A true-blue Mexican makeover in the kitchen

Q: I grew up in the American Southwest and really like Mexican/Spanish design. My New England-bred husband is having a hard time coming around to my point of view. He's OK with our leather couches and the Saltillo tiles I chose for the vestibule, but not the painted tiles I want in the kitchen. They are multicolor Talavera-lookalikes (can't afford the real thing). I really love the look but don't want to overwhelm him.
A: Chances are you can have your Talaveras and keep your husband calm, too, if you rethink that multicolor part. Granted, it's still a bit jaw-dropping, but the kitchen we show here wears two-toned tiles, slightly less exuberant than multicolored tiles but still classic Talaveras (handmade and hand-painted in Puebla, Mexico, since the Spanish brought the traditional craft to the New World).

The kitchen designer, Douglas W. Burdge, AIA, is a Westerner like you, and he took his clients to the tile source in Mexico where they picked the blue-and-white design - a classic in many parts of the world; think Delft, for example, and tiles from Provencal.

Tout Paris - most famously, Monet - adored blue-and-white tiles. He covered his kitchen at Giverny in them, then added strokes of bright yellow, quickly establishing another world-classic color combo.

This kitchen is true-blue Mexican in flavor, balanced on top with calming strokes of white and framed in beams salvaged from an antique barn. The mix of old and new includes both local finds and imported pieces, spiced with the owners' Mexican art, according to author Mervyn Kaufman, who wrote the book from which we borrowed this photo, "Classic Kitchen Style" (with the editors Woman's Day Special Interest Publications, Filapacchi Publishing, www.filipacchi.com).

WANT MORE BANG OUT OF BLING?

Then you should be in your element this year, according to a glance around the 2008 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York.

All that glittered was not (only) gold, it was silver and mirrors, crystals and twinkle lights, not to mention metallics of all kinds, even on wallpapers that are crumpled and scrunched and then painted to gleam in silver and gilt.

The wall-wowers are from The Alpha Workshops in New York, a mission for people living with HIV/AIDS, who are recovering the art of handmaking decorative furnishings ( www.alphaworkshops.org).

More bling twinkled overhead and all over at the pace-setting fair. A husband-wife duo at Refined Sugar Studio showed a one-off, white-painted, claw-footed Chippendale dining table embedded with white and red twinkle lights proclaiming "Eat," "Meat," and other such table talk.

But the prize for The Most Brilliant has to go to the Swarovski Elements exhibit, an entire gallery of crystal-inspired products intended "to push design boundaries in home couture." Push, they did: David Michalik embedded a cork-topped coffee table with mini-crystals, inspired, he said, by the sparkle of mica embedded in the sidewalks of New York. Other designers infused bed linens with crystals, added crystals to decorative tassels, and - more predictably but no less stunning - created a giant hanging "booch" chandelier, branches covered in a jeweled crust of crystals (Shannon Shapiro for Moth Design. Cost: pushing $40,000 retail). Click www.crystallized.com, but put your shades on first.

Rose Bennett Gilbert is the co-author of "Hampton Style" and associate editor of Country Decorating Ideas.