Painted walls seem monotonous to you, wallpaper too commercial, and marble too expensive? If you don‘t like any of these standard solutions, but are aware that walls are a very important element in a home, seek help from Tanja Medanić, an interior designer from Lovran who has specialized in wall decorating. Armed with plastering trowels, spatulas, and surrounded by dozens of bottles and cans of paint, equipped with brushes of various thicknesses and even a pheasant feather for fine detailing, Tanja transforms an ordinary wall into a unique work of art resembling marble, granite, or the rocks of Velebit, only the author is not nature, but - Tanja.
Walls as a canvas
"I love the whole process, which is like meditation - while I work, I forget about everything around me," says the owner of Design MT studio, who completed her decorative wall design studies in Houston, where she lived for twenty years. When she enters a space that needs its walls decorated for the first time, Tanja tries to feel the prevailing atmosphere, and she also takes the exteriors into account, as it matters to her whether you see nature or other buildings through the window. Thus, to the owners of a luxury apartment above Ičići, whose living room offers a spectacular view of the Rijeka Bay and the island of Cres, she suggested that the walls look as if they are made of blue stone. And indeed, when a visitor approaches the wall, they can see the irregularities and "veins" typical of natural stone, and the texture itself is rough because the designer applies several layers of colored material. What‘s most interesting is that she doesn‘t work from a pre-made sketch, but lets, as she says, the material "guide" her.
Unique details
"I have a general idea of what the wall will look like, but I don‘t have a detailed sketch, which is impossible given the technique, because I apply the material directly onto the smooth wall and spread it with a trowel," explains Tanja, who also suggests to clients which wall in the room would be best to decorate.
"If all the walls were done with this technique, the room would become monotonous despite the dynamic surface of the walls; a much better effect is achieved with just one wall," continues the designer, whose clients are thrilled to have hand-decorated and unique walls in their interiors.
The owner of the Lovran villa Suzana Smajlović-Radić also agrees that it is a work of art that further enhances the space of her villa, built at the beginning of the last century, where Tanja decorated the walls in several rooms. In one bedroom, she decorated the wall in a shabby chic style, applying paint in irregular patches, then using a stencil to add a raised baroque-style ornament, which she then painted.
The largest wall in another bedroom was decorated with a marble pattern, first applying several layers of colored material and spreading it with a trowel, then using a pheasant feather to draw the "veins," and finally smoothing it with a grinder to achieve a high gloss, so that the surface becomes smooth and shiny like marble. For comparison, there is a table in the room with a real marble top, which is indistinguishable from the one drawn on the wall. In the bathroom, she also decorated the walls to resemble marble, highlighting black and white shades with gold leaf. She decorated the entrance and staircase walls of the Special Hospital for Lung Diseases in Zagreb‘s Rockefeller Street in the same way, achieving a marble look modeled after the real marble that once adorned those spaces.
Affordable price
However, the peak of skill and artistic expression was achieved in the living room and on a wall made in the shape of a natural rock, with moss and mushrooms "growing" on it. For this, Tanja had to properly prepare the wall by reinforcing it with mesh - because in some places the material is several dozen centimeters thick - to achieve three-dimensionality. After "building" by applying several layers of material and shaping it into protrusions and depressions, painting followed, done so realistically that it seems as if the room is built into a rock. The sense of reality is enhanced by moss made from strands of green wool and mushrooms brought from a real rock. Tanja also matched the furniture to the gray-green colors of nature, repainting and decorating the chairs and wardrobe.
And although these are hand-decorated walls, the price is more or less affordable to everyone: a square meter ranges from 60 to 80 euros, depending on the complexity of the job.
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