BRINGING PROVENCE HOME
By Dagmar, seeker of old things, quiet beauty & the stories they carry.
It’s been a little while since I last wrote here.
Life has been wonderfully full lately, and much of that has to do with our journey through the south of France. We travelled slowly, wandered through old villages, explored antique markets, sat in the shade with a cool lemonade (because yeah 37C/98,6F is a tad to hot for me), and took far too many photographs of things most people might simply walk past.
An abandoned patio, oh how i'd love to have a pause there.
A faded shutter, yep gimme more and more of these.
A pile of straw hats, I'm addicted to them.
Fresh baked bread, can't eat gluten but ohh they looked yummy.
A weathered wall, I saw more that I could count.
Old lavender that smelled heavenly, sadly scent hasn't quite found its way into photography yet.
For me, these are the things that stay.
I have always believed that inspiration doesn’t necessarily arrive in the form of a beautiful room.
Sometimes it is a photograph of a crumbling wall in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, the dusty ochres of Roussillon, a pale blue shutter in Gordes, or an old silver butter knife found amongst the treasures at an antique market in Aix-en-Provence.
You simply have to look.
What I love most about the south of France is that nothing seems too concerned with looking new.
The beauty is in the layers.
Paint that has faded in the sun. Wood softened by decades of use. Stone with a weathered worn. Linen that has lost its crispness. Metal with a little patina. Colours that have been gently bleached by years of sunshine.
Perhaps this is what travel does best. It gives you permission to see familiar things with fresh eyes.
A photograph of an old Provencal shutter might inspire a muted blue-grey somewhere at home.
Terracotta Cushion in sunlight ancient brick wall with wooden beam Stylish lamp and chair with wool hat
The deep terracotta of Roussillon can become a single cushion, a ceramic bowl or the warmth of an aged lamp base. The creamy limestone of Gordes might find its way into a plaster wall, a stone object or simply a palette of warm, chalky neutrals.
I don't want to recreate Provence in my home. I want to bring home the feeling of it.
The effortless mix of old and new. The confidence to let something be imperfect. The warmth that comes from natural materials and objects with a history.
An old door doesn't need to become a door again. Leaned against a wall, it can become art.
A weathered shutter can add architecture to an otherwise quiet corner. A collection of old silver pieces can sit casually in a bowl, their tarnished surfaces becoming part of the decoration.
Even those wonderfully simple straw hats we saw everywhere can become inspiration, their natural woven texture, their soft sandy colour, their very uncomplicated beauty. I've chosen a rug for the living room in jute inspired by the straw hats.
This is where I find myself returning again and again: texture before decoration.
A rough wall beside smooth linen.
A weathered table beside something refined.
A faded ceramic against warm wood.
A woven basket next to old silver.
The contrast is what makes a room feel collected rather than decorated.
And perhaps that is what I loved about wandering through Roussillon, Saint-Rémy, Gordes, Ménerbes, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. Each place had its own palette, its own rhythm, its own layers of age and colour, but together they created something I couldn't quite stop photographing.
A kind of visual vocabulary.
And everywhere, the quiet evidence of time.
Warm ochre.
Dusty rose.
Faded blue.
Chalky cream.
Sun-bleached wood.
A little rust.
Branch in unique vase with antique plate Old wall mural in france French chair with straw hat and bag
Since coming home, I’ve noticed these details following me around.
I see a colour and remember a wall in Roussillon.
I see an old piece of wood and remember a door in Saint-Rémy.
I pick up a piece of vintage silver and suddenly I’m back at an antique market.
This, to me, is the joy of collecting inspiration.
Not copying what you saw, but allowing it to become part of your own visual language.
A photograph can be enough.
You don't need to know exactly what you will do with it. Save it. Look at it. Let the colours settle somewhere in the back of your mind. Perhaps months later, when you are styling a room, that faded shutter or weathered wall suddenly returns, and you know exactly what was missing.
Maybe that is the joie de vivre I brought home.
Not a particular place, but a way of looking.
Slowing down enough to notice the beauty in the worn, the faded and the imperfect.
To understand that an interior doesn't always need something new.
Sometimes it simply needs something with a story.
And perhaps a little sunshine from the south of France.
With love,
Dagmar
Linen & Wood
