I read a lot of interior design blogs/websites to get inspiration for my own home. I have been visiting one of my favorite websites, Apartment Therapy, for close to 20 years. The site features pictures of people’s homes and interviews the individuals about the inspiration behind their design choices and as well as lists their sources for furniture, textiles and décor. Inevitably, these homes have some quirky (i.e., ugly) piece of art that the owner picked up at a thrift store or flea market. I was always curious as to why someone would spend money on something that seemingly isn’t very beautiful and then display such an oddity in their home. I was finally enlightened this past weekend.
Meet Dimitri Aleksander Romanov. I bought him at the Randolph Street Market on Sunday. A few friends and I went to brunch and then wandered over to the market for some vintage shopping.
To Randy’s dismay, I fell in love with this piece immediately and he couldn’t talk me out of buying it. The nicest thing he could bring himself to say about it was that he loves that I love it. For some reason that grudging statement that makes me laugh.
In the end, Randy was a great sport about my newest acquisition. He even carried it from the market to the pub where we ate dinner. On our walk there, he made up stories about the artwork which had all of us in fits of laughter. At first we just called the cat Oscar because he looks so grumpy, but then we decided that if someone had their cat’s likeness etched in marble, he was probably a very important cat from a very important family and would definitely have more than one name – so we called him Solomon Ferguson Firestone. Then for some reason that I can’t remember, we thought he was Russian so we finally settled on Dimitri Aleksander Romanov.
We of course had to set the picture up at the end of table during dinner. I’m happy to report that Dimitri garnered quite a bit of attention. We had several women (presumably fellow cat ladies) come over to our table to admire him. One even tried to buy it from me for considerably more than I paid for it, but no way was I going to let go of my prized artwork.
So now, like those featured on Apartment Therapy, I am the proud owner of ugly art, and I adore it. He hangs in my entryway where I can say good bye to him along with Rose and Elliot when I leave for work and greet him as I do the others when I get home. This ugly piece of art will forever remind me of a wonderfully gloomy Sunday when my friends and I drank a little too much at brunch, wandered around an outdoor market looking at old stuff and laughing all afternoon. And that is what makes this ugly art beautiful to me.
