Bloesem at Home
I find that being at peace in my home is becoming more important to me every day. I spend most of my time at my desk looking at the screen of my Apple (don’t feel sorry for me I love doing this…), and my home is also where I often have my lunch breaks and go for a walk… I want my surroundings to be fully integrated with my home office. Create the ideal home. When I talk about this with other women who also work at home, they say they feel the same way. But it is a quite a challenge to go from the clear picture in your mind that even contains the tiniest details of the ideal home to actually putting it together. Moreover, the ideal home is of course an evolving concept, changing with the different phases in your life, a work that is never completely done…and we don’t want it to be. It is very exciting to keep shaping the place you work and live in. But it is easy to get lost in your imagination… This read is my first attempt to put a bit of structure around the idea of my future home. Putting together some of the bits and pieces that I have collected in my head for some time. It is still a bit fuzzy but it is a start…
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Your own private museum
Li Edelkoort predicts that we will all be living in our own museum some time in the near future. I tend to believe her, she is also the person who predicted the importance of the teddy bear… Li sees us living among our handpicked collector’s items, but also family pieces that passed on from generation to generation and the occasional Ikea icon (remember the first Billy series…). She thinks of us as the curator’s of our own home, our own life. Each room has its own identity and feel, and characterizes who we are.
{ps. images via Volkskrant & Jaap de Wit}
Li Edelkoort's ideal home is shown in the "Kunstpaviljoen". She uses work by Piet Hein Eek, Jurgen Bey, Maarten Baas, Hella Jongerius and many other talented Dutch designers to create different styles and atmospheres: a design and textile room as well as room with special objects. Combining nature with design and connecting the past with the present. The variety in her ideas is amazing. The owners of "Kunstpaviljoen" actually live there. I don’t think they will leave their home that often…
I absolutely love this idea of making your home, if not a museum, a unique place, there will be no place like it, your home expresses who you are and who you will be… keeping all options open, and shaping your ideal home indefinitely…what better excuse to start cherry picking rare pieces of your favorite contemporary furniture and art!
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Some museum ‘must have’ pieces
Find the differences…the polder sofa by Hella Jongerius resembles all I love about the Netherlands, straight lines with uneven plateaus, different shades of green you see everywhere in the Dutch polder landscape. All asymmetric shapes. Most of these ‘low lands’ are far below sea level and only protected against the water by formidable ‘dijken’. The sofa buttons remind of ancient guilders from my grandma’s coin collection. As I move around the globe quite a lot, the polder sofa would be a pleasant reminder of my home country, a great remedy for homesickness. The polder sofa for Vitra is high on my list of collectibles.
I love Piet Hein Eek's work. His distinctive work is known for the use of original materials and applying innovative production techniques. It is very impressive to see what he can do with simple materials. There is so much variety in his work. You will not find any look-alikes.
Imagine burning your furniture and then put it back in your home. That is exactly what Maarten Baas does with this collection of ‘smoke’ furniture. The effect is amazing. Scorched wood and black leather combined with traditionally shaped furniture. These are indeed museum worthy pieces of art.
Jurgen Bey's designs are not meant to be functional. They tell a story. Each design has a predecessor in history. His work is both traditional and modern. You can look at his work for hours, completely forgetting the world around you. This is what the ideal house is all about, continuous day dreaming…
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Living room collectibles
I have always been intrigued by those people who have the ability to make concrete our subconscious and look into the future. Trend watchers who seem to be able to read our minds… know what we want in life before we do ourselves. Their ideas are a great resource to think about your own life and work. And of course to help shape your ideal home…. When I was thinking of starting my own business some years ago, Faith Popcorn's EVEolution was a true inspiration. Much of her work emphasizes the increasing importance of women in both consumer behavior and business (of course we already knew or felt she was right but somehow Faith made it much clearer). But she also introduced us to ‘cocooning’, something I can completely relate to. Much of what I do is about cocooning with my friends and loved ones… The best thing is of course cocooning in your ideal home!
{fashion photography by Wendelien Daan, mobile by XandL, Chandelier by Graham and Green via Decor8 , furniture by BDDW }
So here are some of the items that I would like to see find in my living room. A mix of contemporary and nature inspired designs. Organic designs but also some more slick and modern looking pieces. Collecting handmade items by artists I know personally so each museum piece tells its own story. Adding to the variety and uniqueness of the museum collection. The great thing about your personal museum is that there are no boundaries or prescribed rules of taste or style, you make the rules yourself…
I am longing for these vintage pieces from Modernity! Almost too beautiful Scandinavian design. Can you believe there is so much incredibly cool Nordic stuff?
...…and don’t forget to reserve a couple of spots for handmade American furniture by BDDW.
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Surrounded by nature
As you will be spending a lot of time inside your ideal home, you will have to bring nature inside too, compensating for the lack of walks in the park. Patrick Blanc invented vertical gardens. It's all about green! No need to paint those walls or change wallpaper every year. These living walls may be just a bit much, but I like the idea of leaning against a soft wall of grass and reminisce….
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Storage area
Putting together a personal museum takes time, a lifetime actually..., so make sure to prepare back-up files of all your ideas and creative finds. Here are mine.
{USB Memory stick by Karin van Lieshout and Guido Ooms}
