Author: Shields Wallpaper
Published: April 2, 2013
My kids, Shields Brothers, have been out in LA working on a new YouTube reality show. They are filming at the same studio as the Mad Men show. Their thrill – seeing Jon Hamm at craft services. They got me thinking about the show, Mad Men, and set decorating with wallpaper. Here’s a good LA Times article about it. Grass cloth is hot now and it is all over their set.
Over the past six months, I’ve installed more grass cloth than I have installed in the last 15 years. It’s not just Mad Men going mad for grass cloth. All the big designers are carrying exotic grasses and some are even being made with metallic thread. On the Mad Men set, they are using a retro look to replicate the 1960s. Last week I installed the exact same grass cloth in a private home library. At first glance you’d think it wouldn’t work in a room with an arched bay and 19th century fireplace mantle. But the grass cloth made a fabulous background for their art, small sculpture and book collection. Very tailored, finished but cozy.
Grass cloth gives real texture to the walls and makes the room warm and doesn’t compete with the furniture or artwork Recently, I installed grass cloth samples on flats at the Holland & Sherry showroom in Washington, D.C. There’s a lot of nice grass cloth available now. If you looking for suggestions, here are some manufacturers but there are many more:
Philip Jeffries
Gracie
Stark
Brunswick & Fils
Holland & Sherry
Ralph Lauren
Author: Shields Wallpaper
Published: March 26, 2013
Cotton, The Fabric of Our Lives – Cotton, the wonder material. It’s natural, environmentally friendly, durable, figure-flattering and fashionable. Because I work with a distant cousin, wallpaper, I can’t help but notice they share lots of similarities.
Wallpaper is natural, “green” and durable. Certainly fashionable. Like cotton, it’s versatility can be found in its variety of textures. Wallpaper gives texture to our living spaces. You can create the rough texture of Italian villa walls, the lightness of rice paper lined walls in a Japanese tea house, the strength of leather covered walls in a Spanish castle or the elegance of tapestry walls of a French chateau. Wallpaper is the perfect vehicle to create texture in a room without creating permanence.
My favorite texture-rich wallpapers…
- grass and string cloth
- faux Portuguese, Dutch or Turkish tiles
- paper backed hand colored silks
- mulberry papers with silk and leaves
- papers covered with mica chips or mother of pearl
- French wood grained paper; the raised grain fools the eye and the hand
- amazing pressed vinyls that replicate silk, grass, almost any texture
Wouldn’t it be great if wallpaper manufacturers took a marketing page from the cotton industry? The slogan – Wallpaper, The Texture of Our Lives!
Author: Shields Wallpaper
Published: February 28, 2013
I couldn’t resist… as an Anglophile, I love the show Ripper Street on BBCAmerica. They use wallpaper in every interior scene. Love it!
Nothing like a woman with a gun to motivate you to re-decorate:)
Sometimes, especially in the winter, we need a Tapetenwechsel. A what? Tapetenwechsel means “wallpaper change” in German. It’s an everyday expression for needing a change of scenery, change of color or change of space.
Change your wallpaper – Change your Life!
