[ Lifestyle ] Finding art in unexpected places: how to style your home creatively

[CreW]

 

It will be news to many that art need not be confined to canvases, imprisoned in frames or suffocated behind panes of glass. Generally, when we think of an art collection, we think of framed paintings and drawings hung on the wall.

But, according to interior designers and homewares manufacturers alike, we can incorporate art into our homes in surprising and innovative ways.

While there will always be beauty in a gallery-style wall in a living room or bedroom, what’s to stop the design-savvy finding platforms for self-expression in unexpected places?

Brintons, a carpet manufacturer founded in 1783, has become renowned not only for its quality and beautiful collections, but for its collaborations with contemporary design houses.

In its most recent residential collaboration with the Scottish design duo Timorous Beasties, Brintons launched a collection inspired by John Ruskin’s watercolours featuring British flora and fauna.

The delicate, sprawling patterns feature butterflies, flowers and branches, tangled artfully in a woven controlled chaos.

The collection acts as a reminder that flooring should not be forgotten, but treated as an opportunity for a large scale design statement. Butterflies not obligatory, but certainly recommended.

Speaking of artistic statements, Andrew Martin uses its permission under licence to reproduce paintings in the National Gallery’s permanent collection to create home accessories, wall coverings and even headboards, turning even the plainest of walls or cushions into works of art.

 

 

Most striking is the brand’s recent collaboration with Savoir Beds to produce a collection of headboards which turn your bedroom into an artistic haven of maximalist design.

Headboards are certainly not the be-all and end-all of filling your bedroom with art in new and exciting ways. Sheridan Australia is a homewares company with absolutely unrivalled bed linen designs, using real artists in the research and development phase of their production.

Claudio Alcorso, Sheridan Australia’s Italian founder, always maintained that “art belongs everywhere, not just on gallery walls”, thus establishing the concept of bed linen as a piece of art in and of itself.