| Hi Soccermom811. Back when you first asked about adding some additional trim to dress up your Arts & Crafts style dining room, I wanted to answer & say forget it: that the buzzwords of the whole Arts & Crafts movement were Honesty & Simplicity and one of the ways in which that that simplicity was expressed was by the elimination of superfluous moldings & needless complications, not adding more of them. Of course, to modern eyes accustomed to blank walls & cheap MDF moldings & plastic doors disguised with a coat of Buiders' White paint, the handsome grain & quality workmanship of old-growth oak trim that you find in authentic A&C houses look anything but simple. But it was considered simple--to the point of barrenness--to older eyes that had grown up in densely furnished Victorian rooms with elaborately carved & varnished woodwork. So although well-designed & finished A&C trim may look fancy to us, it wasn't meant to be fancy. Just the opposite, in fact. So my original thought about your possibly adding extra moldings to your room was to tell you to forget it. But now that you put up a picture of your room, that's all changed. I have good news & bad news. The bad news is that while this house may have been marketed as being "A&C" in style, the only thing that I can see that sort-of-qualifies is that little beaded trim detail between the posts & lintels of your doors & windows. Other than that, I'm coming up blank, and even that particular detail is negated by that coat of white paint, which color was sometimes used in the private areas--kitchens, bathrooms, the upstairs bedrooms--of A&C houses, but it was virtually never used in the public areas. Error Number 1. Add to that the round columns (which you already know are are not in the alleged style) the plantation shutters, ditto; the can lights, ditto; the mixed finishes of the stair railing, ditto; the very of-the-moment chandelier, and you end up with a room that's nowhere even close to a true A&C style room. That's the bad news. The good news is that since most real A&C rooms--even the most fiendishly expensive of them, owing to their high-quality workmanship, as in Greene & Greene's houses or some of FLW's simpler interiors--were never intended to be spectacular in the first place, the more authentic your house's existing features, the the less appropriate a spectacular decor would be. But since your house's features are not really authentic A&C, there's absolutely no good reason for you to hesitate in doing whatever you want. That's the good news: you can forget all about that restrictive "A&C" label because it doesn't apply to your house in the first place. This is the decorating equivalent of a Get-Out-of-Jail card: you're FREE! OK, so on to your questions. Yes, that wall color is very bland. A deeper, yellower color will give some life to your walls, and by increasing the walls' contrast with the trim, it means you can use said trim just as it is. If you have a logical place to start & stop a chair rail, you could add one & paint the area below it the same color as your trim. It's not an A&C approach, but it is very traditional. If you decide to do that, you'll want a rail with a relatively plain profile, so that it doesn't look all weird & fussy next to the plainness of your existing trim. Comb-back Windsor chairs are not one of my favorite styles, but I've never thought of them as "kitchen chairs", and these are fairly nice-looking examples--not to mention the fact that they're probably a lot better made than anything you could get today for a whole lot of money--so I'd keep them. If the finish is a little too uniform & slick--and in the 1960s, uniform & slick was all the rage, even for antique style pieces--you might want to work on giving them a little more character. What exactly that means--a darker stain, a more distressed surface, a painted finish instead of stained--I'll leave up to you. One thing I do know: these chairs will be a lot more interesting silhouetted against a white dado than a Parsons chair would ever be. The table? It's OK. I don't love it, but then I've never seen a table that I could say I loved except for the circular dining table on an incurved tripod base that Thomas Hope designed for his own house 200 years ago--and it's in a museum--so my not loving your table means nothing. It's OK, and that's OK. Not everything in life has to be a love match. So what's this room lacking? Like I said: life. Individuality. Personality. I'd put some curtains on that window. Something long & full, but hung straight. Maybe a large-scale paisley in pomegranate red & gold & black with thick cotton moiss moss fringe in bright gold or a ruched edge in the red & black. Maybe a paprika red Indienne. Maybe green & rust & black crewelwork on cream. It would work with the style & period of the chairs. Sure, crewel goes in & out of fashion--as far as I know it's out at the moment, but you can still find it--but, really, who cares? Go for style, not fashion: it lasts longer, which is the salient point when budget is a factor. Buy when it's out & then wait. Most of all, I'd work on that predictable arrangement on the buffet. That's the opposite of spectacular. It all seems to say TJ MAXX, even if that's not where it came from. The inconsequential lamp is doing nothing but balancing that vase--which is also doing nothing. The colors of the flowers--may I assume they're silk?--are timid, there's too much fussiness going on, plus it's too tall & narrow. Shall I go on? I don't thinks so. And if it's really spectacular you're after, it's time for that pastelly artwork to go away, too. It looks like a ginormous Sweetest Day card, and it's overwhelmed by that heavy black frame. Right now it's Strawberry Shortcake meets Darth Vader. No, this is the spot that needs a piece that has something to say. There are plenty of places to get interesting artwork, starting with student shows at local colleges to Goodwill--my own favorite shopping spot--to the alley or the curb on trash day. If worse comes to worse, you can create it yourself. Just don't make it match the room. That's boring. Or ditch the art & get a mirror in a spectacular frame. I have a carved wood Rococo style mirror in my living room, but it's not old, it's just a 1960s reproduction that I got at an estate sale for a few hundred dollars. But here's the point: I once saw exactly the same style & saize mirror--in shiny gold plastic--for $29 at W*l-M*rt. It was hideous. But once it got a coat of flat white paint to make it look like plaster, it looked OK. Actually, it looked great, especially against a dark green wall. Of course, that was ten years ago, back before TV 'designers' discovered Dorothy Draper--and spray paint--but just as I would never do something just because I saw somebody do it on TV, so I would also never avoid doing something I wanted to do simply because somebody on TV did it. That's silly. Actually, TV has no effect at all on me--good or bad--because I don't watch it. But I do read books, old books, and they're full of ideas that are still useful, four or five decades after they were first published. Anyway, so yes, follow your instincts, forget about all that "A&C" nonsense and just have fun decorating your place.
It may have nothing to do with A&C, but your room already has the bones of a very good-looking room. Regards,
Magnaverde. |
