Winter Garden

The Winter Garden room an a dark winter day. photo by Lynne Rutter

Winter Solstice, on the darkest afternoon in Florence, I visited some rooms of the Casa Martelli, the refined home of a once wealthy and important Florentine dynasty.  Now a state museum, the former palace can be visited with volunteer guides, carefully avoiding areas in desperate need of restoration.  The house contains wonderful art collection in situ and many decorated rooms spanning several centuries.

The Winter Garden as they call is, is an entire room frescoed with trellises and vines under a warm sunny sky, with birds and fountains and other formal garden follies. A pair of gas lanterns indicate it was once used as a  billiard room.

trompe l'oeil topiary architecture in the frecoed Winter Garden at Casa Martelli  photo by Lynne Rutter

photo by Massimo Listri, 2009

I am not sure if I would ever have heard of the Casa Martelli had I not already been stalking following the work of the brilliant  Florentine photographer Massimo Listri, whose evocative images include a shot of the Winter Garden in its abandoned state years ago.


More from Florence soon!

Flow Blue

A break in the rain, and a color lesson from my garden.  Cymbidium blossoms in a flow blue sugar bowl.

Lynne Rutter Murals + Decorative Painting

Summertime

Labor Day - a day arbitrarily marked as the end of Summer. White pants? what about them? For San Francisco, it's the beginning of the Indian Summer, the warm big sister to those halcyon days to which we look forward all the year.

Balinese temple umbrella on my patio,
photo by Lynne Rutter, August 2008

Spring Forward

Today really feels like spring. Having the sun out all day, and light well past 7PM
just makes me want to paint my toenails pink.

signs of life

false spring in the garden...

















the crocuses are blooming!







seeing these little flowers pop up really cheered my week.

Chinoiserie in Red

The Chinoiserie Powder Room I designed for the San Francisco Decorator Showcase House - David Papas Photography

Here's one of my favorite historic decorating trends: Chinoiserie.

For a number of years now I've been known for painting a certain style of flowering trees Chinoiserie mural using my own spin on the look that was all the rage in late 17th and 18th century French décor.
I adore the wallcoverings of deGournay and Gracie, which are still being produced today in much the same way as the hand-painted wallpapers found in the Royal Pavillion at Brighton, or Lustschloss Hellbrunn, Salzburg. These papers are lush, labor intensive, delicate, and worth every dime they cost.

For this room mural, rather than paint densely covered wallpaper-style panels, I used a light hand, and a more naturalistic approach, to keep this intimate-scaled space airy and uncluttered. Carnelian Red walls help make the room look larger as well as rich and fabulous. And we included California natives such as poppies and monarch butterflies, alongside the lilies, pomegranates, and peonies.

some mentions for this room:
Kafka blog
sfgate

Lynne Rutter Murals + Decorative Painting

Fall Color

Better late than never
my tree dahlia has finally bloomed! Along with the brugmansia, abutelon, and some of the masdevallias. This is what fall looks like in my garden----


yellow flowering brugmansia - night fragrant


dahlia imperialis