured is done almost entirely in gold. The lighting, pattern and texture provide the interest. Accents such as frames, tassels or fringe are always large. Garcia uses multiple dark colors in many of his designs, even in very small rooms yet they do not appear horribly closed in.
The restrained use of furniture in the room and the attention to lighting makes the difference. In some of the smaller rooms the furniture pieces themselves are small in scale. Not all pieces of furniture are ornate and full of details while others are. The helps to focus the eye and prevents the entire room from being overwhelming. Lighting is provided from multiple sources. Ceiling light fixtures or chandeliers, wall sconces and table lamps create sufficient lighting when used together to counter the dark colors.
To see more of Jacques Garcia’s work check out these hotels.
L’hotel Paris
Hotel Bourg Tibourg Paris
Hotel Foquet’s Barriere Paris
Hotel Danieli Venice
Dark Style has made the transition to Word Press. Please remember to re-subscribe to our new rss feed here to have the newest posts delivered to your news feeds.
So far I am very happy with Word Press. The theme program currently being used I am less than thrilled with. It appeared to be a very flexible theme platform but in reality it greatly hobbled and complicated customization and the use of graphics. So you may see some minor changes to the appearance of the blog as I update it to a new custom theme.
EDIT: The new theme is now installed and working much better than the “theme program” that was creating many headaches.
The Victorians had a keen interest in nature. House plants were a novelty as were fish. A few rare examples of Victorian era fish tanks do exist. The one pictured is a reproduction of a Victorian tank based on illustrations from the era.
Other tanks look more like modern rectangular tanks. The cast iron rectangular tanks provide some ideas on how one might decorate a modern tank to make it more fitting to a room’s decor. This large image of an antique tank has great detail to work from (click here for that image).
Dover’s collection of clip art books has seen some improvements over the years. They now almost exclusively include a CD of all of the images so they are ready for use. Some of my older Dover books do not include CDs, making their use a bit tedious. Dover also began doing full color books for certain publications.
These are some of my favorites for black and white line drawings, hotlinked to Dover’s site.
Dover also carries a line of books with full color and vector images that can be resized. The Pictura series are extremely detailed and useful for even large scale projects.
Pictura includes books of design and art from most of the world’s cultures and detailed books of buterflies, flowers, insects and various art styles.
I stumbled across this image from the Milestone Hotel in London. The hotel’s conservatory is done in this striking black and white scheme. The striped draperies and black furnishings have an interesting balance to the all white room.
This pulled together style could be easily recreated for a conservatory, sun room or room with a white on white theme of woodwork and built in cabinetry. Painted or upholstered black furniture and the striped window treatments are the core design elements.
Something that makes the draperies really excel is the combination all done in the same fabric. There are roman shades, regular draperies and a double valance.
Design Toscano is carrying this unique reproduction Victorian Balloon chair. This is one reproduction you don’t see every day. It is also currently on sale.
