French Inspired Home...French Wirework

Photos BurlapLuxe Home

I strive to design with forgotten pieces of salvage pale in color that echo the
grey skies, and the naturals of earthenware putty clay's.

This French dressing chest made its way to my sitting room after I stripped off it's
painted finish of bright apple green. To then restore it's Frenchness to a finish of desire,
aging it to feel like chalk to the touch.

I alway's look for pieces then paint them allowing them to give back
a harmonious, restful, calm, rustic in style.

I have been creating in some way my whole life. As for the paint finish,
"de la conception a la finition" The design finish, I make and create my own paints.
using old world techniques as is in most modern time chalk paints.

French in designs whites are sometimes creamy and often touched with grey's, using layers,
and wiped off aging. I am comfortable creating around weathered and beaten up pieces, it's
what inspires my soul in what I gather and create.

A weathered beaten down porch post, adds the right kind of rightness,
layered with French serving trays of old.

Iron, pewters, zincs, and galvanized scattered about my home.

It's not uncommon to find a bit of unusual,
like these rocks that look like wild bird eggs ready to hatch.
Found when my daughter was enjoying nature when she was age 4.
Her small hand offering me rocks saying don't they look like bird eggs mommy?
How could I dare toss them.

She is now 3rd year college.

200 year plus door I salvaged from my grandparents home when all there
was left but memories. The key in a box of old skeleton keys passed around for
the taking, and would you believe me, in the dividing up of old keys when I got home
I noticed that the one of a few keys I took home with me fit our family's home door un-locking
beautiful memories of the home that built us.

French wirework is a passion I have been bending and twisting for years.
I love that something common can be artistically re-created into artful play with a
story of it's own.

I love seeing the art of French wirework in an old rustic French villa or cottage.
It's here where I create just that. Wire bits are often found and snipped off pieces in the strangest
places. The open coiled craft of wirework was a technique popular during the first half of
the 19th century. Artisans crafted each piece of handwoven wires, and metals turned, and formed
into forms of French wire-craft. A fine art of today as well.

Here is a piece I have been creating for a performance in one of my crafted
French theatre's. I was inspired by this piece when we added a family member to our home
( Puppy) her name is Pia Bleu, and she is an Italian Greyhound, we adore her.
We sometimes call her dancing Pia!

Here you will see her long legs dancing about.

She wears a dog collar of grey tattered linen and a wire pendant.

Like all ballerina's she wears a wire bun wrapped in a wire crown I had to create for her.
I add something that has become a trademark to my art, a technique of crusty, white
touched with grey, adding that mystery of old.



My hand twisted, and bent wire crowns will soon be filling up my shop, and can
be found in my etsy.

www.etsy.com/shop/BurlapLuxe



Vintage sea pearls embellish with tagged Ocean, and Sea on the back side.
Royal crown is to the right.

Take note of the French wire Chandelier on the book jacket of French Home,
I am in love with this art.

Our Pia Bleu, now 5 months old who inspired my wirework art piece, The
Dancing Pia, wearing her grey tattered collar.