Lamp Fetish

It's safe to say I'm a little obsessed with lamps. Back when I lived in Chicago, Bloomingdale's on Michigan Avenue had an amazing lamp department with equally amazing sales which I took full advantage of on a regular basis. I got to know the Manager of that Department so well that she would call me letting me know when one of my favorite lamps was going on-sale. I amassed several lamps during that time and still have a couple around from way back when. Lighting is very important in any room and changing a lamp can easily change to feel of a room. 

One of my favorite lamp makers is Robert Abbey... A few of my favorites include:



I loved the oversized height of the Buster floor lamp in 
polished nickel and the oversized shade



The companion to the floor lamp

lends drama to a dining room



This is the perfect accent lamp (Robert Abbey Mini C)

for next to a chair and it comes in several great finishes

  

This lamp is part of Jonathan Adler's designs 
for Robert Abbey. I love the scale and the 
many colors it comes in

Great accent lamp for an entryway table

I just ordered this swing arm lamp for my guest room

When I was at Dwell Magazines Dwell on Design show here in LA a couple weeks ago I ran across a really cool lamp designer, Lesley Anton who does amazing ceramic lamps - http://www.lesleyanton.com/

Here are some of her designs:

 


There are some cool online sites that allow you to design your lamp... pick your shape, pick your color, pick your base, pick your finial, pick your shade. Check out http://www.mottega.com/ and play around with the "Design Your Lamp" section of the site. They are pricey at $699 but you get exactly what you want.

Here's a couple I designed:

 

Ebay is a great source for lamps, I bought a couple very unique mid-century lamps recently for between $50-$75. With a newly painted base, some metal polish, a new 3-way socket, and new shades they look like million bucks and the nice thing about an Ebay lamp is they are more often than not very unique.


Here's my latest purchase:

So, have some fun with lamps, change it up every once in awhile. A new lamp can do wonders to change a room.

Wallpaper Obsession...

I love wallpaper, I'm obsessed with it! I have added wallpaper to my bedroom, office, and livingroom. I don't like an entire room of wallpaper but I do like accent walls. It lends texture to any room and keeps a room interesting. In my bedroom I put grasscloth on two walls and it looks amazing with a great blend of navy blue, grays, and straw in the grasscloth. You can get grasscloth in many colors and you can even have it custom printed with a design over the grasscloth. 

Astek Wallcoverings can print a pattern over grasscloth. They used this in a bedroom on HGTV's Design Star. For more information on printable grasscloth visit http://www.astekwallcovering.com/

I used this in my livingroom in brown and it also comes in a beautiful Robin's egg blue, it's from Graham & Brown - http://www.grahambrown.com/us/index and I bought it through DesignYourWall.com.

It's easy to get completely lost in wallpaper sites like: 

http://www.designyourwall.com/ ...It's wallpaper porn!!!

Unfortunately, I just had my first bad experience with wallpaper installation. I searched and searched for a cool wallpaper for my guest room and found another great design from Graham & Brown. The paper had a mustard stripe with a blue gray stripe and a hint of silver metalic throughout with a small silver metallic pin stripe between each color. It was beautiful and I couldn't wait to have it installed.

My plan was to hang horizontally and the wallpaper hanger arrived to do the job but after her first 12 foot strip the wallpaper creased and the color was coming off at the crease. My paper hanger had only ever experienced this problem once in her career. With calls to the manufacturer and calls to the distributor we sadly determined that it just wasn't going to work and the paper was too fragile. It was a brand new pattern and it was batch #1 which might have been the reason no one else had ever had the problem. In the future I will stick to a more durable paper and preferably one that has some vinyl in it. If it says washable, it's durable.  

Grasscloth is a different story... it's not washable but it is durable and most paper hangers know how to handle.Check out Phillip Jefferies line of papers for some truly amazing grasscloths: http://www.phillipjeffries.com/index.html

I recently stumbled upon some very interesting paintable papers that lend amazing texture to a room. Graham & Brown have a modern version with squares that I really like.



Here are some wallpaper favorites available at DesignYourWall.com...

  













Some of my favorite paper comes from Osborne & Little in England:

 

Resources:

http://walnutwallpaper.com/
http://www.phillipjeffries.com/index.html
http://www.astekwallcovering.com/
http://www.designyourwall.com/
http://www.osborneandlittle.com/




Wallpaper takes time to find the right one but the process can be a lot of fun.