Dream Client & Genie Bottles
Who’s the dream client, you ask? I’ll tell you all about her, but first a word from our sponsor (me!) about genie bottles, and hinged boxes, and lockets (oh, my!)…
Rauni Higson, MBE and I are teaming up to co-teach a very special course on how to combine Eastern repoussé with silhouette dies in a hydraulic press. This utterly unique process allows for increased depth and accurately mirrored forms to create vessels, containers, and more.
This is an intermediate/advanced course that requires you to have studied Eastern repoussé with me in person or online or from my DVD. Access to a press is necessary too. If you’re interested or have questions, hit reply and let me know!
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
I don’t usually share projects that are still in the design phase, but I’m so excited about this one that I have to spill the beans!
As the season here turns autumnal and I will once again be faced with the extreme urge to gather metaphorical acorns and nest, instead I’m embarking on the largest metal projects since the double doors and room divider I created for a custom superyacht. This time the environment is decidedly landlocked (at least until Atlanta is an Atlantic beach town thanks to climate deniers). The setting is a house. In fact, it’s my house, which is why I get to be my dream client. I could just as easily turn out to be the client from hell, but I’ve firmly decided to be the former rather than the latter, not that that will make me any less of a perfectionist.
I knew in 1998 when I bought my 1917 Craftsman style home, that the small kitchen and both bathrooms would require major renovation. Until recently, however I’d only been able to stomach renovating the small master bathroom. The original parts of the house are beautiful, but the bathrooms and kitchen were re-done in Home Depot Ultra Cheap DIY, circa 1995. If we leave them in place much longer, the water damaged Formica countertops will curl back on themselves, and the kitchen sink will fall through, leaving us standing in the crawl space to wash dishes.
Every time my husband mentioned how desperately we needed to address these things, I’d melt down. 4 months with no kitchen?!? I just couldn’t face the chaos! I finally hit the procrastination wall and gave in last Valentine’s Day when Chris and I stayed and took cooking classes in a farmhouse with an oh so functional kitchen. Cooking together was just so functional…and fun…and did I say functional? It was so very functional.
Chris and I brainstormed our favorite design styles and the mood boards we put together for the interior designer revealed that we wanted to cook in a Hobbit Kitchen and dine on the Orient Express. As the plans emerge, the feel is decidedly Art Deco with curves that echo the house’s origins in the early 20th Century as Art Nouveau transitioned into Art Deco. Once I could imagine the layout and feel of the space, I began sketching thumbnails for the larger Eastern repoussé panel. The inspiration is partly from the metal wall panels in the Rivoli Bar at the London Ritz hotel, partly from a detail of a mural in a dining room of HMS Queen Mary, partly from my obsession with astronomy, and, of course, partly from my ability to layer multiple levels of high relief in sheet metal.
Now instead of working with an interior design firm and a shipyard all on separate land masses, I get to work with a woman-owned design-build company that comprehends exactly what I need to encompass my vision of Eastern repoussé wall panels. One will go behind the 36” cook top, the other below a high window and behind a dedicated tea/coffee/bar area.
Stay tuned for the other panel’s design!