Stylish People Are Decorating With Plates on the Wall—and We’re Here for It
Designer Anouska Hempel took a similar—and meticulously hung—approach in an historic manor in the English countryside. Within the breakfast room, a collection of near-identical porcelain plates is displayed over the Georgian mantle. The set is one of many antique collections arranged within the storied interior.
Milan-based printoholic J.J. Martin, whose cult line of patterned dresses evolved into tableware in 2017, took a rather opposite approach in the kitchen of her Milan flat. “l wanted it to look as if they were literally thrown on the wall and stuck there,” she says of the brilliantly clashing display she created with castoffs and color trials saved from when she was developing her La Double J tableware line. (In reality, she laid everything out on the floor first to find a grouping that worked and hired her handyman to help with installation.)
“For those of us who don’t have unlimited budgets or unlimited art collections, it’s fun to get creative with how you decorate the walls,” says Martin, who’s known for her signature pattern punch. “This stuff is meant to be enjoyed, ogled, and eaten visually.”
Naturally, the home’s culinary hubs (kitchen, dining room, breakfast nook) are an intuitive landing place for hanging plates on the wall. Take AD100 talent Giancarlo Valle’s color-drenched dining room within a client’s Manhattan townhouse, where he covers the dining room hearth with plates by Stephen Bird. The varying patterns provide plenty of visual intrigue, but the blue and green palette brings some consistency to the budding collection.
In his own kitchen in Sussex, AD100 designer Martin Brudnizki complements the culinary space with a column of printed plates (previously owned by decorating doyenne Nancy Lancaster) lining a bare wall. Not only do the dishes pair nicely with the room’s food-focused objective, but they also integrate the marigold and Kelly green color palette that Brudnizki uses to coat the kitchen walls and cabinets, respectively.