The fashion for vintage decorations has won our hearts. More and more often we reach for forgotten ornaments and decorative elements. It is becoming similar in the matter of plates decorating our walls.
This is a great decoration not only for the kitchen, but also for the living room or dining room. Thanks to it you will completely change the face of the interior, and at the same time you can pull out family heirlooms. However, if you do not have such, do not worry. Just go to a nearby antique store or flea market, where you can find real treasures for affordable money.
Sometimes it is enough to rummage in the attic or in a cupboard at your parents’ or grandparents’ house to find real gems. No wonder. Collecting decorative plates is, in a way, our cultural legacy and an element of native folklore. They are often micro works of art created in Polish factories, hand-painted by local artists. They contain folk elements or genre scenes, which may refer to culture or history.
Interestingly, hanging decorative plates never age. Moreover, the more years they have, the more valuable they are. Some pieces can cost from several hundred to several thousand zlotys. What is also unique about them is that they connect generations. You will usually combine your grandmother’s heirlooms with your acquisitions in your wall gallery without much trouble. You will also buy plates at flea markets, antique stores, and online auctions.
If you want an impressive decoration, you need to focus not only on individual pieces. This is where the whole counts. It is important that the pieces you have collected have one common denominator. This can be color, detail, shape, theme or manufacturer.
Do you love flowers? Choose a floral theme, go wild with lilacs, lilies, lily of the valley! Your favorite color is navy blue? You already have a guiding color, to which faience plates painted in Wloclawek will fit perfectly. There are many possibilities. Choose the best one for you, but make sure it fits in with the interior design, where you intend to place the gallery.
If you want a coherent composition, it will be safer to place the plates not only according to the key, but also according to the principles of geometry. If our collection is just forming, we can place individual pieces in a straight line horizontally, vertically or diagonally. When our collection has several or even a dozen plates, we can think about placing them according to the key. These can be alternately placed smaller and larger specimens or plates of different shapes.
An interesting option, which will be great especially in eclectic style interiors, will be to forget about the key. Multicolored plates of different shapes and sizes arranged fancifully in different parts of the wall is a proposal for the brave, who appreciate creative freedom.
Even before hanging the collection, it is worth “dry” checking how it will look. To do this, you can spread a piece of cardboard on the floor and create a composition. At this stage you are still free to change it at any time. Once it hangs on the wall, any changes and shifts will involve drilling additional holes and taping and painting over the existing ones.
main photo: unsplash.com/Ellen26
