Laurence Collyer: My guide for shopping for unusual decorative items for your home and garden

Laurence Collyer's COMPLETE PAINTING & DECORATING SERVICE

Laurence Collyer's Complete Painting & Decorating Service provides value for money in achieving high technical and professional standards. Our approach is to be responsive to the client requirements and objectives and together with very competitive rates, jobs are completed on time.

No job is too simple or too small... to request a quote see business card at the foot of the page.

Laurence provides an interior design service and works alongside customers to help them design and enhance the quality, beauty and functionality of their home or commerical space. Projects are well managed with the emphasis on attention to detail and the ability to deliver individual interpretations for each clients style and taste.

Laurence's ideas respond to the relevent social and environmental context in order to make a house a home or the perfect setting for a business enterprise.

"For me Interior Design and Decorating allows me to combine all of my skills, interests and ideas into one discipline. I believe I’m a better designer for having trained and worked in a whole range of creative and practical fields already. I am able to draw upon knowledge and experience of Fine art, Art History, Production Design for both stage and screen which includes managing budgets, Technical Drawing and the building trade.

It’s your imagination together with your research which fuels the ideas but the designer has to be able to think ahead and try and foresee potential obstacles and work with the existing architecture. My practical experience and technical knowhow (as a production assistant in the theatre industry I’ve seen 25 opera’s leave the drawing board and be constructed on a stage in addition to a number of years working as a decorator) allows me to have courage in my convictions and commit to detail and most importantly achieve a coherent visual concept for a room or entire building. This involves handling light and shade and creating a palette of colours, patterns and textures to build an appropriate atmosphere.

My imagination fused with an appetite to consume as much of the arts and culture as possible which, no doubt sparks most of my inspiration has enabled me to develop an authentic style but equally important here is the ability to communicate. It’s absolutely paramount to understand what the customer is after, it’s got to function and be liveable. Simultaneously, my work is tailored to a budget and schedule.

My role is to conjure up a design to act as a frame for the people who inhabit the space. Interior design is an exciting process because you can incorporate and appropriate so many different things into a room to embolden its style i.e. Hunting-out and mixing decorative objects and furnishings (referring to styles and periods) with the definite placement of everyday items so they play off each other. For me it’s almost like setting-up the background to your own little film, having a sense of mise en scene. The film director Jean-Luc Godard said: It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to. And as specialist painter I can offer Trompe L’oeil and murals as part of the service to add theatrical elements and a sense of illusion to a space.

I enjoy shopping at antiques fairs, junk shops and eBay, I have an eclectic taste and my work in the studio reflects this. I make collages and sketches taking elements from different times and different places. Aiming to reinvent various period styles and adding touches of modernity. I guess I am concerned with making designs which are beautiful yet idiosyncratic. It’s vital to have an attention to detail and to really know what materials are available on the market and at what price. Again my experience in set design has given me the opportunity to thoroughly research the buying of materials and props. For example, certain fabrics and certain floors reflect light while others catch it.

As an art consultant, I have an extensive network of contemporary fine art and crafts contacts to draw upon as well as an up to date knowledge of the art scene both from a modern and traditional perspective. I have currated an international group exhibition at the 42 New Briggate Gallery, Yorks, featuring almost 60 artists from UK, Belgium, Canada, Finland and Spain. I also studied art history at degree level, my final year dissertation was entitled rather pretentiously: The Dissemination of Mediocrity".

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

My guide for shopping for unusual decorative items for your home and garden

1. J O N O W E N

http://www.jonowen.co.uk/selected%20work.html

Jon fixes and fuses together different found objects and then decorates them or turns them into functional things such as this 'Duck-lamp' below.

2. A N T O N Y I N G L I S H A L L

There's absolutely no info on the web about Antony's output as an artist or furniture maker.

I discoverd his solo exhibtion in Lewes by chance on holiday when I noticed I had narrowly missed The Sticks playing a rare gig at Antony Hall's private view. No doubt the centre piece of his Miss-Shapes solo show was his incredibly detailed paper-cuts. Antony demonstrated his hairsplitting perfection and magical technique by leading a paper-cutting workshop. However, his considered yet wonky furniture design was also on display ('Day bed' below)... a hand-drawn ballancing act of shapes creates a rather harmonious effect in a range of tables, chairs, units and abstract sculptures. I also enjoyed his collection of paintings which, due to the way the exhibition was set-out were a little sidelined by the mesmerizing paper-cuts. Think Victor Willing / Luc Tuymans, deserted landscapes painted in a muddy and psychedelic gleam.

3. V I N C E N T D A R R E

http://www.maisondarre.com/index.php

4. M I C H A E L S A M U E L S

http://www.michaelsamuels.co.uk/work/index.html

Donald Judd-esque light-boxes wedged into a 50's wonderland == impressive abstract wall-mounted structures recreated in a shed with G-clamps, ratchet straps and dismantled Habitat lighting == Surreal juxtapositions like this scaled-down huricane model and piece of everyday furniture.

5. L A U R A C A R L I N
http://lauracarlin.blogspot.com/

6. A N T H O N Y B U R R I L L
http://www.anthonyburrill.com/

Very modern and very shiney. These brighly coloured, mirror finish, laser cut, acrylic wall pieces are superb examples of graphic and abstract art. Interior designers, set designers and interior architects take note: a beautiful material to utilize.

7. D A N L A I D L E R
http://www.danlaidler.com/

A collection of weapons taken from the Martian head-hunters of Arsai Mons (carved wood blocks and oil paint). I invited Dan to make something for an exhibition I curated in 2008 entitled 'Donald Trump & The Planets' - http://donaldtrumpandtheplanets.blogspot.com/ This is what he submitted.

8. T O M A S C O L A C O

http://tomcola.blogspot.com/

The canvas on this deck-chair is in fact one of the artists' original painted canvas's. Seascapes, cityscapes and paintings of baroque interiors and rustic courtyards also find themselves on foot-stools, cupboards and coffee tables. I'm inspired!.. I'm off now to paint an alpine skiing scene on the inside of my wardrobe.

9. H Y L T O N N E L

http://www.stevenson.info/artists/nel.html

10. D E B B I E L A W S O N

http://www.nettiehorn.com/01Debbie_Lawson.htm

11. N E I L A N D R E W S

12. O L A F L A D O U S S E - DOORAGS

http://www.olafladousse.com/

Disco Duchamp... Olaf Ladouse makes electronic musical instruments out of everday household appliances and consumer goods. For example, this tin of sardines is in fact a tiny synthesizer. You can purchase them from his website or you can send-off for a 'Doorag' instruction manual so you can try at making one yourself. See Doorags in action (below). Also check LCDD : the Doorag orchestra

13. M A T H E W S A W Y E R

http://www.mathewsawyer.co.uk/

Artist and musician Mathew Sawyer secretly adds things to this world. If you're lucky enough to discover one of these things (for instance opening your box of brand new lightbulbs and finding a Roy Orbison collage planted in the packaging or have your shoes mysteriously decorated or notice a ping pong ball suddenly appear in your hallway with 5 words written on it: Dresden, ukulele, garden, death, sober) your day will suddely have gained some extra intrigue... for at least one moment, your life will feel like The Times cryptic crossword and you'll be forced to confront something extraordinary and poetic, maybe distrubing but maybe exciting.

14. D A V I D R E E V E S

15. M A R C U S O A K L E Y

http://www.marcusoakley.com/index.html

16. X A V I E R V E I L H AN

17. P A T R I C K v a n C A E C K E N B E R GH

18. M I N I G O L F'S " C R A Z Y " C O U R S E S

19. M A P S of I M A G I N A R Y P L A C E S

P E T E R G R E E N A W A Y - A Walk Through H

WATCH HERE: http://www.ubu.com/film/greenaway_walk.html

19. H O M E M A D E B R I C - A - B R A C

"The Simon Cowell Business Card Holder" was discovered on Deptford Market by the Artist Neil Andrews, whom is also responsible for making the 'Man Sized Lure The Bobbin Bit' door handles and the 'Upside-down Giraffe Suit' helmet. The Caveman bust is by the artist Paul Housley and the 'Yul Brynner egg cup' is by Quality Portraits. "Andy Warhol's shrunken head" is an Inca relic, part of the collection at the Pitts Rivers Museum, Oxford. I thoroughly recommend a visit. It's not really Andy Warhol, he died in New York I think, not in the Peruvian wilderness - captured my warring native tribes!

20. J I M D R A I N

http://www.greenenaftaligallery.com/artist/Jim-Drain

21. H o m e m a d e I n v e n t i o n s - M U S I C A L I N S T R U M E N T S

F E L I X T H O R N - felix's machine

http://www.felixsmachines.com/home/

R I C H A R D C H A P M A N

Richard Chapman designs and builds musical instruments. They're unique and they sound marvellous, perfectly tuned with a distinctive bric-a-brac / Radio Shack look His four-piece band: Private Trousers (LP 'Creased Lightning' out imminently on Catapult Records) play a mix of Richard's acoustic and electric instruments such as 'The Log' or 'Fence Post' cello, twin necked/combined ukulele & six-string guitar - 'The Super Uke', the 'Classic Plank' guitar, 'Bread Tin Ukulele' and various noisy horn and perscussion based instruments. Richard has also produced guitars for other bands such as Wet Dog and The Ice Cream Headaches who commissioned: 'The Electric Volcano' guitar which created thunderous and quaking bass notes and a lightning stike twang for the high notes. Visually effective, it has a jagged mountainous body with a lava eruption shaped neck.

T H O M A S T R U A X

22. N O U S V O U S

http://www.nousvous.eu/

Are you thinking... are these really wooden books !?! Yes. They are. This is a great idea if you've ever had an idea for a book but you can't be bothered to write it. All you need to do is design your dust jacket and paint it on book-sized piece of wood. Then display it proudly on your bookshelf and pretend you're a published author. If you can't be bothered to paint the book cover yourself: Nous Vous actually take commissions for their range of wooden books.