If you`ve made what seems to be your billionth foray into wallpaper stores and still have had no luck finding the perfect pattern, maybe it`s time to call Lamphear Monch Inc.
The two decorative artists who make up the Chicago-based firm, Hillary Lamphear and Jeanne Monch Gould, can make your walls look like they`re covered in sheets of elegant speckled granite. Or a brilliant turquoise malachite. Or the subtlest, softest jadestone.
If a faux finish isn`t what you`re after, you can tap into their talents for wall glazing, which looks like textured wallpaper or fabric (for example, one design mimics moire silk), but doesn`t have any seams to drive you crazy.
How much will it cost you? A lot more than slapping on your own coat of latex or $20-a-roll self-adhesive wallpaper. On the other hand, if your tastes in wallcoverings were running toward the upscale, you might actually come out ahead by bringing them in.
Lamphear and Gould (Monch is her maiden name) are specialists in decorative painting and faux finishes, techniques that create the effect of paper, cloth or stone coverings on walls. These techniques were enormously popular in the 1800s, and have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years.
The two women, both 30, were trained as fine artists (Gould at the Art Institute of Chicago, Lamphear at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). They met while working for someone else`s wall-stenciling studio, hit it off and decided to go into business for themselves.
Selling savvy
After a two-week course in decorative painting techniques at the Joanne Day Studio in New York, they returned to Chicago and began calling on architects and decorators-which was another learning experience.
”Neither of us had ever been in sales,” says Gould.
”We had no business experience,” says Lamphear.
They are a thoughtful, serious pair, and the examples of their work are extraordinary, but their relative youth led them to some memorable exchanges with potential clients.
”They`d look at our samples and say, `Great! Who does the work?` ” says Gould.
Then there were those who treated the pair as if they were only artist representatives-on the assumption that a male artist had to be responsible for such skillful re-creations of stone surfaces and fabric textures.
They never had any intention of camouflaging the fact that they are female, but Lamphear says they`ve learned to ”hide our age well.”
”We`ve cut our hair progressively shorter,” laughs Gould.
Wall-to-ceiling work
Their talents-and perhaps the haircuts-have begun to pay off over the past year and a half. Currently they`re spending the next several months on ladder and scaffolding in a massive, four-story Astor Street mansion, where they are working with sponges, brushes and oil-based paints to cover the walls and some ceilings in all the public areas. They`re also adding gold and silver leaf accents.
It takes Mother Nature an eon or so to make a piece of Carrara marble. Lamphear Monch can do it in about five days.
For their efforts, the artists ask a day rate of $600. ”We tell our clients that they have to have at least $750 to spend on a room,” says Lamphear. But for people contemplating wallpaper that sells $100 or more a roll, their fee doesn`t seem exorbitant.
No murals, please
Don`t hire Lamphear Monch if you`re in the market for trompe l`oeil and mural work, however. Both women say they prefer not to work in those genres. It`s too close to their own work in fine painting, which they still pursue in their spare time.
Faux finishes have become popular with do-it-yourselfers (and even featured on episodes of ”This Old House”), but the duo says they bring an artist-trained eye for color and aesthetic sense to the process.
For example, while they don`t shy away from rich colors, they pride themselves on the subtlety and timelessness of their designs. Too many faux finishes today, they say, are garish, kitschy, and won`t wear well over time. ”We try to steer people away from anything obnoxious,” says Gould.
”You don`t want someone coming into your home and saying, `Wow, what did you do to your walls?` ”
