An absolutely magnificent book on Roman wall paintings is Domus: Wall Painting in the Roman House. It features very large, detailed and stunning pictures (WAY better than mine!) of numerous excavated villas in Pompeii and includes both the Villa Farnesina and Villa Livia from Rome. It’s a bit expensive, but well worth it as a collectors item and source of design and color inspiration!

Still on the second floor of the National Museum of Rome: Wall frescoes from the Villa della Farnesina. After coming home and doing some more research on this, I have found that these frescoes from the 3rd century were discovered and excavated in the late 18th century from the gardens of the current Villa della Farnesina. This villa, built in the Trastevere area of Rome on the banks of the Tiber was a quite large residential villa surrounded by lush gardens. They have been able to reconstruct several rooms from it at the museum, albeit with many pieces missing. 

Behind a long glass case, they have assembled what is left of a long wall of panels and columns, part of which it shown above.

My favorite “antiquities” photo from the whole trip is the small, fractured piece of the delicate column base shown above, right. It’s hard to imagine how it would have felt to be surrounded daily by that much artistic and natural beauty!

The more recent Renaissance version of Villa della Farnesina is open to the public. In fact, there are many Roman Villas, many containing beautiful botanical gardens that are available for touring and can provide a welcome brake from the zipping cars and throngs of pedestrians and fill the streets and sidewalks of Rome. Since I tossed a coin into the Trevi fountain over my back, I am guaranteed a return to Rome some day and may make it a “Villa” trip!

Well, I am back from Italy much to quickly. I really miss the authentic cappucinos and the tangy yogurt, among a million other things! What I found I didn’t miss as much was not being tied to a computer and checking my email 100 times a day, so I am finding it a bit hard to get back into my electronic routines! My son dabbles in mosaics, so I was really excited to take him to the National Museum of Rome at the Palazzo Massimo. I’ve written about it here already, but I find the recovered antiquities there so stunning I’m going to post about it again!

They have an amazing collection of mosaic pavements that were mostly discovered in the ruins of residential buildings of the city and suburbs of Rome around the end of the 19th century. Some of them are in near-perfect condition and the colors and quality of craftsmanship are amazing! While many examples there are of simpler, graphic designs that use black tesserae on a white background (less expensive and time consuming to produce), there are also many examples of more complicated polycrome techniques, like the ones shown above. The details and modeling that they were able to achieve with tiny, perfect squares of stone and marble is simply stunning. I especially love the ochres with blue-greens and the way they were able to achieve the classic egg and dart moldings. It’s inspiring and humbling all at once.

My dear friend Gary Lord is in the process of writing yet another book for Northlight. This one is on murals and will feature step by steps of a wide variety of mural projects. Taking a different approach, he has asked many different people in the industry to contribute projects, including me! Now, even though I wrote a book for Northlight myself back in 2000 called Trompe L’oeil Murals Using Stencils, I don’t consider myself a muralist. I actually much prefer 2-dimensional design and composing with patterns and textures. SO, I chose to do something quite simple and graphic (plus, I procrastinated and was really squeezed for time!) 

I have long wanted to develop these classic Japanese Cranes into Modello patterns, so this was the perfect opportunity! For the book project, I used the Floral Lattice stencil from Royal Design Studio, but we changed it up a bit for the new Modello Panels that we are offering. I troweled Lustestone, a metallic plaster material, over a gold metallic basecoat that had been rolled on pieces of Roclon canvas, so these could be hung from rods or simply wallpaper pasted to the wall. I was quite pleased with the way they turned out! The book will be available next Spring.    

When in Florence, Alison is going to take me to visit the Florentine silk factory and showroom of Antico Sertificio Fiorentino to get some inspiration for one of the wall finishes we will be doing in her studio. Fabric-inspired finishes, using stencils with paint, glaze, plasters, metallics or a combination of all of the above are some of my favorite wall treatments to both design and execute. I love to wrap a room with elegant allover pattern that looks as if it’s been aged over time. It’s a very “livable” look. Some of my favorite fabric inspirations over the years have come from the fabrics of the famed Mariano Fortuny.

His highly guarded secret methods have been attempted to be copied over the years by many, but no one has been able to equal the look of authentic antiquity. The factory now has been moved to an island location off the coast of Venice, and there is a Fortuny museum in that town.

I wrote about my upcoming trip to Italy on the Art of Living blog, but wanted to talk a bit more about the project here. I am going to Rome and on to Florence next week to sort out the details of a trip that Gary Lord and I are hosting for a group of students next October. 

We have joined up with Alison Woolley Bulkghalter (whose exquisite work is shown above) to plan a program around doing some painted decoration in her new studio that is housed in a former small theatre built in the 1800′s. Alison runs a Florentine painting studio and offers art courses year round, both there and at the Maiano estate, where we will be staying.

We will be using a decorative motif that was originally on the plaster ceilings and adapting it to create a design for a “faux marble” floor pattern that will be done with an integrally colored concrete overlayment. This will be set off with trompe l’oeil paneling around the dado with plaster columns. The back rooms will receive wall finishes designed to replicate the local Florentine silk fabrics. More about that “manana”, I mean “domani”. Oh yeah! Gotta start crammin on that Italian language CD.

So, I have started attempting to plan what types of design themes, color, patterns, etc. I will be decorating our new building with. Got my little design notebook going. It’s so cool to have all this design at my fingertips and have the ability to do anything I want! It’s such a burden to be able to to anything I want!! How do you narrow down a choice from “everything” to “something”?

Answer: Find a theme and tease it out. For my office I’ve decided that my theme will be decidedly color decadent and follow the Aesthetic Design Movement battlecry “Art for art’s sake”. The photo at left shows some Tracy Porter ceramics I just bought on sale at Horchow. Love those colors and I think those little bowls will be perfect for holding paper clips and such! The right photo is from Bradbury and Bradbury. Somehow the Victorian love of combining dramatic colors with layered pattern is looking really fresh to me.

I am designing from the floor up. I have decided to have an unfinished wood floor installed and want to use a combination of new, custom designed Modello masking patterns and stencils to create lush surface of dark chocolate, teal, pink, green and gold. I love the look and feel of these 17th Century designs shown above and below.

Looking at some of the latest furniture from Anthropologie (below) I see that, yet again, those guys are following my lead. LOL. Personally, I think the 17th Century designs have a lot more legs, but I like the idea of being in good company all around.

About 7 or 8 years ago I redid this tiny little bedroom in my home into my home office. It had to be really nice as it was going to be photographed for a book by BHG along with other rooms in the house. See Enriching the Ranch. I’ve loved it immensely but it’s time for a change! 

My idea is to make the walls look as if they were created from a patchwork of Japanese Kimonos and I REALLY need to get this done before I completely tire of this theme. I’ve gotten so far as to get the furniture out of the room and have laid out one wall treatment.

Each “patch” in the room will be totally unique and a little artwork unto itself. I will be using metallic leaf, paints and plasters to give it all a nice soft shimmer. The Lights and Lovely post on the Art of Living blog shows some possible light fixtures to hang from the ceiling I may make look like a shoji screen. I am still debating if I want to put the art directly on the walls or apply it to canvas or paper and wallpaper paste it up there. Either way, it will be quite the little project!  I think that I will create a little book to sell detailing how to do the finishes. Stay tuned!

Each year for the last 13 years I have been priviliged to teach a class or two at the annual Stencil Artisans’s League Convention. Well, it’s that time of year again! The Convention Brochure is finally posted and ready for download at the SALI website. This year, I’m offering an all day class that features Kimono-Inspired Wall Finishes. We will be using traditional stencils and Modello Decorative Masking Patterns, along with metallic plasters and paint, gilding and mica powders to create surface treatments like those shown below.

This years convention will be held July 17-21 in San Francisco (yeah!) and features a wide range of classes from some of the most talented decorative artists in this or any country. Get your class requests in ASAP for the best chance of getting in the classes you want. Many will fill up quickly!

If even just for a day trip (or two), it’s worth it to come and just walk the floor of the Expo to see all of the latest and greatest that the decorative finishing industry has to offer. Both Royal Design Studio and Modello Designs will be there with bells on showing off some new designs and eye candy! You enjoy shopping you say? See the Art of Living blog for just one of many great stores to check out while in SF.

Here is a collection of photos to show the steps involved for the gazebo project. It actually only took 2.5 days. As much as I hate to cover any of it up, I’m off this weekend to shop for patio furniture!