ORC Week 4: Texture and Art

A successful room is a room with a lot of texture. Nester, in her inimitable way calls a room with too many slick textures a diarrhea room. Most of our rooms, she says, are this way. What we need is more roughage.

Abigail Ahern, takes the idea further. Every room, she says, needs at least six textures.

Six!

She advises two from each category: smooth, rough and soft.

Smooth textures are things like glass, marble, smooth tile, plastic, fabrics like silk and satin, certain pieces of pottery and ceramics.

Rough textures include wicker, reclaimed wood, brick, stone, and luckily for me, book spines.

I got everything back on the Expedit during the Organize-a-thon last weekend.

Soft textures include most fabrics and feathers.

Her emphasis is on opposition, on contrast and juxtaposition. Smooth with rough, (a smooth ceramic lamp on a stump) soft with smooth, (velvet curtains over a glass window), rough with soft (a woolly blanket in a basket.)

So, I analysed my room and what I had.

Rough? Wicker chair, wicker baskets, book spines.

Smooth? Glass, ceramics, polished wood, plastic (the Expedit and the table are melamine, definitely plastic.)

I updated the china cabinet by taking out the mullions and lining the back with (photocopies of) pages from a Children's dictionary during the Organize-a-thon.

Soft? Velvet curtains.

A cushion on the wicker chair would help--as would a rug. But the cushion wouldn't add a significant amount and my husband doesn't think a rug is a practical idea in this room--and he may be right. 

So, it occured tome that some sort of textile art would be just the ticket. I had planned to put my large 3x4 foot canvas on this wall to help balance things out, 

but scraped that idea when I saw this:

So, I made an attempt at textile art.

The bottom is bothering me--I'm not sure how to finish it off. The width, too. Should it be wider? It may be too 1/2 and 1/2 dark and light. And is the branch too "rustic" for this room?


Your thoughts are welcome.


As usual, please check out the others, both the invited, who posted on Wednesday (and what an inspiration they are) and the party crashers, like me.

If you'd like to catch up on my progress, here are the weekly posts:

Week 1: Befores and a Vision
Week 2: The Painted Room
Week 3: The Agony of Decisions