Many would not know that I used to be a head librarian…in grade school that is! Age 9, It was at my desk positioned, stationed near the door where I would sit feet dangling off a tall stool, rubber stamp at my reach and a copy of Tintin in my hands. Kind of ironic that the head librarian was reading comics, but there was something mystical and adventurous about them that spoke a sophistication to a 9 year old, after all Tintin was a Belgian globetrotting reporter who visited everywhere from China to the moon!
My grade school had every Tintin comic available, double copies at that, I soon learnt at an early age I was not meant for the playground, I much preferred delving into my own world of make believe then falling on asphalt. Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Snowy and my favorite Bianca Castafiore, the famous Opera Diva became my friends in adventure and I idolized Tintin even wearing my hair trying to replicate his famous quiff with some 80's hair gel.
What intrigued me was furniture in Captain Haddocks mansion, the tribal artifacts, inside the rocket ship but mostly the inside flaps that featured a series of frames on a candy striped wallpapered wall, I thought it was genius how it illustrated all the characters in different styled ornate and plain frames, I liked the way the frames where all irregular, some where cock eyed, I use to study it for hours.
This fascination with frames has been a reoccurring theme to my work as a Stylist; I in fact produced a story for Real Simple, that I shot with the very talented Sang An, sanganphotography.com, which revolved around the whole concept of reusing and decorating with empty frames. In a story that I shot with the wonderful Hallie Burton, hallieburton.com on my former apartment, we shot a series of frames on the wall that I had subconsciously arranged just as it appeared in Tintin.
Of course this theme is not an uncommon one in decorating, A few years ago, Artists Taylor and Wood designed an interactive wallpaper for English wallpaper company Graham and Brown, www.grahambrown.com called “Frames” (Of course!) The purpose of the wallpaper is that you decide what you want it to be: whether you want to put up your child's art, paint directly into a frame, or put up family photos, I quite like it with nothing on it at all!
The thing that topped it off for me this week that inspired me to finish this post is I discovered an old English toffee tin at a thrift store in NYC, It was manufactured by George W. Horner and Co Ltd, probably from around the 1940’s that had exactly the same theme that has fascinated me for years, how uncanny, I had to have it, Isn’t it amazing how the smallest things amuse and inspire!
