It’s the little things that make a room.
A vase of flowers, a throw pillow or a table setting are all small details that can make a huge difference. Without them, even if every piece of furniture is a beautiful antique, the room doesn’t look finished.
“Pillows are like jewelry for your room. You’ve got your room, it looks pretty good, but it’s like wearing a plain black dress. You have your outfit and it looks good, and then you put the jewelry on and it just sings,” said Rebecca Vizard, owner of Louisiana-based B. Viz Design.
Vizard, the author of the 2015 book, “Once Upon a Pillow,” will be a breakfast speaker on Feb. 9 at the 2017 Cathedral Antiques Show in Buckhead. The annual event, from Feb. 5-12, includes home tours, other speakers, an antique show and flower festival.
Perfect pillows
Vizard collects ecclesiastical pieces, such as priests’ robes, and other antique textiles to create unique pillows and art. She has discovered stuffed inside the robes bits of newspaper, ledgers and even pages from the Bible that were used to sketch out designs to conserve paper.
To add accents to a room, Vizard recommends lending your space symmetry and style with a few pillows.
“There are all kinds of ways to pull together a room with a pillow,” said Vizard.
For example, a long pillow looks great on a king bed. This technique means you don’t need a huge pile of pillows on the bed. You can simplify with one long statement pillow — a tip, Vizard adds, that men tend to appreciate.
But accessories aren’t just about the arrangement or the colors. Particularly when engaging with ecclesiastical textiles, Vizard finds the fabric itself can tell stories.
“There’s all kinds of symbolism in the pillows, particularly from the flora,” said Vizard.
Fab florals
The flowers on your throw pillows shouldn’t be the only blooms in the room. Botanical arrangements can really send a message, said Laura Dowling, former chief White House floral designer and author of the new book “Floral Diplomacy at the White House.”
“They communicate so much, whether it’s a diplomatic message honoring a visiting country or dignitaries, environmental messages like recycling, reuse, repurposing, or even just a broader message about American style and how it’s warm and optimistic, friendly and open,” said Dowling.
Few of us will be entertaining foreign dignitaries, but Dowling said you can do the same thing at home, just on a smaller scale. When it comes to translating White House-level florals into your own home, start with a theme and work from there. She suggests thinking about the message you’re trying to send, and trying not to let florals scare you.
“Sometimes people seem intimidated by flower design, or they feel like there’s a right and wrong way. It can almost paralyze people,” said Dowling, who studied floral design in Paris.
The garden style of flower arrangement, which Dowling will discuss in her Feb. 10 talk at the Cathedral Antiques Show, has few rules. It’s full of free-flowing lines, crossing stems and looping vines.
“I always like to cross stems to give that sense of natural movement. So it’s really not a rigid recipe. It’s just working with the materials and looking at each flower to see the best placement,” Dowling said.
And if coming up with a theme seems intimidating, start with color. Put different colors of vases that are in the same color scheme that would go together, said Jule Eller, the director of trend and style at Lowe’s.
“Then, you want various heights and widths, so you can kind of nest them together to make a unified look,” she said.
Dowling likes to consider the colors on the undersides of flower petals as well.
“It’ll have variations of colors, and you can use those as a guide to create some really interesting and inspiring color combinations,” she said.
EVENT PREVIEW
Cathedral Antiques Show
Young Collectors' Home Tour, 1-4 p.m., Feb. 5; 2017 Cathedral Antiques Show with talks, book signings and flower festival, Feb. 9-11, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday; Tour of Homes, noon-5 p.m., Feb. 12.Cathedral of St. Philip, 2744 Peachtree Road NW, Atlanta 30305. Price varies. General admission show tickets start at $15; talks and book signings are generally $25; home tours are $20 and $30; and the Patron Preview Party is $250 per person. 404-365-1107, cathedralantiques.org
About the Author
