Emily's Garden began as a series of hand-painted fresco secco panels in my Hastings studio: a fantastical riviera landscape where nature has quietly reclaimed once-manicured pleasure gardens. It has since travelled into wallpaper, Giclée prints, and fabric. This cupboard is the design's most unexpected destination: a Victorian antique pine piece that I painted during my residency as an Annie Sloan Painter in Residence, using Chalk Paint throughout.
I chose this piece for its honest, simple form. The kind of antique that has done its job quietly for decades and has the character to show for it. The brief I set myself was to coax the Emily's Garden landscape entirely around the furniture, so that the cupboard becomes a freestanding mural rather than a decorated object.
The Zantelope leaps across the front panels. Fish drift through rippling waters. Mischievous monkeys inhabit the tiled terraces. The composition is the same fantastical, botanical world as the wallpaper and the prints, but on a three-dimensional surface it moves differently: you walk around it, the scene shifts, new details appear from angles that do not exist on a flat wall.
The sky is chalky blue, the parkland dense with deep greens and forest hues, punctuated by dusky pinks and vibrant florals. Open the doors and the inside walls are finished in warm terracotta-pink: a soft surprise, designed to glow when the light catches it.
The entire piece has been painted in layers, hand-distressed, and sanded back to reveal underlying brushstrokes and hints of the natural pine grain beneath. A final coat of hand-buffed wax gives it a low-sheen finish that protects the surface while keeping the tactile, parched quality of a salvaged antique.
Dimensions: 100 × 40 × 74cm.
Delivery & Collection This is a one-of-a-kind painted original, you will need to arrange delivery for this item and pay for this separately. You are very welcome to collect this from me from my Hastings studio. Otherwise, you will need to arrange for your own courier to collect. In either case, please contact me to arrange. info@melissawhite.co.uk and 01424 868048.
Emily's Garden began as a series of hand-painted fresco secco panels in my Hastings studio: a fantastical riviera landscape where nature has quietly reclaimed once-manicured pleasure gardens. It has since travelled into wallpaper, Giclée prints, and fabric. This cupboard is the design's most unexpected destination: a Victorian antique pine piece that I painted during my residency as an Annie Sloan Painter in Residence, using Chalk Paint throughout.
I chose this piece for its honest, simple form. The kind of antique that has done its job quietly for decades and has the character to show for it. The brief I set myself was to coax the Emily's Garden landscape entirely around the furniture, so that the cupboard becomes a freestanding mural rather than a decorated object.
The Zantelope leaps across the front panels. Fish drift through rippling waters. Mischievous monkeys inhabit the tiled terraces. The composition is the same fantastical, botanical world as the wallpaper and the prints, but on a three-dimensional surface it moves differently: you walk around it, the scene shifts, new details appear from angles that do not exist on a flat wall.
The sky is chalky blue, the parkland dense with deep greens and forest hues, punctuated by dusky pinks and vibrant florals. Open the doors and the inside walls are finished in warm terracotta-pink: a soft surprise, designed to glow when the light catches it.
The entire piece has been painted in layers, hand-distressed, and sanded back to reveal underlying brushstrokes and hints of the natural pine grain beneath. A final coat of hand-buffed wax gives it a low-sheen finish that protects the surface while keeping the tactile, parched quality of a salvaged antique.
Dimensions: 100 × 40 × 74cm.
Delivery & Collection This is a one-of-a-kind painted original, you will need to arrange delivery for this item and pay for this separately. You are very welcome to collect this from me from my Hastings studio. Otherwise, you will need to arrange for your own courier to collect. In either case, please contact me to arrange. info@melissawhite.co.uk and 01424 868048.
