India Hicks Picture Walls

A mini-tour of designer India Hicks house in the tropics with a specific focus: picture walls

Anyone who watched Top Design would remember host India Hicks, daughter of British design icon David Hicks who was known for mixing bold colors and combining antiques with modern furniture. Ms. Hicks has been involved in many style projects and lives in the Bahamas at a home called Hibiscus Hill.

Here’s a mini-tour of the house, but one with a specific focus: picture walls. I’m always interested in the way people organize art in various rooms because the eye is drawn immediately to pictures and because the huge variety in home architecture can demand a seemingly limitless number of arrangements and solutions.

In the living room, a set of antique shell and reptile prints hang high on the wall and side-by-side (rather than in two rows) helping to draw the eye into the room. Furniture is arranged along the wall below the prints, reinforcing the line of sight. The focal point of the living room is the fireplace with a trumeau mirror hanging above.  The fireplace also has a painting on each side.  While the paintings are of different heights, the one on the right appears to be lined up with the prints, putting a full stop on the end of the visual sentence.

Hicks’ dining room features an arrangement of four framed drawings above the sideboard, two on each side of a center mirror. Note the drawings are hung high enough to be illuminated by a pair of lamps.  As they lack color, they are subtle decorations in mostly monochromatic room dominated by wood tones of the wide-plank floor, mahogany table and chairs, and a birdcage from Sri Lanka.

Plantation-style wainscot makes a soothing backdrop for the all-white guest room.  Botanical prints above the bed are arranged in a trio of one series centered over the headboard plus a larger pair split, with one on each side to anchor  bedside tables.

Even designers have what Hicks calls a “scrap wall” of pictures put up informally all around the folding campaign desk and chair. Wood frames containing an arrangement of sea shells helps break up the bulletin board effect by bringing a touch of wood to the whitewashed wall.

(Source: Array, Casasugar)

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