The joys of marriage are many to behold. As William might soon find out, buying (or whatever it is royal people do) and decorating a home/castle/palace is certainly among them. Ikea stores on a Saturday morning often see a truly surprising release of relationship emotion and aggression. “We shall fight over book shelf BILLY and EXPEDIT until the first blood is drawn….”
William is also likely to find out that strong women like Kate are a magnificent and wonderful thing, but also make for formidable opponents. I am married to the very strong and outspoken blogger Metropolitan Mum. Luckily, we usually agree on all things house and home (if not she threatens to expose my bad taste on her blog), but strangly enough art prints have proven an exception. Since I work with art and pictures on a daily bases, this turns out to be a bit of a problem.
My beloved Mondrian style art prints now get to live in our office
The wonderful geometric abstract art prints above used to feature in my bachelor pad’s bedroom pre marriage – now they have to live in the Easyart HQ. The lovely black and white photo by Linda Butler was used at one of Easyart’s many PR events and I thought I could get it up at home, as we do not sell items used for PR. But sadly enough protracted domestic negotiations have ended in a stalemate and the print now sits on the floor rather than on the wall.
Spiral Stairs art print by Linda Butler "parked" next to my desk at home
So what do the professional suggest? How does one agree on art choices at home? Really what applies to relationships in general applies to art:
1. Be considerate – ask before ordering, after the fact your negotiating position is weakened and who would blame your partner? After all you are living TOGETHER and might even be spending the family budget.
2. Create your own space – sharing a home does not mean one is supposed to share everything always. No matter how small or large your home, have a corner that is just yours is essential for long term happiness. This is where you should be able to have any art you may want. I think William’s room will be the Eastern Wing Library on the second floor, plenty of room for pictures there….
3. Be openminded – there might actually be things that your partner loves and that you eventually will learn to like or even love, too. Experiment with new pieces together and hopefully your taste in art will develop and mature!
My wife was for example willing to indulge my love of cars, and our daughter therefore has children’s´s car art prints in her nursery. It might not be the most mature choice, but we all love them.
Speaking of children, I wonder how long it is going to take them? Let’s hope they do not get so cross with each other over their Monets and Warhols or Billy versus Expedit that there will be no Mini- Kate and Mini- Williams, but then again most of us don’t.
Enjoy the celebrations!
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Yar, but those ‘dismantled matchstick men’ prints really ARE a bit too 90′s, don’t you think? Sorry to make you suffer so much…
Good point. I hadn’t thgouht about it quite that way.