Trompe l'oeil faux travertine casings

Trompe l'oeil to the rescue!
In our current project, the huge windows of the two-story living room have somewhat undersized casings.

So we enlarged them, with a faux travertine finish and some trompe l'oeil egg and dart mouldings.

<------ Samples of the faux finishes

The stone finish makes the casings feel more substantial, and the additional border helps balance the size of the large windows.





To create the travertine finish, a coat of glaze (raw umber + white) is painted over an off-white eggshell finish paint.
A piece of pleated tissue paper is laid on the wet glaze, then smoothed over with a tooth spalter, and quickly removed.
This is repeated with a lighter coloured glaze on top.
This technique gives a fairly convincing textured effect similar to a foro romano travertine limestone.



The egg-and-dart moulding is created using a stencil to block in the "shadow" areas. Additional details are painted in by hand. in this way we can make each one slightly different so they don't look too new or machine-made
Warm white highlights are added as well as some shadows on the wall around the new "casings."




Subtle trompe l'oeil "joints" in the casings help make them look more convincingly assembled from carved stone.










The finished windows have more support for their size
and lend some classic Italian atmosphere to the room.

click on any image to view larger

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!

Francophilia

In addition to exploring Lacis, and while were in Berkeley anyway, Kathleen and I made a visit to Tail of the Yak on Saturday.

This has been one of my absolute favorite boutiques ever since 1982, when I lived across the street. Back then, I saved up my money to buy a pair of giant Thomas Mann hand earrings, (and of course,in those days, I only wore one of them at a time.)

<--- antique chinese hair combs


The boutique is filled with a gorgeous collection of antiques, textiles, glassware, ornamental paper goods, from all over the world, all with a decidedly French atmosphere. The work of local artists Anandamayi Arnold, Aimee Baldwin, and Lauren McIntosh has also contributed a fair amount to the aesthetic and look of Tail of the Yak, which has been an inspiration to designers and stylists (and other boutiques) all over the Bay Area.




<---Tail of the Yak window display featuring paper beetles and logs.

We made a stop at Bell'occhio on way back home, and found the log motif being repeated in their wood-grained walls and the sculpted "Woodsie" cake stands.

I picked up some absinthe spoons, which I hope to make more use of now that absinthe is legal, and more available than it has been.


Platial map "Francophilia" more things to do in San Francisco that make you miss Paris.
St George Spirits, Absinthe Verte is being distilled in Alameda
Bell'occhio 10 Brady St, San Francisco
Tail of the Yak 3632 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley

Art Deco Chinoiserie

What gorgeous, romantic bedroom, recalling silver screen Hollywood glamour, bias cut silk lingerie, martinis and cigarette holders....
Interior Designer Paula McChesney, designed this master bedroom for the 2003 Coyote Point Decorators Showcase in an historic Hillsborough mansion.
An expert colorist, Paula was understandably concerned about the astroturf green carpet, which we had to keep. The rest of the room- well, it had some problems:

Before: a long rectangular room with green carpet, white walls and a low ceiling beveled on two sides, dueling chandeliers, and not-quite symmetrically placed anything.

The solution: don't fight with the carpet- go green! The walls were painted with Benjamin Moore "Harrisburg Green" HC-132. The ceiling was painted a custom mixed green-grey and the rest of the palette was kept limited.

We paneled the room with three levels of silver moulding, including each corner, and a picture rail which settled the question 'where does the ceiling start?' The moulding was gilt with aluminum leaf in advance at my studio.

For the insets of the panels I painted Chinoiserie murals, using restrained doses of brilliant color. The panels focus attention into the center of each wall, creating the illusion of symmetry, and balancing the architecture. And it was also just darn pretty.

Paula furnished the room all in ivory, like a splendid Jen Harlow gown.

After the showcase ended, the paneling and the murals were installed in one of our client's homes.

I've been collaborating with Paula for over 12 years now. I think this was one of our most challenging and successful rooms.

room photo by David Duncan Livingston

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Chinoiserie in Red

The Chinoiserie Powder Room I designed for the 2002 San Francisco Decorator Showcase House - David Papas Photography

Here's one of my favorite historic decorating trends: Chinoiserie.
For a number of years now I've been known for painting a certain style of flowering trees Chinoiserie mural using my own spin on the look that was all the rage in late 17th and 18th century French décor.
I adore the wallcoverings of deGournay and Gracie, which are still being produced today in much the same way as the hand-painted wallpapers found in the Royal Pavillion at Brighton, or Lustschloss Hellbrunn, Salzburg. These papers are lush, labor intensive, delicate, and worth every dime they cost.

For this room mural, rather than paint densely covered wallpaper-style panels, I used a light hand, and a more naturalistic approach, to keep this intimate-scaled space airy and uncluttered. Carnelian Red walls help make the room look larger as well as rich and fabulous. And we included California natives such as poppies and monarch butterflies, alongside the lilies, pomegranates, and peonies.

some mentions for this room:
Kafka blog
sfgate

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

The Language of Cloth

I'm so excited about his time of year, because this is when my friend Daniel Gundlach has his annual Asian Textiles sale!

the flowers, birds, sea-life, and the unusual color of this Cirebon sarung, reminds me of the work of Ernst Haeckel.

Daniel is a talented painter with whom I worked back in my salad days, and he now spends 6 months or more every year traveling in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, using his great eye for color and form to collect and design textiles. His company, The Language of Cloth, assists communities in reviving the teaching and making of their local traditional arts while giving them a contemporary spin.

This year's show concentrates on the batik work of Central Java. All of these pieces are one-of-a-kind, hand-made, and spectacular. Many museum-quality contemporary works, as well as antique and tribal pieces are available, and there is a good assortment of scarves and smaller items that make wondrous and affordable gifts as well.

Yes it sounds hippie-dippie, and maybe it is, but you can do some very cool decorating and fashion-ating with this stuff.

My own batik collection is growing! clockwise from top: the red batik cotton tuli "mega mendung" (rain cloud) pattern is destined to become a new window shade; that splendid multicolored scarf I've been wearing all year is a Batak tribal pattern; cotton Cirebon-style sarung super cool in purple; a kain panjang cloth in hand-loomed Garut silk and nautral dyes will become an amazing skirt for me soon; contemporary batik scarf on hand-woven Lao silk; green and grey silk batik sarung I use as a shawl.

Update! read about Dan's work in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Language of Cloth Trunk Show and Sale
Weekends now through December
November 23-25/30th
December 1-2 / 7-9 / 14-16 / 21-24

11 am - 6 pm
650-A Guerrero Street, San Francisco

415.613.9693 www.languageofcloth.com

new lace doily pattern from Flor

photo courtesy flor.com

I've been thinking about using some of those super cool Flor carpet tiles in my tiny "chill room" for a while but could not settle on a pattern.
Until today, when Marcia sent me a link to their new Amazing Lace design, and I think the deal is done now.
This is playing into a recently revived lace obsession.

note to Flor photo-stylist, how about a little cord management?

Trend ho! check out the doily bonanza posted at Decor8!

tea towels

kitchen linens by tikoli

tea towels. somewhere along the line i started collecting them.
not the terry-cloth hand-wipers you see everywhere, but nice, smooth lint-free souvenirs with kiwis or scenes from nürnberg on them.
maybe I get the tendency from my grandmother, jane coley, whose fabulous collection of linens i had displayed in my vintage laundry earlier this year during the san francisco decorator showcase house.

maja brugos is my second cousin; the grand-daughter of jane's sister lenore; and it seems she has the linen bug in her as well. she's a talented graphic designer who has created a line of lovely kitchen towels available at her site tikoli.com as well as a number of swell shops across the country.

i'm pretty sure all of these will look great in my wasabi-green kitchen!

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.

Vintage Laundry

I've recently designed a room for the 2007 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, which is being held in the spectacular house at 2901 Broadway, a 1927 neoclassical mansion in its original state.
A wonderful example of passive preservation, the house's original laundry room had never been painted, or really cleaned, as far as I could tell. The walls are raw plaster and the giant double enamel sinks are in near perfect condition.

So I designed the room as a sort of a valentine, to what this house used to be, and to the era in which it was built. It could almost be 19th century Europe, except with reliable electricity, and prohibition.

My assistants and I hand-washed 80 years worth of filth off of the walls and ceiling, exposing a lovely patina. We stripped the old wax off the concrete floor, acid etched it, and painted a matte faux marbre finish; we also restored the dark painted finish of the 12 foot long solid redwood work table.
The opaque window glass was changed out to clear, revealing an amazing view of the bay. An ugly water heater heater was disguised with a folding screen, custom built by Chris Yerke, and painted with neoclassical motifs and singerie painted by Lynne Rutter with help from Adrian Card.

The fun part of course is the laundry itself- lots of vintage 20's lingerie, all in ivory silk and lace, borrowed from Torso Vintages with the styling help of Erika Bellas von Petrin, and a collection of period linens, many of which belonged to my grandmother, Jane Coley Kittredge, whose bright coral wedding ensemble is also peeking out of the mending basket.

The showcase is open to the public through May 28, 2007.

mentions:
sfgate.com
7x7
Erling Wold: The Laundry Room
SF Chronicle "Swells"
Yelp
LuxLife
7x7 Home and Design

photo by David Papas.

SF Decorator Showcase

Lynne Rutter has been invited to participate as a designer in the 30th annual San Francisco Decorator Showcase April 28- May 28, 2007 at 2901 Broadway Street at the corner of Baker, a spectacular 1927 neoclassical mansion designed by Henry Clay Smith. This house has never been open to the public before, and visitors will have a rare chance to see a period villa in near original condition; no remodeling has been done.
Look for Lynne's work in the Vintage Laundry

Nursery Room Mural in SF Chronicle

July 31, 2005
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
This wonderful children's room mural, commissioned by Sharmin and Brian Bock, is featured in the article "Room to Grow: Decorating, kid style" by Jane Meredith Adams.
The mural transformed a tiny, dark space into a cheery, open meadow, and features a portrait of Sharmin's horse painted onto the closet door as part of a trompe l'oeil "stable."
More than 8 years after it was painted, this room is still used as a playroom for the family's two children.

"All the World's a Designer Showcase..."

May 2003
The more theatrical aspects of this year's San Francisco Decorator Showcase are discussed by Carol Lloyd in the San Francisco Chronicle.

For this showcase I designed the Lift, more than just a personal elevator, this carriage was custom built to my specifications of solid cherry, and its raised mouldings parcel gilt in 23 karat gold. I painted three large scale portraits of eyes to add a surreal element. People entering the lift are either rapt or disquieted.


photo by David Papas

Chinoiserie in Progress

The Chinoiserie powder room, which I designed for the 25th Anniversary of the San Francisco Decorator Showcase, featured in the San Francisco Chronicle
"Show time: Hopes, dreams... "
by Angelica Pence

Edwardian bath featured in Sunset Magazine

click on images to see large enough to read.

Sunset Magazine has published an article by Mary Jo Bowling about the bathroom Paula McChesney and I did for the 2001 San Francisco Decorator Showcase House. We restored this Edwardian era bath to its circa 1915 look, preserving the original tiles, sink, and toilet. The tub, faucets, and lighting are new historic reproductions. Translucent color enlivens the room in both the painted wall glazes and the wonderful resin room divider by Marcia Steurmer of Fossil Faux Studios.

Hot Stuff

December 2000
San Francisco Chronicle "Hot Stuff" column
"Artist Creates Dramatic Interior Scenes" by Beth Bourland featured a chinoiserie room mural we painted for a client in Pacific Heights.

photo by David Duncan Livingston

Diane Dorrans Saeks, on the SF Showcase

April 28, 1999
I got a brief mention in this San Francisco Chronicle review of the 1999 San Francisco Decorator Showcase House by Diane Dorrans Saeks