Is your keyboard filthy?
Own up. Come on. The keyboard of my cute little white Mac Book is proper grubby. It can’t just be me… Here’s a solution, from HerNewLeaf, if you’ve got the time, and a load of Washi tape on your hands.
Dinner at Martin Creed’s
Artist Martin Creed, who was handed his Turner Prize award by Director Gollum Arms as long ago as 2001, is reworking the Gallery restaurant at Sketch in celebration of its tenth anniversary. He’s the first in a series of artists invited to rework the room.
How will the man, whose gig is about not adding to a cluttered world (to paraphrase), translate his ideas into a functioning restaurant? Every item of furniture, cutlery, crockery and glassware is to be individual, with pieces coming from Carl Hansen, Ligne Roset, Martino Gamper and – crikey - Versace. In the absence of press shots there’s only a floor plan to judge just now.
Sketch’s art curator Victoria Brooks has described this as looking like ‘a Missoni sweater with all the different colours. There’s a very vibrant basis for it with all the different colours and materials but, of course, we’ll make sure it doesn’t look like a flea-market.’
So, there we have it, it’s not going to look like a flea market. Martin Creed at Sketch opens on 01 March for 18 months.
Yard sale!
In Britain piling your old crap up outside your house and shamelessly selling it just isn’t very us. You’re expected to go to a car boot sale for that. So I’ve always somewhat envied the American tradition of the yard sale.
It’s not quite like a jumble sale, because it’s less diluted, generally being the possessions of just one person or family being sold. And plus it’s in their own house! What could be creepier more fun?
If you’re feeling hard done buy, bargain hunters, put down that Green Card application, because now you can enjoy this US custom vicariously at excellent Yarding blog YardSaleBloodbath. You get the same dusty record-flipping, rotting orange box-rumaging, nylon sheet-fingering experience, but without needing to keep a tube of hand santizer in your car.
Cups
Need is too strong a word, but I need new cups-and-saucers so that I can be more delightful when giving friends a cup of tea.
Here are the pictures that have led me to such a conclusion:
Straight from My Friend’s own kitchen cupboards, a stack of mint green Deco cups with the best handles.
Surely noone needs 130 cups and saucers, can’t Vintage Jelly send 8 or so my way? Much to my envy, My Friend also has a stash of Woods Ware Beryl crockery.
Heath Ceramics, the perfect modern solution. But, at $35 a pop plus shipping costs from San Francisco I think I’m still looking.
Empty estate
I’m always fascinated with estates awaiting demolition – and in London you can see a surprising amount of them. I love how the missing windows or even walls let you see each identical kitchen or living room, each differently decorated, cross-sectioned like a doll’s house.
Home Sweet Home is a photographic exhibition about the Ferrier Estate in south east London, on at the moment. Built in the late ’60s by the GLC in, as always, a spirit of optimism, it had deteriorated to the extent that residents were rehoused and demolition began in 2010. The two pictures below are from Tom Royal’s blog post on the estate, and below them, the details of the show. For more details see Shop Work gallery’s site.
My desk: Tabitha Teuma
In today’s Designers’ Desks special, we asked editor Tabitha Teuma of the hip, handbag-sized and two-issues-old Midcentury magazine to show us where she works…
Where is your desk from?
My desk is also the dining table in my house. It’s a teak G-plan one that I found at Crystal Palace Antiques about six years ago. I sanded it down myself and sealed it with teak oil. It has a central extending leaf, which comes in handy when the stacks of papers start to get on top of me! I dream of one day owning an Yves writing desk by Pinch Design but I think I’ll be waiting a while…
What’s on your desk just now and what do you like to have around you for inspiration?
Because my desk doubles as a dining table, it changes continuously. My laptop is a permanent fixture though, along with my colossal dictionary. Oh, and the radio. In fact I have a radio in every room. My husband thinks it’s a bit overkill. I usually have some form of centrepiece on the table too – to daydream at basically.
Do you keep your workspace tidy?
I am quite a tidy person by nature, so it bugs me when my desk is a mess. The piles of papers tend to mount up though and I’ve realised that, as the desk doubles as a dining table, inviting friends over for supper gives me a good reason to tidy it. I’ve been doing this most weeks for a while now! I also have the mother of all shelving units – I store all my reference material here, which definitely helps!
Where did you find that lovely white vase?
The white vase is by ceramicist Ikuko Iwamoto and was a wedding gift from my parents. It’s one of my favourite things – I adore the shape and find the textured ‘spores’ quite mesmerising. It serves as a happy reminder of the day.
Do you have any specific stationery, notebooks and pencils you like to keep handy?
Those that know me well will attest to the fact that I do make the occasional list(!) and I like to have a mini pocket Moleskin notebook handy at all times – specifically one with perforated pages, so I can tear out the used ones as I go. It’s very satisfying somehow.
Have you found a good chair?
It’s a 1960′s Danish rosewood chair, which I found a couple of years back – I went out for a pint of milk on a Sunday afternoon and spotted it in Crystal Palace Antiques en route. It’s very upright and incredibly comfy and I can sit in it quite happily for hours. I recently discovered that it was designed by Johannes Andersen (which I admittedly still feel pretty smug about!). I had it reupholstered in a somewhat lurid lime-coloured Bute fabric and for some reason this makes me smile every time I see it.
Tell us about that lovely lamp?
I came across the teak base on eBay and was struck by the simplicity of the shape. I’m pretty certain that it dates from the ‘60s. It had been classified incorrectly and as a result I was the only bidder! I paired it with a lampshade by Orla Kiely.
What is the rest of your house like?
I live in a one-bedroom, top-floor flat on the Dulwich Estate in south-east London, designed by the architect-builders Wates in1963. When I first saw it I was blown away by the amount of natural light up there (it has huge aluminium-framed windows on every wall) and the generous room dimensions – there are no pokey corners or empty nooks for knick-knacks here! I think this is true of most 1960s architect-designed homes. Having lived in a good few Victorian terraces and Edwardian conversion flats previously, I would find it hard to go back there now.
Do you have a view from your desk?
I can see a great deal of sky from my desk – there are panoramic views in two directions, which I find incredibly uplifting. I look out over the London city skyline – from west of the Wembley stadium arch to The Gherkin and The Shard. On a clear day, you can just about make out the Chilterns on the skyline – it’s truly awesome. In summer, the room can feel wonderfully isolated, with the treetops of Dulwich Woods standing directly below creating a sea of green far above the ground.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on issue 03 of the magazine – there’s some great material in the pipeline and beginning a new issue is always an exciting time.
Thanks Tabitha.
You can find Midcentury magazine at various independent shops including Tate bookshop, Selfridges and SCP or subscribe here.
Poor Cook
At Christmas my parents were both delighted – and possibly slightly amused – to see me draw down this recipe book from the shelf. It was theirs originally, and at some point at university I nicked it. I’ve used it as my default recipe book ever since.
Poor Cook is a classic. Published in 1971, it’s all about eating well from good but cheap ingredients. It was written by Susan Campbell and Caroline Conran, one of whom had lived in Sicily. The other one was married to Habitat founder and ‘the man who invented France’, Terence. A European influence is obvious, but there is nothing exotic about the book – except recipes rendered exotic by time. Tripe and Onions anyone? Three different recipes for rabbit?
I use it for simple classic recipes - it’s great for all the things I ought to know how to cook by now, but don’t. At Christmas I turned to it for making the bread sauce. And I always get distracted with the book’s homely oddities, like dandelion salad, ‘Pretend cream’ (bananas, egg white and sugar, of course) and this excellent entry:
“Babies’ Rusks
Cut stale bread into fingers and dry in the oven. Babies will never guess they didn’t come out of a packet.”
Well that sums up a 70s childhood, don’t you think? The book is sadly out of print, but you can read more about it here. Someone is selling a copy on Amazon for £144. And no Mum, you can’t have it back.
Wee room with a view
Around a year ago, we brought news of a competition commissioned by Living Architecture, to design a pop-up bedroom on the South Bank. Well, tomorrow you can get in line to book your night in the winning design…
Yes it’s a wee boat. Designed by architect David Kohn and artist Fiona Banner, A Room for London is due to live on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the whole year as part of the Cultural Olympiad. There are hopes that it will spend the rest of its natural life on top of other London buildings.
One night will cost you £120 and be warned, when bookings for the first six months went on sale they sold in minutes.
Golden Globes outfit review
Normally an interiors blogger, this time of year Jenny over at MyFavouriteAndMyBest gives the moodboards a rest to bring readers succinct and snarky outfit reviews for the big US award dos. I rarely agree with her favourite outfits, but she’s usually spot on about the worst ones. I cheered when I mentally described one as ‘sleeping bag’, before scrolling down to see this was indeed the caption she’d given it. Still, she never forgets her interiors responsibilities, and so kicked off this year’s Globes report with a Tord Boontje joke. Can’t wait for the Oscars.
Designer mantelpieces
Admittedly this is an exhibition we have all missed – finishing last November – but I still enjoyed seeing the images from The Mantelpiece exhibition, which took place at the Bath school of Art & Design. Kerry Curtis, Head of Fashion, Textiles, and Three Dimensional Design at the school, curated the show asking 24 designers, including Tracy Kendall and Donna Wilson, to display their collections and inspirations on individual mantelpieces (she also compiled her own). The results are fascinating and totally different.
By Michael Marriott…
By Darkroom’s Rhonda Drakeford and Lulu Roper-Caldbeck…
By Ptolemy Mann…
By Shai Akram (this one in is a collection of clothes pegs from around the world)…
The mantelpieces themselves are really lovely don’t you think? And you can read Q&A’s with each designer involved here. What would you put on yours?
