You wouldn’t necessarily imagine that where I’m from is particularly exotic. Penzance, the last town in England before Lands End, on the finger of rock that is West Cornwall. Just a few miles from St Ives and the fishing village of Mousehole, both now full of tastefully decorated seaside holiday homes, you’d imagine it perhaps to be cosy and Doc Martin-ish. But the area has had layers and layers of different folk washed up there over the years, from the artists of the Newlyn School and later St Ives to acid casualties and hippies drawn by lay-lines and cheap seaside rents. The result was that the homes I remember were very bohemian, with lots of influences from trips to India and perhaps a few years spent at art school.

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The business of being an artist and a nose

I would love to be able to say “I’m a nose” when people ask what I do for a living – hell, they would believe it when they get a load of the Macnair Sail (as an Uncle described it once to my horrified brother). I’ve been reading up about Berlin-based Norwegian ‘odour artist’ Sissel […]

This is what feminist, socialist housing looks like

A random stumble across a photography project led me to discover this. It’s an apartment block in the centre of Moscow, built in 1928-32 to the designs of architect Moisei Ginzberg. The building is called Narkomfin, and was designed for employees of the Commissariat of Finance based on ideas from the Constructivist movement regarding both form and communal […]

The interiors of Aesop

It was my tasteful French friend (again) who put me onto Australian cosmetics brand Aesop and now I can’t pass by a shop without going in. The soaps and lotions are delicious, but the interiors are even more so. The one in London’s Covent Garden has a hand-cream dispenser attached to the wall outside the […]

Art to hibernate by

Gosh I’m sleepy. Are you? The dark and the (relative) cold are making me sleepy as a dormouse sipping a camomile tea. Jill was just putting forward the idea of installing a ‘sleeping cupboard’ in the office so it’s obviously not just me. I really do feel like I could fall asleep standing up. So you […]