Decorative details - Venetian Doorway

A doorway from Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. A nice door if I ever saw one...

Timorous Beasties

I was just listening to an interview on By Design about the wallpaper and fabric designers called "Timorous Beasties". You can download the interview here. I looked them up and had to share their designs with you all. Absolutely beautiful illustrations. But I also like the way that they create new variations on old themes. In particular the toiles, see the London Toile below, which eschews the usual chinoiserie buildings and shepherds and shepherdesses and instead includes shady characters and modern architecture from the streets of London. Apparently they have a Sydney Toile planned. As you stare at them more and more details emerge, which is what I think wallpaper is all about after all. Something to gaze at first for the rhythmn of a the repeated pattern and the richness of colour, and then as you look for longer small details and even a type of narrative begin to emerge.

The designers are featured in an exhibit at the Melbourne Exhibition centre for the State of Design Festival. More information here.

It will be a long time before I have my own place to wallpaper willy nilly but in the meantime I can wallpaper my blog instead. All images come via the Timorous Beasties website.

London Toile

Napoleon (though as a keen scholar of Baroque Rome this says Barberini to me!)

Devil (I love the idea of having this on the wall and as you stare at it the Devil emerges, maybe not for a bedroom though...)

Branch Out

Bloody Hell

Oh look someone made a building out of a doily! Clever.

A design for the Polish pavilion for the 2010 Polish Expo by WWA architects. Despite my facetiousness I actually think the building is beautiful. The intricate patterning on the wraparound façade (that sounds like a contradiction in terms but seems to be the best description) is based on a folk-art paper cut-out. But I'm not really that concerned with the cultural significance, I am more excited by the dedication to decorative detail as a central aspect of the buildings exterior. Also the consistency of the motif rather than splashes of colour, mixed with pattern mixed with wood mixed with shiny mixed with everything else. Found via archdaily.

Image via archdaily.

Decorative Details - Doorway

I like collecting decorative details on buildings with my camera. I get especially excited when I notice one that had previously passed me by as it was with this magnificent doorway on Flinders Lane in Melbourne. The National Trust tells us that the building was built in 1901 for Robert Reid and Co as a warehouse and showroom. It was designed by Bates Peebles and Smart. The doorway has a sort of 'pared back till it is almost invisible' classicism. The long vertical grooves set with geometric rosettes suggest pilasters. The central 'keystone' has been transformed into a sort scroll tablet. I think you can see elements of mannerism in the way that classical forms are being played around with (as I suggested in a recent post about a doorway in Fitzroy) as well as the elegant elongation and simplification of classical forms which looks forward to the architecture of the Art Deco period.