Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993 TAG: 9304050269
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: E-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLYNE VARKONYI KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
NEW NATURE MOVEMENT INSPIRES DESIGNERS
The cabbage rose chintz and show-off style of the opulent '80s are as passe as red suspenders and yellow power ties.The glitz is gone. Less is more. Arts and crafts have pushed out gilt and glamour.
Welcome to the New Nature movement of the '90s. Designers are coming back down to earth with everything from doorknockers made from old rusted horseshoes and railroad ties to armoires painted with lattice and trails of ivy.
The look is basic. The inspiration is "green" - a reflection of our concern to save the planet. It's the '60s with a dash more sophistication and style.
Nancy High, communications director for the Furniture Information Council in High Point, N.C., said the movement's seeds were planted about two years ago. Now, it's becoming the hottest design trend of 1993.
"I think it all started with an attitudinal change by the American public, the realization that we must protect the environment for ourselves and for our children," High said.
This philosophy has been translated into selection of natural fabrics, use of twigs and found objects in making furniture and environment-inspired motifs and colors.
Jena Hall, a New York City interior and product designer, sees designers as cultural anthropologists. It's art imitating life.
"Real designers observe the moment and design to the need," she said. "There are some real environmental issues. The question is: Are we really being environmentally responsible or are we cashing in on environmental issues? I think it's a little of both."
Hall introduced her first environmental series about a year and a half ago. The Friends of the Good Earth collection featured sunflowers and butterflies on handpainted porcelain, tile-top tables and woven fabrics.
The back-to-nature appeal is compatible with the popular European country look, but Hall said it also carries a message. For instance, in her collection, the butterfly symbolizes a delicate creature that is surviving in a polluted atmosphere. The sunflower is the icon for the turn-of-the-century arts and crafts movement.
"The sunflower is used as one of the symbols for the return to nature, hand craftsmanship, basic values, a rejection of the industrial age," Hall said. "And here we are almost a century later re-evaluating the same things."
From butterflies and sunflowers, Hall's designs evolved into Friends of the Sea, a whimsical and decorative collection featuring seahorses, shells and fish.
Hall is a small part of the emerging trend. All you have to do is open a home-decorating magazine or browse through a store and you'll see the influences of the New Nature movement. Consider:
The Spring issue of Countryside magazine features Tapp Ranch in Texas hill country, where the design is based on colors and materials found in the local landscape. A Louis XVI chair sits next to a table made from a galvanized water trough turned upside down and topped with a local fossil stone. Stones dug from the property were used to make the fireplace.
A recent issue of "Home" magazine featured a metal twig bed with bare branch tops worthy of Central Park in the winter. The rest of the decor is an eclectic combination of Deco-style chaise, Welsh sideboard and carved mirror.
Pine-tiques in Boca Raton, Fla., focuses on nature as a theme for its accessories. There's faux ivy made of copper with a verdigris finish, baskets and tables decorated with sunflowers, a sun and moon vase filled with silk sunflowers displayed on top of a handmade cotton throw rug with large sun, surrounded by moons and planets.
At the Design Center of the Americas in Dania, Fla., interior designers can find a variety of environmental-inspired designs. An 8-by-10 Everglades-theme rug featuring an alligator and swamp motif is available at the Lacey-Champion Carpets showroom. And Mitchell-Ryan's showroom offers a line of furniture handpainted by master artists from the Sidney Arthur company, including pieces decorated with wildflowers and trailing ivy. Mitchell-Ryan's private collection includes a Welsh dresser topped with a shelf painted with lattice motif.
A Bloomingdale's catalog recently featured iron lamps with vines of leaves crawling up the base.
The Bombay Company and Ballard Designs also have taken the nature trail. Bombay has given traditional botanicals a new home on a shade for a swing-arm wall lamp. The catalog and larger Bombay stores are offering a brown, three-panel screen decorated with a dozen prints of original engravings published in 1807 by botanical artist Sydenham Edwards. The spring Ballard Designs catalog offers a wrought-iron shelf decorated with a morning bird and leaves, a handmade towel rack with handpainted wooden birds and a crossbar made from a branch, and a scrolled flower chandelier with opened blossoms.
Lyn Peterson, president of Motif Designs in New Rochelle, N.Y., said her company has looked to nature for a variety of designs. The Vintage Rosie II line includes "Green Grocer" wallpaper inspired by an old seed catalog and a coordinating border that echoes a Dutch still life.
"Nature is filled with patterns," Peterson said. "We have patterns inspired by sand, wildflowers and rhododendron. There is no greater source of inspiration."