La vera Sophia

We all know Sophia, right? La vera Sophia, the real Sophia? Sophia Loren indeed!

Even before we bought Casa Vita last year, my head was spinning with decorating ideas for it. The house came with furniture, but of course I wanted to make it more personal and more cozy. The living room was refurbished with some antique closets from home, a few self-made cushions, and the two big sofas upholstered with dark green velvet by Teresa.

The kitchen renovation had to wait until spring, so I could take my time. And that definitely worked out for the best.

In the two trulli, we couldn’t change much, they are authentic and unique with their big brick walls, but fortunately not much change was needed. I love the little niches in the wall where I could put the Madonna that I had saved from the attic of my parents home. I also put two pineapple lights in a niche in each trullo.

But in the newer, “normal” rooms, I had a blank slate.  My first plan was to put a large wall poster on one wall of each room. I would make the poster myself in Photoshop, and I had many scenes of old Italian movies in mind. Preferably in black and white. But Francesca gently pointed out to me, that wallpaper wouldn’t be a good idea, because of the humidity in Puglia.   So disappointing!  I had to come up with a new idea, and I wanted to stick to something typical Italian. So I thought of the pretty Italian actresses from the sixties: Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale. I spent a long time looking for pretty pictures with decent resolution of Sophia. To be honest,  I don’t find Sophia always that pretty, but these photos I found were atypical for her. Her hair is shorter than normal, and  her eyes have cool, even cold, way of looking into the lens. I put a filter on the pictures in Photoshop and added a shade of pink on top of them. I had them printed on Forex (a very light, sort of pressed plastic, material) by a company – Uw fotocadeau – here in Belgium. You can see the result on top.

Once the frames hung on the wall, the room was baptized “the Sophia Loren room.” It is a small cozy room with twin beds and a private bath. The rack, the bedside tables, and metal beds were all dark. When we were in Puglia in April, I painted everything white. It looks so much brighter and nicer now, don’t you think?