In addition to finding furniture for the great room, over the last two years we’ve managed to find interesting items to hang on the walls–mainly via auctions, but also from a few online sites.
The first acquisitions were purchased at the same time as the dining room table–a set of three serigraphs by a Pennsylvania artist. I had them framed with cherrywood to echo the brown of the teak floor, and hung them within sight of one another when standing in the Great Room. This helps tie the foyer and Great Room together visually.
For the downstairs area and via various Michaan’s auctions, I managed to find three sculptures featuring birds. Two reside on the hearth, while the the third sits on the cafe table in the corner.
Years ago on a trip to Australia I saw a painting I really liked and when I came into some blood money (a startup company I had worked for was purchased by a much larger company), I used a small bit of the cash to buy the painting and have it shipped. We decided to try finding another interesting bit of work from Agent Smith’s country of origin. Once it arrived I had it framed to match the serigraphs and installed it in the Great Room.
I then got lucky, and Michaan’s had a couple more sets of serigraphs by the same artist who did the blue ones, and I managed to snag them super cheap. In fact nothing I purchased ultimately cost any significant amount of money–far less than if we had gone to sites like art.com or such.
In addition to the bits of art, the room is decorated with a lot of plants…