Labour & Wait

Progress on the hallway has been a little slow, but we have had two of these lovely grey and white enamel utilitarian lampshades from Labour and Wait fitted.

Image Labour and Wait

George Nelson's Pretzel chair

George Nelson's 1952 designed Pretzel chair is a thing of beauty, and to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Nelson's birth, Vitra have made a limited run of 1000 of them in a palisander veneer.

Only 75 of them will be available in the UK, and will be sold exclusively through Aram Store in London.

Image Aram Store

Happy Birthday JoD

JoD is a special and unique woman, and if she weren't so caring of others you could possibly find yourself more than a touch green with envy at her popularity and sheer zest for life. She recently made a significant life change and has moved to France. Happy Birthday JoD, I hope you've had a truly wonderful day… x

Image Chronicle Books e-postcards

Happy Birthday Matt

Our dearest friend Matt, who lives in NYC, has a big birthday today... and we're sending lots of love his way! Have a great day & wish we were able to be there to celebrate with you!!

CHEERS... K&Pxx

You'll have to wait until our October visit for gifts... x

It's a Beautiful Wedding Day

I wanted to share this article from Saturday's Telegraph magazine about a very special Finnish wedding.

The vision of Dai Fujiwara (Issey Miyake) who, in 2007, spoke at 'It's a Beautiful Day', a design conference which was organised by the Alvar Aalto Foundation. The theme 'It's a Beautiful Wedding Day'.

The bride and groom, Ulla-Maaria Mutanen and Jyri Engeström, agreed to leave the entire planning and design of their day in the hands of Fujiwara and an impressive list of international designers, who all contributed their time and ideas free of charge in order to be part of the project.

Dai Fujiwara designed the stunning wedding gown which is based on a hexagon, the groom's suit and an outfit for the couples baby son, Eliel.

Ronan and Ewan Bouroullec designed the chairs which the couple sat on during the ceremony.

Hella Jongeirus created a beautiful corsage, which was used in place of a traditional bouquet.

Miguel Fluxá, whose family own Camper, provided the hand stitched footware, inspired by classic dancing shoes.

Ilkka Suppanen's contribution was his 'Temporary' wedding ring, which has an interesting story itself.

The ceremony took place at Alvar Aalto's studio in Helsinki, Tiilimäki 20, in February with snow gently falling.

I hope that you enjoy the article... I can imagine that it was also a wonderful wedding day!

Sunday...

Picked up these huge hydrangeas at Columbia Road...

Marvelled at the glassware in Ryantown...

And brought this one home...

Enjoyed coffee and a pain au chocolat at Leila's...

You can see a few more pics at read me... flickr... if you'd like to!

Read me...

Our new bedtime read is The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, from this omnibus Penguin edition, which includes two other Philip Marlowe greats, The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely. I am loving it.

The 1973 film, directed by Robert Altman, is one of our favs... gotta love Elliott Gould.

Bottom image Wikipedia

RE-found Objects

We're looking for a new coat hook for the hallway (our Eames Hang It All and Alexander Taylor Antlers are clearly not sufficient!)... and these from RE-found are a contender.

Here are some other RE-found items which tickle my fancy...

Vintage cutlery...

Pendant jelly lights...

Vintage glass jelly moulds...

Tipped edged stationery in cream and red...

All images: RE-found

Eames Plywood Elephant

We have absolutely, positively, no space for this whatsoever...

But I really want one!

Sunday...

An early start at Columbia Road for green chrysanthemum's and a beautiful a six year old white hydrangea for our roof terrace...

A quick peek into magical Ryantown...

Then home to paint the second coat of Farrow and Ball Monkey Puzzle on our front door...

flickr

Not sure why we hadn't gotten round to doing this before now, but P and I have each created flickr accounts, links over on the right...

Hope you'll take a look, especially at P's, which is dedicated to his incredible paintings and studio...

Linnet bag at Selvedge

The lovely people at Selvedge have teamed up with the wonderful Japanese team at Linnet to share with us a pattern for this very cute shopping bag...

Download the patters and instructions here.

Bjorn Wiinblad

I'm very excited... I won the bid for this cute Bjorn Wiinblad trinket box on Ebay.

I hope it's as cute as it looks in this photo...

Ryantown...

We weren't able to make it to Columbia Road yesterday, so I thought I would post some photos which I took last week when we visited Ryantown...

A 7 foot tall ruler for measuring little ones, or already big ones, as they grow...

The hallway updated

It's been busy here, so no time for blogging, but we do have some progress in our hall way.

Before...

After...

So much better!!

The hallway

We've started work on decorating our hallway... which means that we're at the stage where we need to do all the essential but horrid little jobs which make you feel like you're not really getting anywhere.

Sunday afternoon was spent cleaning the telephone extension chord, which runs from our living room, along the first floor landing and upstairs...

Before... ugh!

After... phew!!

The House of Viktor & Rolf

Deerylou and I went to see the magical House of Viktor and Rolf at The Barbican tonight.

It's a fascinating look at the work of this original, imaginative and highly talented pair, over the past 15 years. The centrepiece of which is a huge dolls house that showcases perfectly crafted minature versions of some of their finest creations. The dolls are amazing to study as well as being a little sinister... as dolls often can be.

My favourite exhibit is "Russian Doll, A/W 1999-2000". Model Maggie Rizer wore the entire collection which was made up of eight costumes. She arrived in the first outfit and while standing on a turntable was dressed in each of the remaining seven couture piece by V&R.

For a sneak peek, take a look at this video from the Times Online.

Meadow

P has taken these photos of meadow parkland outside his studio in East London. I really like them, so wanted to share them here.

I can't wait to see how studying these images will influence P's paintings... but given how long the paintings take to make, I could be waiting a while!