Westiche

West-ish welcome

Pastiche: a stylistic imitation; an artistic work that borrows motifs or techniques from the previous work of other artists. Westiche: my interpretation of western style, using borrowed motifs and techniques from previous artistic works. Above is the entry to the Rancho. It’s western, but not — flea market, as well as arts-y. The ingredients of this look came together accidentally-on-purpose, like most of the Rancho, deliberately unplanned, as it were. Here’s the break down:

The chair: My friend, Jan, bought this chair for her husband’s birthday. It sported an interesting laced red leather sling back, was vaguely Asian in flavor, and I loved it … later, I saw it at her house and the sling had split and it wasn’t being used. I offered to take if off her hands in exchange for a reupholstered 50s side chair and she agreed. I decided to have a new sling made for it from cowhide. I found the hide on ebay (from Argentina, by way of Florida, for a ridiculously low price) and had a local upholsterer cut the hide to fit (using the old leather sling as a template). Perfect! Next, I knew I wanted something vertical to go next to it, and probably a coat tree of some sort, but didn’t know exactly what. I was working with really limited space so it couldn’t be too large. The Long Beach Flea Market provided the perfect solution in this one-of-a-kind hand-welded horseshoe coat tree! Again, got it for a terrific price and I loved the black distressed enamel paint on it. I really loved the stiffened chain look of the horseshoes and I mean, c’mon, what’s more western than horseshoes? Great! Still needed more, so, art over the chair. I dipped into my vast collection of thrift store/flea market canvasses and found a winner: a beautifully matted and framed abstract oil, signed Villanova. Beneath it I added a tiny surrealist piece by a local artist. I hung them over the chair with the larger canvas above the smaller so that it would reflect visually the shape of the chair back. Cool! With that I had achieved the perfect Rancho welcome … howdy!