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dcnovice -> RE: Startling New Look for a White House Dining Room (2/15/2015 12:02:31 PM)
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quote:
Hey DC... what do you think?... You've a lot more style than I and would like to hear your thoughts.
Why thank you, Butch! What a kind thing to say.
I want to like this room. It takes the state floor of the White House into the 20th century, and it clearly resulted from a lot of thought and good intentions, as Mrs. Obama explained on the Today show.
Yet . . .
Somehow it just doesn't come together for me. For starters, it seems cold and uninviting, perhaps due to the gray walls. It might also help to accessorize it more generously. The tea set looks lonely on the sideboard, as does the glass vase atop the chest of drawers. The candlesticks on the mantel look overwhelmed. The table could use a few more chairs. Even the flowers seem austere rather than welcoming.
More important (imho) is the lack of visual unity. A big part of that problem, I think, is that there are two competing palettes. The modern art and not-so-modern curtains emphasize primary colors, with gray as the neutral background. But the rug and seat covers take us into the world of earth tones. Having a single palette would unify the room a lot, I think.
I like eclecticism and don't feel every room has to be a slave to a single style. Indeed, my own LR/BR blends "dead grandmother" with "hipster wannabe." But here I think the contrasts are too sharp. The heavy, old-fashioned curtains look particularly out of place, and the dainty chairs don't have the visual weight to hold their own with the in-you-face artwork.
Does this make any sense?
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