Being quite partial to a painted portrait, the story behind the 1950’s Aero girls sparked my interest: Two archivists from the Borthwick Institute for Archives,  found a Rowntree’s file containing a batch of 20 original oil paintings, tucked in between boxes of sales figures and meeting minutes. Each canvas was labelled either with a first name – ‘Audrey’, ‘Elaine’ etc – or  simply, ‘the art student’. All women whose faces were painted to advertise Aero chocolate bars back in the day. Aren’t they incredible? There are 40 paintings in total – some by known artists – with 20 currently missing. A figure which, coupled with the fact that oil paintings were not typical of commercial art of that era, sparked a search to find the sitters. This started with an exhibition (just closed) in York.

Last week, Channel 4 News managed to track down one of the models – Pamela Synge, now 93, living in Belgravia (side note: she’s done well for herself) – and subsequently, her portrait, hanging on the wall above her mantelpiece. Amazing. But what of the other 19? Read more about it and find the full set of images here. And if you know anything then get in touch with the Borthwick Institute.

Swan vases: a collection is born

Hold on to your hats – I’ve just started a new collection. Admittedly it’s only a collection of one, as yet. But it’s going to be great. Want to meet it? Yes, swan vases. Jill and I have been discussing collecting these babies for years. When we went shopping to Ardingly Antiques Fair we were […]

Goodwood & Cass

At the weekend, we went (last minute) to Goodwood Estate, West Sussex for a night, armed only with slightly bad moods from having been in London too long. I was vaguely aware of expecting a race course, a country house where the Hemmingways once hosted their Vintage festival, and enough trees and rolling hills to […]

I need a table + a trend or travesty

I’ve been living without a coffee table. Part of me is delighted by this – I hated the old one, it makes the living room look bigger – but when I had some friend’s over lately for an evening of wine and cheese (really) I had to bodge together a temporary solution that involved some […]

The Pound shop

That’s The Poundshop founders George Wu and Sara Melin, and you read right, I said The Poundshop. Together with another Sarah (Gottlieb) the duo set up their concept back in 2010, hoping to harness their love of shopping with a greater aim of making design accessible to the masses. They achieved the latter by selling […]