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Southwestern Style: An Overview of Some Key Aspects
Southwestern design has a certain rustic charm to it. It is both neat and elegant, however, it is also able to hold onto a certain amount of it 's rustic roots. I am quite a fan of southwestern style and enjoy the pride that many of its design elements seem to exude.
One key aspect of southwestern design that helps provide it with a rustic charm is the type of material often used in southwestern design elements. For the most part southwestern pieces are made from natural and abundant materials. For example a southwestern style bench would often be made from wood rather than an industrialized material such as metal. While such a bench could easily utilize some pillows, having it upholstered with an overly fancy material (like silk) would easily push it outside the bounds of “southwestern”.
Also in service to its rustic appeal southwestern pieces are rarely overly finished. Often the signs of its creation by hand are left on and the piece is not polished. The rough texture and unpatterned surface (such as seeing the carving marks on a cabinet) also help provide southwestern pieces with their valuable simplicity.
Many surfaces are simply left unfinished in southwestern design. This can contributes to the simplicity of a design as well as emphasizing certain textures. However, when colors are applied bright colors are lovingly embraced. There are few other styles that use yellow, orange, or dark red as much. However, beyond that the colors are often allowed to weather a bit. For example a particular design might use bright yellows that have been allowed to fade in the sun. In many southwestern designs paint that has begun to bubble up and flake of is not something to be avoided.
One reason I particularly enjoy southwestern designs are because they are elegant, yet, not overly cluttered. In fact southwestern pieces are often rather simple designs. They utilize just a few clean straight lines.
John Geer runs the online rug store Hazaad.com at http://www.hazaad.com/. He is also a contributor to Hazaad.com's blog (http://blog.hazaad.com/) and helps run Hazaad West, which specializes in southwestern designs, at http://stores.ebay.com/Hazaad-com-West.
Source: www.articlesbase.com