At Kia Designs, previously blogged about how to design a room around a piece of art, now we’re going to focus on the opposite – commissioning a bespoke piece to match the room.
A Kia Designs living room. Our colour scheme was based around this stunning piece of fabric. To pull everything together we then had it stretched like a canvas and hung to add a focal point to the room.
Finding art to dress a room after you’ve completed the design can be one of the most pleasurable parts of finishing off your interior. You might want to hold out and look for it on your travels, or go browsing in in the glossy galleries around Mayfair (they sell prints too, so even if your budget doesn’t stretch to a Rothko canvas, you can pick up something like a Henry Moore print for around the £2000 mark. It’s be a great talking point and will be an excellent investment!). You could head to an auction house to see check out the offerings (after Christmas is always a good sale time) or you could look at online site such as Artfinder.com which displays 1000s of artists, with easy to use search functions to narrow down the hunt.
But if you are short on time, or you just want it finished and looking perfect, you can always commission a piece. You can email some artists directly, if you have someone whose style you already like. Not all artists are willing to be flexible, but it’s worth a try. Or there are companies which will hold artists on their books and offer a bespoke service. We use Luminaire Arts for this. They are based in Belgravia and have artists from all over the world on their site, all of whom will do bespoke pieces, based on their existing style. It’s an indispensable resource for an interior designer, and so fantastic to be able to say “That piece would be perfect if it were twice the size and purple”.
We recently commissioned them to do a round piece for a kitchen we were working on in North London. The artist sent us images of how it was progressing:
And here’s the piece in situ. You’ll see how the shape, height and colours really add to the space and pull the other colours together.
