Updated on Art and Inspiration

Cement tiles in dreamy blue mid-eastern inspired designs are perfect for outdoor use

For reasons which remain opaque to me, no-one offered to send me on an all-expense paid trip to Salone del Mobile, the huge annual furniture and design show held in Milan, and which is attended by all the Cool Kids from across the globe who are in design. Alas! Good thing I can get a taste of what’s going on from afar. One of the most delicious items that came across my desk are the designs from Walker Zanger’s  well-loved Duquesa (Spanish for Duchess) collection, which are now available in cement, and thus suitable for outdoor use.

The designs include Alba, Fatima, Fez and Jasmine, all executed in a dreamy blue called Mezzanotte. Fatima draws inspiration from 16th century Italian textiles, Portuguese ceramics and Moorish mosaics. Fez nods to Spanish and Egyptian wood inlays, pendant lanterns, and Chinese decorative screens. Alba’s roots are Moorish geometric designs and bronze metalwork, while Jasmine’s curves evoke arched Moroccan doorways and carvings.

See more here in this lovely PinBoard:

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Updated on Art and Inspiration Featured Articles

Black and white photography makes artful decor

Like a lot of people, I’m really digging that black has become so prevalent in home décor. I love the way it defines space when used on ceiling beams, windows, and frames. I love the sculptural form it brings to faucets and light fixtures, and the way even a little of it can change the depth of shadows in a room. I love the graphic punch of a bold black tile, especially when it’s married with navy blues and dark greens. I love the way it works with golds of every hue, and silver, and bronze, and stainless steel, and whites of every sheen, and glass, and wood, and stone.

More than anything else, perhaps, I  love to see black and white  photography used as art. Which is why I gasped when I recently went on the Ffotoimage site  – an online collection of 40,000 fine art photographs overseen by the Stephen Bulger Gallery. I was there researching a piece on online shopping for the Toronto Star (I’ll add the link when it goes live). The first image I saw was by Lutz Dille, a German photographer who started working in still and documentary photography in Canada in the 60s. (Ignoramus alert — I’d never heard of him).

This series comes from street photography done in Paris and New York City in the late fifties and early sixties. I am entranced by how vivid the subjects seem, and how much I think I can infer about them from the shot. To me, it’s stunning story-telling. Unfortunately, I don’t have the $20,000 or so I’d need to get the series, so I’ll just have to content myself to looking at them here. As perhaps will you.

Beautiful, no?

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