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Shrigley has a nice, slightly out of date website which belongs to someone clever about marketing himself.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.