One of my goals for 2013 was to take more professional photographs of my painted furniture. I decided that I want to take them as if they are set up in a real room. Previously I had been taking furniture photographs outside in the sunlight because I had no other space to do it. That was “ok” but lacked the quality I desired.
This meant creating the illusion of curtains on a windowless wall. Here is a dresser with curtain panel hung on both sides. I left the stool on purpose as a “prop.”
This winter I cleaned out a 5-ft space on a flat wall of my studio to take advantage of the soft light from my front studio windows and created a “staged” room display space. This gives me a lovely sidelight even on the sunniest of days because north light is diffused light. Because we hung them using two spate dowels I can move both panels out-of-the-way when I don’t want them in the photograph, or just push one panel away when I only want one panel to show.
First we screwed a screw into the end of a wooden dowel.
While I do have windows on the front and back of my studio with nice natural lighting, I have no curtains in my studio. Curtains are just not necessary there and would be one more thing in a rural studio on a dirt road to maintain. But I wanted the look of curtains in my staged room settings!
Then Gene hung the dowel to the rail using brass “S” hooks. He is testing everything before we added the material “curtains.”
My husband and I figured out we could make pretend curtains by using a long wooden dowel with screws in each end and attached to the wooden rails on a brass “S” hook. This is how we at one time hung two dimensional artwork in the White Oak Studio Art Gallery.
The rail is hard to see on the wall as it is painted the same paint color as the wall. Here is an end piece unpainted.
I didn’t want to spend much money so I dug out some nice tablecloths and two Indian batique cotton bedspreads and ironed them. We attached them to the wooden dowel using metal clip on curtain hangers from my old Cape Cod kitchen and then we hung the material to the rods. Fake vertical curtains!
Adjusting the curtain panels to hang the way I wanted.
They are a bit short not touching the floor like they would in a real-life room but they certainly serve the purpose I need them to serve. And best of all the only cost was just one dollar for the wooden rod and $8.99 for a second packet of metal clip-on hangers. Success!
Showing you the top of the curtain panel today to see how they are hung.
My favorite kind of solution!
Small House / Big Sky Donna
