Oxford shop: Objects of use (plus a small rant about kettles)
I was in Oxford for a lovely wedding at the weekend and left myself with 15 minutes to get ready owing to an accidental shop discovery made after getting my nails did. Objects of Use is like Labour and Wait crossed with Native and Co with a touch of Skandium thrown in. It’s all utility-like and sells kitchenware you’d get if you were richer – copper pots, wire implements, tidy ceramics etc. I only took one of my own photos, of the floor obvs, because I love those original tiles and basically forgot to snap anything else. Are they terrazzo? I’m afraid I’m just too much on holiday mode to really find out.
About that nice kettle though. I recently made the transition from (my millionth) poor performing electrical kettle to a brass beauty for the hob. I paid £36 for it, so maybe that’s the issue even though I think that’s a fair price to pay to expect something good. Anyway it takes in the region of 20 minutes to reach boiling point and you can only pick it up without a tea towel if you’re prepared to sustain a serious scald. And however you decide to pick it up you have to sustain a serious mocking from the husband. What a ball ache.
My question then is this: Are the hob kettles that cost £85 and up (the one shown was an eye watering £200) any better?
Ok enough on that. What else did I glean while in this nice shop? If you want to appear serious about your house then you ought to get serious about your broom – check these guys out.
There’s an outpost of Objects in Use in Nottingham too, so the below photos from the website are a bit of a jangly mix of the two stores. And on a more serious note the shop’s mission statement is nice and right on, all about being against ‘throwawayism’, selling quality items that age well and have been made using low-impact production methods, and also keeping the emphasis on products from the UK and Europe. I think my kettle huff may have effected the tone of this blog post so ignore all that stuff before and go see it for yourself. We all know if I hadn’t had a wedding to get to I’d have left with one of those brooms.
Lovely shop. One of the guys behind the counter was a finalist in the interior design competition on TV, can’t remember which channel.
Ah thanks Eleanor, I hadn’t realised. Will look it up.
Drool, drool, I have a long-time yearning for one of those ostrich feather dusters (at least I assume it is one of those…)
2nd photo looks like guide book on Yoga for brushes
New blog idea: Household items in yoga positions. You in?
Definitely!