Thursday, August 28, 2014

Vignettes in decorating

The first time I was confronted by vignetting in decorating was thirty years ago with an article in The World of Interiors and I did not react well. Living in Amsterdam at the time, these photographs reminded me of nothing more than the Metz & Co furniture showrooms diagonally across the Keizersgracht from our house and, still, all these years later, I find it hard to let go the idea of showroom vignetting – ironic, perhaps, given what I quote below from the original magazine text. I still wonder where those people actually lived.


"With all the architectural details, including the floor, painted white, the drawing-room becomes an intriguing limbo for a graphic collection of furniture. The colours are limited to black, bright red and a small amount of pale grey, so with this visual discipline the choice of objects in the room has to be precise and unerring. Some people might imagine that this is a very elemental solution to the problem of decoration and against the drama of a plain white background almost any object will be enhanced. In fact the reverse is true. Any flaw in design or proportion will show up immediately. The great pitfall to be avoided when placing things in a space like this is temptation to make small 'groups'. Although charming in themselves, if unrelated they give that restless showroom-like atmosphere, with every precious object pleading to be looked at. It is far more difficult to compose a balanced room so that the gaze can move about unmolested, taking in everything. Selecting the right pieces and putting them in just the right place to achieve this takes a great deal of skill." 


Undeniably beautiful, and equally beyond doubt designed to be photographed, these rooms have such an intense cerebral quality that makes one think they may well be haunted by the ghosts of brainstorms past.  Indeed, it is precisely that cerebral vignetted quality that pervades the rest of the oevre of the husband and wife team René and Barbara Stoeltie – where their own residences are concerned, that is. Shortly after this article was published the Stoelties took control of their own image, as it were, and she wrote the text to his photographs. For years I have disliked everything they have done even to the point of not buying books on which they have collaborated – so strong has been my prejudice (I can call it nothing else).

Having said that, yesterday afternoon I watched a video on youtube in which Barbara and René Stoeltie were interviewed and I began to understand not only their point of view but something I thought I already knew – the quicksands lying in wait for us all within our own language.  The video is in Dutch but for those you who might be able to understand the link is below. The Stoelties are not unsympathetic people and I was both glad and nonplussed to find that.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bxFo0T41Mg


I'm not beyond appreciating a decent vignette or two but, nonetheless, given what I see in the blogs et al, I feel we are on a downward slope – like once-chic macarons on sale in a cart at the mall,  vignetting has become a tool for anyone with a rainy afternoon, a pile of junk, some books, an iPhone and internet access to hand.

Previous generations deforested whole continents, captured Sabines, established cities on hills, conquered a colony or two, swaggered across oceans and planted vines in new lands ... but what do we do? We arrange our books according to color, we style our shelves, arrange pretty objects on tabletops, and then, not knowing our arses from our elbows meanders from our Chinese frets, we write whole blogs about them. There's civilization for you!

More of that next week.


I've said it before, and I'll say it again, democracy is a good thing but it ain't for everyone.

Quotation from text by John Vaughan and photographs by same, The World of Interiors, June 1984.

16 comments:

  1. BRAVO!! I"m not very familiar with their work but from what I see and hear here I would just say it's a bit 'trying too hard'? Or am I rudely downsizing the importance of it? At the end of the day design/decoration is my favorite preoccupation (and even my occupation) but it's not exactly solving world problems or finding a cure for cancer.

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    1. ArchitectDesign, thank you. I fully agree with you and, no, you're not diminishing the importance of it. This kind of discussion is a "first world" problem, after all. The ever-turning wheel of fashion is creating ever more problems – think only of the miles of textiles dumped every year by showrooms getting rid of memo samples. It's too late to change a damned thing.

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  2. I was never the same when as a young boy I discovered that most magazine photo's weren't real rooms but stages in Alderman Studios. Maybe things have changed.

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    1. Terry, thank you. I looked up Alderman Studios but found nothing satisfactory. Staged room sets often appeared in early catalogues and magazines and are now easy to spot as frequently the windows are too shallow and "blind". I wonder if things have changed that much.

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  3. Before reading your post I thought the first image came from The Hill House in Helensburgh, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and then of the second that the room had a sunken floor - a trompe l'oeil if you like from the design of the carpet.

    Anyhow, these remarks are completely off the point you are making. I think there's an element of staging in all interior design, and the trick is to make it look effortless; the space by itself will inevitably look staged, but with people in it, and it functioning for its purpose should remove all of that which you fear.

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    1. Columnist, thank you. There is certainly an element of staging in interior design – nowadays more than ever, I feel – and I wonder after listening to a friend who has been published twice if the rooms I see in magazines are really as they exist.

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  4. Where are the books? Don't these people read? (wink)

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    1. Daniel, they might but without evidence what can we deduce? Maybe in the loo?

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  5. I afraid find the photos stagey but beautiful. Your comment on democracy reminds me of the time I made a similar remark to a friend who responded that it wasn’t “perfect but it’s the best thing we’ve found so far.” We snobs with democratic principles are just more disappointed about it all.

    I had an experience this summer visiting a chateau in the Loire valley that was just about the opposite of these images. It was a privately owned Renaissance chateau and we were guided through the lived-in rooms furnished with plenty of 19th century Neo-Renaissance furniture and further crammed with modern furnishings of the most doubtful taste. But the worst thing was to go into the bedrooms and come nose to nose with personal items – just ordinary things -books, DVDs, toys, yoga mats, photos. It was so distracting that I wasn’t able to look at the architectural details and just wanted to get out – fast. Naturally, the chatelaine was waiting for the group at the end of the tour where she was startled by our arrival. She had just been arranging flowers in a kitchen artfully strewn with petals. This woman would do better to give guided tours of a decorator’s vignettes in certain rooms while living mysteriously in other quarters. (Whew - now that's off my chest!)

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    1. Well, it is the pictures that are attractive. The video shows something bordering on sterile. Photo reality is definitely on another plane. Where real life is in all that, I don't know.

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    2. gésbi, thank you. There is a famous decorator here who published a book where every floor or table is layered with drifts of petals and leaves artfully plucked from whatever floral or arboreal arrangement decorated the room. Loved his work, was irritated by his vignetting.

      Thank you for the voice of reason. Where was real life in the video. I got waylaid by the cadences of the language, I'm afraid.

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  6. Hmmm? I don't know, but is this really something to be fretting about? Not to dismiss your concerns, but this just doesn't seem the typical sort of interesting topics I've come to enjoy about this blog.

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  7. Anon. 9:05, I totally disagree based on the simple fact that if you are a more than casual reader of design blogs, you will find the last two paragraphs of this post spot on. Some of the vignettes look like five and dime store displays of throw away items that have no intrinsic value whatsoever. We have seen moss balls, balls of twine, antlers, grapes, paper weights, etc. on sitting on the same table. I enjoy these critiques because they really make me examine my own spaces more carefully. Bravo Blue!

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  8. Anon 2:20, I hear your point, and it is true that I am only a casual reader of blogs. But again, why spend any further time on these vignettes that everyone seems to agree are dreadful. Isn't it better to focus on subjects of integrity? Students learn from studying the great works, not the bad.

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  9. Anonymous 9:05 and Anonymous 2:20, thank you both. Ad interim, I have a little more to say about the subject.

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  10. Bravo! Yes since when did vignette become a verb...I like things and things artfully strewn together but I try and be postive and think of the old dutch masters with their "shelfies" and hope it is just artistry muffled with low ambitions.

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