Furniture Designed

New Color Combinations

Way back in January of 2009, Coco Kelley featured a guest post about new trends in wedding colors. I'm thinking back to those special color combinations, and two still seem pretty fresh and gorgeous to me. So, here are some new ideas for incorporating those gorgeous colors into a room in 2010.

Coco & Cream

Because both brown and cream are neutrals, I don't imagine anybody needs me to find a brown and a cream piece to combine, but I will suggest a velvet from Pearson textiles that combines the two in a fabulous animalistic way. The brown stripes are on an ombre background that goes from gold to cream to ivory.

 

Maitland-Smith has a gorgeous brown and white hide chair that combines animal with formal, too.

Red & Peach

A saturated red with a deeply colored peach looks rich without falling into boudoir cliches. How a delicious pair of chairs from Henredon's upholstery collection (the shane chair in peach and the charisma chair in red)?

And if that isn't enough, here's a room by Pearson that shows a Pearson sofa in peach/orange against a rich orange wall. 

 

Small Luxuries, Storage For Small Homes

There's no reason small spaces can't have the same level of elegance and design as larger homes. But it can be hard to find high-end and formal pieces scaled for small spaces.

Small spaces need plenty of storage.

Nothing makes a small space looked cramped faster than mess. So, storage to help keep tidy is a must.

The most important tip to keep in mind is to use the height of your room. Don't waste the space you've got by keeping all your storage too low to the ground. Go tall.

You might choose something with a small footprint, like the Park Avenue Tall Cabinets from Hickory Chair. A pair of these can bring some wonderful harmony into a small space. (Thanks for J. Covington Designs for pointing out these cabinets.)

Or skip the small footprint and give one entire wall over to shelves.

A Bed Of Nails

There's something romantic about nailhead trim.

You can think I'm crazy. Nailhead trim seems like such a masculine detail and "romantic" interiors are usually pretty girly.

Maybe it's that connection of manly and womanly that seems romantic.

Seriously, try doing a search for "nailhead trim" in Google books. Usually when I'm looking for Google books information about a decorative style or detail, the results are all nerdy design books. Nailhead trim shows up in romance novels.

So, I say take a little nailhead trim into the bedroom. The Candler bed from Hickory Chair (pictured right) is a nice start.

Or try Henredon's Monroe beds, which combine masculine nailheads with feminine curves and curlicues.

But look out. Too much time in that nailhead trimmed bed and you'll end up with another one of these.

Seriously, though. How awesome is that leather and nails crib? It's from one of the (newly reopened!) period rooms at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (thanks, Peak of Chic).

If you still need more of a manly nailhead trim fix, here are a few other places to look:

Tobi Fairley Loves Suzanne Kasler

Blogger/Designer Tobi Fairley recently wrote two posts about the fabulous Suzanne Kasler.

Tobi's first post about Suzanne Kasler has a bunch of great details and photos from Suzanne's new book, Inspired Interiors. I especially liked Tobi's point that Suzanne "has an inimitable way of creating 'collected' interiors by melding client’s special collections, art, antiques and custom designed pieces." Lots of ideas for combining new and old into a really polished but also comfortable space.

Tobi's second and superfun post on the subject is about some of the unique and special pieces Suzanne Kasler created for Hickory Chair.

As one commenter (Laura Jens Sisino) put it:

"Inspirational, amazing, beautiful I could go on and on. Everything this woman does I am in awe of."

No arguments here.

P.S. Habitually Chic had some great things to say about Suzanne's use of color in her show rooms for Hickory Chair at High Point Market earlier this year, too.

Computer Programming, Architecture And Furniture

On November 5 of this year, Christopher Alexander was awarded the Vincent Scully Prize. The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., established the Prize in 1999 to recognize exemplary practice, scholarship or criticism in architecture, historic preservation and urban design.

Alexander is noted for an unusual combination of accomplishments. He is known as the "father" of the pattern language movement in computer science. But he is better known as an influential architect.

Alexander's book (written with several other contributors), A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction has been hugely influential on architects and builders, although some architects have disapproved of the idea that the nuances of designing great buildings. Slate.com recently published a nice overview of Alexander's influence.

Although there are many wonderful books about furniture design, including many overviews, I don't think any have been as important and influential as Alexander's book has been to architecture. Alexander's books is useful for furniture designers and interior designers. His thoughts about sunlight, in particular, are crucial to creating a great room.

I'd love to see suggestions of books that might be the "Pattern Language" of furniture design.

We're All A-Twitter

Yesterday the fabulous Leslie Carothers answered the question Who is Furniture Brands International? in one tweet.

If you need more than 140 characters (and you're dying to take the awesome StyleFinder Quiz), visit the new Furniture Brands web site. 

And if you need lots and lots more than 140 characters (and some pretty sweet furniture), visit all our brand sites:

• Broyhill
• Drexel Heritage
• Henredon
• Hickory Chair
• Laneventure
• Maitland-Smith
• Pearson Furniture (and Pearson Textiles)
• Thomasville

Would also telling you about the Henredon blog, the Pearson Textiles blog, the Hickory Chair blog and the Facebook pages for Broyhill, Lane Furniture and Thomasville be too much? Okay then, we won't tell you.

Fine Furniture Is The Future

More than 3/4 of home furnishing shoppers are looking for quality these days, according to a recent survey by Furniture Today and HGTV. That's great news to those of us who love beautiful furniture.

Here's what a few of the people surveyed had to say:

“I’m looking for better quality products that will last longer for the price rather than cheaply-made items.”

“I’m looking for items that are very well made.”

“The economy has made me even more apt to buy quality rather than quantity.”

The rest of the survey results will appear in Furniture Today's new issue, out December 7, 2009.

A Checklist For Mixing Patterns

Mixing patterns on multiple pieces within one space can look like Holly Hobbie exploded or it can create a chic and elegant blend of great prints and textures. 

So, how do you make sure you're not heading into Holly Hobbie territory? With a handy checklist!

Is there something tying all the patterns together? (Yes? One point for chic!)

In the room from Hickory Chair in the picture to the right, it's color. The saturated blue with white repeats from pattern to pattern. You could repeat the same shape (maybe a ginkgo leaf motif?) Or you could go with a color theme like jewel tones or earth tones. But there has to be something that ties the patterns together.

Have you thought about texture as well as pattern? (Yes? That's another point towards chic.)

Don't go too crazy with both pattern and texture. It's okay, in fact it's recommended, to mix in a few different textures, but try to treat each new texture the same as you would an additional pattern. For example, choose several patterns in fabrics with similar sheen and then one velvet or chenille for some variety instead of having every pattern in a different texture.

Does the scale of your patterns vary enough? (Yes, three chic points.)

Fall High Point Premarket Scheduled

Furniture Today is reporting that the fall High Point Premarket has been scheduled for Sept. 13-14. (BTW--the spring premarket will be March 15-16.)

Here's what Furniture Today had to say about High Point Premarket:

"Held about a month before each High Point Market, premarket aims to give retailers a chance to preview major product collections, secure distribution, and strengthen relationships with key vendors and company principals, according to market officials."

3 Ideas For Historic Church Style

I used to live in a renovated, de-consecrated Catholic church in the downtown of a small Virginia town. It was one of the most beautiful and special places I've lived.

Several sites have posted in the last couple of months about a couple who have painstakingly restored a church in Northumberland in the U.K. for their home (pictured left, also here and here).

There's also a restored church home from the Netherlands and a Dutch bookstore in a former medieval church that are great examples of modern uses for historic church spaces.

Looking at these pictures and remembering my old church home got me thinking about how you could use furniture to re-create the feeling of a restored church home.

To re-create the feeling of a restored church home using furniture and accessories, you'd have to have 3 important things.

1. The right mix of old and new.

Part of what's so special about living in any historic building is that sense of the past and the present right next to each other.

To re-create the feeling of a church home, pick one very formal style from the past and one less formal style from the present and mix them together.

For example, you could choose 18-century French as your formal style and "cottage" as your more casual modern style. Both styles are a little romantic, plus the neutral colors and natural materials of cottage style would provide a fresh, calm backdrop to elegant details inspired by royal French style.

Other possible combos: gothic with arts and crafts; American colonial with shabby chic; 19th-century English with Bauhaus.

The Dutch church home pictured above has very stark, modern style. But the building itself has the gothic historic details. By including a few select pieces that have the feel of a certain historic period, you can give you space the historic feel of a church home interior.