What are you doing on New Year’s Eve? We’ll be having a quiet one at home, probably watching a film and then maybe Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on the box. We’ll be enjoying a bottle or two of New Year’s Eve bubbly listening to the fireworks going off around the neighbourhood.
We can heartily recommend all the bottles featured below – we’ve personally tested them ourselves! Who needs to spend hundreds of pounds on Cristal Champagne and the like? These are excellent value and taste great!
Last week, I made an all too rare visit to Manchester; I was meeting a friend at the Whitworth to view the Tibor Reich exhibition.
It was wonderful seeing his work ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, rather than in books or on the internet, to appreciate the scale. The ‘Florence’ Tigo-Ware vase on the left of the photo above is over a foot tall.
His black & white sgraffito designs are very eye-catching and distinctive.
Apparently, he designed and produced these keyhole-shaped ashtrays as presents for friends one Christmas. I’ve never seen one on the open market, they’re absolutely beautiful!
A lot of his ceramic work is concerned with the female form and visage – my friend and I wondered whether his wife Freda, who was pictured in many of the photographs in the exhibition, acted as his muse.
Reich may be best known for his textiles (his designs were on the seats of Concorde and the QE II), however his practice was multifaceted. Ceramics, fine art, photography… he even designed his own home including the ‘flaming onion’ fire in his sitting room, shown above.
Tibor Reich: Art of Colour and Texture, shown above, was published earlier this month to accompany the exhibition. It can be purchased here (£35.00). The Tibor Reich exhibition runs until August 2016, so you still have lots of time to check it out – it’s well worth it! If you can’t get to Manchester, the University of Leeds (where he studied) have a huge archive of his textile work which can be viewed online.
In an adjoining room, there was an exhibition of vintage wallpaper (which runs until the 4th of September 2016). With the room’s huge, tall walls the long rolls were shown off to spectacular effect.
Although I loved most of the designs, it also made me realise how overpowering some of the patterns would be if all four walls in a room were papered. A small feature wall would suffice!
There were display cabinets of wallpaper samples – here are two of my favourites.
Whatever happens in the fashion world filters down into the interiors world. The following is what Pantone had to say about Green Flash, one of the top 10 fashion colours they picked for spring 2016.
Green Flash calls on its wearer to explore, push the envelope and escape the mundane, radiating an openness that combines with the rest of the palette in unexpected but serendipitous ways. The popularity of this brilliant hue is representative of nature’s persistent influence even in urban environments, a trend continuing to inspire designers.
Perhaps not the easiest colour to use (nor wear for that matter), but it is very striking when successful. It’s fresh & clean so perfect for bathrooms – and also looks great near large windows where it helps bring the outdoors in. The ideal partner is a crisp, contrasting brilliant white.
2015 is almost gone – just a fortnight’s worth of sand left in the timer. I don’t know about you, but with the proliferation of tech gadgets and apps around, I still like having the physicality of pen & paper to record certain things.
Every year, I carry over everyone’s birthdays from the previous year’s diary to the following year’s. I love to flip through the pages to remind myself of what I’d been up to during the prior 12 months. The work I had on, the deadlines that I had to meet, the weekends away, the people who came to visit…
I’ve been searching for a bright one for next year – orange being my favoured colour. Here’s what I came up with for 2016 diaries – budget, mid-range and deluxe.
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