Our Brooklyn dining room with vintage plates that Dorothy Draper created for The Greenbrier in West Virginia.
John and I have always loved decorating wall spaces with vintage plates… It’s a cheap, easy, and fun way to transform a wall from boring to brilliant.
John and I employed vintage "state" plates to create instant drama on the back wall of our kitchen in upstate New York.
John and I paw about antiques shops and flea markets where we have found an incredible assortment of dishes–from dinner plates to chargers, bread plates, and every shape and size in between–that eventually make their way into a wonderful pattern upon a blank wall. Many of these plates cost us next to nothing, so it’s a bargain way of making design magic without breaking the bank. Before you hang the plates, map them out on a piece of paper. Have fun: You can hang plates in circles or in diamond patterns or have them swoosh across a wall. Insider secret: The best way to hang plates is not with the traditional, unwieldy metal plate hangers but rather with the disc adhesive plate hangers that attach to the back of china by rubbing the adhesive with water to create glue. You’ll find these British imports at the Container Store.
AOL’s ShelterPop has just done a piece on decorating with blue-and-white plates, and they kindly ran an image of a kitchen that we designed in the Midwest with blue Spode china as the backsplash behind the stove.
A kitchen in Iowa that John designed in which he employed blue-and-white dinner plates as a backsplash. Many thanks to ShelterPop for featuring our work.
So get out there and start stocking up on vintage china then create some magic in your own home.
