Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1061165
Adora's Bedroom – The Queen's Chamber Adora's bedroom posed one of the most intriguing design challenges in recent memory—it needed to have a period-appropriate ivory floor that has never existed in real life. Despite a lot of research, examples of ivory floors, which Adora has in her queen-like bedroom built during the Civil War, could not be found. Even sultans didn't have ivory floors. Examples of inlaid ivory boxes and furniture could be found, but those obscured the material. And because the floor is associated with a specific plot point, it had to have a dental quality to it, but not be too referential to teeth. The design process started by looking at the material (the horns and teeth of elephants, whales and walruses) and wondering how a craftsman/builder from the 1850s would fashion it. It occurred to me that slicing them in sections like a tree ring made sense because you could see the organic material, and the shape was somewhat tooth-shaped but the pattern would read as a decorative floor. The border was made up of crisscrossed horn shapes that when sliced laterally made a great boarder strip. Once an approach was settled on, high-resolution photos of sectioned ivory were sourced. These "tiles" were digitally aged in Photoshop, and given shadow lines to simulate a raised surface. These were then printed on linoleum with an embossed grout line. The overall result looked believable as a floor in a Victorian mansion. B D E A B C