September: Now you see them..

While most other people I know are surrounded by buildings, tarred roads and the occasional die hard tree or lawn, artificially kept alive by pesticides and fertilisers, my reality is something quite different. One glance out of any window and I can see at least 30 different natural plant species and many of them only to be found in this small spec on the globe. This is floral kingdom at it's best and I very seldom actually realise how very fortunate I am to live here. My "normal" is being surrounded by wildflowers.   

I prefer to see these flowers right there where they grow and feel quite guilty picking them. But occasionally I simply can't resist and today was one of those days. All the yellows seem to be in bloom right now and it's almost as if the different species are competing to see who can produce the most impressive display of blooms. For me, September is synonymous with yellow and October's pink is just starting to show itself. 

While putting them in a tea glass, my eye caught the almost same cheerful colours of the leftover velvet ribbon I had used, wrapping a gift last week. Yes, it's been lying there for over a week! I enjoy gift wrapping and there are always a lot of ribbons being hauled out and tossed about in the process. The problem is, that they have to be rolled up neatly again, before being packed away and that's time-consuming.  So they sometimes just end up lying there for a while - not very tidy I know, but pretty!

And then I suddenly recalled the same powerful colour combination that wowed me at the Chateau de Versailles. So I dug out the Versailles pictures and sure enough, there were those jewel colours again in the Mars and Mercury Salons. 

It was this picture of the bed in the Mercury Salon that set my mind off into designing mode.  What if I could revamp this room? Set aside the fact that this a museum where they try and keep everything historically correct.  If this was just a room with the most exquisite ceiling, panelling and furniture, what would I change here to bring this room into the 21st century?  Not much, really.  I would add some bold fabrics that would pick up the gold ornamentation and the colour of the wallpaper. Perhaps I would also throw in a fresh floral design on a white background for a lighter, airier touch. Something like this, using Designers Guild fabrics. Mmm... I wonder if Marie Antoinette would have approved.

Anyway, enough of the daydreaming and back to the here and now. It's time I packed away all of this and get back to the studio where the colour palette ranges from natural linen, through taupes and greys, all the way to pewter and chalkboard black. Other colours that found their way there are muted and faded by time. No bright fuschia pinks and luminous lemons there...yet! That's about to change. I'm taking the tea glass with me!  

Tania 

xxx

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