Gilt by Association

"Gilt by association" was a phrase my mentor, the late, famous Ray Staples repeated often, swore by, and used in most if not all of her Interior Designs.  This was long before the term "mash-up" came into common usage, and, as a concept, makes a lot more sense.   It is also much more readily understood.

The idea is simply this: one or two or more, if you are very lucky, items of high quality in your room will elevate the rest of your more ordinary pieces.

In this simple dining-living plan, two Mid-Century Modern, black vinyl chairs, true gems, elevate the status of this whole dining area.  The trestle table is actual vintage Ikea, discovered in a second-hand furniture store and no longer available!  Who knew?

To supplement this table for dinner guests, mass-produced (dare we say Ikea twice?), stackable, inexpensive but colourful chairs may be used.  This surface can also function as an appetizer or buffet table for larger parties, or alternatively, as a work surface when needed.  Its glass surface takes up little visible space in the area.

Here are another two Mid-Century Modern finds, solid-maple bar stools, which, refinished, again upscale the look of the breakfast bar in the same open-plan room.   

The living room furniture itself is nothing to write home about.  The slightly out-of-date, grey corduroy sofa was sourced on Kijiji, and the vintage chair and plain coffee table (again, refinished) were actual found objects.  Some colourful Indian pillows dress the sofa and chair up.  The neutral area rug defines this space.

Finally, the very small balcony which faces a brick wall - therefore no need for privacy curtains - is dressed up significantly by some charming French-bistro-style wrought-iron chairs and a small matching table. 

As my Interior Design clearly shows here, some of the most mundane pieces of furniture may be used, and your room will be elevated to star status when you use Ray Staples' principle, appropriated with great appreciation by me, of "gilt by association."

My Moroccan Influence - Yves Saint Laurent

More-is-more sums up my  Moroccan influence - pattern against pattern, hand-done embroidery and vibrant colour.  A single photo of the late Yves Saint Laurent, seated, with his muse, actress Catherine Deneuve standing beside him became my inspiration for a new interior.  This particular photo I came across was taken at Saint Laurent's vacation home in Morocco, and in it he was completely surrounded by lush fabrics and large, intricately-patterned pillows.

I had a big problem though, I thought.  The ceiling in this home had been treated with an ugly, frothy, white stucco, and I wanted to cover it.  I did this by creating a tent of blue-and-black-striped fabric, gathered and loosely draped over sturdy bamboo poles.  With the old brass light fixture hanging through to light up the sheen of the fabric, it resembled the night sky.

I had a footstool upholstered with a family heirloom piece of needlework. Then I covered the accompanying, but not matching bergere, with a fabric in the same colours, but repeating the geometric elements in the room.

 

The take-off point for my theme had actually been an antique, Indian, ivory-inlaid chess table, bought at auction years before.  The bright blue, cream, red and pink kilim it rests on repeats the grid pattern of the chess table itself.
On the sofa is a collection of hand-embroidered, woven or crocheted pillows, each telling a story of its own.

The dining room fixture cannot strictly be called Moroccan, but its 3 gilt, wood, carved arms ending in gold-coloured glass shades with bulbs that resemble flower stamens adds an exotic feel to the bright red dining room walls.

Yves Saint Laurent found beauty and inspiration in Morocco, and here is where he was most relaxed and happy in his vacation home with his partner, Pierre Berge.

Yes, more-is-more can be beautifully done.  It is important, however, to go to the opposite end of the spectrum in pattern when using similar or same colours - too close, or not far enough won't work.  But when done right, you will retain a feeling of calm and harmony because overall, the composition will show congruency.

Marsala: Pantone's Colour of the Year 2015

Marsala is a complex colour, a brown-red, often with undertones of blue.  Pantone has named Marsala "The Colour of 2015," and it is a huge departure from the pure hues that have been and still are in fashion.  Take a look at the new work being produced by young artists today, and compositions in saturated colours are the norm.

In the 80's we were using complex colour.  I, more than almost anyone, used it on all the walls, especially in older or historical homes.  You will find it extremely difficult today to use a pure hue on more than one wall.

In this kitchen pantry I designed in the late 80's, a grey-green laminate on the pantry doors and matching floor tiles set off the Marsala of the kitchen walls.  Grey-green is not a pure hue either.

These are 3 colours I have chosen from Benjamin Moore's Historical Collection.  From top to bottom, they are named "Whipple Blue," "New London Burgundy," and "Louisburg Green." 

"New London Burgundy' is another name for Marsala. 

As you can see the other 2 colours contrast with it in a pleasing way.  "Louisburg Green" is like the green I used for my kitchen pantry.

But the main point is: all 3 of these colours are not pure hues, but complex colour mixes.





The top colour here is again Marsala or "New London Burgundy," but it will complement rather than contrast with (as the colours above) "Georgian Brick." Again, both are from Benjamin Moore's Historical Collection, and they are complex colours, not pure hues.

I have used this brick colour on the walls of this solarium, again with light, grey-green floor tiles.






It's my prediction that, because artists will continue to use pure or saturated colours for some time to come, there will be confusion and some sort of disconnect when Interior Designers attempt to begin using Marsala.  The result of this will likely be that you will see many variation of "Marsala," some "purer" or less complex than others. 

This is a small room in Le Chateau de Digoine, a manor and national heritage site in the style of the ancien regime, situated in southern Burgundy, France.  As you can clearly see, the more pure hue of the burgundy or magenta on the chair is matched in clarity by the light aqua of the panelled walls. (Architectural Digest - December 2014)

So the principal is simply this: create colour groupings that share the same strength or saturation, or clarity of colour.  Here, and as in my first picture of my kitchen pantry and wall behind, a wonderful effect can be created by using a tint opposite on the colour wheel to your more intense colour.  But if you do this, the colours must share the same complexity of colour or, on the other hand, purity of hue.

Tonight I'm going to the Opening Party of the Artist Project, a huge, indoor art exhibition at Exhibition Place, Toronto.  I plan to wear my new draped, Marsala dress from H & M.  I'll take my Nikon too, and hopefully have some good pics to show!

My "drop" of colour celebrates Black History Month

My mother and the generations before her preferred to emphasize their English ancestry, and then their Scottish.  There's plenty of both.

My mother herself was a brilliant woman and constant reader, but without what I would call an education in "critical thinking." She read historical novels and believed she knew history by piecing together facts from here and there, not infrequently mixing fact with fiction.

Perhaps unfortunately for her, I inherited her mind, yet I had the opportunity to go to university where I was taught to think more rationally.

Mom told me often when I was a child that the reason her Grandmother Sarah's skin was brown was because the Spanish Armada were shipwrecked off the coast of Devon.  Now, wait a minute, I would think.  Why is she bothering to even bring this up and then to give me a reason?  I wasn't asking.

As an adult I learned that this famous shipwreck happened in 1588.  As an explanation for my Great-grandmother's brown skin colour, it's far-fetched, to say the least.  But long before this time, I was putting 2 and 2 together whenever I found facts concerning the Underground Railroad to Canada.  The people I've met, the books I've read are too many to talk about here.  But below is a picture of my Great-grandmother with my Grandmother's eldest child,


and this is the black cameo she is wearing in her formal portrait.  I wear it today.  My great-grandmother was clearly marrying white, although she had to choose an alcoholic husband to do it.














The telling details of who she was are to be found without much difficulty by reading between the lines of my mother's family ancestry document.  Sarah's father, Arthur Parsons, arrived in Port Hope, Ontario with his wife and 8 children in 1847.  The Parsons came from Devon, England.  (Remember the Armada story?)   If Arthur's English wife were really Sarah's mother - and she looks not a bit like her, but instead has the stern, tight-lipped look of an Englishwoman - then she would have given birth to Sarah at the age of 48.  Highly dubious, I should say.

But most telling of all is the Probate of Arthur Parsons where he leaves everything he has to his 8 English children, but nothing at all to Sarah.

The will shows that Sarah was not seen as legitimate.

Sarah was very skilled at needlework, and I like to think that her work tells a tale.  Sarah favoured the more African zigzag in her early work, each monogrammed with a family last name initial.

But she also sewed a most delicately-lace-trimmed handkerchief for herself when she became a young bride, perhaps legitimizing her English status as the wife of blue-eyed Englishman, Richard Bellamy.

 

This geometric cut-work linen tablecloth is my favourite piece of all that I have that has survived.  It has a different aesthetic altogether.

 

 

 

Yet here is a delicate lace trimmed handkerchief embroidered by Sarah with African violets, as they were called.  You don't see these tiny, furry-leafed flowering plants much these days, but in my Grandmother's day their small purple blooms provided welcome winter colour.

 

 

Finally, here is Sarah's family portrait with her English husband and 5 surviving children.  Sarah, the Mother, takes pride of place in the centre of this formal group.  On the right-hand side are the 2 boys, the younger girls are to the left.  Each child has some trait she or he clearly inherits from Sarah.  Just in case you're wondering about my own tale, since you have seen how Celtic I look, my grandmother is the little girl in the middle, the most English-looking of them all. 

 

 

This photo is just a black-and-white reproduction, and so the original sepia tones have been lost.

 

"Doesn't it make sense that after 400 years of living on the same continent, in the same cities, in the same neighbourhoods...that we're all having children that are ...both one thing and "the other?"

Further Discoveries re my Celtic Heritage

I want to wrap up this portion of my blog posts here, if only to avoid straying too far from its original theme of my own work as an Interior Designer, and all forms of art and architecture relating to it.  But, after all, there really are only 6 degrees of separation between all things.

I mentioned in my blog on Scottish Stone Masons my paternal grandfather, William R. Dewson.  His life was full of more sorrow than I could have imagined.  I have recently learned even more about it on Ancestry.  I already knew a great deal because when my father died, he left detailed family photo albums of early family history, as well as his own hand-written stories.

As the eldest son, my grandfather, William Dawson, left a life of great family turbulence and poverty to board a ship called the "Sarnia" from the major port of Liverpool, near his home in Lancaster.  He was just 11 years old!

He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

He next can be found in Ontario, working as a labourer, a single man in his 20's.  He had, by then, changed his family name from Dawson to Dewson.  Then, the lure of Western Canada led him to make his way there where free homesteads of 100 acres were being offered by the Crown.  He settled near Colgate, Saskatchewan, a young man with no knowledge of farming whatsoever.  Here is where my Dad's detailed oral history (which I have in abundance) picks up.

Long story short, William died in a fierce December blizzard when my father was just 7 years old.  My father and his 5 siblings were sent to The Oddfellows Home, an orphanage run by the Freemasons, whom I mentioned in my earlier blog about Scottish Stone Masons.  The farm was sold to pay for their keep.

My father's mother, Myrtle Rae Reid had died shortly before of "scarlet fever" which we now know as a bacterial infection beginning as strep throat.  Her death must have been excruciatingly painful, and both of Dad's parents died in the same year during the icy grip of a prairie winter.

The loss of his wife and the mother of his children must have been deeply painful to William, who had left his own mother at the age of 11.

While researching my father's history I didn't expect to find much, since Dad was an orphan.  However, I found that his mother had a long and stable family history.  Myrtle's father was an Engineer and the family had strong and early roots in Bay City, Michigan.  The Reid family reached back to one small area in north-eastern Scotland, Glenbuchat, Aberdeenshire for generation upon generation. 

My brother and Dad's oldest son is named Reid.  I named my only son Reid.  Reid means "red," or red-haired.

In his will, my grandfather William Dewson left an enormous, leather-bound Bible with gilt-edged pages (which must have cost this poor man a great deal) and his watch to be kept for my father, his oldest son, also named William R. Dewson.  My brother Reid is now its keeper.  He also specified that his 6 children were to be adopted as one whole family, which of course never happened.

My father's lifetime hobby was collecting and preserving photo albums and family history.  It's even more clear to me today that he did this because his own father endured so much sorrow in a lifetime made up of continual loss of family. 

As a side-note, the family name Dawson, while seeming to be English, dates back to Normandy and the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. 

These people from across the channel were also Celts.

Classic design or trend?

Interior Design follows fashion in its immediacy.  At this moment in time, fashion trends are moving at breakneck speed.  However, very few can afford to change their interiors this quickly.

In the 90's and early 2000's we were told that we needed a neutral interior to come home to after a long and hectic work day.  We even lined up our artwork along the walls in neat rows, all framed in black, and all identical in size!

Next came the term "pop of colour."  Interior Designers put a toe into the waters of colour by adding a few bright objects, but still within a neutral interior.

But now we are finding Designers having more confidence to expand their repertoire with use of colour.  What we are beginning to see is experimentation with layers of colour throughout the room.

I have just described some colour trends.  However, Interior Design concepts are classic, and they remain constant.  The rules may be broken, but the underlying principle is unchanging.  Simply put, the room needs a sense of harmony, as difficult as this may be to achieve.

Adding colour into the mix adds to the difficulty of achieving this harmony.  This is because each

object in the room has a weight due to various factors: its scale in proportion to the size of the room and ceiling height, its actual size, its placement in the room, its contrast with other objects surrounding it, and, very significantly, its colour.

Classic design creates a calming feeling of harmony, whatever neutral or colour is used.

The Art of Scottish Stone Masons

"They had Stone Age technology, but their vision was millennia ahead of their time.  5,000 years ago the ancient inhabitants of Orkney, a fertile, green archipelago off the northern tip of modern-day Scotland erected a complex of homes and monumental buildings unlike anything they had ever attempted before." - National Geographic, August 2014.

"Life in Stone Age Orkney was far more refined than once imagined.  The well-built homes at Skara Brae, Europe's most complete Neolithic village, included stone hearths, beds, and cupboards."

The tradition and craft of stone masonry continued throughout Scottish history.  In medieval times guilds, similar to unions today, were formed to protect the interests of the stone masons.  This guild survives today in the form of the society of Freemasons.  My grandfather Dewson who was born in the north of England near the Scottish border joined the Freemasons - rather than a church - when he came to homestead in Saskatchewan, Canada in 1905.

In Scotland, the superb artistry of the stone masons is evident.

This is a knotted rope around a window of the Wallace Monument.  Wallace is a Scots hero and legend.

This is a statue in Edinburgh representing Canada.  Scots were among the first settlers to our country, and they brought their craft with them.  They constructed many of our finest and most important buildings out of the plentiful and varied stone they found here.

This is The Centre Block with the Centennial Flame at Canada's Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.  It is known as one of the finest Gothic structures in North America, and was near completion around 1865.  Many quarrymen and stone cutters from Scotland where the trade flourished were imported to meet the demands of its construction.

Stone from Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Manitoba as well as some from Europe and the U.S. was brought to the banks of the Ottawa River to build this magnificent monument.

Scottish stone masons and their artistry have left their enduring mark on grand buildings in important cities across our province of Ontario.