by Simon Temprell

Created on: April 26, 2008   Last Updated: February 19, 2009

Some things in life are an acquired taste; olives, bitter chocolate, experimental jazz. In the decorating world the equivalent to such things as anchovies and Japanese animation is a deliberate process called aging.

Aging isn't something that only happens to living things, it happens to all manner of home furnishings from fabric to furniture and it happens because age equals pedigree and pedigree is what some people wish to cultivate. If you look at any Ralph Lauren advertisement you will see all the trappings of instant pedigree from the engraved silver julep beakers to the monogrammed velvet slippers. Furniture is distressed to give it that time-worn appearance and I have comical mental images of factory workers thrashing a poor little dining chair with lengths of heavy chain to add a century or so of hard labor to its rsum.

Of course it's those Europeans who inspired this strange decorating practice; they fill their homes with antiques and sun-faded fabrics, they leave their paintwork to blister and peel, they allow marble floors to settle unevenly and statues to grow plump with moss and mold. There just isn't enough time to wait for those things to happen naturally so we have to find a way to accelerate the ageing process so that, we too, can have a home that looks as though Venetian canals flooded it several times over the last two hundred years or so!

Be careful when you apply this look to your own home and make sure that the process is executed with taste and talent because I have seen some terrible examples of ageing, and I'm not talking about the kind that can be rectified by a few injections of Botox! Faux paint effects are probably the worst offenders when it comes to the re-creation of history. If you don't use an excellent artist to color-wash and distress your walls you will end up with something that looks as though it belongs in a mediocre coffee shop; splotches and streaks of paint that are supposed to represent the ravages of time.

I have worked with some brilliant faux painters over the years and I have worked with some bad ones too. Many years ago I employed a guy in London to create an aged stencil technique around a room that had been color-washed. I wanted the stencilling to break up in places, to appear faded and worn, like an old fresco but it ended up looking as though a seagull had splattered the walls in a rush to get to the powder room! Not only was my client in tears but my budget was dissolved because I had to employ someone else to re-paint the walls and then create the look I had originally desired.

There was a fad a few years ago to soak fabric in tea to lend it some character and to fade the colors. This was an OK technique for do-it-yourself experts but it was an inexact science and not something I would recommend you try. There are some beautifully aged fabric designs available without having to fill your bathtub with Earl Grey. Scalamandr, Brunswig & Fils, Schumacher all carry fabric designs that would not look out of place in a sixteenth century manor house.

I could pontificate on this subject for days but I must be concise. Aging and distressing are fine as long as they are achieved with a degree of expertise and if you can toss in a few real antiques at the same time you are guaranteed success. Of course, there are some people (like my mother) who will never understand why a perfectly flat wall should be daubed and scrubbed to make it look as though it's falling apart, but as I said earlier, some things are an acquired taste and there was a time when I used to think a dry martini tasted like cough medicine! Go figure.

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