Agate is a natural mineral with beautiful bands or stripes. It is a type of Chalcedony, which is Quartz. Every slice of Agate is unique. It occurs naturally in shades of white, blue, red, green, yellow, orange, brown, pink, purple, gray, black or even iridescent. Often Agate is dyed. Brightly colored Agate is rarely natural….
I found these area rugs with a modified Blue Willow pattern. The Asian motif is hand-hooked in two shades of blue with off white. They are made of Courtron Polypropylene, for use on a covered porch, so they will stand up in the house really well. The rugs are hand-hooked in two shades of blue…
Blue Willow Pagoda Pattern Memory Foam Contour Mat When I was looking for bath mats, I found these contoured Blue Willow Pattern mats to go around the toilet. They come in two versions of the traditional Blue Willow pattern. Blue Willow Scene Toilet Mat I know. Some people really hate the look of a mat…
Bath Mats, Kitchen Mats or Doggie Beds I was looking for bath mats and found these. They are all very similar, but sold by a lot of different companies. They are very well priced on Amazon, but the descriptions came from other websites. Style and comfort come together in these Asian Motif memory foam mats….
I was looking for a replacement piece of Blue Willow china and found something really fun! Have you ever heard of CalamityWare? I looked it up. These are designed by Don Moyer, a retired graphic designer. The Calamityware website says that when he inherited a Blue Willow plate, he copied the pattern and added a…
The January 2019 Issue of Southern Living has an article Pretty Snug in the Home & Garden: Beautiful Spaces — Inside and Out feature. “10 new rules for cottage style, a small home can have big attitude. Birmingham decorator Fran Keenan certainly proves it.” Pretty Snug Don’t have room to spare? All the more reason…
The January issue of Better Homes & Gardens starts with the article Fresh: Obsessed with Scalloped Edges We’ve seen their swooping symmetry in architecture, furniture, and hemlines for decades, even centuries. What’s new is the way scallop’s structure has been loosened, scaled up, and repeated graphically in a way that’s bolder, curvier, and a bit…
One of my favorite decorating books is Signature Style: Creating Beautiful Interiors from Traditional Home Books. The book is about finding your own approach to design. All of the interiors are Traditional, but the eight different designers have very different approaches. There are a lot of photos, as you would expect. But the designers explain…
Blue Willow and other Chinese looking patterns are transferware. Transferware was developed in England sometime in the 1750s and became enormously popular. Transfer-printed dishes were affordable. Cobalt blue, like Blue Willow, was the most popular, but transferware was also available in green, yellow, red, pink, purple, cranberry, brown, black and gray. The style is timeless….
Examples by E Wood and Sons, William Smith & Co and other traditional houses were made in browns, reds and other popular shades. The composition of gondolas in the waters of Venice are bordered with bold florals with a grand Italian feel. The example from the Madison Bay Company uses multiple shades of an attractive…
