DESIGN STORIES: FLOWERS FROM A LONDON GARDEN
During our last two years in London, with travel limitations and a new baby, I spent inordinately long periods of time in our garden. It was communal and ran the full length of the back of the mansion block we lived in in Battersea. It was open to all residents but our ground floor flat had a French window enabling ready access to this hidden slice of green that bisected the Victorian blocks to either side….
DESIGN STORIES: MILL OAK
Shortly after I gave birth to my first child, interior designers Turner Pocock contacted me about a commission for a Georgian country house project they were working on. Their client had requested some original wallpaper and fabric designs for the interiors and had apparently admired my existing designs. In the fog of early motherhood I was slightly reluctant to commit to the project but Bunny and Emma were patient and persevered and the two designs we now carry…
DESIGN STORIES: FIG
There are some plants that evoke a sense of place or, more personally, a moment in time so strongly that when encountered somewhere else, serve to carry you back there. A hot house tomato and the smell of the stem is the raised concrete patio of my grandmother’s garden in Devon, Eucalyptus is driving through a Cretan avenue, an enormous flaking branch in the back that Marc had pulled into our hire car just to get a better whiff. Sage is the Dordogne and cooking fish on a wire barbecue however many times we’ve cooked with it since…
DESIGN STORIES: BIRDS & BEASTS
This is the second instalment of our Design Stories and this month we bring you ‘Birds & Beasts’. Also part of the ‘Garden of the Gods’ collection, ‘Birds & Beasts’ is a printed menagerie of the species naturalist and writer, Gerald Durrell collects and covets during his childhood on the Greek island of Corfu…
DESIGN STORIES: MARGO
‘Margo’ is our most popular print so I thought it would be a good one to kick off this series of ‘Design Stories’. My aim is that these stories take you through the thoughts and inspiration behind each design, how I translated my ideas onto paper and into a pattern, how we produced the final product and then how that product has then been used by others to tell another story. So without further ado… ‘Margo’.
THE ALHAMBRA
Navigating Granada in a rental car is not my idea of a fun way to spend a hot, overcast day. We were on a family holiday in Andalucia at the end of September last year, staying in the village of Montejaque just outside Ronda and had driven for the best part of three hours (with me in the middle seat with what I can only imagine was on-coming surprise sciatica in my backside) to be greeted by the endlessly barren industrial landscape that so often seems to welcome you to even the most beautiful of European cities. The route up to the fortress took us via the newer side of the town, through a labyrinth of increasingly narrow, one-way pedestrianised streets, inconclusive arrow-based signage and dead ends, up to a wide road that snakes all too slowly away from the grey plain of cranes and scaffolding and pink and white cement.