Your “Style in One Picture” Challenge

top:2px;padding-right:5px;font-family:times;”>One of my favorite blogs, From The Right Bank To The Left Coast, posted a Summer Challenge, asking readers to define their style in one photo. This is not an easy task to accomplish as my taste tends towards the eclectic. Frequent moves throughout my marriage (6 in 13 years) have given me time to exercise many options, but whatever color or style-de-jour I’m embracing, the one thing that’s become a constant in my home decor is how I intermingle antiques with modern art.

Alek, the brain behind the aforementioned blog, encourages readers to boil the photo & their style down into 3 simple words – for me, it’s Antiques, Modern, Glamour.

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The Antiques Diva’s Style is all about Art & Antiques juxtaposed against Modern Glamour.

• I love intense dramatic colors that pop, calling your name and demanding attention. Black is bold yet clean, modern and edgy and if I had a place in my home for it now I’d do it in a heartbeat. As it stands, our apartment is so light and airy I hate to ruin the ambiance so in deference to our historically-listed home I’m bowing towards a traditional white and hoping for a chance to someday exercise my artistic bent elsewhere with black in the future.
• I love outrageously over-the-top, heavily-gilted, marble-topped antiques, heavy with scrolls and embellishments contrasted against the straight lines of modern art.
• While Modern Art speaks the language of my heart, giving expression to feelings words cannot articulate, Antiques speak the language of my soul.
• The Object d’Art makes this ensemble – the bronze statue, Gothic miniature chest and piece of coral – evoke memories of Grand Tour souvenirs. In my own home, my art de la table is composed of an eclectic mish-mash of shells picked up on Girls Trips to Florida, Art Deco statues scavenged from flea markets and art salons throughout Europe and I’ve even a wooden box of similar size, if not similar origin. Mine is a wooden box made by my father-in-law when he was a young boy, handed down to my husband, sitting proudly on my own Louis XV commode*. My home is a mix of the precious and the priceless, the latter being made in MasterCard fashion entirely of memories!
• My chosen photo above was taken in Holland at Art & Antiques Fair ‘s-Hertogenbosch April 2008 in the booth of the fair coordinator, Jan Roelof, a master who mixes this modern+antiques recipe.
• AF’sH is next scheduled for April 18 – 25, 2010. See The Diva Website for more information on upcoming tours!

That’s it for now, but in the meantime, why don’t you take From The Right Bank to The Left Coast’s Challenge – What’s Your Style in One Photo?

The Antiques Diva™

* Remember: commode means chest of drawers – not toilet – in Europe!

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