We saw this in a great book, Babies' Rooms: From Zero to three a year ago, which has us looking admiringly into baby decor for the first time. There are many, many good ideas in here, but this one stood out: Cowboy Wallpaper from Cath Kidston. Just take a look at how much fun that cowboy is having, galloping across the range with his lasso flying. Wallpaper is so cool.
A Brit with a killer name, Cath Kidston must be Laura Ashley's trippy, fun cousin. She has a US website and shops in NY and LA selling her eccentric, colorful vintage furnishings, tableware and accessories, but she also sells wallpaper. To see it you have to find it under oilcloth here. Each roll is 11 yards and 20" wide ($50).
I'm such a sucker for that kind of stuff.
Oh sure, surround your child with images of a romanticized white supremicist manifest destiny. How about some framed prints of Custer's army raping native women?
OK! It's cocktail hour!
I own lots of Cath stuff, I've been addicted to her line for years now. It's lovely. Great post!
Holly
Fun rug that would go with the wallpaper:
http://tinyurl.com/z3eeb
Szig:
I was trying to help someone find nice boy's bedding, and kept running across themes that I'm really not too keen on introducing a child to...military (camouflage, etc), construction/farming, etc.
Girl's themes aren't much better with princesses and divas.
So, instead, I'd end up here:
http://www.modernnursery.com/
Or here:
http://www.usawallpaper.com/gljebabe.html
My fav?:
http://www.usawallpaper.com/flbanucobygl.html
We had to watch a film in one of our Psych classes called "The Pinks and the Blues" (most of you taking any Psych classes saw it too).
They wrapped the same baby in either a pink blanket or a blue blanket. Comments for pink blankets were "look at those delicate features, she's going to turn heads" or other such nonsense. They'd place dolls next to the baby in pink. Play with the baby in a gentle fashion.
Not so for the blue blanketed baby. That baby was "husky" and a real man's man and got footballs and was played with in different manner.
It was the SAME BABY.
I hate passing on stereotypes to kids. Hence, I never did get around to having children. Would trying to raise the ultimate uber-child result in the next big serial killer? Geez.
"Ma, it's all your fault, you let me play with dolls and trucks, let me have camo bedding with diva pillows, and now I must kill."
I didn't find the cowboy wallpaper objectionable, though my comment above referred to Cath's whole site.
There are plenty of options for nurseries and kids' rooms outside the extreme stereotypes. For our kids when they were little, we used bright colors that we liked, pictures that we liked, and whatever was necessary for baby/little-kid safety. Had nothing to do with pink, blue, cowboys, or princesses.
I was bald till I was about 15 months old. Despite having pierced ears and pink clothes, people still thought I was a boy. Go figure.
As a Brit can anyone tell me why Cath Kidston is a Killer Brit Name? I would have said Clarissa Dickson-Wright or Hugo Pendragon-Jones is more in keeping with killer Brit names ;-)
Suzanne Sharp and her husband (of Rug Company fame -- e.g. the Swirl rug) used this wallpaper for one of their kid's rooms (they have 4 kids). They combined it with an elaborately carved Indian (as in from India) bed painted white (looked like a mini Taj Mahal). Very witty and boho-chic.
An earlier kids' room featuring that bed is in the book "Children's Spaces from Zero to Ten".
The cheapest site I found was http://www.eadeswallpaper.com
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