I could have called this ‘Best of Design Week’, but ‘Bits of Design Week I Made It To’ would be more accurate. The old schedule is a bit squeezed this week, but I did manage to amble round Hoxton on the Icon Design Trail on Tuesday night. First stop, SCP, where Donna Wilson‘s new collection was showing (below) and three boys were DJing (not shown).

Then it was on to Caravan, Emily Chalmer’s beautiful emporium of interiors oddities. Now, on the down side, the shop was shut – all those chemists bottles and bell jars are pretty easily breakable by drunken design journalists I guess. But on the plus side they were serving cognac cocktails in enamel mugs from the window of Caravan’s very own, er, caravan.

I stayed until dusk fell and the tin cup was wrestled from my hands.

Top tiles

I just stumbled across this old (wonky) tear sheet from a yonks-ago issue of Elle Deco and was bold over again by the concrete tiles by Eileen Elliott. She won various design awards for them back in 2005. The tiles are hand printed with images of Persian and kilim rugs, apparently taken from books on […]

Horse and home

Years ago I was half listening to the radio, and found myself enjoying hugely an interview with a posh sounding woman. She was a delight – funny, irreverent and inspiring. I had weird mixed feelings then when it came to an end and I found out it was Jilly Cooper. I have a guilty literary […]

Bathroom mood board

I’ve been working on a bathroom project and typically had a lot of fun mood boarding my ideas. The inspiration (from top) is the location – in a painting, plus photographs – and  a shoot from Elle Decoration that encapsulated the same palette of colours. My scanner has given everything a brown tinge, so here’s […]

Big tartan love

Hold onto your hats, this week I’m proclaiming tartan as a trend. I just can’t fight the celt in me. A favourite house I once wrote about had tartan cushions in it and when I returned to my office after visiting it, so busy was I raving on about them that it took me a […]