NEW DESIGNERS: Gillian Kyle’s kitchen textiles
June 9, 2012
I do love a good apron. As soon as I get home I like to don my H&M sackcloth number. I feel more productive in an apron – I can bake a cake, paint furniture, clean the house, indulge in a spot of gardening. If you too have a thing for aprons you might like Gillian Kyle‘s rather fetching designs that would put anyone, faced with housework, in a cheery mood. Hailing from sunny Glasgow she takes inspiration from iconic Scottish food packaging including Tunnock’s Teacakes and Caramel Wafers (yum!), Scotts Porridge Oats and Creamola Foam (a 1950s soft drink that used to come in the form of soluble crystals – had to Wikipedia that one)!
The aprons cost £17.95 each and you’ll also find tea towels, bags and mugs to match. All available on-line from Gillian Kyle’s website. Happy browsing. – Alice
NEW: Festival Collection from Random Retail
May 11, 2012
Love, love, love the new collection from Random Retail. Always a sucker for a nice cushion and these screen printed beauties (all handmade on the Isle of Wight) are simply tip top!
Textile designer Joy Joliffe took inspiration from 1950s ceramics and her leafy garden to create these vintage prints. I love her attention to detail, even on the backs…
The three designs are called Four Rose Plates, Stalks & Leaves, Lines & Spots and cost £38 each (including a good quality feather pad). And if you have a hankering for yet another calico shopping bag, they’ve also relaunched these rather fetching, limited edition designs. Lovely stuff. – Alice
FAVOURITE FIND: Owls, trees and tea leaves
May 4, 2012
Sorry it’s been a week since my last post. I’ve been busy gallivanting around the country shooting lovely reader homes for Ideal Home’s September issue. A little something to share with you though this fine Friday is House of Rym’s chinaware, available from Couverture soon. House of Rym founders are a Tunisian and Swedish duo who worked with Swedish designers Anna Backlund and Elisabeth Dunker to create this beautiful range of porcelain that I simply LOVE…
It’s delicate with clean lines yet whimsical with a natural woodland feel…
Mmmm, don’t you just love the monochrome pattern on this teapot!? Feel’s a little Marimekko-esque crossed with Lisa Stickley…
The blue and white lattice style pattern on the cup below reminds me of a modern take on Royal Copenhagen’s blue fluted design…
Teapot, £59; cup, £12; saucer, £12; milk jug, £29.
Yet again, scrummy Scandi design at it’s best! Another something for the wish list. Keep an eye on the Couverture website come June. – Alice
Wise words from Clerk Ink Well
April 27, 2012
For all you letterpress lovers out there, here’s a little Friday afternoon treat. Clerk Ink Well (based in, yep, you guessed it – Clerkenwell. Clever!) are Huw Griffith and Tessa Nicholson and they have a lovely 19th century Wharfedale letterpress. Huw is arty and Tessa likes words and so together they have come up with a few posters with fun slogans…
Each print is hand-cranked through their letterpress and look at their lovely fruit wood printing blocks…such joy…
Tee hee! I like this one…
They use the finest handmade paper and hand mixed vegetable based inks. Prices start from £45 (unframed) and are available to buy from the Clerk Ink Well website. Bon weekend all et bon nuit (je suis suffering somewhat from post-editorial awards fatigue). Sigh. – Alice
I have always been a fan of Vanessa Arbuthnott’s printed textiles and her new Swedish Collection is my favourite yet with its ’50s feel and Scandi-twist. Friends, feast your eyes on her pretty patterns that are launching later this month…
With four different designs in the range you’ll find stylised birds, whimsical trees and flowers, pinstripes, spots and trailing leaves. I love the mid-century sludgy colour palette with cutesy, country names including pumpkin, sweet pea, mushroom, lime and dove.
I love the retro orange paint colour used in this kitchen, it’s nice to see how she’s introduced vibrant colours that merge well with her softer signature shades…
Ooooh now I could quite happily live in this shepherd’s hut decked out in teal and lime spots and stripes. It’s just the right size for me! Plonk me in a sunny field with chickens and bunting and I could invite all my friends round for tea and boiled eggs. Ah, the good life…
All her fabrics are printed in the UK on 100% linen that is handwoven in Scotland from Belgium yarn. But MY goodness that’s A LOT of cushions for a picnic and I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to drive their Nissan Figaro quite like that! But HURRAH for Vanessa because this is a very fresh and pretty collection, just in time for spring. Prices start from £39 a metre. Keep an eye on her website later this month. – Alice
Spring flowers…
April 13, 2012
I’ve just spent a few days in the West Country skipping around like a sprightly spring lamb. The fresh air was wondrous and I was amazed by the amount of daffodils bloomin’ everywhere. In my attempt to bring a little bit of the country back to the city, I picked daffodils from my Mother’s garden and gathered whatever greenery I could scrounge from the local hedgerows, along the Devon lanes. I decided to display them in the many jam jars I have collected over the years, I normally use these as tea light holders but with a bit of ribbon they looked suitably pretty for my little floral arrangements that are now dotted ALL over my house…
If you’re looking for a similar weekend project then this is all you need:
1. A selection of glass jars or any other interesting glass receptacles! If you don’t have many kicking about at home try The Jam Jar Shop for all sorts of shapes and sizes or raid your local car boot/charity shop for old glass bottles.
2. Scraps of ribbon, baker’s twine, brown string..whatever you fancy (I used a selection of ribbons in yellows/creams to keep to a co-ordinated colour scheme.
3. A selection of cut spring flowers from your garden, florist or supermarket and greenery.
For more country decorating ideas why not visit the Ideal Home website. Happy weekend. The sun is set to shine! – Alice
HOT SHOP: Gudrun Sjödén comes to London
March 30, 2012
If you’re not yet familiar with Gudrun Sjödén she is a Swedish designer who has a bit of a thing for colour and pattern. She loves to layer it up in contrasting, clashing and clever creative ways. She’s also a bit of an eco do-gooder with a lot of organic cottons and a strong green ethos. Her fashion and homeware range has actually been going for 35 years with stores all over Scandinavia and Germany where she has a cult following. She’s now come to London and last night I went to the store opening on Monmouth Street, Covent Garden.
It was a colourful affair that felt more like a garden party than a store opening. It was full of typically darn beautiful Scandi’s dressed head to toe in her collections, handsome men in floral aprons handing out canapés and summery drinks, fresh flowers in buckets and an enslaught of dedicated fans (where did they all come from!?) whom Gudrun greeted, one by one, on the door.
Think Anthropologie crossed with Designers Guild…
I’m not sure I could pull off the bold, statement attire but the homeware I could happily live with. I loved the folky style rugs, ziz zag towels and gorgeous textiles and bedlinen inspired by meadows, wild flowers and sunshine…
Eco-friendly cards from The Green Gables
March 20, 2012
Gabrielle is a designer who lives with her husband and little dog in a rural cottage in Surrey. She makes cards, cute notebooks and plantable bunting (!) amongst other things. Her business is called The Green Gables. She only uses FSC certified paper, works with local printers and suppliers, uses recycled packaging and all orders are shipped from her local village Post Office. Her cheery post card designs landed in my inbox this week and I love the simple illustrations that feature some of my favourite vintage objects…
They’re a mere £3.50 for a mixed set of 6 and if you don’t feel like giving them away then why not use as a mini piece of wall art? Lovely. – Alice
More lovely buys from RE
March 1, 2012
It’s not everyday you can walk into a shop and come out with a vintage jelly mould reinvented as a pendant lamp, a Mexican bingo set, moose shaped firelighters and a deckchair. But if you’re lucky enough to live near the market town, Corbridge in Northumberland, you can! (For those that don’t, you can of course buy online, phew!), Simon Young and Jenny Vaughan’s converted workshop (round the back of an old filling station) is a treasure trove of totally unique finds for the home. They named their shop RE after two giant metal red letters they bought in a Parisian flea market…
People, step inside and feast your eyes on these wonderful buys..
I would very much like these jolly, jelly mould pendant lamps. How lovely to hang a row of these above a kitchen table…
Planning fodder for your Jubilee street party yet? Make sure you get yourself a set of these British Isles cookie cutters..
Keep your teapot cosy with this cute pom-pom number, hand knitted in Northumberland..
This red, white and blue twine will come in handy for any Jubilee/Olympic crafty projects…
Elsewhere there are gorgeous linen cushions, inspired by American flour sacks…
original 50’s and 60’s mixing bowls in pretty on-trend pastel shades..
and this ‘waste not want not’ fabric is sold off the roll, for £16 a metre. It’s 44cm wide perfect for a table runner. GREAT idea..
Thank goodness it’s March! Spring had sprung and I’ve just bought 4 bunches of daffodils for £1 in my lunch break – hurrah! They’re currently bunged in a vase and just about surviving in our air conditioned office but what I’d really like to display them in is this…
A test tube for each single stem. Ah Joy! Thank you RE. Delightful finds and next time I’m even vaguely heading oop north I’m going to take a detour and pop by. – Alice
NEW DESIGNERS: Abigail Edwards Seascape wallpaper
February 24, 2012
Coastal style is always a big look for Spring/Summer. Every year at Ideal Home we’re inundated with ideas, products and everyone’s different take on the trend. It’s an easy look to live with; breezy blues, crisps whites, nautical stripes, distressed wood, driftwood accessories, fisherman’s lamps…you know the sort of thing! It’s always a treat though when smaller, up-and-coming designers interpret the trend in a new way. Abigail Edwards is a freelance stylist who recently launched her own collection of hand drawn wallpapers. Her latest Seascape design is simply dreamy..
Available in black (Winter) and soft blue (Summer), the rolling waves are so soothing to look at, I could get lost in them for hours. This paper would look gorgeous in a bathroom, a downstairs loo or even on a house boat (I actually used to live on one!)
At £59 a roll, the papers are all hand drawn by Abigail and printed in Lancashire at one of the few remaining traditional wallpaper printers in the UK. When she’s not busy styling she is working on two new wallpaper designs, tiles and even table linen. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with. Happy weekend all. Spring has nearly sprung!– Alice
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