Good Finds at Good Earth in Chennai, India

I need to get my mind out of the gutter that is our Chicago basement lately, and find a happier place, like the original purpose of this blog:  decorating the India apartment!

We visited Good Earth while in Chennai last year. Good Earth had the merchandise mix we love:  comfy upholstered furniture, old Chinese cabinets and tables, plus a dash of India. This is pretty much the style in our Chicago home.

Things we saw at Good Earth …

I like this interpretation of columns, fashioned of wood and painted silver:

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There’s That Chair Again

I’m talkin’ a certain chair.

Notice how the chair lies low. It lets the table be the center of attention. You’re not looking at chair backs sticking up all around. Which is fine, if that’s what you want. For our Chennai apartment, low-backed chairs and less visual noise is part of what I seek to create a cool, calm environment. I want focus to be on the walls and art by India artists I plan to collect in the future. Not so much focus on the furniture. The furniture can recede in the background.

The chair pops up on Pinterest occasionally, here in this image via Remodelista:

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In Awe of Decorative Painting

With the clean slate of the India apartment’s walls, imaginations of what to do can run wild and free! There’s nothing existing to constrain ideas. No things like a royal blue velvet sectional that must be accommodated in the design. Or Chinese celadon pottery. Or Hello Kitty wallpaper.

I’ve written previously about creating an old stenciled look on many of the walls:

Something exotic. Patterned but not overwhelmingly so; maybe it’s faded and uneven like it wore away over centuries.

During online travels through the world of decorative painting, I “met” Sylvie Michel Bilger of Metamorfaux, who was in Chicago this week for a client project, and I had the wonderful opportunity to really meet her, in real life! We had a lovely conversation about all sorts of creative and life things, and time flew by so fast. That’s when you know you’re having fun. We laughed about how homes may not always be as they appear in blogs — it’s true! — because we choose to put our best faces forward here.

I wanted to share Sylvie’s work with you, which opens my eyes and mind to things that can be done with walls that I never thought possible. I admire most in this world the ability of people to make the impossible possible, and the ability to envision and innovate from literally and figuratively, blank walls. This applies to decorative endeavors as much as it applies to things like leadership and entrepreneurship.

So I respect people who can turn visions into reality. Like these images below from Sylvie’s Metamorfaux blog. Wouldn’t these stucco impressions help make the cool and calm feeling I just posted about, but add texture to make a room interesting:

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Cool and Calm Amid Chennai Chaos

Cool and calm. That’s what I hope to achieve in the India pied-à-terre, because it sits amid a busy and sweltering Southern India city neighborhood. Here are images that capture the cool feeling of escape that I’m aiming for (from a Pinterest Board – India Apartment Decorating Inspiration) …

Via Elle Decor:

A chair from Matter that looks like a chair in my husband’s family photo in Southern India when he was a little boy. But the cost of this one chair probably could have housed, clothed and fed their whole neighborhood back then:

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