Sarah Bagner loves a good story, and she thinks our walls create the perfect storytelling stage. In her new book, Wonder Walls (October 2012), the stylist, flea market fiend and writer of this blog Supermarket Sarah visited the homes of artists, designers and collectors using their walls to communicate their personal design to the world. “What caught my eye were screens that revealed their personality, walls which let me discover a bit more about the person,” says Bagner.
Whether you’re a minimalist or a hoarder-collector, there’s a wall in Magic Walls which will speak to you. See how you can display your style by allowing your partitions do the talking.
Ryland Peters & Small | CICO Books
Embrace your inner maximalist. A fast glimpse to this crafts area may scare any minimalist rear into a bare-walled home. But take a good look at button designer Hiroyo Suzuki’s Tokyo home and you’ll observe great balance and order in her teeming wall display.
Suzuki let her instincts direct the way she decorated her partitions, yet there’s the ideal shape and a grid-like structure to her understanding of containers, jars, boxes, rolls and cloth.
Tip: Zone in on the details, even if you’re coping with loads of small pieces. Suzuki’s display works just because she believed the space between objects and the dimensions, colors and tonal attributes of her ranges.
Let your items do the talking. This photo shows the House of Bjorn Springfeldt, the curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Sweden. Instead of existing pieces in his home as a set, Springfeldt showcases items by enjoying on the contrasts between them.
Bagner loves how Springfeldt shows Erik Dietman’s work, “Pain,” over the doorway, directing the eye to an abstract painting in the next room. You don’t quite know if Springfeldt is referencing the English word “pain” or even the French word for “bread”
Tip: Flip typography on its head, as Dietman did “Pain.” The artist shaped and glazed each piece of bread rather than using wood or metal letters.
Layer. Then layer more. Shrubs, plants, dried leaves, prints and found items fill Ayumi Yamamoto’s studio. “Every time you have a look at the wall collage, something fresh reveals itself,” says Bagner.
Tip: If you have a religious side, use it to get inspiration. Here, dried bamboo blessed by a Shinto priest hangs from the ceiling above Yamamoto’s work; it’s layered on top of a purse showing the image of Ebisu, God of Luck.
Produce a spectacle. Why not have a sitting area from the bathtub? Bagner delighted in researching shoe designer Chisa Nomura’s bathroom, and particularly, a corner Nomura enlivened with an argyle wall, pops of red accessories and handmade pincushion throw cushions.
Tip: Bagner loves how Nomura embraces the odd — something she thinks we should all know to do. “Beauty frequently comes from mistakes and spontaneity. Once you get into the rhythm, then you can in fact be quite structured with all the higgledy-piggledyness of it all,” says Bagner.
Ryland Peters & Small | CICO Books
Give aged items a new life. Within her own home, Bagner filled a corner using a collection of tchotchkes: Sun-Maid raisin packages, mini beer bottles, a framed film showing cigarette packet layouts with felines from the 50s along with a certification from her dad, who had been an Olympic table tennis champion.
“I really like mixing family photographs and mementos with dolls and found objects. It gives me great joy to breathe fresh life into old items,” she says.
Tip: Use kind cases to corral miniatures and smaller locates. The case backs assist all the small things stand out.
Ryland Peters & Small | CICO Books
Show what you love. British fashion designer and cofounder of Red or Dead Wayne Hemingway and his spouse, Gerardine, live in an eclectic modern house in Sussex, England. This mural showcases the Hemingways’ own print, along with the sectional’s cushion and throws use recycled linings from clothes — all materials that have particular meaning to the couple.
Tip: Play. Do not let people tell you that you can’t place a lightbulb lamp onto the ground, or that Placing your living room (just since the Hemingways did) so that bedrooms are living and living spaces and the kitchen are upstairs, is plain crazy.
Ryland Peters & Small | CICO Books
Displaying stuff, says Bagner, is all about exploring notions: “If you’re a minimalist, then go with that. Then embrace it if you’re a maximalist. Regardless of what, develop a style that’s you”
More:
A Gallery Wall for Every Personality
Put Your Set on Display