"I never decorate I just make sure that I'm going to be comfortable and let the effect come with the living." Lesley Blanche, English author and historian (1904-2007)
Throw pillows can add personality to a room - your personality. Lesley Blanche, a true Bohemian, with plenty of wanderlust and imagination, had "mountains of pillows" collected on her exotic travels. She used them for couch pillows in her getaway which was once a donkey stable and was not too far from her home in Menton, France. Sometimes she even took her decorative pillows on her travels with her. She saw her homes as moveable caravans and did not believe in traveling light. With a few throw pillows and rugs, she felt she could feel comfortable anywhere. In addition to farflung travel, she loved to write about romance. Her most well-known book, The Wilder Shores of Love is about four English women who traveled to the far East. Cy Twombly named a painting after it. Take a page from Blanche's book. Surround yourself with throw pillows and read or write to your heart's content.
Throw pillows Chez Lesley Blanche....Blanche loved day beds strewn with decorative pillows of all sizes, shapes and prints. She used them as decorative accents to add interest and warmth. Her accent pillows are much more than your usual couch pillows or sofa pillows. Since she traveled so much, we guess that she bought throw pillow covers and folded them flat to put them in her luggage and transported them back home to use as sofa pillows on her living room sofas, couches and daybeds. Blanche loved daybeds full of throw pillows!
Some of our favorite inspiration for throw pillows comes from The Miller House. The living room of this iconic Modernist house built by Eero Sarinen with gardens by Dan Kiley s filled with decorative pillows that were hand picked by the delightful Modernist decorator, Alexander Girard. The throw pillows for the living room couches that Girard picked are in shades of refresing reds. You might say these red throw pillows steal the show in the conversation pit sofa.
The Miller House is in Columbus, Ohio. Further west, we love Georgia O'Keefe's take on throw pillows at Ghost Ranch. Like Lesley Blanche, O'Keefe was an intrepid explorer but seems to have also loved home decor. Both of these women, had their own unique sense of style and the decorative pillows and room decoration they picked reflect them.
Georgia O'Keefe had pillows made of bandanas and denim on the banquettes that came out of the walls of her adobe sitting room in Abiqu. They went with her Alexander Calder mobiles which were in primary colors and could easily be used for outdoor pillows too.Throw pillows for sofa, couch or beds are a wonderful way to express your personal decorating style. Whether you choose to have a lot of throw pillows, or just a few accent pillows, decorative pillows for couch pillows are clearly must have home decor.
