Our friend Peggy Markel, who leads culinary adventures in Italy, Morrocco Spain and India, sent us these images of her visit to Castello Sonnino, an agricultural estate/vineyard/restaurant/lodge/cooking school 20 minutes from Florence; its earliest buildings date back to the 13th century, with later buildings c 1800. The murals are frescoes painted directly on the walls —when, we don’t know — to stunning effect. They reminded us of the Dreaming Walls we wrote about recently, and of photographer Thomas Wrede’s Domestic Landscapes, which feature printed murals people have applied to their walls, to expansive, imaginative —and sometimes dissonant — effect.

These images got us thinking about mural services we’ve come across in our wanderings.

Peggy Markel
Peggy Markel/Casa Sonnino

Murals Your Way  and other services will print any high-resolution image you like HUGE, as hangable wall paper or canvas; they also offer ready-made images you can choose from. Although we haven’t tried them, we love the possibilities of the basic idea…which we first started imagining/blogging about over a year ago.

What would we like to see on our wall?

We imagine a Maria Robledo Instagram

Maria Robledo
Maria Robledo

Maria Robledo
Maria Robledo

…or an Ellsworth Kelly-ish geometry…

Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly

…or perhaps this bucolic day at Palais Royale in Paris…

Sally Schneider
Sally Schneider

We’re looking forward to a meet-up with decorative painter Deirdre Newman (an Improvised Life reader) to find out what she does in this realm. Who knows what collaboration might come if it?

What mural do you imagine on your wall?

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