Analyzing Work

I spend a lot of time thinking about home.  About how to make the spaces I live in comfortable and interesting.  About how to make living interesting.

I told a friend just before we moved from St. Louis that I'm somewhat retarded at decorating.  I realize that word is fraught with baggage from bullies and social insensitivity, but when I used it, I meant it in the literal sense.  I have a slowed, almost incapacitated, sense of how to make things beautiful.  My father had a great sense of style, but by the time I was conscious of learning how to live, his visual creativity had been largely stifled by outside forces.

I'm trying to learn, belatedly, from studying a styling expert...and I'm getting paid to do it.  Just once a week, I get to spend the day in a lovely antiques shop.  One of the co-owners has made a random collection of things that catch her fancy into a cave of treasures.  So, here are a few photos that I'm taking home to study.  And you can see the glitzy place where I work.

I'm working to figure out the "height" and "depth" of this little seating area across from the sales area.  You can't see it so much in this photo, but there's a lot of crystal in addition to the decanters in the right foreground.  The chandelier hangs slightly to the left of center and there's a small decanter on the side table.  Almost completely hidden by the mannequin is another gold-and-crystal chandelier, a Murano glass chandelier, and a set of six sherry glasses.

A bust of Shakespeare -- yes.  The Murano chandelier is the one I mentioned with the earlier photo. The crystal on the right is paired with the smaller crystal pendant in a birdcage.

This corner in the second room has always grabbed me.  The 1920s spotlight has been here since the first time I came in the shop.  It's just cool.  But what I like about this corner is how the plane propeller sets the "limit" of the image, framing the vignette.  Even though the propeller dates from WWI, it's exactly right to have the WWII army coat below it.  With the coat collar turned up, everything feels "Old Hollywood" with the spotlight and the champagne.