GIVEN their ornate designs and striking colors, antique Indian and Tibetan furniture pieces work well as focal points.

Combined with minimalist and sedate-looking modern pieces, these old-world gems can brighten and lend character to space.

But what do aspiring interior designers do when given unlimited access to these remarkable pieces? What do they use as foil?

Or how can they produce a cohesive setup in a series of limited space when their task is to stress product lines ? including clothes, glass lanterns and semi-precious and costume jewelry?

Three groups of graduating students from the Philippine School of Interior Design faced such a challenge as Bohemian Nation ? a complex of four establishments, including Bona Café, at Westgate in Alabang ? opened its Sujivana salon and spa with design contest using merchandise in its furniture store.

No less than veteran architect Lor Calma, writer Opat Hermano and interior designer Rolando Laurena served as judges. Dubbed as ?La Vie Boheme,? the contest is part of the students? practicum.

The winning work will be on display at Bohemian Nation showroom for a month. Apart from the judges, the public can also give its choices ? there?s a people?s choice award.

For almost two years now, Bohemian Nation has been known for its diverse range of antiques and pre-owned South Asian and Tibetan furniture and home accents, including lamps, area rugs, and reused objects such as carved double doors, ceiling treatments and windows. It also sells a good mix of real and costume jewelry.

Group 1, represented by Karen Lopez, chose to do a lanai, using a heavy double door as imaginary entrance to a main house and an arch to frame the entire space. Certain furniture pieces from Tibet and chunky necklaces from India give the space hints of color.

?We needed to break the monotony from all that brown, wooden furniture from India,? said Lopez. ?Thanks to accent pieces such as the orange wooden cabinet, I believe we managed to make our display more attractive.?

Since there was little they could do to achieve contrast, Lopez and her team simply combined big and small pieces to temper visual overload and keep their display from looking too monotonous.

Rosanna Gonzalez and the rest of Group 2 had a different concern. They had to settle for what?s available having been the last group to ?shop? for items. Unlike groups 1 and 3, they anchored their display on a huge glass-top wooden chest with a series of niches or indentions.

Instead of leaving each indention empty, the group displayed Bohemian Nation?s daintier jewelry pieces adorned with colored stones. They then covered the chest with a clear sheet of thick, tempered glass.

Apart from adding color, clothes hanging in a corner soften an otherwise hard setup composed primarily of heavy wooden objects, including display cabinets. The attempt to make the showcase look more like a shop than a home, said Gonzalez, was deliberate.

At a glance, group 3, represented by Mary Campos, seemed literally at a disadvantage. Unlike their schoolmates on the ground floor, the group did their setup on the second floor.

On the contrary, said Campos, as she showed us their idea of a supposed world traveler?s rustic living room. Thanks to a fourth group, which backed out, Campos and her team have almost the entire second floor all to themselves. They even went as far as dressing up windows and ceiling with lamps and drapes to lure people in.

?The bigger space is certainly an advantage,? she said. ?Since we were given unlimited access to display merchandise, editing was also a big concern. We balanced colors by adding hints of saffron and green to all that brown.?

While Laurena emphasized selection (a ?tough task,? he conceded, given that each group was limited to ornate pieces) and arranging, Hermano was more concerned about how each group made their displays appealing to customers.

?The main point of the entire exercise is to entice shoppers to linger and admire merchandise on display,? she said. ?For me a display?s selling appeal is important. If normally we go for less is more, in this case more is definitely more.?

But she also cited subtle and creative efforts that went into each group?s attempt. Group 3, for instance, Hermano pointed out, succeeded in adding an imaginary division and highlighting a handsome Tibetan cabinet by putting it back to back with a sturdy Indian bench.

Calma lauded the students? attempts to create ?disciplined? arrangements that mirror spaces in a real house. He also noted the way certain groups highlighted accent and furniture pieces to produce a cohesive display.

?And unless you fully scrutinize each display,? he said, ?none of them deviated from their respective drawings.?