Decorating with Elsewhere Without Catalogue Exoticism
Elsewhere should never enter a home as an imposed theme. A so-called exotic room quickly becomes thin when it merely adds recognisable signs: an expected colour, a travel piece, two objects arranged to set a scene, a plant meant to explain everything. True elsewhere is quieter. It may lie in a quality of light, a sense of depth, a material, the presence of foliage or the way a landscape suddenly opens the room. It does not require a country to be recognised at once. It asks the eye to travel. Do not turn travel into decor To travel is not to bring back an inventory. It is to learn to see proportions, shadows, colours, thresholds, gardens and handmade things differently. An interior can keep something of a journey without becoming the reproduction of a hotel, a restaurant or a shop window. This is often where the difference lies between an inhabited home and a catalogue decor. In the first, objects have an intimate or formal reason to exist. In the second, they are there to pr...
