Colette van den Thillart on the mixology of Lavender

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Corbis image

"Lavender lends itself terribly well to what I call metamorphic colours 

-colours that change and are complex."

Jacques-Emile Blanche's In the Mirror

image from it's about time here

 "Aesthetically I have always loved it in the garden...it works so well with grey greens especially."  

 Liotard's Empress Maria Theresa

"It was my grandmothers favorite colour so I had slightly 'old fashioned' aesthetic hang ups in regards to decorating with it, 

but Nicky really brought home to me the potentials of the colour."  

Haslam's Shutter Stripe in  Cloudy Lilac

"I have learnt to think of it as a neutral and use it more and more.  It sets off and calms almost any colour palette and when used in a scheme can provide a whisper of necessary clash... that invisible note of the unexpected."

"Reflective silks, silk velvets and lacquer finishes come to life when there is the slightest tint of lavender in them.  Nicky often adds a dash of it to old white ceilings for that hard to place sense of faded grandeur...."

  oil sketch of madame X giving a toast 

John Singer Sargent

Lavender is that wonderful sensory colour that conjures not only visions, but certainly smells, and especially tastes.  Only just this weekend I bought some lavender infused black tea, and last summer while in the countryside of Ontario we experimented with Lavender ice-cream which was an enormous success.

Oh! 

"And a dash of lavender syrup in champagne never hurts either!!"

 Colette van den Thillart- interior designer , blogger here,   here



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