Brocade Home Catalog Arrives
Posted in Discourse on Mon Sep 18, 06 by Kyle under Decorative Arts.
I was a total sucker and ordered the Brocade Home catalog that I mentioned in an earlier post. It came in the mail a couple of days ago. What can I say, curiosity got the better of me and now even though I’m on yet another corporate mailing list, at least I had something better in my mailbox than the weekly Comcast junk mail that I normally receive.
That’s no joke by the way, Comcast really does send me some kind of advertising or promotion every week. Well, they actually send it to Current Resident, but that is close enough. The only question is will the saturated pleading to sign up for their amazing limited time only Internet/TV service be in English or Spanish this week. Enquiring minds want to know do the residents of Inner Richmond get Chinese postcards, do the Tenderloin-residing get Vietnamese postcards, do Castro addresses get rainbow postcards? I am amused how companies try to target your demographic identity with such a blunt instrument as a ZIP code. At least Comcast gets points for trying to be a multicultural paper waster.
Anyway, snail-spam ranting aside. I did enjoy the Brocade Home catalog. The photo staging was quite nice. I loved all the wallpapers that they had in the shots and was sad to find out that not a single one was for sale in the catalog. Over all I was pleased with the furniture, although I was somewhat let down by the detailing of the upholstery. The chairs shown in the catalog have no trim or edging whatsoever beneath the tacks which makes the edges look a little under-finished. Not the worst attempt at cost cutting in the world, but the tacking along some of the edges looked sloppy on close inspection of the photos. It really is the small details like that which can make or break a piece. Prices for the furniture were not as high as I expected them to be, but for only a couple hundred dollars more it would not be too hard to find original 19th century antiques that the collection takes its inspiration from.
I really enjoyed the mirror collection and the floating shelves the most. The shelves made a really good balance between the minimalist planar furniture we have seen for so long and a tasteful use of ornament. The mirrors look gorgeous in the pictures and there are several quite large sizes to choose from with prices to match. I detecteed a slight 1970s influence creeping into the textiles in both pattern and color. Everything has a darker more somber hue, but I’m sure I could find the base versions of these colors preserved in the dark recesses of my parents’ closet and attic.
The catalog is now finally available for your perusal online but you still have to order over the phone. The catalog website isn’t anything more than a Flash viewer for scanned images of the paper catalog. Lazy online presence… but they are a start-up brand, so I’ll stop kvetching about it. No pretty pictures today, I’ve been busy lately and not had the will to blog. Mostly because I’ve been delving into such antiquated activities as reading paper books and cleaning house. What can I say? I love anachronism and I can’t afford a maid.