Category: Design
Raindrops on roses..
A few of my favourite things..
Must remember to order a roll or two in time for December..
Laters, Kate x
Taste Wars x
First day back to school after the two week half term holiday and bizarrely it’s Halloween…an oxymoronic combination which will probably leave the rest of the week in tatters with the children trying to recover juggling routine and school. But hey, at least we gained an hour this week… it’ll be put to good use carving pumpkins and slapping on the grease paint later. Sigh. But leaving blood dripping knives and the prospect of tired kids aside, I need to actually write a post so I’m going with something that struck a nerve whilst we were away in Hastings.
We stayed in a little wooden lodge that was very pleasant….but didn’t look like anything in these pictures. Which has become a bit of a bug bear – in England, when you go away to a resort setting, chances are you are either paying a fortune for a properly imagined rustic aesthetic (casing point: Soho Farmhouse) or you’re having your tastes dictated to by a narrow number of bulk buying, short sighted, cheap loving, tight fisted suits that think modern always means good.
But the rub is rustic isn’t about expense. It’s roots lie in making the best use of the materials available in the best way possible, given the space available.
It’s about finding elements that are both practical and will stand the test of time, yet still look good: Re-using, re-thinking, re-energising.
It’s not generic canvas’s from Ikea but vintage pictures from a charity shop. Not ready made velour curtains but re-imagined blankets and kantha quilts. Not shiny carpets but wooden floors and battered rugs.
Does taste cost more? Sometimes…but mostly it just takes a bit more thought.
And how often is it that those thought out things cast the longest shadows?
Laters, Kate x
Sculpted x
I’m re-cycling this post because I love it x
Great Art is like a chemical reaction in the blood, sparking signals to swell the brain and heart with waves of love and wonder. So it is with the ceramics of Fenella Elms.
Another feather in her talented cap: She never started her professional life as a Potter, working instead in mental health as an occupational therapist.
‘I’d always joked that one day I would become a potter. And then ten years ago, for my 40th birthday, my husband bought me a wheel.’
She did an art foundation at Swindon College follwed a year later by a part-time HNC-level course in ceramics. Who knows what would’ve happened to a fledgling Fenella and whether she needed to treat down her other path first: She’d always enjoyed pottery at school but couldn’t see how to make a career out of it. But the mature, newly graduated Fenella immediately started winning awards including the Ceramic Review Award for Exceptional, Innovation and Challenging work at the Ceramic Art London exhibition.
Organic, living, breathing her work crosses the boundary between manmade and nature.
‘The approach I make to porcelain isn’t so different to my psychoanalytic practice; It’s all about the subconscious , where things aren’t forced or contrived. I do masses of preparation and drawing, then I put it all aside and wait to see what emerges.’
Her studio is based in Wiltshire, in a converted milking parlour, which speaks of beauty, age, space and peace: ‘I enjoy looking at the world around me. It’s nice realising that all the time I spent staring at the details of plants or ripples in water was for a reason.’
Laters, Kate x
Future Candy x
The future doesn’t eat, but it does draw you in with it’s promise of change and difference.
If I could predict a future trend it would be a move away from regular pattern and symmetry.
Not an easy concept to pull off: How do you make something cohesive whilst embracing chaos?
(All pictures Pinterest)
Except it’s that perfect imperfect sweet spot that makes it so very tasty.
Bon appetit.
Laters, Kate x
Lady of Misrule x
Do you look at clothes for their integral beauty or as something you could potentially add to your expanding wardrobe? Take the By. Bonnie Young clothes – a veritable smorgasbord of gorgeousness – but the chances of them say, fitting me? Limited. But it doesn’t stop me drooling. Or do you dream of what you want and hope that somebody out there can read your fevered mind and actually produce it?
It’s a subtle twist on that age old question, does style come before fashion? (Which one could argue is a posh way of saying if you wear what suits you first, do you look better?) which also the means, the chances of finding what you’ve dreamt of are low.
Which as cunningly as a foxes tail on a badger, brings me to the point of this post: The eternal hunt for the perfect pair of jeans..mainly because there’s an imaginary pair I’m desperate to find…high waisted that flare from the hip rather than the knee…and I suspect these: Irina High Rise by Citizens of Humanity could be them.
So I’m looking and thinking would they fit? would they really suit…… And who at Citizen of Humanity has got the power of telepathy? Maybe if there’s ever a chance I could try on a pair in the right size in a half price sale, I’ll jump.
Laters, Kate x
Full Spectrum x
I’m being distracted by everything Mexican folk art. Not surprising with Day of the Dead just around the corner, but it’s an art form I cherish.
Honed and loved into existence, it’s a buzz that can gather and turn something simple into to a jewel.
There’s exuberance, simplicity, ingenuity and joy: It’s life.
Laters, Kate x
Sweet Dreams x
A bedroom with a statement bad that draws the eye and makes the heart beat faster with it’s come-to-bed loucheness..
(All pictures Savoir Beds)
Who am I to disagree?
Laters, Kate x
BY. Bonnie Young x
A woman of my heart as a true renaissance woman, Bonnie Young has worked in the fashion industry, travelled the world, written a book, amassed an important collection of tribal costumes and jewellery (hashtag-very-jealous). Then returned to Donna Karan, to leave Karan to start a children’s line to suddenly realising that women were actually buying the clothes for themselves (pausing now briefly for a cynically raised eyebrow at the momentary snapshot of society today) leading her to start her own label, BY.Bonnie Young. This was her New York Fashion Week debut.
It was inspired by nature, the South, the Victorians all wrapped up in a velvet bow with a flair for seventies ease.
It’s flounces with fierce rather than frivolity – there’s nothing over the top or distracting.
Each texture, cut, silhouette has a reason.
It’s totally wearable, totally special, grown up, no-nonsense strength.
She’s one to watch.
Laters, Kate x
Pegged out..
I was talking about this to a friend today, so now I’m blogging about it: It’s a simple retro peg board discovered at Berylune complete with wooden pegs which would be perfect in Charlie’s room to carry the clutter from his desk.
(Though I’d quite like one for my study too)
It’s good, simple, honest, clever design with multiple uses. To be honest, you can probably pick up a bargain by searching ‘work shop storage’. I was being a bit anal, loving the wooden pegs. But I’m hoping I’ll be able to customise it anyways – there are plenty of websites on how to make your own.
Maybe not this far…but who knows?!
It’s a winner. Chicken dinner.
Laters, Kate x
It’s Started..
Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. Except it isn’t..but the insidious creep is appearing on my peripheral vision like the ink from a frightened octopus. I bought my first stocking fillers today…and faced head on the yearly mental anguish of the inner childs excitement for presents versus materialistic waste and the accumulation of useless stuff. I still haven’t got a solution to square the circle – how to appear less Ebenezer, more Mathew Cuthbert? Except possibly to buy less, buy better, buy clever. With this in mind I found myself on this site – Life of Jay – which, though I didn’t realise it at the time, caters primarily for men which they don’t presume to be all sports mad. It genuinely has some interesting stuff..(though does it work if it’s still classed as ‘stuff?’ Sigh)
But who can say no to good stylish storage?
Or a retro notebook for the jottings of the block buster you know they want to write.
But then I see a silly tin toy rabbit and want to pop it in my basket. Why??
They have these which are clever – a retro tin..
Containing the bits you think you need. Except I’d pay more if the interior wasn’t made of plastic..
This appeals: A reusable teabag robot. Who doesn’t need that on a cold morning?
And I love their lab style storage jars.
(All pictures Life of Jay)
Then side tracked by a cunningly designed pizza cutter…
And I’m failing and falling already..
Laters, Kate x
Maison Bentley Style 
