1 Credenza 4 Ways: #2 California Eclectic

It’s another ‘One Credenza Four Ways’, except this time … she (the credenza is female, obviously) is ‘California Eclectic’. She is the kind of girl who almost shoplifted when she was 16, but didn’t because she was distracted by the cute teller. She’s the kind of girl who you might not want to date your son, unless you want your son to have a crash course in ‘life lessons’. She’s fun, but a little cuckoo.

As a style schizophrenic, each of these credenzas actually feels like a part of me (see yesterdays ‘Upper East Side Cool’ and stay tuned for the other two coming out).

This one clearly feels like young a California chick. A chick that obsessively collects weird art and pottery in bright colors, loves high brow and low brow culture equally, and every day wishes she were just a little bit tanner and a lot more focused. She might call herself Emily Henderson, but you’d think a chick who had this art collection would have an edgier name …. a name like Emily Starke. Now that’s a real bad ass name (It’s my maiden name).

Why this styling works:

1. While there are certainly more than 3 -5 colors here at play (which is traditionally the number to stick to unless you are extremely skilled at mixing colors), white and blue are the stabilizers with pops of other colors mixed in. And all of them feel equally bright and colorful. Mixing in a neutral landscape painting into this would feel accidental.

Click through for more images, tips and a gif of the process.

2. Since the artwork itself is a little cooky, most of the frames recede a bit – no strong thick black frames in here drawing too much attention. The art pops and the white/gold and gray frames kinda disappear.

3. The placement of the lamp is ‘considered’ in both the color/composition and the balance of the whole collection. You might think – you can’t have a tall lamp on one side and a short horizontal sculpture on the other!!!, but you can, little naysayer. You can. The blue of the lamp is counterbalanced perfectly with the teal painting on the left. And the blue lamp is equally as visually strong of a piece as the dynamic string sculpture despite how different they are. Had it been just a collection of small mediocre pottery it wouldn’t have worked. We placed the lamp first then created the collection so we knew how the lamp would play with the rest of the pieces (even though in the gif it shows that the lamp went last – it didn’t).

4. Normally I say there needs to be something that ‘grounds’ the collection of things on the credenza, but there are no books or trays in this case. It still works because the shape of all the pieces create a collection that really acts as one big piece. They all compliment each other, working with each other’s shapes, colors and textures to create 1 big, beautiful, eclectic collection. Your eye keeps moving over the pieces gracefully landing at the edge of the photo. Your eye just had its own little organism and just thanked you.

That string art is stupid and represents so much of my personality – blue/white/organic/structured/surprising/mesmerizing. I got it in Arizona at a vintage store and I couldn’t let that guy leave my heart and soul. The blue plate I’ve had for so long – like 8 years and it reminds me when I loved anything indigo, white and patterned -in other words it reminds me of my entire life the last 20 years.

It’s funny because as we prep for our online vintage store, I look around and there are soooo many things that I’m capable of parting with, but in that photo above, most of them you would have to rip from my cold, dead, sausage fingers. I’m going to have a huge room-sized coffin. Charlie better start saving for that now. I can’t wait to unnecessarily burden him by me sleeping with my favorite large pieces of furniture, accessories and art forever. You thought you were getting an inheritance?? HA!!!

To help raise money for my future coffin we made a gif. You can make contributions to www.hoardingtilheaven.com (don’t bother, it doesn’t exist until tomorrow morning when I make that happen and hire Bearcat to do the Kickstarter campaign).

I’m tempted to call that my favorite one, but you have no idea what the last two look like. One involves seascapes and one a really large face. You’ll have to come back to see for yourself.

1 Credenza, 4 ways = #1 ‘Upper East Side Midcentury’, #2 ‘Eclectic California’.

Photos by TessaNeustadt