A lampshade made of bones, a table from a landfill, a lamp made of cellophane … The decorator, the host of the master-classes of the “Fazenda” project, knows how to create the unusual from the simple.
December 4 2016
Things are born in the gallery of interiors not far from the Serpukhovskaya metro station. “We moved here in January this year,” said Marat Ka. – They “lived” in the same place for 16 years. Now there is a restaurant, and formerly there was a fur atelier. Aunties constantly came to us and asked: “Where are the fur coats being altered here?” We got over when it became impossible to park in the center. The studio is fenced off from the furniture salons in the neighborhood by a curtain. I open it so that everyone can see how beautiful we are. But visitors rarely come. Fear. It’s like pretty girls can’t find a boyfriend because men are wary of them. So in a beautiful interior, a beautiful restaurant, they are also afraid to enter. This is our mentality. Afraid when too much. Inexpensive – this is just about us. They are afraid of bright individual things, objects, clothes.
– In order to make the base of the lamp in the form of frozen ice, I experimented for a long time. I used glass, broken mirrors, balls, and finally stuffed cellophane bags into the glass base, and they gave the desired effect. Now such lamps, in fact, made of some kind of nonsense, are in an expensive restaurant in Moscow.
– I have everything strictly according to folders and shelves. Clutter interferes with work. Even in the mail I hate unread letters. I read and delete. And at home: got up – and immediately made the bed.
– Curtains, on the one hand, are ironic for a patchwork quilt or patchwork technique. But this is usually done with cheap trimmings, and we have each piece – a piece of fabric that costs from 3 to 5 thousand euros per square meter. There are brocade, and Venetian designs, and French tapestries from the monastery, and Chinese, hand-embroidered. But nobody bought them on purpose. These are all remnants of fabrics that we used for different interiors. And curtains are also an applied tool, a kind of navigation map of color. When clients cannot explain which shade they like, we find it on the curtains.
– Lampshade made of goat skin, which is processed in a certain way and is called morocco. Previously, part of the boots, tambourines, drums and lampshades were made from it. Now also bones for dogs. Once the children bought them for our dog, and she chewed them up so that the bones unrolled into leaves. By the composition, I realized that they were made of goat skin. The idea came up to make a lampshade out of them. Soaked the bones, unwound the strips and sewed them. The skin is dry and stretched beautifully.
– In the premium interiors that I do, everything is handmade. This console was intended for an expensive private interior. Any furniture manufacturer makes products for average apartments and houses. And the housing of wealthy people is large. And they need furniture of the appropriate size. The console is made based on these considerations. At first it was solid. And it seemed to me a decoration that does not carry functionality. I improved the next option. Now it is like a transforming knife – all in boxes. There’s even a pull-out laptop table. There were eight such consoles and they all sold.
“These old scales were meant for letters. The weight of the item determined its value.
– Ophthalmic glasses of the century before last with replaceable lenses. I use them when I need to get a close look at the surface.
– It seems that the table is made of solid oak. But this is a snag, an imitation. I needed a long, easily collapsible system, tall, sturdy, simple, inexpensive. An oak table would be overwhelming. It is made of an ordinary furniture board purchased on the market, on top of an oak veneer, and instead of a cut, an ordinary slab is glued – a cut of oak bark, which is simply thrown out in production.
– Nowadays, not many people write with a pen. Perhaps only lawyers and school teachers. I always write financial proposals to clients by hand in ink and seal them with a wax seal with my logo – a butterfly.
The Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts would tear off this table with hands, because this is the rarest example of Russian naive art of the beginning of the last century. It was released at the beginning of the last century by artists from the World of Art association. A wooden table, found in a Moscow garbage dump, I did not alter it, I don’t touch beautiful things. But the lamp is made of ordinary MDF, on which my hands have worked.
– Meetings in the studio always take place at the table over a cup of tea and coffee. Chairs – irony on the chairs of Charles McIntosh (Scottish architect. – Approx. “Antenna”). The classic “Mac” is smaller, thin and iron. Sitting on it is completely uncomfortable. These chairs are 16 years old and comfortable for everyone. I had three options before finding the perfect aspect ratio. And the irony is that Macintosh was against decorating, and I used popular decorating techniques on mine. Above the table is a lamp assembled from two. Metal lampshade from a Moscow lantern. The structure hangs on a chain. Beauty does not have to be expensive; it is often born out of garbage. So that no one is afraid to touch her.