Miami Modern Style - MiMo

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50's Style

Whether your inspiration is the Guggenheim Museum or Marcus Welby’s waiting room, fifties design allows you to mix sophistication with fun in whatever proportions suit your fancy. From Eames chairs to tiki-room kitsch, the fifties can be high, low, or anywhere in between.

Mica Powder

Highlight your decorative project with these high quality mica powders.

Mica Powder. - Perfect for artists and craftsmen alike, these powders have many uses and mix with clear vehicles ranging from acrylic and oil based mediums to shellac. You control the pigment content - use very little for a translucent veil of metallic or use more for a solid metal look. Intermix colors to create your own mica palette. Ideal for 'Flash Gilding', where you apply the mica directly over size that is at perfect tack.

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Miami Modern Style

The Fontainebleau and the Eden Roc. The Deauville and the Carillon. The Bel Aire and the Casablanca. The names of Miami’s great resort hotels evoke a time when nymphs in mink bikinis frolicked on Miami Beach, when Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Lucille Ball were regulars in local nightclubs, and when thousands of newly-minted middle-class Americans flocked to South Florida to enjoy themselves after enduring nearly two decades of hard times. The post-World War II period was a time of optimism, faith in technology, and a belief that the future would bring ever improving conditions for all. These beliefs were made manifest in the period’s exuberant architecture, and nowhere more than in the postwar style known as Miami Modern, or MiMo.

MiMo’s Jetsons-style motifs -- boomerangs, fins, kidney-bean shapes - paired with an over-the-top Hollywood sensibility and a tropical environment to create a style that was modern, luxe, and local all at the same time. The great MiMo architect Morris Lapidus, reviled by the International Style-worshipping architectural establishment of the time, called his autobiography “Too Much is Never Enough” -- and put this credo into practice with projects like the Fontainebleau, whose lobby featured a terrarium with live alligators, bellboys clad in purple and gold braid, and the infamous “stairway to nowhere,” built solely to provide guests with way to make a grand entrance in their evening clothes. If you’re the sort that favors grand entrances -- and views the living room as a stage set for your fabulousness -- the MiMo is the style for you.

MiMo interiors are modern -- but with as many, twists, turns, and flourishes as can be crammed into them. They should feature curving, sweeping lines, theatrical lighting effects, lots of color and drama, and, if possible, multiple floor levels (i.e., the classic “sunken living room”). Morris Lapidus devised a large catalogue of design “tricks” that became the lingua franca of fifties and sixties popular architecture: curved walls, circular or amoeba-shaped cutouts (he called them “cheeseholes”), metal rods with no structural purpose, and purely decorative mirrored dividers.

Color Essentials

Mixing with Color.

Create custom color schemes and color effects in your home or office. Learn how to use the best base color, create a glaze, mixing colors, and more. Using color at home or in the office - for paintings, furniture or any artistic challenge - takes a good eye, a little know how, and a creative imagination.

Lithos Venetian Plaster

Finishing Venetian Plaster with natural polished marble effect

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Lithos is the contemporary version of the famous ancient Stucco Veneziano. It is a beautiful and highly refined decorative finish for hotels, offices, shops, exhibition halls, living rooms, etc. Ideal for all types of interior surfaces such as cement renders, Gypsum plasters, prefabricated panels wood and its by-products, as long as sufficiently smooth. With the range of colours and the applicator’s capacity and inspiration, it is possible to attain a variety of designs and chromatic effects. The resulting coating, in addition to being highly attractive, is abrasion resistant and washable.

Spread rate: 35 to 45 sq. ft. per quart.

0.8 - 1.0 kg/m² (for a recommended dry film thickness of 1,0 mm)

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Floors:

Floors can be tile, highly polished stone, or terrazzo, perhaps topped with a curvilinear rug. Low-pile wall to wall carpet is another good choice, preferably in a vibrant color like electric blue or burnt orange (or even in a curvy, busy pattern). Furniture should be midcentury modern, but avoid Miesian austerity: you want kidney- shaped coffee tables, curved sofas, anodyzed aluminum pieces in gold and copper tones, colors like avocado and eggplant, and glamourous touches like white fur throws and tiled mosaic murals.

Details:

In the bedroom, a round bed with white-on-white linens would work brilliantly, along with metallic accents, mirrors, and rattan or bamboo room divider screens. In any MiMo room, tropical elements add the unmistakable Miami touch, transforming mere kitsch into resort glamour: potted palms, louvered windows, a salt water aquarium, tropical and animal prints, and neon. When you look your creation over and say to yourself, “Enough,” go out buy two more accessories, then come home and fix yourself a champagne cocktail.

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Early American Style

Colonial Amercians drew inspriation from their European heritage. Curent design styles would filter across the ocean and become reinventedin early America. Proportion and scale took reign over ornementation, A neutral color palette of grey blue, greens and rose pinks is readily apparent.

Stucco Rustico - Aged Plaster

Stucco Rustico is a Traditional interior and exterior textured plaster that epitomizes the rustic old world charm commonly associated with Tuscan environments. I love this treatment for its ease of application and the natural, organic glazed appearance that results when using mineral based plasters and glazes. Whether a rough application or a smooth finish, this treatment holds true to the test of time and, in fact, feels as if time itself stopped to wash the walls personally.

The Rustic Color Palette

The Rustic Style color palette falls within a distinct range of color tones and is essential in creating a successful Rustic interior. By using the appropriate color tones you can create a variety of design styles ranging from Period and Historic, regional or thematic. Color helps define our experiences within an interior and exterior environment. It affects us on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level and can be calming and passive, expressive and vital.

Painted Floral Details

Floral patterns used as accents in fabrics and furniture are common place details in the English Country home. These graceful and organic patterns complement the cozy interior of this style and work particularly well with lace window treatments, an heirloom tea service set and the natural and rustic charm of wooden ceiling beams and slightly irregularly textured walls.