Clerkenwell Design Week: last day

If you're in London, and skiving off this afternoon – or around before 9pm this evening in the Clerkenwell vicinity, you still have the chance to check out the CDW exhibitions before they close, tonight.

There are three major ones in different buildings. And if you only do two, I would recommend first, the one in the Farmiloe Building... but mainly for the building itself.

This former glassworks, all brickwork and unusual spaces – from the vast entrance with its arial exhibiting space to the windy corridors a wonderful little rooms with wood and glass panelled doors upstairs, makes for a beautiful and atmospheric backdrop for fresh, gleaming design. If you haven't checked it out before during London Design Festival, when it's also put to good use for Designers Block, it's really worth seeing just for the space itself – in fact, it's one of my favourite interiors in London. This image is from Industri UK, where you can take an online walkthrough tour of this wonderful place (it hires such buildings out for big events).

On show at the Farmiloe are lots of swish design stores and brands – the furniture may be out of range price-wise, but an exhibition environment turns it from a consumer experience to a cultural one, no? Exhibitors include some of my favourites, such as Theo and SCP, as well as the likes of Swedese (pictured above), Dyke and Dean, who have a temporary shop at the event, and Very Good and Proper, who have also designed the event's mobile version of the Canteen restaurant along with Transport for London. Check out the full list of brands on show here.

But if you have already been to the Farmiloe before (it's also been put to use by Designers Block during previous London Design Festivals), then try the exhibition inside a Victorian former prison: House of Detention, pictured above.

This is also where you'll find lots if up-and-coming rather than established designers showing their wares. Check out Irish designer, Donna Bates, aka I Do Cartwheels – her milkshed inspired lighting is brilliantly unusual. While recent graduate, Freyja Sewell's HUSH Chair (pictured below) is something we could all surely do with after long working week, or a big night out. For a full list of exhibitors, click here (once there, click on their logos and you'll get images and links to their individual sites. Be warned, you will lose several hours...).

Brooklyn style

I hope you're up for a few more holiday snaps. As well as seeing so many beautiful things, I also got a new camera... and you know how it is with a new toy. So from Monday's snaps of The Best Hotel in The World, deep down in the Mississippi Delta, to...

...Brooklyn. Yes, we drove like the clappers from Clarksdale up to Nashville (which is a whole other post) and flew to New York for a few days. We had a near-death experience on the plane and a brush with the law on the road, but I think it's best I stick to the design. So here are some highlights from a trip to the Brooklyn Flea, via Vinegar Hill.

We got a rainy ferry from Manhattan over to Dumbo in Brooklyn. Miles from the Brooklyn flea, but with were with a local who wanted us to have a wander and stop for brunch at a very sweet cafe in nearby Vinegar Hill. This tiny little neighbourhood only has a couple of places to eat – we went to Hillside, which made me happy because look at how pretty it is.

I think this  idea for a bar is brilliant. It is made from differently painted, varyingly battered wooden poles, lined up and used as cladding. There's something about it that reminds me of the stairs in my house I arduously painted in different colours a couple of years ago. But these colours area really summery. If I didn't already have a colour explosion of stair risers, I'd be looking around the house thinking about what I could clad with a copy of this. It'd make a great bath panel, in a black painted bathroom, don't you think?

How nice is this circular display of greenery. And I do love a pegboard wall (good for hanging jewellery or kitchen things).

 You can't go wrong with a bit of tonally complementary repetition. The 1950s jugs on the top middle shelf make for a marvellous focal point. Helps that they are a very pleasing shape too. (If anyone knows the type of jug they are, I'd love to know – I have a bright green one in my living room, which I found in a London junk shop and which you can see in the link to my painted stairs above.)

GOOD lampshade.

Another nice jug. What you can't tell from this picture is that both glass and jug are half the size you'd expect. There's always something extra good about very little things.

Hillside from the outside.

Then we hopped in a cab and hit Brooklyn Flea. Because of the dubious weather (a few hours after this photo there was a rampant rain storm) there weren't heaps of stalls. But of those that had turned out, I particularly liked the animal cups, bowls and flour sack tea-towels by Susannah Tisue, aka SKT Ceramics, who also sells her wares in selected Anthropologie stores.

This stall had some beautiful antique postcards and school learning cards. Lovely for a child's bedroom wall, or a home office.

And this stall was like catnip for crafters.

Beautiful ribbons aren't they? They'd make wonderful trim on a plain duvet cover.

A seat for two.

 And some good, old fashioned kitsch. I very nearly bought one of these light-up Miller advertising wall plaques. The more I look back at these photos, the more shopping and less photographing I wish I'd done...

Is there such a thing as a good flea market that doesn't have a fondue set on sale on at least one stall?

Some good old Brooklyn brownstones. Yep, my fantasy double life living in New York is well and truly stoked.

Mississippi style: Americana rustic style

Well hello again. So I'm finally back from a pretty epic holiday in the States: a road trip from Nashville via Memphis, down to Clarksdale, Mississippi, birthplace of the blues – with a few deviations en route including a tranquil log cabin on the edge of a beautiful lake, a mental casino village that scared the life out of us and a long weekend in New York City. 

I'll be writing a full travel story about it on the other website I edit shortly. Meanwhile, here, some design highlights, starting with possibly my favourite stop-off – the excellently-named Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale.

The place is made up of a series of shacks, all different, that you rent out like hotel or motel rooms (above you can see the porch outside the one we rented, complete with rocking chairs). 

The shacks have all been bought by the owners and transported from nearby former plantations, and are the rooms once inhabited by plantation workers. In the wrong hands, it could be a somewhat ghoulish given the area's history, but the owners are big on history, huge on blues (which originated inside some of these very shacks, or some like them) and sensitive to what they're doing. They've also got a marvellous recycling ethos – though a few of the shacks are reconstructions, many are the very same buildings but with their corrugated iron and weathered wood patched together more solidly, and with electricity, plumbing (including great showers) and insulation subtly added in. Check out our room...

Isn't it brilliant? The bed headboard is made out of some kind of scrap metal. It looks great and I like the contrast with the soft, floral bedspread.

Loved this simple turquoise metal chair. Looks great against the bare wood boards and walls. 

A rocking arm chair in one corner of our room. The framed collage above it on the left shows the adverts for each individual shack. These are printed in the style of Hatch Prints, in Nashville, which I'll do a separate post about because it's so amazing.

The bathroom is beautifully plain but had one of the best showers of all the places we stayed. Love the burnished copper surround to the sink, and the contrast of that with textures of the wood walls and corrugated metal ceiling.

The view from inside our room. Pretty awesome, huh? And (very tiny in the distance) you can see my travelling buddy carrying one of the free-to-borrow guitars at reception.

Love the faded colours of the exterior of one of the other shacks.

And the pressed tin ceiling tiles from one of the other bathrooms (you can read more about these tiles in this previous post on the topic).

Each shack had a different coloured (eco) bulb lighting up its porch. Nice touch.

We stayed in this room on the first night. Love that quilted bedspread...

...And the little kitchen area...

 ...and the sweet bathroom.

This, above, is the shack from the outside.

 

To put it in context, above is a shot of the whole place from the other side of the deserted railroad track that runs in front of it. What about the Mississippi sky? It was immense – and dramatically different from the next state up, Tennessee. The further south we drove, the flatter the landscapes and the huger the skies. We were mesmerised.

And a close-up of those posters for the individual rooms. Below, the bar area, reception and general out-buildings at the Shack Up. I want to go back already.

I am a bit obsessed with American style ovens. This, above, is a really old one obviously, but even the modern ones are the same satisfyingly broad shape. Aren't those handles lovely? And as for the fridge – Smeg, eat your heart out.

The "TV area" at the Shack Up's bar.

Cowboy-friendly wall dedor upstairs at the bar. 

Some more of the shacks you can stay in. The automotive accessory (one of many rusting old trucks dotted about the place) should really look tacky and novelty. And if the place wasn't so quiet and untouristy, maybe they would have done. But we'd just come from brash, theme-parky Memphis central a few days earlier – and in this sleepy setting, they just added to the feeling that you'd stepped back in time.

We really struggled to tear ourselves away. But then we had the excitement of the open road for the next bit of the journey's inspiration... 

Out of office

Hello! Except I'm not really here. All being well, I'm on my way here...

Yep. I'm off for the longest holiday I've had in years, on a road trip from Nashville Tennessee, down through the Mississippi Delta and then up for some luxury and a family reunion in New York City. We are actually staying in the place pictured above for a few days, even though (to my urban, British eyes, it doesn't look as it it can possibly be anything other than a film set). It's called the Shack Up Inn. It looks amazing.

I shall take many photos. You shall see the good ones.

Meanwhile, happy May and see you towards the end of the month. Yee-haw!

Giving good gift

It was my birthday this week. My friends are very kind. I have already shared the beautiful early birthday present I got from Abi in this previous post...

...and now a few other very nice surprises (and this isn't even including the hugely surprising and marvellously great bicycle that came careering down the hill in the park at me, festive ribbons flying from the handlebars – but a photo of that is probably for a different blog entirely).

The beautiful print on the left is of the Crystal Palace tower, in south London. I live in south London – not right by the tower, but near enough that it's always visible on the skyline when you look south. Which is because it's the fourth tallest structure in the capital, and it has been providing Londoners with a TV signal since it went up amid the ruins of the former Crystal Palace in 1956. What a lovely present for a south Londoner. Or maybe just for a TV fan. Ha. Anyway, if you like it, the sticker on the back of the print say it's from Sold by Sold, where I see they have had these prints in stock but are currently out, and waiting for a new colourway.

The plate is by Carly Dodsley, whose crockery is made in England's traditional ceramics epicentre, Stoke-on-Trent. It all has a nice hint of midcentury about it, and I love those late 50s colours.

The "K" in this great font comes from Tiger, which is a favourite shop of the lovely friend who gave it to me. Be warned, its website will absorb much of your morning.

Loveliest of all, of course, is the beautiful cake card drawn by my boyfriend's very small and very excellent niece, Isabella. She's two. And she is very good at drawing!

I also got this...

 ...which came from a charity shop. Who could throw Luther out? And a gift that inspires a spontaneous 80s disco (and a surprise martini) is surely a gift that keeps giving.

Finally, a sweet ending. Beautiful old French plates, which arrived bearing extra gifts in the form of these beautiful muffins. They look pretty, but my god you should have tasted them: blueberries, lemon zest and almonds. They didn't last long.

Thank you friends. You are great.