This is second in a series of posts that provide a small tour of my home and concentrates on our French style dining room. Many of you have asked for a tour and we have made some changes recently since both of us have retired and have more time to treasure hunt and curate our home. I promised I would take pictures and post them this year so I hope you enjoy.
I love all styles of French decor from rustic farmhouses to contemporary Paris apartments. However, as I have said before, my own favorite style is French Chateau. The chateau was designed to provide a private country residence for the family away from Paris but was formal enough to receive visiting luminaries. The traditional styles were softened, making the lines less rigid and the overall feel of the home more rustic. The overall result was a country house that was relaxed and inviting while retaining many of the delicate features of the French influence. This old house is certainly not a chateau but it does have alot of character and tall 12 foot ceilings which give it a grand feel.
I enjoy the warmth and beauty of living with antiques and I try to make the interior space a place where everyone, I hope, feels very much at home.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
For some reason yellow rooms are hard to photograph and get a true color. My dining room never shows up as warm and lovely as it really is because the butter yellow walls never are really captured in a picture. You can look at this picture and see three different yellows. This room always looks smaller in pictures than it actually is because it's hard with my camera to get the width and the height of the 12 foot ceilings at the same time.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
The table is oval with a matlasse cover and small scrunched section of yellow and cream buffalo plaid that sometimes is also used as a flat overlay. I like banquette seating so I'm using a French cane settee and rush seated French provincial chairs. My mom did the needlepoint pillows when I was a little girl. The border is actually fabric and has a French Gothic look, the pattern a bit hard to distinguish in these photos. The tapestry is French. The screen has a fabric bottom and chicken wire top and is used to keep marauding felines out of the dining room when it is being used to entertain. There is a door that can be shut and one opening leading into the hall that has no door, thus the need for the screen.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
I recently picked up a pair of beautiful carved wood architectural fragments depicting various fruits and foliage, such as pomegranates (symbol of life, marriage and rebirth). Decided to use them on my screen to spruce it up a bit.
Lisa Farmer-Eye For Design
A close-up of the finished product.
Lisa Farmer- Eye For Design
UPDATE
We recently added this antique French sideboard and moved the other piece into the living room.
This French piece features wonderful ormolu, marquetry and a green marble top.
Also added the French Louis XIV sunburst mirror.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
I had been looking for an antique sunburst mirror to layer over the mirror above the dining room mantle.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
An old poplar cupboard is now displaying the antique dinnerware I have started collecting. When I changed the dining room my old Limoges sadly didn't work anymore.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
I have started collecting some different antique China patterns for use in the dining room. I don't care for matching sets and would rather opt for a cohesive mis-matched look. These are discontinued of course and hard to find so patience is required. This is Copeland Spode, Raeburn pattern...........
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
and this is Royal Cauldon, Jessamine. The soup bowls are Spode Vienna Bird pattern. If any of you dealers and booth owners have any please let me know!!!!
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
This is Chanel, striking a pose as usual. A great old oil painting of a castle ruin is above the window. An old poplar cupboard and antique red painted table fill up this corner.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
My favorite French style is the country chateau look when the home was a place to escape to from the city for rest and relaxation, picnicking, hunting, and frolicking about out of the stuffy costumes associated with court or Parisian dress. I love this old picture of French nobles doing just that.
Lisa Farmer
This is looking in through the family room door and is probably my favorite view of the dining room. I love a French hunting lodge look (even though I would never kill an animal) and the hunt tapestry, trophy mounts, and hunt inspired carved wall decor give the effect. All the mounts have been found in antique stores here in the US and some from Europe. I feel like displaying them honors the animal more than letting them waste away in some shop. The entrance of the house is also in French hunting lodge style and leads into the dining room.
Lisa Farmer
I am searching for a French bombe chest to go here under the tapestry and foolishly let a painted one slip through my fingers recently for which I kick myself regularly. There will be another though....just waiting for an auction or Craigslist find.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
Playing around with a vignette in the dining room. French girandoles feature and old shepherd and his son, also old framed hunt tapestry.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
The view looking from the dining room out into the French hall which I painted in a faux limestone technique.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
Trying to take pictures from all angles so you can have a panoramic view and not claiming to be a good photographer. I was going to have some professional pictures taken for my website but now that I'm retired it just doesn't seem that important.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
This door has always perplexed me because it never really seemed to belong in this room. I recently bought a great old screen at auction and the place I wanted to use it would only accommodate three of the four panels. We decided to hang a panel on the old door and it works for us.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
The screen is gold burnished leather with oil painting of swags, bouquets, and architectural elements. Hard to see in the picture but lovely in the right light.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
UPDATE
I recently made an update with this antique French piece. I moved the other into my office. Also found this candelabra and paid $40.00 for it and it's twin which is in my bedroom now. They were in pieces but all pieces were there with exception of one prism. I guess people thought it was ruined. Glad they did!!!
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
The French trumeau mirror was an unbelievably great find.
Lisa Farmer -Eye For Design
This old etching of Louis XIV on horseback during the Carousel of 1662 is interesting. The Carousel was an event celebrating the birth of the Dauphin and 25-year old Louis XIV wanted to make the most of it. It was held on June 5, 6 and 7, not at Versailles but between the Louvre and the courtyard of the Tuileries, now called the Place de Carousel. Close to 15,000 people gathered to watch the grand spectacle.
The theme for this event was a tribute to the five most exotic countries at the time and each was represented by a quadrille. In turn each quadrille was headed by a member of the court and each quadrille had its' own color scheme, theme, etc. associated with that country. The five quadrilles would perform mock charges at each other where they fired small, scented balls in bright colors to amuse to spectators. Not only the courtiers were clad in lavish costumes. Their followers wore helmets shaped as dragons, fish and parrots and even the King's horse was dressed to impress.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
My favorite time in the dining room is in the evening when the walls take on a wonderful new color and the light from the chandelier and girandoles make it kind of magical.
Lisa Farmer - Eye For Design
If you would like to see more pictures of our home you can visit the living room by clicking on the following link:
Click this one to see the entrance hallway
Click here to see the kitchen
https://eyefordesignlfd.blogspot.com/2018/01/my-old-world-style-kitchen.html
Click here to see the master bedroom suite and my office
https://eyefordesignlfd.blogspot.com/2018/09/my-old-world-master-bedroom-suite.html
Click this link to see our Old World sitting room
https://eyefordesignlfd.blogspot.com/2018/11/my-frenchenglish-old-world-style.html
Click here to see the previous post
http://eyefordesignlfd.blogspot.com/2017/09/decorating-with-multiple-layered-mirrors.html
This blog post was published by Lisa Farmer