Are you looking for ideas and materials for elegant and engaging wall art to decorate your home? If so, you are in the right place. As explained on the About Us page, I have spent the last 15 years collecting rare prints and using them to decorate my various residences. On this page you will see some examples of how beautiful old prints and maps could make your home look refined and unique.
The monochrome prints placed on walls do not disrupt the overall colour scheme of the room. Unlike coloured images, they are perfectly compatible with any background colours, creating a single decorative theme running through the whole space and binding it together visually.
Plan Turgot – a printed mural
This spectacular bird’s eye view or plan of Paris of early 18th century, popularly known as Plan Turgot (by the name of the Paris prévôt des marchands who ordered it), is probably the most famous plan of Paris, or any other city for that matter, ever made. (continue reading Plan Turgot)
The whole set of twenty plates (85×55 cm each) making up the plan, if displayed on a wall, would take more space than a typical
wall in an average dwelling allows. Moreover, some of the plates would be too high above a standing adult’s sight line to be able to see them close up.
So for the living room in my urban residence I selected just eight of them (the central ones) framing them with some space in between. This allows people to view them separately, as originally intended, but at the same time to see them all together, getting a glimpse of the whole thing to the extent of the rather limited space of the apartment. I had the furniture made to order to “frame” symmetrically this spectacular centrepiece.
This is wall art at its most dazzling and breath-taking, certain to impress anyone whatever their interest in history is.
The Serenissima as part of home decoration
Similar in concept to the Plan Turgot of Paris, but much smaller in scale (72×30 cm), this bird’s eye view of Venice is actually the work of a French engraver in mid-17th century. It is really rare as very few original copies are known to survive. In fact, it predates the Plan Turgot by over 80 years. So it could not have been inspired by the latter, while the opposite is possible. You can see its Italian older sister (by Jacobo de Barbari), much grander in scale, in the Museum Correr (https://correr.visitmuve.it/) on Piazza San Marco in Venice. There one can also see the amazing pearwood plates used in making the prints (my smaller version is an eauforte made on a copper plate). Very few of those remain in existence.
To purchase this monochrome print click Venice.
The Venetian part of my art prints collection (Venice) includes a few views of the city made in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of which you can see displayed on the left. It also includes an eauforte by a Flemish engraver, representing the ceremonial ship of the Doges known as Bucentoro (after which my brand is called). It is roughly contemporaneous with the aerial plan above. You can see it hanging on the wall of the blue bedroom below.
Maps in home decoration
This remarkable specimen Mappe Monde dating to 1729 (roughly contemporaneous with the Plan Turgot) comes with a lot of additional information, both narrative and visual. This makes it indeed both educational and very eye-pleasing. The original hangs in the hallway of my house in Brittany as seen above. Old maps are a fascinating object for home decoration that can make any dull place look special and beautiful (see more at bucentaure.com/maps/).
For example, this beautiful old map of Brittany and South-West England of the late 17th century was part of the collection of the museum of the Citadel of the Belle-Ile island off the cost of South Brittany. I bought it at an auction at the Citadel more than ten years ago. Now it decorates the wall of the living room of my house in Brittany which I acquired later than the map. Two of my current residences are on this map, like the Belle-Ile island itself, but on different sides of the English Channel.
This map was made in 1695 for the the education of the Duke of Burgundy, grandson of king Louis XIV. He died in 1712 before becoming a king in his turn. King Louis XV was his son. To purchase click Oceani britannici
Landscapes and fêtes gallantes on walls
As a reminder that most of engravings during this period (i.e. before the French Revolution) were published under a royal licence (avec privilège du roi), as expressly stated on them, the royal presence is never far away. Some of the most sumptuous prints in my collection display exactly that with much pomp and detail. The two prints by Van der Meulen depicting the king and the queen moving through beautiful landscapes were made on the order of king Louis XIV at the royal manufacture of the Gobelins . They were some of the most decrepit in my collection, almost brown in colour due to extensive light damage. Now they are restored to their original monochrome splendour.
To purchase click La reine allant a Fontainebleau or Le roi dans sa caleche.
The painting below by Antoine Watteau also entitled “Fête galante” is in the Wallace Collection in London. (https://www.wallacecollection.org/) where you can enjoy it for free.
The large print on the yellow wall of the kitchen is called “Fête galante dans le parc d’un chateau” (Fete gallante) and is reminiscent of the paintings by Antoine Watteau. Like the latter, it has a fairy tale, bucolic side about it that makes it particularly appealing to children. However, this drawing predates Watteau by almost a century but it originates in roughly the same geographical region (Flanders). This might explain the similarity.
Unlike most of other prints in my collection which depict precise places which existed at the time and may still exist to date, this one seems to be set in an imaginary landscape of a conte de fées by Charles Perrault (a Sleeping Beauty?).
Bedroom Decoration
This is a blue bedroom in one of my (urban) residences revealing my love not just for old fine prints but also for old paintings and tapestries. I have in my collection a few of them, including Aubusson and Flemish tapestries of the 17th and 18th centuries. To me, there is a lot in common between tapestries and engravings (other than colour), both in terms of laborious techniques they involve, including the creation of a prototype in another medium (drawing), and in terms of texture. Just look at the print below. Like the Fete gallante presented above, it could have been turned into an excellent Flemish tapestry.
Unlike the prints though, tapestries were specifically designed to hang on walls, so it was quintessential wall art. Now we can use prints alongside or instead of tapestries to decorate our walls. This is also a much cheaper alternative as original tapestries usually cost thousands of pounds/euros and no cheaper copies are available.
The elongated print hanging on the wall of the bedroom is indeed the longest single print in my art collection (actually printed on more than one sheet of paper) measuring in length almost 1.3 meters or 51 inches. It shows a royal hunting party in the forest of Fontainebleau with the eponymous chateau at the background.
To purchase the digitally restored print click Meulen – Fontainebleau
The smaller prints hanging nearby are part of a series of engravings of various royal residences, chateaux, hôtels particuliers and cityscapes by Jacques Rigaud, active in the first half of the 18th century. I have a large collection of them many of which are available for purchase at Products (on a rotating basis due to the number). I am a great fan of this engraver for the exquisite beauty and sophistication of his prints. Consistent with my thesis in Engraving and Photography: continuity or disruption?, he actually drew views of places from life (like a photographer) and then engraved them himself on copper plates.
Monochrome prints in hallways
It is amazing how one can transform the ambiance of a space by the addition of framed images on empty walls. If you have not yet done this, try it in your own home and you will see the difference – it is magic! The use of monochrome prints is particularly effective on coloured background (see the introduction above). The hallways or corridors are usually the most boring part of a home that residents and guests simply pass through to get from one room (or the entrance) to another. You can transform them into a space where your guests will want to linger for a while to study and admire the beautiful prints that adorn the walls. This is what wall art is about.
