The Silver Kitchen

This gorgeous custom kitchen was recently featured in the Spring 2009 issue of Better Homes and Gardens "Beautiful Kitchens." This room features a silver and ecru color palette and is dressed with rock crystal and stainless steel. I painted a faux limestone finish on the walls and used venetian lime plaster to create the irregular stone-like finish on the range hood.

These warm stone finishes compliment the silver pearlescent cabinets and white calcutta marble counter. Silver is a recurring theme color in this Piedmont, Ca. home, where I contributed color design and well as many other decorative finishes.













photo courtesy Camber Construction, where you can see more of my work in this house.

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Showcase Season

My Powder Room in the 2002 San Francisco Decorator Showcase

Showcase season is upon us again, with exciting spaces being presented by veteran and new designers alike. I have painted in over 25 showcases houses around the Bay Area, and transformed three rooms for the San Francisco Decorator Showcase as a designer. This year, due to my travel schedule, I could not participate in the exhilarating rush of reshaping a room in a scant three months.

I missed it, actually, because it is during this time I get my one chance each year to spend time under the same roof with so many talented colleagues in the business, and there is an atmosphere of camaraderie when a large number of the area's best decorative painters are all working on the same house. Oh of course there can also be a little drama, but for the most part everyone is trying to do their best work and finish before the press arrive, sometimes working late into the night, often running to the next room to beg a roll of tape or ask advice.

Showcases are especially great for ideas. Working without a "client" the designers get a chance to show off what they are interested in, what inspires them, and their best new finds.
A few years ago a nice book came out called "Decorator Showcase Houses" which compiled the best 250 rooms of 50 different showcase houses from all over the country. I recently flipped through this idea-packed book looking for a room I remembered from a previous showcase, and was really struck by how fresh and interesting even 7 year old projects look. This is because these designs are not the "trends" so much as each designer's personal vision, which, if anything, will set the trends for the future.
(look for my work on pages 137, 176, and 186!)


See the 2009 San Francisco Decorator Showcase , through May 25 at 2830 Pacific Avenue.

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

Library Children's Room Mural completed!

We recently finished the murals for the Children's Room in the Burlingame Public Library. I am so thrilled with the transformation of this space!

<----- Sierra as Melisande


The mural was commissioned by the Burlingame Library Foundation to commemorate the centennial celebration of the Library.


My goal was to create a mural that appears original to the room, as though it's always been there. Indeed it is hard to imagine the room without the paintings.





The North "main" mural wall is about 37 feet wide and the ceilings are 20 feet high. The first 5 feet of the walls are filled with bookcases, so all of the murals had to be painted with perspective from below eye-level.

There is a large metal grate and a little maintenance door in this wall, that I worked into the design, so the architecture became part of the composition of the mural.







I had a lot of fun re-imagining this little door area, to make it an entrance to a castle, or possibly, another world.

Faraway Castles, approx. 9 feet wide

We added images all around the room, so the room becomes a story, its walls the pages of a favorite book.
Details like tiny faeries, mice, and California poppies become more noticeable when you get up close.

(click on images to view larger)

See my previous post for work in progress images, and more about this project

Centennial Mural story in San Mateo Times

Bay Area Art Quake review by Phil Gravitt!

My thanks to:
Burlingame Library Foundation for their support and this amazing commission
the Burlingame Librarians for all their research and enthusiasm
interior design consultant Michelle Nelson
and to the ladies of my atelier: Sierra Helvey and Melka Myers.

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Chinoiserie at Decorati

My Chinoiserie Powder Room is now featured in the "Style Guide" of Decorati's new on-line magazine Decorati Access.

Decorati is a site for locating furnishings for interior décor, and includes a large number of designer profiles, making it a great resource for both designers and design clients.

2002 San Francisco Decorator Showcase. photo by David Papas

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Singerie Screen in 7x7

September issue of 7x7 Magazine has included a shot of my singerie screen in their home and design section.

A Delicate Matter - Care for your bare necessities with these pretty picks for your laundry room. by Leilani Labong


This large screen made its debut my "Vintage Laundry" in the 2007 San Francisco Decorator Showcase.
Each panel is 90" high by 26" wide and 1.75" thick - sturdy enough to serve as a room divider, or to create a dressing area from a larger room.



One side of the screen is painted in a blue/gray neoclassical motif with singerie scenes in which the monkeys are all playing with clothing, sewing, etc.

Contact Lynne Rutter for details about purchasing this screen or commissioning a custom piece.

My thanks to David Papas Photographer for these photos.

Diego's big close-up

"Diego" giant blue and gold Macaw parrot, painted for the New Spot, San Francisco. 10 x 13' acrylic on canvas.

While visiting the Urban Farmer this afternoon, I noticed a giant parrot on the cover of the 96 Hours weekend insert of the San Francisco Chronicle.

A nice review of the New Spot, for whom I painted this mural, is featured, along with some other good pictures.

How to attract paparazzi...

1. show up late
2. wear a turban
(also handy to cover that sweaty "i just worked all day" hair)
3. pick up flute of champagne on the way in, completely ignoring the bank of photographers that are by now following you
4. hook arms with the tallest, best looking guy you can find: in this case, Rob Delameter of Lost Art Salon

Here is my exceedingly rare appearance on the society page
"signature look" translation = "we don't get it"




circa 1920 Chinese robe from Torso Vintages
turban by Kathleen Crowley

Photo by Drew Altizer

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. All we needed now was a period sewing machine and a hand-made low-tech wooden drying rack from Amish Home Place.

The fun part of course is the laundry itself- lots of vintage 1920'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.

Dramaticaly Inclined

The Pearl Earring featured in this House Beautiful "Beautiful Baths"

This mural is 10 x 13 feet and painted on canvas. It covers a wall which once had a view-less window and makes a focal point of what would otherwise be visual dead end.
I painted this mural for Ellen Broadhurst's master bathroom a few years ago, and though it uses the image from Vermeer's famous masterpiece, it is painted at a surreal scale- 600% of the original size using a completely different painting techniques- lot of layers of acrylic paint, and highlights applied by dry brushing.
She finally got some press from House Beautiful.
Beautiful Baths special issue, August 2006, pages 84-91
available at amazon.com

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Pow-Wow Network interviews Lynne

I've met so many wonderful women in the design business, through San Francisco's Pow-Wow Network.
In March 20o6, they published this interview of me, with pictures, and intimate details....

click on image to read article at full size.

"Grand Illusions"

February, 2006
I am featured in Silicon Valley Home magazine in the article
"Grand Illusions: Custom-Painted Murals" by Tiffany Carboni

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.

Period Homes double feature!

By some coincidence, we are highlighted in two articles in the same March, 2005 issue of Period Homes Magazine.

"Home is Where the Art Is: Residential Murals" by Nicole V. Gagne featuring a trompe l'oeil bas-relief Egyptian passageway mural painted for a client in Novato, CA.

"The Fifth Wall: Options for Decorating a Ceiling" by Martha McDonald - all about ornamenting the ceilings of your home.

How to paint a white kitchen floor

October 27, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle
Lynne solves a Design Dilemma - how to deal with a white kitchen floor. Think painting that white vinyl is an easy cheap option? Think again.

Paris Ceiling featured in Traditional Building Magazine

The detailed process of ornamenting a 900 square foot ceiling in the new Paris Casino Resort Hotel in Las Vegas, is outlined in the article "Vegas Hotel Gambles on Classical Design..." by Nicole V. Gagne
including photos of the work in progress.click on each image to view large enough to read.

Published in Traditional Building Magazine , June 2004

East Bay Home and Design

February 2004
"Faux finishes are truly appealing" by Kristine M. Carber

My work in this historic Diablo, CA home is featured in East Bay Home and Design magazine. In this entry the I painted the checkerboard floor by adjusting the size and shape of each diamond, just a bit, to compensate for an extremely crooked hallway. The house's original faux bois finishes were also cleaned and restored and in some places re-created to match the original.

photo by by Bernardo Grijalva

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Lynne Profiled in Artist's Magazine

February, 2004
Click on the image to see the article large enough to read
Here is a very kind profile of me in The Artist's Magazine
"Scaling The Wall" by Jennifer Ball.

Murals featured in Decorative Artist's Workbook

Another thrilling exposé of me and my work:
click on the image to view the article large enough to read.

"Walls of Wonder" by Lorraine Crouch, published in the Decorative Artist's Workbook, January 2004.

Bay Area Muralists profiled in San Francisco Chronicle

September 6, 2003San Francisco Chronicle
"Walls with a View...Muralists put painted faces on blank indoor spaces" by Kristine Carber.

"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

As Seen on TV

KPIX Evening Magazine catches Lynne on a good hair day, in this rare TV appearance.
Featured in the video are "Vera has a Martini" and "Maxi-Max" in progress, during the time I was using my living room as a studio.

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

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.

Pearl Earring in the Nob Hill Gazette

"Modern and Minimal"
The March, 2001 issue of the Nob Hill Gazette has a large photo spread by R. Bengston on the home of Ellen Broadhurst and featuring the giant mural I painted for her of Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring.
Ellen also commissioned the Lacemaker from me for another house. She almost as big a fan of Vermeer as I am!

above photo by David Duncan Livingston

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

"Mural Mural on the Wall..."

The Lacemaker is included in a nice feature in SV / Savvy Magazine article by Kris Spangler. January 2001

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