This is the colour I want my sitting room

And I’d quite like that painting too!

Christopher Hodsoll Moving Sale

Christopher Hodsoll is leaving Core One. Which is terrible news, but the good news is he is having a sale tomorrow through Saturday 19th May. Core One is one of the best antiques shopping destinations in London, round the back of the Gasworks which is to the right of the bend in The New Kings Road.  

Labour and Wait

This is probably one of my favorite stores. A few weekends ago I went down to Columbia Road having not been there for years and years.  After buying flowers I headed over to Cheshire Street to go to Labour and Wait only to find they had gone!  The street lined with poor imitations; shops filled with this current trend for repro fifties or Danish kitchen stuff and prints.  I left feeling a bit sad.

For no reason!  Turns out Labour and Wait moved around the corner to Redchurch Street to the most beautiful, larger and perfect building for them. It makes me burst with pride to see two such incredibly nice people do so well.  They have stayed true to their look, they have improved upon it and grown and as usual I wanted almost everything in the store.  It is the perfect place if you are in the middle of decorating a kitchen or laundry or live in a cabin of any sort, or wish you did.  

I really want to get this sink and the soap:

I did buy a couple of these lights in elephant grey which i am planning on hanging in my kitchen with bright yellow flex.  

They have a very good website so check it out and if you are in London and this strikes a cord with you then I can’t recommend you visit more highly.

 

I Want to Steal This Garden

I have just read the new LonnyMag and have fallen in love with this garden.  I literally want to steal it.  I went over to my building site today, another wall is down, this time between the kitchen and the bedroom – seems a shame to put it back up but there are limits to open plan.  The sheer mess in there that is apparently going to be all done in a month and a half leaves me unable to get that into the decor just yet, but am in full fantasy mode on the garden…

The Ford’s place is in Charlotteville N Carolina which is a far cry from W10, London but i would love to climb ivy up the house like this, maybe mixed with clematis and i love these paths with pots and a chair for a rest on the way in or out.  Check out the story in this month’s Lonny…

And finally

John Derian for Astier de Villatte

I must have this tea pot!  And I wouldn’t mind a couple of the cups either….

Salty Licorice

I have been put on to salty liquorice by my friend Sarah Standing.  I have always loved liquorice, one of those marmite style love or hate treats, but I never liked the salty only the sweet.  Her powers of enticement got me hooked.  First it involved going down to Columbia Road to Suck and Chew and small old fashioned shop lined with vintage Coronation biscuit tins and jars of sweets for sale by the ounce.  I now have cravings for it, usually by association when I am on the phone with sarah (most days).  I have just ordered a stock online at AllThingsLicorice.co.uk, destined elsewhere.  There is a whole liquorice world out there and the sweet/candy market online is quite vast.  I think it is something the online candy market is something I want to start dipping into and using for gifts.  Finding old boxes at Kempton or flee markets and then filling them with candy for presents is going to be my new gift.  You can find so many pretty boxes in markets, old cigarette boxes and endless tin, silver or china ones that we no longer really have any use for – unless possibly filled with sour apples, jelly beans or salty star fish and brought out after dinner. 

The Gunton Arms

In January I went to the newly opened Gunton Arms in Norfolk for WSJ magazine.  It is a fabulous place, a delicious restaurant, comfortable rooms designed by Robert Kime and a proper English Country pub.  The place is owned by the fabulous London art dealer Ivor Braka and his wife Sarah, so the walls are covered in a mix of good things.  If this wet spring ever gives way to summer it is a great place for a weekend, and even in the cold it is awfully cosy indoors. Click on the image to read the story.