Adler’s home decorating book is called “My Prescription for Anti-Depressive Living” and it delivers. He’s all about using colors and décor that surprises and puts a smile on your face.
This is a man who started out as a potter and with his iconic interpretations, changed this art medium from dreary to dynamic. Now he has branched out into furniture, tapestry, design, and yes…still wonderful pottery. He calls his book “a therapeutic intervention designed to rescue you from whatever decorating disease you are struggling with.” In this world of IKEA and Pottery Barn look alike abodes, it’s about time.
He takes chapters entitled “Minimalism is a Bummer”, “Go Stark Raving Mod”, “Liberate Your Inner Hippie” and “Colors Can’t Clash”, and marries them with glorious spreads of vibrantly decorated rooms. Your brain will soon buzz with ideas for you own pad.
A friend gave me my first piece of Adler pottery and I was smitten. Soon after he gave me this book signed by the master himself. Immediately I began letting it influence my decorating choices. Bolder and more daring, my place soon became the home I never imagined it could be. Happy and unexpected, not just another shabby chic vanilla villa. Thanks to Mr. Adler, I now have lush, hot pink sheets paired with a butter and white duvet, brightly colored velvet striped pillows in my office and a baby blue and tan leopard print rug. He encourages you to let out your inner wild child that intuitively knows how you want to live – a little glitz, a little elegance and a lot of flair.
Let’s see what else Jonathan has to say about taking us out of the “seriousness” of “adulthood”:
1. Mix and match with panache. Don’t be tentative with patterns…If you keep your color scheme restrained, you can approach patterns with wild abandon. When in doubt, repeat, repeat, repeat.
2. Orange! The poppiest color is the answer to most decorating conundrums. Paint your hat stand orange, buy an orange plastic Artemide table lamp (www.artemide.us)… Lacquer your front door orange. Your front door announces who you are, and it’s an important detail that most people forget about. Pique your neighbors’ curiosity. “Safety Orange” spray paint from Krylon is the perfect color.
3. Ebonize your floors. Pale wood floors are a drag. And parquet wood floors are even worse. Stain your floors a dark color and watch everything in the room come to life. [Then] name your house after and English country estate – Balmoral Arms, Sandringham, Blenheim – and have the name imprinted on matchbooks, napkins and staionary (www.sun-rise.com). This is an especially good idea if you live in a studio apartment or a suburm of Buffalo.
4. Lemon Yellow is the essence of crispness and should not be overlooked. One lemon yellow pillow will invigorate you more than a million cucumber masks.
5. Hide a riot of color under the covers. You can be restrained and buttoned up in the bedroom and still wild between the sheets. I love sheets with big, bold florals, preppy bamboo patterns and jaunty stripes hidden underneath tame coverlets.
6. Whomp it up with wallpaper…sometimes paint just isn’t enough for a room , and patterns can add a little pizzazz…and don’t ignore you ceilings – wallpaper overhead adds an unexpected layer and changes a boring old ceiling from an eyesore into an eye-catcher.
7. Accessorize with aplomb. Most people stop decorating too soon. Once you have the walls and floors and furniture in place, it’s the finishing touches that can really take a room from ordinaire to extraordinaire: collections of favorite objects, art on the walls (or the doors or the banister of your staircase), over-the-top drapery and window treatments or giant chandeliers hung above it all. (Chandeliers should always be a little bit bigger than you imagines, a little bit glitzier than you’re comfortable with…the more over-the-top the better…with large, oversize bulbs in them.) These are the details that take you from like to love, from complacency to ecstasy.
8. Kitsch: discriminate but don’t dismiss. In general I don’t like kitsch. Pink flamingoes on the front lawn? Thanks, but no thanks. But I do like kitsch when it’s married to craft, when it’s idiosyncratic and beautifully made. I live to hunt for amusing pieces and inevitably it’s the things in questionable taste – inappropriate, vulgar, or a little kooky – that makes a room memorable. Diana Vreeland once said, “A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. No taste is what I’m against.”
9. Do it salon-style. Hanging art might seem intimidating, but it is actually quite simple. Be intuitive – hang a large picture first and then just keep on going. One principal I like to follow is to ignore the content of the art and think of the pictures as geometric forms that need to be composted nicely.
10. Rearrange your furniture. There’s never one single answer for a furniture layout, so keep playing and keep trying new things. A new arrangement can be an instant facelift for your house and make everything seem fresh. Plus, it burns lots of calories.
But my favorite advice from Mr. Adler is to “live out your delusions of grandeur…when you were little, you probably imagined that someday you would live in a grand manner: a castle, a mansion, an elegant duplex at the very least. Now you’ve settled for moderate surroundings, practical solutions, and compromise. How utterly realistic and dreary! Why shouldn’t you be grand in your own home?” Why indeed?!
“Make your home as luxe as your wildest imaginings allow…”
You can buy “My Prescription for Anti-Depressive Living” at all Jonathan Adler boutiques, at jonathanadler.com or online at Amazon.com.
Check out this video as Jonathan Adler redecorates a room:
