Enhance Your Child’s Room with Your Cultural Heritage

As we start our first post, we want to say how excited we are to join the Project Nursery community; we hope that we will inspire you as you create your own special spaces.

We just finished a fun room for a four-year-old boy that we wanted to share with you all. The boy’s French mother had one crucial request—that “Tintin,” a treasured character from her own childhood, be featured somewhere in the room. She could not imagine her son growing up with Diego, Dora and The Backyardigans and not also be familiar with her own childhood friend.

One lucky Saturday, at the Chelsea Market in New York, we discovered the pivotal item for the room—the Tintin poster became the inspiration for the color scheme of the room but by no means its theme. This Tintin poster is similar to our find at the Chelsea vintage flea market.

We also displayed these Tintin figurines in square frames on the wall as three-dimensional art.We added these throw pillows, which worked with the color scheme and fell in line with the parents’ plan to raise their son bilingual.

In our business, and especially in the cultural melting pot that is New York City, we see this often. People from all over the world who have made New York City their home but who still want to integrate a bit of their culture and own childhood into their children’s rooms.

We like to call these elements the cultural enhancers—the elements that allude to another place, that add a moment of fun or a memory of home for the parents and a piece of history or lineage for their little ones. Late at night sitting in a rocker, these are the elements that may inspire a story from another place and time that will ultimately influence the children who sleep there.

We encourage you, as you think of colors, patterns and prints, to think of a place or something from your past that will serve as your children’s roots as they start to grow their own wings.

Alessia is Italian, and Julie is South African. We’re a long way from home, but we have brought with us the components of our respective upbringings to make our homes here reflective of where we come from. African fabric pillows remind us of the traditional fabrics and vibrant colors Julie saw around her growing up.

Beaded African Animals, made in South Africa, remind us of the fun finds at the craft markets in Johannesburg—where Julie used to live—as well as the animals seen on safari.

This modern quilt sent us back to the traditional quilt made in Italy by Alessia’s nonna.

These vintage Pinocchio prints are like the images that were in the storybooks Alessia grew up with in Italy.Have you integrated any items for your cultural heritage into your children’s rooms?