Dunrobin Castle attic sale

When a press release dropped into my inbox for a forthcoming attic sale at Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland, I think my jaw also dropped, just ever so slightly. Sales like this don’t happen very often. A recent decluttering of the attics and cellars at the Scottish castle revealed generations of long forgotten treasures of domestic life. Prior to the sale on 20 April 2021, Bonhams auctioneers in Edinburgh have curated a selection of some of the 450 lots with an evocative set of photos.

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Garden design at The Newt, Somerset

If like me you are drawn to colour, pattern and texture in all its forms, I hope you might enjoy this snapshot of some inspirational garden design ideas from a recent visit to the gardens at The Newt in Somerset. The garden had been on my radar for a while so I was excited to be able to take the opportunity to make a flying visit.

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Fanny’s Antiques

Alongside the re-opening of other ‘non-essential’ shops this week was one of Reading’s Sleeping Beauties . Fanny’s Antiques awoke from its lockdown state to the new normal and an appreciative audience of interior designers, stylists and general hunter-gatherer-types who couldn’t wait for it to open its doors again. Continue reading “Fanny’s Antiques”

Grandmillennial style

I am rather tickled by a phrase that has emerged from the U.S. to describe the return of Old School or English Decorating. It is a favourite blog topic and one that is currently experiencing a renaissance of interest on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks to Emma Bazilian in her September 2019 piece for US House Beautiful magazine (a much preppier version of Hearst’s UK edition), Grandmillennial style has been coined.

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Oxfam superstore

Take the formula of an out of town supermarket, add a few ingredients from IKEA, the precise display skills of a west London prop house and finally a sprinkling of sports store Decathlon to discover the recipe behind Oxfam’s new superstore design. The blog takes a tour of this new sustainable and charitable department store concept to find out what might make us all want to shop there.

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Pomegranate design for Lewis & Wood

Textile design is as much about storytelling as it is about design for me. The storytelling is important because I want to know how the design came about and from whom. When it comes to the plot, the quirkier, the better. Especially when the protagonist has not only worked as a set decorator in the world of film, for at least two of Britain’s most treasured interior brands, but whose debut fabric and wallpaper designs for Lewis & Wood are currently lining the walls of an interior designed shipping container in the Cumbrian Hills.

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Watlington Art Week 11 – 19 May 2019

Watlington is a small Oxfordshire market town that is blessed with that rare species – a thriving independent high street. Nestled amongst farmland at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, it has ‘a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker’. The butcher is called Tom, the 14-year-old baker (as featured in The Sunday Times) regularly creates queues halfway up the street for her pop-up bread sales, while the candlestick maker has show-stopping designer lighting. Oh, and the town is also about to launch its first Art Week.

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Red Joan – behind the scenes

As the film adaptation of Jennie Rooney’s novel Red Joan (directed by Trevor Nunn) opens across the UK this weekend, the blog has an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour with talented set decorator Tanya Bowd. The blog gets the low-down on the locations, where the film props were sourced and how the set team did a crash course in nuclear physics. All in a day’s work for Tanya who has worked her magic on many top film and TV series including The Crimson Field, Victoria, Howards End and more recently for The New Pope starring Jude Law.

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Easter styling

I am no Mary Berry but if there is even a hint of an excuse to bake a C-A-K-E, then the oven is on and the cake tins are lined before a single egg has been cracked. Not only is it another styling opportunity but you can eat the props when the photographic shoot is done. When Berkshire Life magazine came to photograph our house to do a story on Styling Box (my new affordable interior design service) for their April 2019 issue, it seemed the perfect time to indulge in a bit of Easter baking and share with you some interior styling ideas that aren’t just for Easter…

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