How to repaint furniture
How to repaint furniture yourself
Syrano Stool by Massant - seven bright colours give new life to an object that was previously a theatrical prop.
Smeg brand turns refrigerator into designer oneobject. Imagine that platinum blonde Donatella Versace suddenly turned into a burning brunette or a fiery red-haired beast. What, shocking? That's exactly it! This is the effect - shock and complete amazement - that the latest collection of Versace furniture caused. Bright, like a peacock's tail, satin upholstery gave way to strict black and white fabrics and leather, the wooden elements of the chairs were also painted black and white. The company, which has always specialized in heavy classics, suddenly went for postmodernism. We have never seen anything like this! Strange metamorphoses can be seen in the collections of many other brands. Gone are the days when designers rejected the experience of the past and struggled to create new progressive forms. Now they do not deny traditions, but turn them upside down. Most often - with the help of color, and black is the king here. The song Paint It Black, an old hit by the Rolling Stones, can be considered an anthem of the design community. Traditional form and hooligan finish together create a fundamentally new object…
One of the first "denigration" of objectsPhilippe Starck, who developed The Dark Side collection for Baccarat three years ago, took on the interior. Its main hit was a mind-blowing black chandelier. The Curios collection by Lalique includes objects in an unconventional black color. Including the Chrysis paperweight, created in 1931. Also, in honor of the centenary of its first boutique, Lalique reissued the Tourbillon vases created by the founder of the brand, René Lalique. Now, most crystal manufacturers have similar objects. And not only: Royal Copenhagen, despite its solid status as a royal manufactory, also decided to play around - the traditional blue patterns on its porcelain plates unexpectedly turned jet black. (We are impatiently waiting for our Gzhel masters to pick up this glorious initiative!) Furniture makers are not far behind the glassmakers. Black trim for a chair or, say, a chest of drawers is like a little black dress for a socialite. A simply beautiful object in such an outfit becomes dramatic and chic. It would be a sin not to take advantage of this. Look at the Smoke chair by Moooi - a stunning mix of classic and decadent. The combination of classic form and dramatic trim turned out to be so effective that this item was immediately included in the category of cult. Or the furniture from the new Ceccotti collection. This Italian brand has always specialized in Art Nouveau furniture, but this year it suddenly changed its color scheme and switched to Gothic.
It is enough to repaint the Louis style chairXIV and it will become a super-fashionable object… Not only black is popular. When it is necessary to breathe new life into gray classics, all colors of the rainbow are used. Dozens of French factories produce aged furniture based on historical samples, but only a few of them have received worldwide recognition. They remain faithful to classic forms, but fill them with new content (or rather, paint these forms in the most unexpected colors). For example, the Moissonnier company: its baroque chests of drawers in the style of Louis XV flaunt in a screaming pink vestment, they are decorated with large-caliber golden peas, diamonds and images of Chinese boys. The Massant brand is also fond of repainting old furniture, having brought back from oblivion the famous Cyrano Stool. From 1938 to 1964, this item shone on the stage: sitting on it, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a letter to Roxane. In the updated version, the veteran of the French scene has acquired seven new cheerful colors. Cyrano is unlikely to sit on such a chair, but a connoisseur of modern design - with great pleasure. The same principle was used by Smeg, which guessed to paint boring white refrigerators in bright colors. Thanks to this simple operation, a utilitarian unit has become a design classic! Another illustrative example is the Tondo chair, invented by the legendary Vico Magistretti for the De Padova brand. This item always looked very modest - until another famous character, Alessandro Mendini, put his hand to it. He dressed the chair in a flashy Harlequin costume. Famous brands often change the upholstery of old models to attract attention to them again, but this case is special. At least because Magistretti and Mendini are long-standing ideological opponents. The first is a bright representative of traditional Italian design, restrained and verified to the smallest detail. The second is a seasoned rebel who could sign under the line of Pavel Kogan: "Since childhood I have not liked the oval, since childhood I have drawn the corner". But these days opposites attract. It is at the point of their intersection that all the most interesting and relevant things happen. Traditional form and hooligan finish together give a fundamentally new piece of furniture. As they say, "at forty-five - a woman is a berry again". Only in this case we are not talking about women, but about furniture, and its age does not matter.
