I’ve been somewhat inadvertently collecting transfer-ware plates with scenes from the British Isles on them, and now that I have about 10 of them in black, red, blue and purple, I’ve been thinking of what to do with them.
Since my main room is just one large room, sort of divided into a living area and a dining area, I thought it would be fun to use the plates over a serpentine-front dresser I have. I had two pictures above it, but moved them to the other side of the room to have a gallery-style arrangement of pictures. |  |
Here’s what it looked like just after I moved the pictures from the other side of the room. The picture above the lamp is a sketch of Venice on the back of an old magazine that my parents got form a gondolier in Venice. The engraving above the house picture (read about it here) is of Chepstow Castle on the Welsh borders. I used to go to Chepstow Race Course when I lived in Wales, so this brings back memories.
When I was at my mother’s for dinner, I remembered that she had a stash of pictures that hung on our old house, but that she didn’t have hanging in the new one. So I asked to rifle through them to see of anything appealed to me. I found a watercolour from 1971 of an alley in Vienna that my father had picked up on a trip. 
Once I hung it, I realized it went brilliantly with the other painting I’d gotten last year. The colours and the subjects are very similar and they work perfectly together. The other picture was a tiny photograph of some boats at a mooring in Chester, England from 1908. It is from my father’s family, and it encompasses my love of sailing and my background in the UK.
It was too difficult to capture the photograph, but you can see it right under the lamp. I still have one more picture to hang, but I need to work out where it will go in the arrangement.
So, I need to hang the other side of the room, but I thought I’d leave that until I get back from the UK in a few weeks, since I am hoping to pick up another plate or two that will be souvenirs of my trip. However, I played around with some arrangements for the plates.
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Thank god for Photoshop, so I can work out the arrangement before I hang all of the plates. I have mostly blue and red plates, but I have one each in purple and white. I can’t decide whether to hang the plates in a symmetrical arrangement, or just randomly.
Any suggestions?
