Get the Look: Bird Cage Accessories

You don’t need an actual cage to get the look. You can do it in wallpaper, with a throw pillow, around your neck, or in a little work of art. . .

WALL PAPER

Bird-Cage-WallpaperWallpaper credits: Target; Etsy ChuckEByrd Wall Art decal; Walnut Wallpaper; Parakeet Bird Cage custom vintage at Design Your Walls; Totally Home; Harry’s Garden by Louis Brody Wallprints.


PILLOWS

bird-cage-pillows

Pillow credits: Etsy; Ferm Living; Etsy.


JEWELRY

Bird-cage-pendants

Jewelry credits: Etsy roscata; Etsy pinkdragonfly98; Etsy StarfishStratagie.


ART

Bird-Cage-Art

Art credits: All art from Etsy. hopeink; papersparrow; AFancifulTwist; Wyanne; TK; artsyorange; screendoorgoods; CheshireCatsGrin; londontierneyart

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Get the Look: Frank Roop Style DIY

Loved the Nantucket house we toured this week? Designer Frank Roop reveals ten insider tips that you can pull off yourself, no matter what your budget.

curtains daybed

Cover cushions in contrasting fabrics. Instead of re-upholstering your whole piece, slipcover just the cushions, in a contrasting color or coordinating pattern. Roop, who covered the cushion of the daybed in the living room says, “I love that it looks almost like a mattress.”

Choose pieces that do double duty.
Invest in pieces like x-stools, cubes, and poufs that can be dragged from room to room and used as a stool, side table, or ottoman. In the living room, Roop designed x-stools upholstered in a silk canvas fabric.

Cut and sew pre-made curtains for a custom look. Buy inexpensive panels in different colors, cut lengthwise in thirds, and have your dry cleaner sew back together for a new, multi-colored effect. Roop had three soothing colors of linen stitched together to create the living room curtains. In the sitting room off the dining area, he had three different colors in varying horizontal widths sewn together for a more stripe-y effect.

br lamp

Trim lampshades with ribbon. Use a glue gun to affix grosgrain ribbon around the top and bottom edge of a run of the mill lampshade for a custom upgrade. Roop has all his lampshades custom made – the one on the vintage Danish chandelier is trimmed in suede while the linen shade in the master bedroom is trimmed with grosgrain ribbon. curtains and lamp

Frame far away trinkets. Be it a kimono from your trip to Japan or a feather you plucked off the ground in the Everglades, framing a sentimental piece preserves memories and adds an exotic touch. Roop had a child’s dress that the homeowner brought back from India framed for her daughter’s room.

Put new tops on old bases. Swap out a ruined tabletop with a remnant slab of stone, or top a wooden cube, stone pillar, or other architectural gem with a custom cut piece of glass. For the sitting area off the dining room, Roop designed a Moroccan-shaped lacquered base to which he added a bronze top that is stamped with a Moroccan pattern.

entry tableUse natural objects as accent pieces. Celebrate simplicity by displaying a specimen that occurs naturally in nature, like a gnarly hunk of driftwood , a chunky mineral, or a spiky piece of coral. Roop filled a huge clamshell with hydrangea and placed it on the dining room table with a piece of old driftwood, on a brightly colored runner. In the entry, a simple glass vase is filled with branches beside a piece of quartz.

Collect pieces of the similar objects in the same color. No matter how mundane an object may be, a grouping in the same color scheme elevates then from plain to polished. In the kitchen, the homeowner displays blue and green seltzer bottles she had been collecting over the years.

mosaic Paint old furniture a spunky new color. Any old piece of furniture can be transformed with glossy paint – try chartreuse, tomato red, inky black or bright white. Roop had vintage faux bamboo chairs (the homeowner loves faux bamboo) re-lacquered in celery and reupholstered in a neutral stripe for the dining room.

Use several small mirrors to make a mosaic. Instead of hanging one large, pricey mirror, collect a number of small ones, and arrange in a mosaic pattern for maximum impact. In a niche off the entry, Roop hung mirrored-back sconces in a bulls-eye design to echo the round mirror off to the side.

carrot-currency-graphic

 

Montgomery Curtains (www.montgomery.co.uk/) offers made-to-measure and ready-made curtains and accessories.

Shopping: 1st Dibs Saturday Sale

Here are the goodies I found at the 1st Dibs Saturday Sale this morning.

1stDibs-June

Shopping Guide

Mongolian Court Robe, 19th c. silk robe worn on special occasions, $2,200, Burke Antiques, Sarasota, FL

Star-Shaped Mirror, c. 1950s mirror in brown leather and white galuchat, $4,680, 1st Dibs Paris

Pair of Italian Gilt Wood Sconces, c.1780 handcarved, gilded sconces, $9,800, Antiques on Old Plank Road, Westmont, IL

Sideboard by Pieter de Bruyne, 1962-1965 Belgian sideboard in veined teak and brushed steel. Two sliding doors and four drawers, $2,808, 1st Dibs Paris

Eight Resin Paperweights/Sculptures, 1970s resin paperweights by New York artist Norman Mercer, $850
Vermillion, North Miami, FL

Faux Bamboo Armchairs, c. 1950s chairs upholstereed in orange silk, $2,900, Modern One, Los Angeles

Iron and Rattan “Catch All”, 1940s French catch-all perfect for magazines, knitting supplies, decorative objects, etc., $800, Modern One, Los Angeles

French Wax Mannequin, 1940s wax bust and torso, $1,500, Galerie Sommerlath, Culver City, CA

Fire Screen by René Drouet, 1940s French fire screen in wrought iron gilded with gold leaf, $1,872, $1,872
1st Dibs Paris

Design Diary: Frank Roop in Nantucket (Part II)

If you read my last post, you know that Sunday’s edition of the Boston Globe Magazine featured “Living Brilliantly”, the piece I wrote about a Nantucket house with interiors by Frank Roop .I know I promised Part II of this dreamy spot yesterday, but life (well, kids home on summer vacation) got in the way. Three doctor’s appointments, a teacher conference, a trip to the playground, two playdates, a four hour hair appointment (hey, straight hair takes time) and a massive Target trip later, here’s the other half!

Photography by Eric Roth – Courtesy of The Boston Globe

1 Globe Frank Roop Great Roomthe dining room

Don’t you love the chandelier? It’s a very heavy commercial piece, probably from a restaurant, from the 1960s. It resembles of mass of tangled twigs, or maybe coral. Roop calls its look “a nod to the ocean without being corny.” The antique table came from a Paris flea market. The homeowners bought it on a trip years ago, and had been storing until they had the space for it. Roop added the vintage faux bamboo chairs that he had lacquered in celery green (I know, they look white here) and reupholstered. Roop filled a huge clamshell he found in the basement with hydrangea for the shoot.

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2 Globe Frank Roop Kitchenthe kitchen

The perfect kitchen. The sea colored glass tiles are divine. Roop ordered them in an array of custom color arrangement from Ann Sacks. They make a perfect backdrop for the wife’s collection of green and blue seltzer bottles, which she’d been collecting over the years and acquired mostly in Paris and at Brimfield. She says, “I have a bunch of them; some have old wicker around them. They’re antique and very heavy. I love them; I have been hoarding them for Nantucket.”

The cabinetry is from Dalia Kitchen Design in the Boston Design Center. You can’t tell here, but the base of the island is stained a light blue color to break it up and bring in more color. The cooktop is Thermidor, with cobalt blue knobs, similar in color to the vintage Greek fisherman pendants that were acquired by Roop through a dealer. The countertop is jet mist honed granite from Gerrity Stone in Woburn, Mass. (a popular source around here). They wanted a honed stone because they felt is was less formal than a polished stone, and it also created a soapstone look without the fragility. (Soapstone is pourous and stains easily.

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3 Globe Frank Roop Sitting Room off DRsitting room off the dining room

This is the room you see in the background in the dining room shot above. How great is that 1950s driftwood lamp? Of course, Roop added a new shade, white linen, I think, trimmed in khaki grosgrain ribbon. Even better are teh 1820s blue opaline glass sconces from England. Love, love, love. Roop designed the side table, using a Moorish shaped-base to continue the exotic accents theme. The top is bronze, with a Moroccan pattern stamped on it. The coffee table is by French Modernist Jacques Adnet. It has a tile top in its iron base. (You can find some similar pieces by Jacques Adnet on 1st Dibs.) And, by now you’ll recognize Roop’s signature drapes. These are made from green silk that looks like linen (imported from Thailand), white linen and khaki linen. I’m thinking of trying this look in my Back Bay bay living room bay windows.

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6 Globe Frank Roop LRthe living room

Let’s start with the rug. Like pretty much everywhere else in the house, the living room rug is sisal. The family has two dogs (a chocolate lab and a mutt) and three cats, so they needed a pet friendly solution. The husband wanted Oriental rugs. The wife said no way. She had some rag rugs. Roop was less than charmed. So the sisal was a practical compromise. (The husband got an Oriental in his office.)

The fireplace surround is Costa Esmerelda, which is a pale green granite from Brazil. Roop designed the niche bookcases, above which are mounted sconces with sky blue pleated silk shades. Roop designed the coffee table. The open detail Moorish shape was inspired by a Robsjohn Gibbons stool he has. The top is inlaid paoa shell imported from Hawaii, which is a super shiny and lustrous veneer that Roop uses whenever he can. He has a star-shaped table covered in it in his design studio, and when the wife saw it, she insisted on his designing a piece using paoa shell for the Nantucket house. The finish is unique and gorgeous. The side table in the foreground is vintage faux bamboo. Roop designed the X-stools as well; they’re covered in a green silk canvas by Jim Thompson. The drapes are custom, but this time vertical panels are stitched together rather than horizontal swathes of color. They’re linen, with some shine, in three different colors.

Roop also designed all the upholstered pieces. (The sofa and chair were actually prototypes.) Roop uses McLaughlin Upholstering Company in Everett, Mass. to make them. The sofa fabric is a very heavy grayish blue linen, and the chairs are in a linen awning stripe. The daybed is upholstered in linen too, with a linen velvet cushion in a bluish green. Roop loves to do a contrasting cushion on a daybed, so it almost looks like a mattress. He cleverly used a daybed in front of the window because a sofa with a back would have blocked the view. The husband wasn’t crazy about the idea of seating sans back, but it’s the wife’s favorite seat in the house. She says,  “I love to sit there with a cup of tea and look out at the sky with the sun shining in on me; I can see the water in the distance, I love that seat, it is my favorite place.”

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4 Globe Frank Roop Game Roomthe game room

This is a little room off the living room where the family does puzzles. Their old house did not have a television, so they did a lot of puzzles, and wanted to be sure to fit in a dedicated round table for puzzles here. The table was found by the homeowners in a Paris flea market. The chandelier is thoroughly amazing. It’s funky Danish piece from the ’60s that Roop got from a dealer in New York City. It’s iron, embellished with handmade glass tiles. The wife adored it immediately, but both she and Roop were certain that neither the architect or her husband would like it. Surprise! They both loved it. Roop designed the chartreuse shade, which is made out of at least 100 yards of cotton cording, and trimmed in suede around the bottom edge.

5 Globe Frank Roop Game Rm Chandelier