The Steampunk Aquarium Mural

Giant octopus in a rusting iron aquarium

I recently completed a fabulous project on a tiny detached garage in Oakland, California. My client is an avid scuba diver who loves all things Victoriana, and has a special attraction for octopi. So I devised a plan for a Jules Verne-inspired aquarium.

before: a little detached garage building

I designed the mural to incorporate the entire structure: the garage door became the glass "tank" and the building its "case."

The finished mural with many surprising details

In retro- steampunk fashion, trompe l'oeil rusting iron bolts and cast-iron brackets hold the aquarium tank together in a Victorian-style oak woodgrained case. The mural is completed with three portholes at the top and protected with several coats of UV varnish.


all images in this post ©Lynne Rutter

click on images to view larger

Lynne Rutter Murals and Decorative Painting

Exterior Color: Noe Valley Victorian

Beautiful Victorian details celebrated with six colors and gold leaf!

This Victorian in San Francisco's Noe Valley could not help being a bit cute. The Stick-Eastlake Cottage had been painted about 15 years ago using the pink colors from the magnificent hortensia blooming in its front entry.

before: a pink and green scheme for the cutest house on the street!

When it came time to repaint, the owners asked me to design something a bit more grown-up.

Choosing a Color: I ask my clients to drive around town and photograph houses of similar style whose paint schemes appealed to them. Every one they chose was green! So we started with green. The color scheme I devised for this house uses six colors, all from from Benjamin Moore's Historic Color range, with 23 karat gold leaf on the buttons and pediment ornaments.

Managing contrast: This palette is as much about contrast as it is about color. One technique being employed here is the use of what I call a "secondary trim" color, in this case HC-96 "richmond gray" which is about 30% darker in value than the "high trim" color (HC -32 "standish white") and is used to support features like brackets and window columns, and to create a break between the main body color of the house and the more vibrant accent colors of the window sashes and insets.

Know when to say when: The custom garage door was simplified from three colors to one, and painted the same as the body color, so as not to compete for attention from the main part of the facade. The front door, which had been whimsically painted with four different colors, now sports a more European look in a solid glossy teal with polished hardware and gold leaf details, leading the eye right to the entrance.

After: the Victorian Cottage as stately home

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Expert Painting by San Francisco Local Color Painting
Color Consulting by Lynne Rutter 415-282-8820

Lynne Rutter Murals and Decorative Painting

Miniature Portraits

Recently I have been spending some time cleaning and getting to know the miniature portraits collected by my great-grandmother. Many in her collection were acquired from a sale at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and most of those were portraits of Marie Antionette.

I will be posting the entire collection in sections here as I have time.

Some of this first group of paintings were set aside for my niece in honor of her 21st birthday.

Portrait of Marie Antionette in a green dress, goauche on ivory, signed “Chatain.” Backed with white kid leather and set in a simple ornamental oval frame with watch-crystal type pillowed/beveled glass. Very likely painted as a copy of another painting, as a souvenir.

Oval portrait of a dark-haired lady dressed in the Italian fashion, watercolor on ivory, unsigned.

Portrait of Marie Antionette with a rose, signed "A.T." gouache on ivory backed with white kid leather, in gilt wood frame.

Portrait of Marie Antionette in an apricot dress, unsigned watercolor on ivory. This painting is much smaller and older than its elaborate frame, which dates from the late 1870's.

Very fine and pretty portrait of a young girl, gouache on bone ivory, signed "Gericault 1812" backed with white kid leather, in its original simple brass frame.

By far my favorite of this group, "Lady Smitson" as this is labeled on the back, is wearing the fashion of the 1780's and painted with a rare amount of texture, recalling the English School style. Signed "Gram" and dated "80" on reverse, and set into an elaborate frame.

Lady Smitson is so realistically painted that I am sure this is not a portrait of Marie Antionette, but of lady dressed in her style.

Click any image to view at larger size.

Want to know more about miniatures?
Read here about my obsession with Miniature Eye Portraits

Elle Shushan in Philedelphia has a fine business collecting and selling miniatures.

Check out this huge on line gallery of a number of collections on this extremely informative site: "Artists and Ancestors"

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Exterior Color: using paint to emphasize architecture

Here is another case study on the placement of paint color, and how to get the most from your Victorian facade.
This Laguna Street Queen Anne Victorian had some common issues- raised to add a garage, the house looked so high off the ground that the nice parts of the facade were hard to find; you could see the garage door but not the front entrance.
My clients asked me to give this Grand San Francisco Lady the refined look she deserves. I started by talking to them about not just the colors, but where we put them, and the difference between emphasizing details vs emphasizing architecture.
You see, it isn't just the colors you choose, but where you put them that makes all the difference!

Laguna St. Queen Anne before and after: color design by Lynne Rutter. Click on image to view larger

In the previous paint job, every detail was painted differently. Despite a complicated scheme of 5 colors, the house looked a bit flat; the placement of colors emphasized individual features, but without honoring the role they play in the architecture.
Columns in the entablature as well as in the entry arch, were painted dusty rose while the areas behind them were much lighter, so rather than stand out, these columns receded into the background, and everything above them, crown moulding and brackets, "floated" unsupported. Fancy rosettes had dark "holes" of burgundy, and the lovely egg and dart feature in the crown moulding had been painted out like a dark ribbon, slicing an otherwise substantial crown into three skinny horizontal stripes.

Laguna St. entablature before and after: click on image to view larger

So, in addition to a new palette, we needed a new "map" of where to put the colors to best bring out the shape of the architecture, and help this house stand up straight!

The first thing I did was de-emphasize the garage, creating a "foundation" for the house by painting everything below the entry the same deep neutral gray, a color very similar to the stone covered foundations of neighboring houses.
"Structural trim" that is, everything supportive, or the "bones" of the house - columns, cornices, crowns, capitols, etc. - are painted a warm ivory, so that they are connected and supported by each other. Carved elements like the egg and dart in the crown, now show up as sculptural relief, with shadows and highlights adding detail. From there, shades of green, bamboo, gold, and ivory, are arranged to focus attention on the beauty of the structure. In all, seven colors of paint are in use here, with some choice decorative features highlighted in 23 karat gold leaf.

All colors on this project were specified using C2 paints.


Bring out the best in your historic building, whether it be inside or outside. Color Consultation 415-282-8820

Entablature is in the glossary!

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Victorian Woodgraining

This splendid Victorian front door set with leaded glass windows
was finished with a simplified faux bois effect by Lynne Rutter.

In San Francisco Victorians, it's fairly common that the dark woodwork so commonly found in their interiors is actually redwood, that has been painted with a faux bois finish to look like something richer and more expensive. This style of woodgraining usually emulated mahogany, and was often nothing more than a layer of deep tinted glaze pulled over a painted surface, then varnished. This simplified faux bois technique is a remarkably effective treatment.
In older American cities like New York or Chicago the faux bois used in Victorian homes was a complicated process resulting in a realistic imitation of wood, but in boomtown San Francisco, there were few skilled painters available in the rapidly growing city, so most made do with a very simple graining job; and then it was off to the next house!

One of my specialties as a restoration painter is rehabilitating and recreating these period finishes, which requires careful matching of color and mimicking the style of the original painter.

Missing ceiling mouldings were recreated (left) then glazed to match the original finish (right)

In this Mission District Italiante mansion, removal of a 20th century dropped ceiling in the dining room revealed the original mouldings, damaged but well worth saving! Missing areas were re-created by a carpenter, and then we painted them with a woodgrain effect to match the original finish. We also created a typical faux bois finish for the baseboards, doors, and casings, to restore the room's period look.

My associate Melka Myers is creating a burl effect in the insets of some reproduction doors.

The parlor in this house had an interesting paneled ceiling that had been painted over many times. I designed a color palette and finishes for this room to create a more Victorian period atmosphere. As you can see the finish starts with a bright, apricot colored base.

My good friend Tania Seabock was available to help us, and worked some magic to create this finish using only one layer of glaze, to skillfully fashion a convincing faux bois finish.

The effect is stunning, so much so that it's hard to believe anyone would want to paint it white. It's worth the extra effort to finish these surfaces as they were intended; you get so much more out of the architecture.


click on any image to view larger

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

The Fabulous Peacock Parlor of Mr. Clem Labine

During our recent visit to New York, the maestro and I made a trip out to Brooklyn, to visit Mr. Clem Labine at his historic Park Slope brownstone.

Portrait of the Publisher as a Young Aesthete.

Mr. Labine is a longtime Friend of Artistic License, and the notorious founder and former editor and publisher of the Old House Journal, Traditional Building, and Period Homes magazines, all of which sprang from his passion for preserving and improving older buildings, starting with his own spectacular manse. It's no surprise that his home boasts outstanding original as well as restored features and is decorated in high Victoriana, complete with koi pond and neoclassical statues.

My favorite room is the Peacock Parlor, the formal sitting room on the grand main floor of the house, with its massive original casings and doors, high ceilings, coral walls, and crammed with art and statues. On the day we visited, an indoor bocce court (non-regulation) had been constructed on the spacious peacock feather patterned carpet. But the real story for The Ornamentalist here is the custom-painted frieze.

Unusually large at about two and a half feet high, the Peacock Frieze was designed and painted ~ 30 years ago by Austrian-trained Helmut Bucherl, ably assisted by Howard ("Howie the Grainer") Zucker, the son of a German-born decorative painter. Both artisans spent most of their professional life working for Rambusch Painting Studios of New York. The inspiration for the design was found in an old Dover Edition and embellished by Mr. Bucherl, whose Austrian roots show in the Secessionist-style elements. The ceiling has a very cool anthemion detail of stylized peacock feathers. These borders were painted using a combination of stencils, pounces, hand-shading, and gold leaf, and the entire room, including the ceiling, has been glazed. While the color are rather intense, in the intimate light of this room, they look perfectly balanced.

The peacock motif was adapted to create a four by eight foot ceiling rosette with a fabulous antler-branch spiral border and gold leaf accents which glitter above the electrified gas chandelier.
As you can see a gorgeous decorative painting job endures, like great architecture.

click on any image to view larger
anthemion is in the glossary!

Visit Clem Labine's new blog, The Preservationist

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Cover story!

December 2008 - check out this month's California Homes magazine, whose cover story puts the spotlight our favorite new San Francisco designer, Claudia Juestel of Adeeni Design.




The cover article features a historically significant Victorian country house in Diablo, California, to which I have previously contributed a fair amount of work, including restoring and recreating the faux bois for the baseboards and doors in the main parlors and entry, the entry floor, and the ornamental overdoor panels in the living room.

Above: The panels over the windows and doors in the Living Room were painted by Lynne Rutter.
Artistic License associate Brian Kovac created a weathered wood finish for the beams in the newly built wine cellar.

I am so happy to see this work used in Claudia's fresh design, which is an eclectic, worldly mix, and celebration of the Victorian house's original features.


<-- The entry with its painted checkerboard floor and restored faux bois baseboards and casings.



Here is proof positive that you can live,
really live in a period home, with all its "dark" wood and traditional proportions, and still have a joyful, current interior.






click on images to view larger.
images 1 and 2 © California Homes Magazine
image 3 photo by Bernardo Grijalva

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Eye Candy

A splendid miniature eye portrait from the Victoria and Albert Museum, with a diamond teardrop,
via Tail of the Yak.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, miniature eye portraits were all the rage. This was after the late 17th century rage for miniature portraits of any kind. They were painted most often using watercolor or gouache, on a substrate of ivory or parchment, then set into a bit of jewelry- a pin or pendant.
In Victorian times the eye portrait was often a piece of mourning jewelry, but the origin of this form was as a token of love.
I have had, for rather a long time, an obsession with eyes, used as symbols in my paintings. So naturally I am fascinated with these tiny symbolic paintings, the lover's eyes.

an assortment of lover's eyes

According to The Art of Mourning:
"Eye portraits are considered to have their genesis in the late 18th Century when the Prince of Wales (to become George IV) wanted to exchange a token of love with the Catholic widow (of Edward Weld who died 3 months into the marriage) Maria Fitzherbert. The court denounced the romance as unacceptable, though a court miniaturist developed the idea of painting the eye and the surrounding facial region as a way of keeping anonymity. The pair were married on December 15, 1785, but this was considered invalid by the Royal Marriages Act because it had not been approved by George III, but Fitzherbert’s Catholic persuasion would have tainted any chance of approval. Maria’s eye portrait was worn by George under his lapel in a locket as a memento of her love. This was the catalyst that began the popularity of lover’s eyes. From its inception, the very nature of wearing the eye is a personal one and a statement of love by the wearer. Not having marks of identification, the wearer and the piece are intrinsically linked, rather than a jewellery [sic] item which can exist without the necessity of the wearer."

I'd love to be a collector of these, or to have just one of them. Perhaps I will paint one of or for my own best beloved, as a follow-up to the maxi-eye portraits I painted a few years ago, of Erling Wold, myself, and our "adopted" daughter Laura Bohn.

Eye portraits of Erling Wold, eye self-portrait, and Laura Bohn, at 250% of life size, oil on masonite.




Treasuring the Gaze more about Georgian lover's eye portraits.
Check out the highly enviable collection of Cathy Gordon
Oeil en miniature by Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien
Even more lover's eyes from Candice Hern

The Art of Mourning more about Victorian mourning jewelry
Interested in collecting? Antiques Roadshow has some tips.

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

The Fantastic World of Edvard Mordake

Mordake, Erling Wold's latest opera, tells the story of the 19th century aristocrat, Edvard Mordake, who was driven mad by his twin sister - a female face on the back of his own head.
I was asked to help visualize the setting- a suite of rooms fit for a Victorian gentleman.

I found plenty of inspiration at Richard Reutlinger's lovingly restored Victorian house in San Francisco, especially in the master bedroom, which features a Dresser-inspired frieze painted by my late friend and mentor, Larry Boyce.
I photographed some rooms, and made a Thurber-esque line drawing, as well as a simplified gouache painting of the bedroom (above) which are all to be computer- modified by Erling and German visual artist Freider Weiß, and then projected on stage to create Edvard's world. The large mirror I left blank, as they will be adding some invented reflections there. The set will alternate between photos, video, drawings, and paintings, to create varying levels of reality and fantasy.
And I hope Larry won't mind that in making my paintings of this room, I filled in his rather glaring persian flaw, so as to leave room for some of my own.

Mordake by Erling Wold, a solo performance with tenor John Duykers, premiers May 22 and runs through June 7, 2008
as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival
More information and musings on this subject can be found on Erling's blog.

Mordake is featured on the cover of Theater Bay Area this month!

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Lace Doily Table

It's here! my lace doily table, custom made by my friend Marcia Stuermer of Fossil Faux Studios.


The tabletop is acrylic resin, embedded with lace doilies, many of which were made by my great grandmother. The rest were collected from eBay as well as San Francisco's Chinatown. At 51" in diameter, the table is scaled perfectly to the room, and can seat 6 comfortably.


It has a different color and glow in varying light.
And it looks great with my late relative lyre-back chairs.


I could not be more excited about this. It's perfect!

Needle Lace Exhibit at Lacis

<---- 17th Century Gros Point de Venise lace border

Saturday Kathleen Crowley and I ventured to Berkeley to pick up corset supplies at one of my favorite places- Lacis, where one can get all those little necessities for costuming and beautful living, like chatelaines, patterns for period clothing, corset busques, pewter clasps, bone knitting needles, and of course, lace....

While there I got a tour in their small but fabulous Lace Museum. The current exhibit features some outstanding hand made needle lace from the 16th-19th century, that rivals the lace collection I saw recently at the MAK in Vienna.

this exhibit displays incredible examples of European lace, with photo-enlargements of pattern details, as well as illustrations of how it was used in collars, sleeves, etc.

punto in aria

a spectacular lace fan, and detail of its pattern

click on the images to see larger images and more detail.

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Krampus!

Travel flashback: December 5, 2002, Salzburg, Austria



December 6 is St. Nicholas Day. yes, that St. Nik aka the Bishop of Myra, aka Santa Claus. The night before, is known as Krampusnacht.

In the Salzburgerland, St. Nik (dressed as a bishop) is always preceded by a pack of horrifying devils. Krampus wears a horrifying shaggy suit of fur, carved mask wth horns, and large iron bells and an apple basket or bag on his back. His job: beat the bad children with bundles of sticks, stuff them in baskets or bags, or otherwise punish them, while St Nik doles out treats to the good kids. The sounds of the bells sends the children running (either to or from.)

We found a bunch of these guys bar-hopping along the river: after they'd done with their more official duties in the Mozartplatz, they were using their super cool costumes to charm women.

A lovely Weiner Werkstätte style greeting card, circa 1900

The Krampus tradition is also popular in other parts of Europe in various forms, and a common subject in Victorian greeting cards.

How my family managed all these decades without an annual visit from the Krampusse is beyond me.

setting the table

I love the work of my friend, artist Marcia Stuermer, who designs acrylic resin furniture and art installations via her company Fossil Faux Studios. Embedded in the resin can be anything from grasses and rice, to computer parts, cds, street trash, rocks, and skeletal leaves, frozen in what can be considered modern fossils.
The surface of these things is lovely- honed, durable, hard but not cold.

I've asked Marcia to make a table for me, an unusual size, round, sort of a dining room library all purpose life table. I am putting a lot of pressure on this table to be everything for me already. For a long time I was not sure what it ought to preserve- my shell collection, single earrings, or any of those other odd bits of old and pretty that I not so secretly collect, but rarely display in a somewhat vain effort to unclutter my life. None of my ideas seem to quite work with the arty-farty eclectic Victoriana gallimaufry that is my décor.

The ideal solution presented itself to us when Marcia and I went to see a show in the gallery of the Intersection for the Arts, where a profound installation by Stephani Martinez reminded me that I have a trunk full of hand made lace doilies made by my great-grandmother.

Today I picked up the fantastic sample Marcia made.

I am very excited to see the results of this. Rather than setting the table with a lace tablecloth... it will be an Embedded Translucent Lace Table.