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Accessories are the most important part of any properly decorated room. They’re the finishing touch – much like the earrings, scarf and shoes you wear to complete an outfit.

Sculptures and statuary are an emerging trend that will help you put that final piece of jewelry in any room. Here are a few I’ve chosen to get your creative decorating minds a head start on this trend.

Have you visited One Kings Lane? They feature daily sales on individually selected home products. This Saturday, June 4th, interior designer, Michelle Nussbaumer, will be featured as one of their Tastemakers.  They select items from their own inventory. Which brings me back to statuary.

These Tang Dynasty-style ceramic rams (pictured above) will be included in the sale ($749 – marked down from $1,400). You have to grab these deals fast as there are only a few pieces available and they sell out quickly. In the case of these horses, they’re one-of-a-kind. I often see statuary and sculptures at One King’s Lane.

These four  figures from Fantastic Decor ($69.99) shown above, aren’t your Mama’s Italian maidens. These are actually new, but are nicely antiqued. Don’t you think?

I love this metal bird created by artist Llana Goor. These birds (there are several on Nia Goods Etsy’s shop ($350). I have a few iron birds, painted white that I use to decorate the edge of our pond. You can copy me. But at this price, I might leave this indoors.

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I adore Novica. I found these cuchimilcos statues ($58) made by Peruvian artist Jose Acosta. These are made in pairs depicting a man and woman.

Finally, I couldn’t resist Jonathan Adler’s shark sculpture ($495). It’s big! And will make a biting statement. I’m loving it. Brain ticking away.

Jennifer’s Styling Tips

Sculptures look terrific on mantles, atop a stack of books, on a bookcase or a side table. Some make great centerpieces on the dining room table.

If your sculpture is large, consider putting it on a pedestal in a corner of your room. It will give your room height.

Do you have your own favorite way of using sculptures? Let’s make a list.

The over-sized graphics create a lot of impact. Painted white, this clock makes a bold statement.

The interplay of the black and white graphics are terrific. I love the lime green, too.

This is my favorite. The enormous clock is all you need. I love the French caf?© chairs with the wood tavern table. It works.

Resources. If you live in Europe, you’re in luck – you’ll have an easier time finding vintage clocks. Check salvage shops. Here are some places to try.

Lassco

Tick Tock Tony

Homedakor

We really don’t see many clocks, do we? Do you think they’re making a comeback? Do you ever think of buying a clock for your mantle? How about a grandfather clock?

Visit Benjamin Moore and check out their line of Aura paints. They cover in one coat and have low VOCs. Shop online at Shine Home.

Jane Churchill fabrics are available through the trade. Contact me for your best price. To find Mitchell-Gold’s Mia nesting tables follow this link.¬† Mythology’s Milk Glass hurricanes start at $18.00.

Farrow and Ball paints, wallpapers and fabrics are now available online.¬† Jim Thompson fabrics are available through the trade. Call your favorite designer (or me) for a quote. Yogagoat’s shop is at Etsy. The porcelain plate is $275.

Take this vintage beauty for example.

It’s from Urban Archaeology and weighs in at a whopping $19,500. Yikes. That price is a little pre-recessionista, dontcha think? But the piece sure is fantastic.

Anyway, after my blood pressure returned to normal, I thought I’d take a little tour around the online hospital furniture wards to see if this trend is going as viral and my need to write bad double entendres. Let’s see what the Internet coughed up.

I love this cabinet from Furniture Love. It’s made by a Belgian medical furniture company. You can see more photos of it on their site. As with most of the things I found, this has been sold. But you might Google the furniture company’s name to find more.

These cabinets come from the 1940′s via Past Present Future. This company will sell you the piece “as-is”, or refinished. The price for this cabinet is $1,025 restored.

Twenty Gauge, a vintage metal furniture company from California is holding their winter sale. with 30-50% off their entire stock. They will also operate on your vintage parts so they look shiny new. But sometimes a  little patina can be a good thing.

Here’s another 1940′s cabinet from Grant Hospital, in Chicago. It retails for only $675. I found it at Urban Remains, one of the best Medical Furniture Wards on the Internet (in my humble opinion). Here’s more.

Hey, this early 1900′s cabinet (left), from Urban Remains, would make a nice lower-priced substitute for the cabinet at the top of this post. Price? A healthy $1,085. The one the left is typical of many of their stock, which is enormous.

These vintage medical pieces would look lively in a bathroom, a contemporary living room, hallway, and home office. Truly, the imagination is your only limit. So there is none.

Here’s a particularly heartening excerpt:

“Now, given that all those slick Miami condos are sitting empty in the sky, designers like the Campana Brothers, with their $8,910 Corallo chair, and Hella Jongerius, with her $10,615 Ponder sofa, might have a harder time selling their wares. Already designers are biting their knuckles over the damage reports. The American Institute of Architects reported that last month‚Äôs billings index, a gauge of nonresidential construction, reached its lowest level since it began collecting data in 1995.

The pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two ‚Äî and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process. That was the case during the Great Depression, when an early wave of modernism flourished in the United States, partly because it efficiently addressed the middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings.”

In short, it seems there’s hope for those of us with B & B Italia taste and an IKEA wallet.

Read the entire article here.

Leave your comments below. :-)

Bouquet: 6 Colorways

The 1980’s was the era of the English Country House. Interiors were decorated with over-stuffed, Chintz-covered sofas. They sat amidst ottoman-style coffee tables laden with piles of books, topped with a vase of peonies fresh from the stately gardens out back.

Bird in the Bush: 6 Colorways

Often, movies precede the emergence of a particular style. Out of Africa greatly influences Ralph Lauren’s signature look – both in fashion and interiors. That movie, as well as A Room With A View, Howard’s End were influencers in the English Country Look that symbolized the 1980’s.

Ash: 9 Colorways

The Return of The English Country Cottage?
The great thing about rediscovery is the way an old style is reinterpreted to make it look fresh. Mad Men, for example, aims for historic accuracy. And the look isn’t quite as hip as we would have thought. It’s the reinterpretation that makes it fresh to our eyes.

Songbirds: 7 Colorways

I’m beginning to see this same reinterpretation applied to the ‘80’s Country Cottage. Why? Sometimes it only takes one movie to start things moving. In my humble opinion, Atonement is responsible for giving this look new life.

Atonement’s Living Room: A Feminine Country Setting

The movie’s set design was very popular and got a lot of press (not unlike Something’s Gotta Give). Cecilia’s bedroom, in particular, was gorgeous. Yet all interiors featured floral wall covering with matching window treatments. It’s a feminine look that works really well within the architectural framework of the rooms. Of course, the movie takes place in the 1930’s. But, as I said, we’re constantly taking a new look at old things.

Velvet Jaquard: 6 Colorways

Another influencer is the popularity of Jane Austen’s novels and the gentrified rural world in which her characters reside Рsort of faded fancy.

Anne French’s new Wild Flora collection of wall coverings and fabrics is spot on this trend. If you like a feminine style, it’s worth taking a look at.

We talked about color forecasting, an industry unto itself, and one that I find fascinating. We touched on creating color palettes and Benjamin Moore’s revolutionary new paint, Aura. I’ve divided our interview into three parts. The first topic is color forecasting, which poses the question: how do you know what colors will be hot two years down the road without using a Ouija board?

Benjamin Moore’s Sonu Mathew

Design Hole: You’re promoting really bright colors, like yellow and fuchsia. Why brights?

Sonu Mathew: We’re really promoting the idea of optimism in 2009 РIt’s a year of transition in the economy and politics which will have an effect on design.  The expression of colors that embrace this transition in a positive way is what we’re excited about.

Design Hole: What areas of influence do you look at when forecasting. Does the economy play a large role? Fashion?

Sonu Mathew: When we look at trends, we look at socio-economic movements, fashion, technology, and political climates and how they all come together to create culture in society.  For example, the current down economy may influence the number of new colors a car manufacturer may be financially able to introduce in a given year.  This will likely mean fewer experimental colors and more basic neutrals.  If that’s the case, we can argue that self expression should not be lost, but reinvented in the home with a greater degree of vigor, personalization and customization.

Red is a traditional color for weddings in China. White rules the day in the West.

Each society has associations to color (i.e. red for weddings in China, white here) that you can use to stimulate a connection through color to represent what’s to come in that culture.

A more global color trend example is an entire color family like Green.  It is an easy color for the human eye to adapt to and it’s also a color that has become the representative for the ecological movement globally.  Going Green has become both figurative and literal.  Therefore, the Green Family has come to the forefront of design and has essentially become a neutral (you’ll find Wales Green in our 2009 collection to represent this).

Green works well as a neutral.

Also, we tend to see a rejuvenation of color in a cycle too.  What changes is the tone, value and intensity of a particular hue each time the color comes back. Lastly, sometimes technological advancements (like making synthetic processes) allow for us to discover a new color- think of mauve- and the newness of that color catches on in our culture.

Insights to the colors we’re looking at for 2009:

We find a new optimism in 2009- we are on the verge of new beginnings politically, socially and culturally speaking.  As we’re faced with changing times, we chose to embrace and experience it fully.  We express that through our color choices for 2009- they are a combination of bright colors like St. Elmo’s Fire, Peony, and Wales Green balanced by grounding colors like Ebony King, Dior Gray and Stone Brown.

Benjamin Moore’s forecast is drawn from paints in their existing wheel.This palette is designed to work together.

Yellow attracts many of us- it radiates warmth and energy.¬† Deciding on the right yellow can be challenging.¬† St. Elmo‚Äôs fire is both a great transitional color and its namesake is a weather phenomenon that‚Äôs representative of a light that leads the way in times of uncertainty.¬† It pairs beautifully with Dior Gray for a sophisticated effect.¬† We’ve been seeing fashion designers play with it on runways in unique combinations like gold, silver, pink, etc.¬† It‚Äôs the very subtle hint of green that is the key to St. Elmo‚Äôs compatibility with these colors.

Green is easy for they eye to process and so is deemed a calming color.¬† Because of environmental focus, it’s also representative of nature.¬† Green has been gaining speed over the last 5 years and is now basically a neutral.¬† It goes with any color.¬† Wales Green is a nice variation on the acidic greens we‚Äôve seen in the past.¬† It‚Äôs relaxing and fun!

Peony is that representation of Fuchsia- punchy, exciting and can be treated as a color for an accent wall or an entire room filled with dramatic influence.  It’s a blue based red and colors in this family have been associated to luxury in the past.

Design Hole: What is the goal of promoting seasonally trendy colors while still keeping in mind that homeowners will only repaint once every 5-10 years?

Sonu Mathew: We all look for transition and refreshing ideas at different times or seasons in our own lives.  By offering edited selections of color, we keep our clients up to date on what’s happening in the exciting world of color & design (tying into home fashion and accessory collections that are introduced throughout the year) while finding new and fun ways to highlight just a few of our over 3500 colors.  Inspiration can strike us at anytime and we hope to help each individual find it through our work.

It’s also important to recognize the difference between a trend and a fad. Fads are a “flash in the pan”, an idea that’s over before it begins and that leaves someone with regret.  Trends and their purpose are to be evolutionary.  You’ll see a family of color that you can certainly live with for years.  As I mentioned earlier, tone, value, intensity may shift, but the colors we select are meant to be livable.

Lastly, we find where homeowners used to be on a longer cycle, about 4-6 years between repainting, they’re now repainting every 3-5 years on average and not necessarily repainting the entire home at one time.  Rather, we work on smaller projects more regularly now.

Design Hole: How much does Benjamin Moore take climate into account when predicting popular colors? For example, bright yellow is a bold choice. Will it play well in the frozen north as well as the sunny south?

Sonu Mathew: We consider lighting in environments when suggesting colors and recognize that every situation is different.  The context of color actually plays a large part in how any given color will live in any location.  For example, when looking at our yellow, St. Elmo’s Fire, we also offer accompanying colors.  There are the brights such as Peony and Wales Green for the environment that craves a bold combination of color and there are what I call grounding colors in the selection such as Ebony King, Dior Gray, and Stone Brown that can offer a very comforting and rooted influence in combination with that same yellow.  Also, as you reference, light, even artificial, is of extreme importance.  A poorly lit interior environment is often the culprit of dissatisfaction when it comes to our spaces.

Also, we are advocating our optimistic yellow as an accent color – if you are going to paint one wall next year, consider St. Elmo’s Fire.

Stay tuned for part two of our interview on Monday! In the meantime, what top three colors would be in your color forecast? Have you seen enough newscasters wearing purple ties? Is that a trend or a fad?

This room is from French magazine, Maison Francaise. Notice the way the designer used three colors to create a wonderful sense of drama. He used purple on the walls (“Brinjal” by Farrow and Ball) and coordinated it with indigo on the doors and furniture to create depth. The final touch is the turquiose used for the back the armoire. the turquiose is reflective and makes the glassware pop.

Also, notice how the purple and indigo play off the orange tones in the dining table. The wood is accentuated because the blue tones are complimentary colors of the orange tones in the wood. Zip!

Finally, the light colored carpet and fabric on the chairs add light, so the room isn’t too dark. This is also where adding ambient light comes into play. A chandelier is wonderful, but if the room is still too dark, adding some simple downlights will brighten the room on a dark day and add even more drama if used creatively.

Here are a couple of other rooms in the same home. Again, look at the way color is used to work together. The indigo doors are aged so emphasize the decorative molding. I love the way the fabrics aren’t matched to perfection. Lots of stripes – but they work so well together. It’s this more casual approach (for lack of a better word) that creates a sense of a “real” room for “real” people. It looks like humans with an opinion live here. Not like a decorator super-matched everything to death. Those types of room always wind up looking like hotels to me.

If you’re interested in trying purple in a room, here are some paint colors to consider:

• Mythic‘s #016-5 & 016-6
• Pratt & Lambert‘s Shaded Climatis and Anchusa
• Benjamin Moore‘s Grape Gum and Starry Night Blue

I couldn’t find the Farrow and Ball colors on their American website. We haven’t caught up with this trend. I”ve contact the company to find out if and when they’ll be introduced here and will update when I hear back.

UPDATE: A reader corrected me about the “Brinjal” color, which is on their website. I was working too fast and didn’t see it. My bad.

Photos: Jean-Marc Palisse