Repost | Inspiration/Interpretation
Even better when it doesn't look like the inspiration at all
Hello loves, and happy Easter weekend! You saw this photo recently, so I thought it’d be fun to revisit the story behind this pot full of plants, and revisit how powerful inspiration can be. (Also, I recently potted this same planter with a slew of fun and different things. I’ll be showing you in the upcoming weeks!) Enjoy this repost.
When the work, words, home, style, or talents of someone else makes your breath catch, stirs a longing, or causes you to lean in with curiosity, this is simply part of them reflecting part of you. Their life and work is not a prescription or formula, but an invitation for you to live fully yours. Take that awakening, that curiosity, and see what it becomes in your unique life.
These are words from a post I wrote in fall of 2018, words that seem to have resonated with so many. When a reader wrote to me recently and asked how one actually goes about this, I understood her wondering. How does one find that comfort zone of gaining valid ideas, of learning from others, rather than feeling so much less than?
I don’t have all the answers, not even a few of them, but what I do have is the ability to show you how others have inspired my life, home, and work. I like how showing often speaks far better than telling, anyway.
INSPIRATION:
A giant white porcelain bowl overflowing with green amaranthus sits atop a white pedestal in the dining room of an historic governor’s house.
To me this pot of green makes the room. Everything else is impeccably beautiful, to be sure, but just imagine what the room would look like without the bowl of draping amaranthus on the pedestal. See? It makes the room. (A fun side note: When I first published this post in 2019, I connected with Lisa Tharp, the interior designer responsible for this beautiful work, and we’ve been internet friends ever since.)
INTERPRETATION:
A large thrifted footed bowl, formerly finished in bright, glossy colors, is quieted in flat white paint with an overlay of wood filler (rubbed on, dried, and sanded). In it was planted a collection of begonia and ferns in fresh potting soil, then tucked in with foraged sphagnum moss. It sits atop an antique mahogany side table in our great room.
Inspiration / Interpretation is a series meant to encourage us all. Next time you see an inspiring human, let them wake up the best in you. No inferiority or lack. No inadequacy or comparison. Just inspired curiosity, discovery, passion, you.
I remember now, again, how those words resonated with me when I first read them too. In a time when we’re prone to ever more comparisons, it helps to read them again. Thank you, Carmella!
Perfect!