In the night bedroom

I read in last months Elle Decoration magazine that you should decorate bedrooms for night - rather than day - time. Sounds simple. Trite even. But it struck me. As a long term insomniac I spend a lot of time in my bedroom at night. Awake.

I really get my money's worth from that room. But hadn’t really twigged that it is indeed a night room, until I read that. It is a tasteful (to me) cocoon. Minimalist if not plain. Sludge pink walls. Not much hung on them. A small Vitsoe hanging rail for a depressingly small array of clothes. Dark, in-between-coloured plain bedding. A dappled Jaeger rabbit on the old fireplace. An old glass-fronted bookcase (bought from a renovating Leeds University) for blankets and books. Oh, and a pile of magazines. For they are the perfect read when you are hovering between exhaustion and wakefulness.

I did that thing, a few years ago, of not fighting the insomnia. It didn’t make me any less tired but it did make me less stressed about it. More likely to just do things, potter, read..

And so, early this morning I was to be found taking a photo of my Habitat mug, recently emptied of Horlicks (I know, I know). It is sitting under my beloved Anglepoise Type75 on top of said bookcase.

Designed for nighttime indeed.

Mr Mellor and the spoon

The late David Mellor had a house and factory near Sheffield. It is still there, being run by his son. A visit back to Sheffield to see family inevitably means a few hints (OK, maybe more than a few) that a detour to his factory-shop-café-museum would be a very good idea indeed.

His living northward should not necessarily have made me like Mr Mellor any more. Yet it did and does. Especially since a large part of my childhood consisted of echo-y tramps through dusty, oily, ghostly cutlery works. They were, it seemed, closing down one a month at that time.

I still love good cutlery. It does make things taste better. It ties together - for me at least - form, function, food and the five senses.

Nice cutlery is made all over the place. But one of the best places to find it is still a David Mellor shop. There the cutlery is serious. The weight of each piece has been thought about, balance tested. My small horn and rosewood coffee spoon (as it is for me) was lusted after for several visits before I bought one. Despite it costing only £5.45. I like to know sometimes - most times - that I am buying something I really want.

I met Mr Mellor once, though I didn’t realise it at the time. A few years back during a cold New Year my brother drove us out to the factory. Noses were stuck to the windows when a chap came up and asked if we’d like to see inside? He gave us a tour. What a place. You could eat off the floor. Everything in its place and a place for everything. Boxes of knife handles. Interesting machines. Cool cupboards. All wrapped around with a great circular Michael Hopkins structure.

“Do you work here?” I asked. “Yes” he replied. I later realised from a picture that it had been Mr Mellor himself who had been so hospitable that cold northern day.

Jumper

David Shrigley gets about a bit.

Walking past Pringle on Bond Street I was happy to spot his ‘intervention’ window display for them. His typical skew-whiff mad characters sporting pringle-esque clothing, drawn onto backdrops and window vinyl. There is also an accompanying promo animation on their website.

Pringle are doing some interesting things to market themselves at the moment. As well as their Shrigley collaboration - which began last summer with t-shirt designs – they currently have a rather nice photographic campaign going with actress Tilda Swinton modelling their mens and womenswear against rocks in Scotland. Better than it sounds.

Shrigley has a nice, slightly out of date website which belongs to someone clever about marketing himself. Things to buy, images of a nice mural he did for a skateboard park and even a rather scary page for people to post images of Shrigley tattoos they have had done.

There is something knowingly amateurish about Shrigley's work. I see him more as a cartoonist than anything. But rather than a political cartoonist - a cultural one. He still seems to command the epithet ‘artist’ though.

Getting away with it, I’d say.

Toy story

I don’t often get to Ikea - a car being a prerequisite for visiting most of them. Or it’s a tortuous walk down the edge of the motorway. Or a train, then a bus, then humping a yellow bag all the way back again. Living in London, it is a wonder they haven’t cottoned on to the idea of Ikea Metro stores yet.

The whole Ikea thing fascinates me when I do get to one. The route planning taking you through room set after room set. The paper rulers. The café with vibrant green cakes. The meatballs. The shortcuts through to the marketplace..

This glorious ode to call it design, pile it high, sell it cheap is always rather smarter than I expect. In-store graphics are pretty darn tasteful. The product designs on sale nice and simple - for the most part. Although it doesn’t do to get too close to a lot of it. And some of the food packaging is really very well designed.

The fact that everyone seems to know how Ikea is ‘done’ is also interesting to me. Uncomplainingly, shoppers do all the work for the store. There isn’t much help to be had. You choose, find, hump your own flat pack furniture to the tills. And then load up the car, take it home, unpack and make it up yourself. Job done. By you.

This weekend the leftover toys from Christmas were everywhere. Tugging at the hearts of children bored of room after room of suburban-style Scandi. Surreal shelves piled high with furry polar bears, kangaroos, crocodiles, elephants, rats. Some lonely decimated shelves, with one or two unwanted fur things on them. It was like toy road kill in there.

Just dandy

This week seems to be about well-dressed men. I have a weakness for them.

I finally got around to reading a big thick tasty biography of Beau Brummell. Considered Head Dandy of his Georgian generation and many subsequent generations. It’s turning out to be a fine read. Unashamed obsession and manipulation of clothing to social and political ends.

And one of my blog feeds – Happy Mundane – just brought me to a Prada film ‘First Spring’ put together for their Spring 2010 Menswear collection. It is a very beautiful 9 black and white, evocative minutes. Slightly strange. It is also, unsurprisingly, like one long photograph from a fashion campaign. I have always liked arty film shorts, though. This one just has some very well dressed models and great Shanghai scenery to make it more of a treat to the eye.

It was commissioned from Chinese artist Yang Fudong. You can smell the money they must have spent on this. But then Prada have the money to spend and fancy themselves as art collectors and curators, as well as designers.

Overtly commercial undertakings like this obviously find it hard to be considered ‘proper art’ by the cognoscenti. But I’m so well ensconced in all things fashion history that I don’t question much. Worry less. And just enjoy the sight of a well turned-up trouser and a sharp sloping shoulder line.

Tag it

I am someone more excited by the wrapping than the contents. Paper things: bags, labels, small catalogues, fold-out promo cards. And, glory of glories, hang tags.

Hang tags often have a hole punched thorough them (eyeletting), a string attached to them and a little bit of information printed on them. Or perhaps a logo. It’s a good and satisfying combination, makes a lovely object. The ephemeral nature of the things makes them even lovelier. Does this pleasure in small things make me a cheap date? I fear so.

In Heal’s in Manchester at New Year I was cooing over the Orla Kiely products. She has designed a set of furniture, bed wear, towels and other bits for them. It’s not revolutionary stuff; drawing heavily on 1950s and 1960s Scandinavian designs and the paler Ercol designs so collectable now. And why not? But despite that it is covetable. Useable. Understated. Tasteful.

This hang tag was attached by a nice small brass safety pin to a face flannel. There isn’t enough thought about this level of retail detail in my opinion. It really makes the offer so much nicer. Of course, I thought the hang tag much nicer than the actual flannel.

Kiely designs handbags too. They are a sort of right of passage for many of my friends. Ideal for the woman who has grown out of Accessorize and Top Shop but can’t yet afford a Gucci, Chanel or Hermes. They are well made, distinctive, big enough for keeping all that stuff in. Just different enough.

The nose for it

A final post before 2010.

This Pinocchio pencil came to me as part of a birthday present in early December. He came with a paper bird that I had previously seen and panted after. It was lovely to be given things so me. Both items are on the shelf now. But with his red topper and slightly unhappy face Pinocchio somehow gives out an appropriate Christmas message.

The rise of the individual and small-ish online craft shops (like the one that offered up my pencil) is really interesting to me. There are big online marketplaces like Folksy and the bigger Etsy - with a sometimes questionable definition of ‘craft’. But I really prefer the small curated crafty websites. You get a real sense of someone making things and choosing things they would like to buy themselves. These websites are often glorified personal blogs. Giving you information on the person, postings about new items in the ‘shop’, photographs of the owners homes and their friends, pets, socks…

My Google Reader currently follows 54 different blogs. Although I am fickle and many come and go. But they are ideal snippets for me - a picture, a bit of text, something to coo over momentarily, or something to tempt my credit card out into the open.

A lot of the blogs I follow come from individuals that make and or sell stuff. They might have a small shop in Belgium, a tastefully cluttered desk in a cold Nordic-type outpost or a clunky private press in a small, smoky US city. It seems to me to be a particularly female thing - the selling of small items, lovingly chosen, presented and packaged. Money is not necessarily the motivating factor. The numbers of items involved is not going to make anyone really rich, really quick.

It is more about stepping outside the usual, the mainstream. About spending your day or part of your day with, just, well, nice things.