So you're a sports fanatic seeking to decorate your home or office with conversation pieces or maybe you just want a vintage sports theme for a specific room like your man cave or bedroom. Purchasing antiques can get expensive and require space to display them. Consider filling your space with vintage sports photography. Artwork is something that can hang on your walls so it doesn't take up too much space. It’s also a great way to surround yourself with conversation starters without going broke. There are a few tricks and things to consider when choosing vintage sports posters.

Choose a color!

One big thing to consider is the color. What will fit best in your decor, black and white, sepia toned or color sports photos. The color theme you choose can depend on the color of your walls, furniture and other accessories in the room. If the room is full of color it may be a good idea to use black and white or sepia to tone the colors down. Using color sports photography in a room full of color can become overwhelming. The sepia tones and photographs that lack rich colors is what tends to give the photograph a more vintage feel. When you find the right color for your room, the finish for the print is your next big step. If a frame compliments your piece best, you'll want to use a frame that has more of a vintage feel rather than a modern frame. Some mat colors that may pair well with retro sports photos include egg shell, buff and serene cream.

The Sport or the Name?

Before you automatically select photography that includes famous athletes or stadiums, browse pictures that feature the unexpected or show humankind’s love of the sport. Good examples are photos like Free Golf and Retrieving the Ball. Each one presents everyday people engaged in the sport of golf. We carry prints in various types of categories like football, racing cars, hockey, tennis, lacrosse and more. So take time to find the beautiful golf course or the motivational soccer poster rather than automatically searching for famous sports players and stadiums.

If you do feel compelled to spotlight famous athletes or locations, there are tons of sports places and people to choose from in our categories. One of our best illustrations in that regard may be found in the photo titled, Lou Gehrig – With Bats. It's almost a 3-D look the way that the baseball bats are positioned, it gives the illusion that they are literally coming out of frame. This piece and pieces like it would look great printed on a seamless piece of canvas or a two-toned, ebony and gold bastion frame.

The Last Game

The last best thing to consider is the last game. If you have a favorite athlete, finding photographs from their last game is not only great decor but a great conversation starter as well. A good example would be to pair photos like Lou Gehrig – Farewell #2 or Babe Ruth - Farewell.

Finish it Off

Artwork is not complete with out a frame, laminate or canvas finish. If a canvas best suites your desired piece, choose a painted sides color that matches something in the frame. For black and white photos, black painted sides is always an amazing finish. If you're choosing a frame finish, choose a vintage styled frame. You can also choose a frame that matches the furniture in the room it will decorate. If you have a mahogany colored bed frame and the chosen piece is going in that bedroom, try choosing one of our mahogany frames if they match the piece as well.

All of our frame and canvas finishes come with 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Belong long, January 2015 will be here and it will be time to take down the New Year’s decorations. Perhaps you’re wondering what to replace them with until Valentine’s Day rolls around in February. Well, wonder no more because we’ve dug up five wacky holidays that are tailor-made for hanging up wall art. Here’s a look-see:

1.) National Soup Month

Why not decorate the kitchen or dining room in honor of National Soup Month? Believe it or not, there is a lot of interesting wall art that focuses on the delightful dish besides Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Series. There are artists like Will Rafuse, Pamela Gladding, Dan Dipaolo, Jerianne Van Dijk and Jane Maday too. They’ve created art that shows chefs making big, bubbling pots of soup. In addition, over the years there have been many artists who've painted fresh ingredients, bowls, wait staff, restaurants, movie posters and advertisements hawking various kinds of soups.

2.) National Hot Tea Month

While we are still talking about wall art for the kitchen and dining room, we’d be remiss to mention National. Our art gallery has more than 150 pieces of art devoted to tea and tea making equipment alone. One of the artists involved is Helen Vladykina. She’s created a three frame series on tea that focuses on different regions of the world, including Morocco, Russia and Asia. So they could easily fit into a variety of interior design themes. The list of other artists whose tea prints are tied to geographic locations includes Krista Sewell, Charlene Audrey, Gregory Gorham, Deborah Bookman and Ingrid Van De Brand.

3.) National Polka Music Month

Now that we’ve covered the wacky holidays tailor-made for kitchen and dining room art, let’s move on to the den. It’s a good spot to hang wall art in celebration of National Polka Music Month. We’ve got a series of Panoramic Images that capture true-to-life scenes from Poland that would be perfect for such an occasion. There’s also a map of the country available courtesy of artist T. Jeffreys. If you don’t want to hang up pictures of Poland, there are other options as well. They include displaying pictures of dancers, musicians, musical instruments and fun uses of polka dots.

4.) National Mail Order Gardening Month

National Mail Order Gardening Month is also on tap. So why not create a display wall in the den dedicated to mail catalogs, seed packets and gardening implements? Artist Deborah Schenck has created a series of artwork featuring vintage letters and various flower blossoms that could be used as a basis for the display. As for the pictures of gardening tools and seed packets, there are many different artists’ collections to choose from. Among them are Atelier Nouvelles Images, Ginny Joyner, Susan Winget, Daphne Brissonnet, Vision Studio and Kate Ward Thacker.

5.) International Wayfinding Month 

Lastly, we can’t forget about International Wayfinding Month. It’s a great way to incorporate an array of maps, directional signage and transportation related art into your building’s hallways, entrance ways and living rooms. If you decide to stick with the living room, consider using movie posters that contain directional words in their titles. Examples include Last Exit to Brooklyn, Exit to Eden and Exit the Dragon Enter the Tiger. To find these pieces of art and others that are ideal for celebrating any number of January’s wacky holidays, please contact us at the Fulcrum Gallery today.

Even before Facebook, artists were creating art from a combination of words and images. Such a combination was used to identify Roman coins, books from a particular college (using a famous quotation), and historical figures. The ornate script identifying the subject of the portrait in the frontispiece of this book (published in 1663) leaves no doubt that it was intended as part of the decoration.

Today, a collage of random words can make an interesting pattern, but when it comes to something that will hang on the wall, most people opt for meaning. After all, if it’s something you’re going to look at every day, you want it to speak to you. Literally.

Of all the rooms in the house, this communication seems to happen most frequently in the kitchen. People talk when they eat, and the cook is going to have her say, regardless. What does your kitchen communicate? A welcome? A blessing? An invitation to laugh? Or maybe just a promise.

Religious subjects are natural for this type of art, of many cultures and languages. Artists use the co-mingling of language with portraits to express the philosophies closest to their hearts. Most importantly, this is art that comforts.

 Even art that was once informational, as this amazing world map, is used to inspire and enlighten. Poetry that moves us when it’s just words on a page becomes doubly meaningful when rendered in a painting that we can identify with.

Above all, some combinations of beloved art and meaningful words become classics that deserve reproduction for many years to come.