December 03, 2003
Nesting
I was thinking today, on my way back to the office after lunch, about feathering an entire wall in my apartment. You know, covering the entire thing with feathers.
Well, no, not really. What I was really thinking about was more fluid, starting from a recollection of a Trading Spaces commercial I saw last night in which a wall was feathered (looked like goose down to me, although it might've been chicken feathers for all I know) and a teaser for tonight's edition of Marketplace, on which the home makeover TV genre will supposedly be exposéed. Apparently, these incredible decorating schemes aren't always viable for day-to-day living -- imagine for instance, having to clean a wall covered in feathers, or inviting a feather-allergic friend over.
But the idea of a feather covered wall might work in, say, a restaurant or nightclub. but rather than using down, I think full-size feathers would be better. You could mount them by sticking them into a clay-like substance (placticine? fimo? I dunno) and arranging them on the wall starting from the top and going down, so that each successive row covers the mounting material of the previous row.
So yeah, it might look cool. But what about maintenance? If a feather breaks, just replace it. When they get dusty, just take'em down and wash them -- if you used the right material to stick them to the wall, they should be easy to put back up.
I'm not going to actually do it, of course, but I think it'd look cool, and in theory it wouldn't be hard to do, just a little tedious.
Posted by Andrew Huff at December 3, 2003 02:28 PMWhew. At first I thought you meant "feathering" in the sense of Farrah Fawcett's hair. I wasn't sure how you were going to pull it off, but it would be fully retro, that's for sure.
Posted by: Jeffrey Utech at December 3, 2003 03:13 PMI heard that they covered an entire wall with hay once. The baby that actually lived in the house was highly allergic to it.
That is crazy. I mean, hay?!?
Posted by: Lacey at December 4, 2003 11:27 AMI don't know if the baby was allergic, but the mom was pretty hilarious when she mocked the hay concept by miming the baby picking the hay off the wall and eating it....they were more mad about the craftsman mantelpiece being ripped out of the wall and replaced with mdf, I think. . .
as for the feather wall idea - way back in my college days, I feathered a wall in my apt with a load of cheap boas - I stapled them across the wall from end-to-end. I got fabulous, fuzzy, full-feather coverage, and when me and the roommate were caught with an emergency burlesque-performance demand, we pulled out the staples and wore 'em! (the boas, not the staples. that was another show).
Posted by: heather at December 4, 2003 12:32 PM