Creating Intriguing interiors with antique mystical art may be easier than you think.We yearn for spaces that are both a sanctuary and an inspiration, for rooms that reflect outwards something of our own unique internal landscapes. After many years of Creating such spaces here are a few things i’ve learned….

As acclaimed designer David Hicks once said ‘ The best rooms have something to say about the people who live in them’

I’ve seen a lot of unusual  interiors in my years of travel and dealing in antiques, some stay with you for decades, but most are forgotten in a short time. The rooms that I’ve remembered even years later are not those with the most ‘tasteful’ décor, or elegant colour schemes. They were the spaces that seemed to shine a small chink of light into the owners lives and souls.

Without exception, these rooms evoked an immediate curiosity about the person who lived in them. Spaces that had become intriguing, and they had become so, in part, by the inclusion of Mystical or Spiritual Art

– there’s not a single room in a typical home couldn’t, with a little imagination, be radically changed and enriched by well chosen pieces thoughtfully displayed.

Here are nine of my best tips on creating these evocative spaces.

1) Take your time and choose your pieces carefully…

The finest rooms can’t be thrown together in a weekend. It takes time to come across those things that will make a space truly your own. Choose pieces that genuinely speak to you, and that you are in some way touched by. You will probably be the person spending the most time around these things and the whole point is that they make you feel good.

If you love medieval angel images, or your beloved animal is Wolf, or Crow, don’t just buy the first ‘okay / nearly’ piece that you come across. Wait for one that you will love for years, that has just the right expression, or that feels somehow like an old friend.

There are all sorts of reasons that a particular piece may speak to you, it could remind you of something from your grandmothers house, or a favourite story, or somewhere you have travelled to that made you feel alive. Choose the pieces that waken your emotions….

‘ the purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls’ – Pablo Picasso

2) Think about the purpose of the room, 

How do you want to feel in this particular space?

I had a mirror on the mantel piece in the bedroom of one previous home. I would stand there to put on makeup and prepare to tackle the day ahead. Standing there I wanted to feel strong, bold, and ready for anything – flanking that mirror were a small pair of antique Egyptian Revival ‘Bastet’ goddess figures. Calm, inscrutable feline queens, – they would remind me every morning to stay focused, keep my shit together, and not get too bent out of shape by the world.

Some pieces will have a feeling of tranquillity about them, do you want to feel serene and monastic in your living room? Or would you rather share your hearth with pieces that feel warm and familiar or cosy?

Guardians figures, gargoyles, and certain masks are often fierce or watchful, and will be right at home in an entrance hall to both set the tone and bring a sense of protection against the outside world. An office or study can be brought alive by pieces that are intense or energetic in some way, and certain pieces will feel welcoming and magnanimous in a room meant for socializing

3) Don’t be afraid of large ‘Statement’ pieces

As long as you love it, you can make it work… Usually we think larger pieces work best in a more ‘minimalist’ interior, the way bold art looks amazing in a spacious white gallery room. But I couldn’t manage to maintain a minimalist décor style if my life depended on it, and neither can most other collectors.

Larger statues and figures can keep watch from amongst a jungle of house plants, or stand guard beside a fireplace or window. They can also keep company with a whole collection of smaller figures which can help tone them down a bit, especially if there is a variety of shapes and heights.

Large pictures can work as part of a ‘gallery wall’ or stand alone, it is the colours that will impact the room much more than the size.

Just beware of buying anything that you literally don’t have enough physical space for. I’ve done this many times and its infuriating to keep tripping over something that you love until you realize you have to sell it again before it gets ruined or kills somebody.

4) Experiment with placing pieces at different heights

This is a classic interior decorators trick and is also quite intuitive. Instead of placing pieces lined up on a shelf or pictures hung in a line on the wall, experiment with placing pieces at every different height you can imagine.

Many larger figures look best when standing directly on the floor, smaller pieces can be on a raised stand or plinth, on a shelf, desk, windowsill, on top of a small wooden chest, or in some cases placed up near the ceiling looking down.

There is something magical about spotting intriguing objects in unexpected places all around a room, as interior designer Juan Montoya said;

‘A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place, it should smile at you and create fantasy’

5) How you group pieces together changes everything

It is incredible how the character of a piece can be drawn out to really shine, or utterly diminished, by just the placement of the objects around it. These effects can be really strong, and often the only way to figure out what works best is to experiment.

Don’t be afraid to mix styles, periods, materials, colours, or anything else, – but you must be ready to try a bunch of different arrangements before you find what works best. Sometimes you will get stuck and the only way forward is to completely dismantle your efforts and start over, but keep going, and eventually you will find the sweet spot.

The most beguiling rooms often look as if they just ‘fell together’ that way, – this is almost always an illusion.

Colour will be very important in what works where in a group of pieces, as will the textures of the materials objects are made of. Just like colours, textures can ‘clash’ horribly and so can certain styles. Older pieces will often work well placed together because of their similar organic materials or tarnished and faded colours, even if they come from different sides of the world. Equally, similar pieces, and ‘pairs’ placed apart can act to pull a whole room together.

But even the most ‘clashy’ of combinations can be fiercely magical sometimes, especially when the spirit behind it is is real… For examples of this look out for images of the Latin American Santa Muerte shrines where real bones nestle up against plastic flowers, glittery fabrics, earthenware pots, cigarette packs, archaic Catholic art and fake pearls.

6) Don’t fight the architecture

Probably should put this as number one on the list really as it’s pretty fundamental. It would be great if we could all live in the perfect 18th century stone cottage, or log cabin or whatever your dream home is, but reality is we don’t.

If you’re stuck (for now) in a charmless building there are things you can do to improve the situation, but what you can’t do is fight the architecture.

Take time to really look at the rooms you want to transform, Where is the best light? The best angles? Are there any redeeming features that you can emphasise and make the most of?

And perhaps most importantly, what is the natural ‘character’ of your building? This may sound odd, but I feel that every building does have its own natural character and style.

I’ve lived in and decorated all sorts of temporary homes over my life, dozens of them spanning 8 different countries, so I know about making the most of what you’ve got. Sometimes the only intrinsic character of my building was ‘semi – derelict concrete apartment in the worst part of town’ – but even that can lend itself to a unique style if you are brave enough to grab it and run with it.

And the thing is, that everywhere I’ve lived I have always been to some extent collecting and trading in magical objects and spiritual art, so I’ve always had at least a few of these pieces with me, and each time i’ve found they could literally transform even the grimmest of places into somewhere enigmatic, comforting, and interesting….

If you hope to completely disguise the architectural style of home you live in, trying to hide it behind emergency wall hangings and bulky furntiture, you will end up with the pantomime horse version of interior décor. Something  will always seem ‘off’ and wrong with the picture.

So instead of trying to fight the architecture to make a silk purse out of a sows ear (or a farm cottage out of a 1960’s apartment block) imagine instead that your building is being used as a movie set. What kind of strange tale would be set in it? Would it lend itself to a 1940’s film noir maybe? Or some gritty realism in the projects on the wrong side of the tracks?  Now take that story and give it a twist, – one where the main character, (that’s you) is for some reason a scholar and collector of antique mystical and spiritual art, – and start over from there…

 

7) Lead the eye where you want it to go

Composition is your friend. The way that a skilled artist or photographer uses composition to plan and create an image is what you are going to do in your minds eye to plan your interior.

Using ascending or descending heights will draw the gaze up or down to where you would like it to go, this can be done, with furniture, objects, pictures on a wall, or even ornaments on a shelf.

Create little ‘vignettes’ or staged scenes in different areas of the room and give them layers, the backdrop may be a window, a fireplace, a hung textile, or carved wooden panel, maybe just a stack of books.

You can frame a specific area with plants, lamps, candle sticks or tall narrow pictures or panels of any kind you fancy. Mirrors surrounded by large plants are great as they reflect back the light, create depth, and make any space appear like a hidden doorway to another dimension.

8) Textiles and Rugs

Textiles and rugs really can hide a multitude of sins, but they can also be used to subtly set the tone of a whole room.  Antiques world royalty and interior designer Robert Kime always said the way to begin a room is a with the carpet…

I think I first fell in love with threadbare antique oriental rugs as a teenager, they reminded me of Agatha Christie mysteries and English manor house decaying elegance. But since growing up and travelling I’ve become aware of a whole world out there of incredible textiles.

Many older hand made textiles are art in their own right, They carry cultural histories and spiritual symbolism in their patterns and designs and the traditions of how they were made.

Whatever atmosphere you want to create in a room there will be vintage and antique rugs and textiles to get you there. Rugs, cushion covers, tapestries, blankets, quilts, Skins, salt bags and fine embroidered silks, the list and the varieties are endless. Just think of an aesthetic, and there is guaranteed to be a perfect textile out there to enhance it. Handmade textiles have in them so much spirit they can bring the desert straight into a London apartment or the Appalachian Mountains to NYC.

9) Bring the outside in

This is my favourite way to really shift the energy of a space. We already know that plants can change rooms greatly, they bring life and light indoors, and can evoke anything from a secret tangled forest to the clean elegance of a Zen garden.

But There are also many man made objects that I deal in which have originated as outside pieces yet can transform the inside of a home. I frequently sell small aged outdoor statuary that look amazing indoors. The best have been outside for many years acquiring moss and lichens and rain darkened streaks on the old stone. Some have been elements from old fountains, the faces of ancient water deities or a strange mythical sea creature that was once serving as a water spout.

Other  pieces are ‘building salvage’, this can be stone, wood, or metal, from collapsed churches or demolished houses and shrines. They don’t need to be large, panels of the carved wooden surround from an ancient doorway, often complete with symbolic patterns, or perhaps a small fragment of carved architectural stone.

Statuary is fairly easy to find, especially if you are happy with pieces just a few decades old, it often turns up in house clearances when people move, or decide to renovate an old garden. The architectural pieces are harder to come by but they can bring a tangible sense of mystery with them, and also often a strange and timeless calm. All of theses things appear magical when surrounded by plants.

To Conclude…

Antique Mystical and Spiritual Art comes in a vast variety of forms and materials.

From stone statues and carved wooden figures to traditional textiles, painted icons and architectural salvage, the variations are endless. What these objects have in common is the intention of the artists and craftsmen who made them. All were created with the goal of evoking spirit and drawing us closer to the mystical realms, and it is this, that ultimately gives them their magic.

It is a magic that when harnessed, can create the most intriguing and inspiring of homes….