New Design Museum

I love the old Commonwealth Institute. It was built in the nineteen sixties on the edge of Holland Park and off High Street Kensington in London. Having lain neglected and unloved for a number of years, this grade 1 listed building  it is about to be refurbished and will become the New Design Museum in 2014.

Letter-Bench-by-Boex-Brothers

I just saw this on  design-dautore.com it is so lovely i just had to upload it.

An elegant and witty piece of design

close up of Bench

More Paris!

Today I am going to show some more of the lovely items from  Paris. At  Moline Mercerie they sell bold stripped fabrics in a variety of widths plus header tape with pole sized eyelets. This comes  in two varieties, the sort you can sew on to your curtain length and  another that one can Velcro onto the fabric.

They also sell exclusive Japanese fabrics

The next stop is the Belgium designer shop ::
Emery & Cie – Articles de décoration : carrelages, zelliges, peintures …
www.emeryetcie.com/
In the areae Bastille-Saint Antoine, métro Faidherbe Chaligny or ledru Rollin

This shop is full of such beautiful artifacts tiles, paints, papers, lamp shades, ironmongery. I took a few photo’s on my small camera but it is better to go to their web site.

Tiles

Wall paper

Window blind

The next stop was Hermès new shop in the old swimming pool : 17 rue de Sévres. Metro Sèvres Babylone I blogged about this on 28th January if you wish to look at images.

Next stop: Bon Marché département store with its famous food section : La Grande Epicerie
great food with its affordable café offering good value snacks and healthy food for lunch.

Salad

Another lovely company found at Maison et Objects

Lodish  were at ‘M et O’ and they produce many different kinds of interior products.

Lodish cushion

More cushions

I love this fun coat stand that looks like enormous knitting needles.

Olika

Another gem from Maison et Objects plus the Hermes shop

I particularly like hot colours and Lisa Corti from Milan does them splendidly wwe.lisacorti.com

Day bed and Cushions from Lisa Corti

Hermes have purchased and restored a derelict Art Deco swimming pool and turned it into a splendid emporium, just don’t purchase a cup of tea there unless you are feeling very wealthy.

view down the stair rail

HOME a new homesware and interiors show

“Home”  is a spin off exhibition attached to Top Drawer, the show where retailers buy for their shops.  This show is focused on  interiors and   a variety of design companies were exhibiting. The overall standard was incredibly high, and there were lots of established names such as Alessi, Marimeko, Conran,  as well as many  new ones.

The company who started as WW2, creating brands for customers such as The transport Museum, after their considerable success with the colour range ‘Pantone’ , have re branded themselves as Whitbread Wilkinson W2 Products ltd. I love their new range based on the images from Eames House of Cards. Here are a couple of pictures of the original cards being put to use building towers.

House of cards from Grace Bonney on Design Sponge Website

Eames house of cards from the blog 'Killed by Craft'

Here are a selection of the products based on the images above.

mugs and tray

Table Mats

There were so many new and exciting products it is very difficult to pick out just a few.  The work of Lindsey Lang who has been chosen by many Interiors journalists had a clean subtle geometric collection of kitchen ware. www.lindseylang.co.uk

Lindsey Lang kitchen ware

I think I loved everything that The New English produce and wish I had capacious pockets to afford it all. Very innovative ceramic designs  including Barbara Chandlers ‘Love London’ Range. www.thenewenglish.co.uk

Nelson

Barbara Chandler porcelain boxes

Just as I was leaving the exhibition  I was lucky enough to  meet the trio of  innovative and inspired people who have set up Heart and Home Magazine. I took a  poor photo of them, but in my defence the quality of the light was very bad.  I would also like to add they are all much better looking than my photo might otherwise suggest.

The Heart and Home Magazine team

Found this on the beautiful blog sight ‘ A Creative Mint’

Christmas re styled

Leslie Shewring, who made this collage has one of the most beautiful blogs on the sphere.  http://acreativemint.typepad.com/ She is an architect and interior  designer  by training but appears to be able to turn her skills to any medium. She  creates pretty pages and makes beautiful images for Holly Becker’s Decor8 blog.

Currently I am still in D.I.Y mode and so havn’t got much of interest visually to put on to my blog unless you want to see another shower cubicle. The publishers  Quadrille are running a competition on pinterest to win some  of their lovely books and Dylon are running a ‘name that colour’ competition. If you havn’t discovered Pinterest do join as it  is such a great way of collecting tear sheets on the internet.

Colour in art quilts

Devon Red by Elizabeth Brimalow

Colour in art quilts  by Janet Twinn. When this book arrived I didn’t even give it a second glance as I  disliked the cover, a bit too grungy for me. But as they say, never judge a book by its cover.  The work inside the book is completely another matter and is of the highest quality with the work of quilting superstars such as Pauline Burbridge, who incidentally works with a monotone palette these days.

Fabric Col by Mary Fogg.

The book makes  connections between how and why colours work and how different makers respond to them. Janet Twinn describes her own working methods with dyes and paints without being prescriptive. As she says in her conclusion

‘ I believe that everyone given time and practise, will be able to find their own  ‘colour’ voice. Making  quilts is like any other art-based activity; it is a never-ending journey, rich in anticipation, often fraught with disappointment, but full of excitement.

yin and yang Bethan Ash (Wales)

Quilts are multi-layered both in the way they are structured and in the meanings they hold and convey. Hung on walls they appear flat, but they are also ‘objects’ that can be draped and folded, disrupting and fragmenting their surface design and transforming themselves into sculpture.’

The end of the year

We are now in that odd time after Christmas and before New Year, sitting in a kind of Limbo. It has been an extraordinary year with Europe having financial problems, O.K. that is a bit of an understatement. The middle east has political problems, again an understatement.  Personally it has been good year, with the publication of ‘The Shirt Off his back’, a book I wanted to write when the credit crunch first hit. It took a little longer than I had hoped,  but it is out now and, I hope,  worth it.

There are a few images that didn’t make it onto the blog. The first was something that intrigued me when I saw it propped on a bench in Kew Gardens on Boxing day. When you read it you see why it was there, a sad occasion but a touching tribute for someone obviously loved and missed.

My lovely nephew’s girl friend, has started baking cakes for a farmers market and I tasted one she made, a light-ish fruit cake similar to a Dundee cake. Here is the one she  made for us  as a Christmas cake, much nicer than those horrid rich ones. She  decorated the top with glace fruits. The best Cake I have ever tasted. Siobhan Armstrong is selling at the  farmers market at Camberwell Green in South East London 

One of the most thrilling, for me , exhibitions I visited this year was ‘Building the Revolution’: It is on until 22nd of January 2012, so if you have time go and see it. In the Sackler Wing of Galleries at the Royal Academy of Art.

Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935. As you can see from the dates it was a tiny period of history, but a very exciting and radical one in terms of design. Sadly it was short lived and the Soviet Union went back to pastiche all too soon.  Fired by the Constructivist art that emerged in Russia from c.1915, architects transformed this radical artistic language into three dimensions, creating structures whose innovative style embodied the energy and optimism of the new Soviet Socialist state.

El Lissitzky, Sketch for Proun 6B, 1919-21

Richard Pare, Shabolovka Radio Tower, 1998 154.8 x 121.9 cm. Richard Pare, courtesy Kicken Berlin. © Richard Pare.

In conjunction with the exhibition, a reconstruction of Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, known as ‘Tatlin’s Tower’, specially commissioned from Jeremy Dixon of Dixon Jones Architects has been installed in the Royal Academy’s Annenberg Courtyard.

A supporting exhibition in the Architecture Space (23 September – 29 January 2012) explores the conception, vision and symbolism of Tatlin’s Tower and uncovers the intriguing process undertaken for its special recreation at the Royal Academy.

For those of you who have taken time to read this blog, thank you.  Please write  and let me know if there is anything you would rather I focused on, and if you found anything interesting, and also what you felt was a waste of time. Happy new Year and peace to all.

Tags: farmers market, Royal Academy, Tatlin’s Tower

The Museum at FIT announces new exhibition

It may seem  rather early to be announcing an exhibition starting in February 2012, but  what with Christmas, and  if you are not in the right place you will need to arrange transport and somewhere to stay. This is a biggie and I think it will be great.

The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology has announced its new exhibition Impact: Fifty Years of the CFDA. Celebrating the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s 50th anniversary, the exhibition will showcase around 100 garments and accessories designed by its members of the last 50 years. Taking place from February 10-April 20 2012, images and acknowledgement of the nearly 600 designers who have been members over the last five decades are also featured. Each living designer will select a single object or ensemble that best represents his or her impact on the fashion world, with Patricia Mears, Deputy Director of The Museum at FIT and Fred Dennis, Senior Curator, selecting the work produced by historical members. Featured designers include Halston, Diane von Furstenberg, Oscar de la Renta, Marc Jacobs, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, Michael Kors and Rodarte. In addition, Impact, a championing book to the exhibition, will be released, documenting the evolution of the CFDA. Published by Abrams, contributors include Diane von Furstenberg, Cathy Horyn and Patricia Mears.

Website:          www.fitnyc.edu

Website:          www.cfda.com

Twitter:          @cfda