Terra Cotta and The Rubber Kitchen Mat

The is a picture of Terra Cotta. She is a life-size bust and beautiful example of papier-mache but at a glance everyone thinks she’s terra cotta pottery and she likes it that way. Hence the name.

I purchased Ms. Cotta the last day of a jewelry show after begging the grumpy old guy who was using her as a necklace display to sell her to me. I imagined a better life for her. She is now the Matriarch of the Mantle having graced our living room for more than fifteen years.

Now, don’t let her serene beauty bamboozle you. Terra Cotta is a grand dame in every sense of the word. A Diva. She makes the Mona Lisa seem warm and extroverted.  Terra Cotta’s face may read docile, her smile might imply a kind of quiet contemplation, but I know from experience that if she doesn’t like you or your choices, she will launch herself off that mantle in less time than it takes to say “I don’t believe an inanimate object has opinions.”

When we remodeled our house, I moved her around from time to time to keep her out of harm’s way.
Covered by a sheet most days to protect her from the drywall dust, I could feel her, in the dark, seething. She expected better treatment AND she wasn’t at all sure about the wall color I was choosing.

When the room was finally finished I uncovered her and placed on the focal point of the room, in her seat of honor in the center of the mantel. The next morning I came out to find her face down on the floor.

Apparently she loathed the shade of white we had picked. It did nothing for her skin tone.

Eventually, after several more face plants, we found a blue that she approved of. I am forever grateful that she is indeed papier-mache and not pottery. By now I’d have a ceramic plastic surgeon on speed dial.

When the time came to place a piece of art on that wall, I did so with trepidation. The Queen of Cotta had her strong opinions and her nose would not be able to endure much more suicidal mantle jumping.

I was determined to save her from herself. I can remember placing her on a table across the room as we propped various oil painted scenes and watercolor landscapes up on that mantel to see what fit the room. On an adjacent wall, there is a very large and brightly colored abstract portrait. She barely tolerates it, and pretty much anything we hung above the mantle clashed.

I think I heard her say “I told you so”, several times. What I actually kept hearing was Something like me.

I’m not one to shy away from collections, I have many. Hummingbird’s nests and heart-shaped rocks. Skulls and hands and chairs large and small. Coffee table books and Eiffel towers just to name a few, but I couldn’t picture a group of busts on the mantle. Or more papier-mache for that matter. So I halted my search and waited for inspiration which came several months later in the most unlikely form imaginable.

Our lot was a construction zone in the back. Or a trash heap. It all depended on your perspective and how many dry wall nails you had stuck in the bottom of your flip-flops. For months, stacks of roof tiles, old medicine cabinets and discarded lumber lay strewn around in the dirt that had formerly been our back lawn. Added to the mess were old garden pots, the box our new dishwasher came in, and some old rubber floor mats, the kind they use in restaurant kitchens to save the chef’s feet from making him so miserable that he spits in your soup.

One day I was organizing the chaos, (moving stuff from place to place to make myself feel better), when I turned one of the large mats over and noticed that on the opposite side of the soft, cushy part was a web of the intricate relief work and designs. This is so cool my brain said. Too bad nobody ever sees this side. That’s when inspiration struck. Why not? Why don’t people see the cool underside of a plain rubber mat? Because no one has any imagination! With that, I heaved the large, cumbersome behemoth over my shoulder and ran inside to see if my hunch was correct.

Would it fit above the mantle and could we hang it there easily?

The answer turned out to be yes and yes! It fit the space perfectly!
My husband was skeptical until the last nail was hammered and we stood back to access. Then even he had to admit—it was perfect. And because we hung it about an inch away from the wall, the light from the sconces on each side cause the perforations to cast these cool shadows. And there was plenty of room for Terra Cotta, who was thrilled with the decision. It didn’t steal her thunder and it was exactly as she’d suggested. It was something like her.

It had been saved from its previously boring fate, and reimagined—as art. AND it is a shape-shifter. It looks like something it is not.

Almost everyone who notices that piece thinks it’s metal. Just as Terra Cotta looks like pottery, the underside of the mat hung on the wall looks like metal. It just does. So much so that when one of our snotty, haughty, decorator friends visited the house, she snorted “Oh I love that piece. That artist (she named some guy) does such extraordinary things with metal.”

I had to hold Terra Cotta back to keep her from launching herself into that woman’s glass of Chardonnay.

So there are multiple morals to this story.

Decorating is a collaborative effort. Every piece in the house has a say.

Listen to your instincts.

And remember…NOTHING is as it appears.

Carry on,
xox