shelf appeal

In the night bedroom

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:27:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:47:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:27:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 10:43:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:04:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:46:00 +0000

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.

Taking the tickle out

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:25:00 +0000

The cold weather is making me think of thermal underwear. It’s probably an age thing too. But that in turn made me think of a lovely Morley Pure Wool Theta Shrunk leaflet I have.

I particularly love this illustration of a relaxed gent, in his socks and suspenders, smoking a cigar, wearing his ‘soft wool’ all-in-one, already rid of all ‘natural irritants.’ Important, I think. One wouldn’t want him to feel itchy and scratchy on certain delicate parts of the body.

The leaflet was issued during World War II. It extols the virtues of wool that won’t shrink and has had ‘the tickle taken out of it.’ The British Army, we are told, were issued with the garments; ‘and the Air Force quickly followed suit.’

All in all: ‘Something exciting has happened to wool.’

The succinct illustrations are by ‘Fenwick’ - I can’t find anything about him / her. Very much in the style of Fougasse, who illustrated a lot of war time print and advertising work.

Thermal-ness, keeping warm and practicality are definitely an age thing as far as underwear is concerned these days. Those models writhing in the Calvin Klein adverts really don’t look bothered about the temperature.

More or less

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:13:00 +0000

I had a trip to the Design Museum to see the Dieter Rams exhibition this weekend.

I met Dieter when I worked at Vitsoe, who manufacture his 606 shelving system. He was charming, had a twinkle in his eye and a pencil in his hand. I remember him crawling under a compressed table to check a tiny detail. I remember feeling a little star struck.

This exhibition is all about the details. Design unadorned and understated. Rams’ back catalogue looks pretty modern to my eye. Lots of classic shapes I remember from my childhood, when his Braun products were ubiquitous and bought in Boots electrical department.

Apart from the 606 shelves I find his furniture a bit dated and easily datable, though. It’s not for me. Yet his products are the bees knees.

The exhibition design and graphics by Bibliothèque are really well delivered. Just enough and not too much intervention. Their design compliments the objects on show but doesn’t overwhelm them. Nicely judged object layouts, great oversized graphic treatments and a sense of peacefulness that allows the objects to be just, well, seen.

It is rare to see exhibitions these days where designers have been able to resist shouting louder than the exhibits. Case in point: the Identity exhibition at the Wellcome Trust, which I also saw at the weekend. Designed by Ben Kelly, it is a wall of unfriendly wood and green metal. There is no graphic signage to indicate where you are, what the narrative or user journey is. All you can see, everywhere, is the overwhelming structure. Oh, and slightly embarrassed people wandering around looking for the actual exhibition.

Milk it

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:37:00 +0000

For me a visit to the supermarket is a distraction of packaging. I go off-list very quickly indeed if something is designed nicely and needs to go home with me.

For example, I very often feel the need for a whole set of Waitrose herbs and spices. They look great all lined up in the shop, nice big lettering, simple clear containers, interesting innards. The other day I spent a long time looking at the cake decorations and bun cases in there, similarly packaged but brighter on the inside. And I don’t bake.

Tea packaging is a big like too. Nice little rows of cardboard boxes with illustrations on them. Inside, disappointingly, you often find rather unnatural flavoured natural herb teas. Top opening tea packets with hinges are the best. I can take or leave a cellophane wrap.

Marks & Spencers tend to have small clusters of nicely packaged goods in their shops. Amongst horrible, vivid fast food wrappers and ye-olde looking boxes and bottles for the grey shoppers you can find some gems. They have some corking sweet packets in store at the moment. This small ‘milk carton’ fairly leapt out at me the other day. Fabulous typeface. Lovely visual play on the packaging of real milk. Nice milky milk sweets inside. Bliss.

Milk is a wonderful thing anyway. As a word it looks great. It's a nice colour – full cream, anyway. Milk bottles used to be nice - those old glass ones were a classic shape. Pushing in the tin foil lid was most satisfying. Such a simple packaging solution. The cardboard milk carton is a classic now too. Up there with - dare I say it - Chinese cardboard takeaway pots with little metal carrying handles. But that's a whole other blog.

On the beach

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:07:00 +0000

Finally got back to Dungeness last weekend. It is a place from my childhood. At least, I have memories of paddling in an unusually warm sea (there or somewhere) near a nuclear power station. As you do.

Dungeness is a cultural destination for Derek Jarman fans.   His wooden abode there has been well documented. But I was as much if not more excited to see the sea. Although one is a good excuse for the other. And his garden demonstrates an unlikely bloody-minded beauty in that bleak landscape.

It was a wonderfully windy day. The sort where you expect the wind to push you off up into the sky - like a rather large version of the Red Balloon.

The deserted beach was littered with flotsam, large and small. The large: old husks of dry boat, dark creosoted huts with their backs to the wind, rusting iron remnants of a past gravel industry. The small: discarded but rather smart plimsolls, skeletons of fishy things, string, rope, iron chain, crisp packets. I photographed some of those.

And so many - too many - pebbles to choose from. I wanted to bring back the lot. The colours of the stones - huge undulating waves of them going down toward the beach - were just so good to look at. Set against a backdrop of a luminous grey and heaving sea – it would be hard to find a better way to spend an hour.

The tube

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:43:00 +0000

I went to Paris for a long weekend with a friend, a little while back. Nice to be there when the weather was clement and sitting out drinking coffee was the thing to do. I have often found myself there in mid-winter, blue and shivering in finger-snapping cold.

It was Paris fashion week, by coincidence. Great people watching. Lots of grown men in too-small skinny grey jeans. Also, by coincidence, it was Nuit Blanche, an art all-nighter. An emotive showing of Mark Wallinger’s video Threshold to the Kingdom in a huge, atmospheric, dark Saint-Eustache church. And the largest mirror-ball ever hung - over Jardin du Luxembourg. This we didn’t manage to get up close and personal with. There were near riot conditions, with thousands of people vying to get into the park, one by one, at half past midnight. As the police started to take their batons out, it seemed time to leave.

Anyway. I always imagine buying my way around Paris. Coming back with an armful of bulging tasteful carrier bags. But in reality the world has become a smaller place. And brands have become a bigger proposition. So. Many things seem to be sold in many places.

But, in a traditional art shop I fell for a very beautifully formed and functional cardboard tube. Bright red anodised aluminium ends, dark grey card outside, orange card interior. Great graphics, super name: TUBECA.

The shop assistant (in a lovely white lab coat) wanted to know what I was going to put in it? I didn’t have the French to say ‘Nothing. It’s perfect as it is.’

ku:nel

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:19:00 +0000

I have a list that isn’t written down. It consists of things I have bookmarked, pictures I have kept, snippets filed away. Things to look out for one day.

So. A friend was recently heading to Japantown in San Francisco, and was here anything in particular I was after? Well, yes. A copy of the Japanese magazine ku:nel. I had long since given up the idea of actually getting hold of a copy. The good Japanese magazines tend not to make it over here in huge quantities. I have contented myself looking at the covers of back issues of ku:nel online instead. But whatdoyouknow. I now have a copy.

Ku:nel is a nice - if not sweet - magazine. The cover of this issue is just lovely. Lovely photographs of plants. Nothing else. No copy to mar the graphic simplicity. I have never been convinced that magazines need tacky copy on their covers in order to sell them. Especially niche magazines. And even the bigger sellers; Vogue itself spent many decades with copy-free covers and looked all the better for it.

Ku:nel is a lifestyle-homes-interior-crafts-type magazine. Not exactly sure of the translation of the title and inside it is, of course, in Japanese. But far from frustrating me, this just gives me an excuse to simply look at the pictures. It’s what I do with most magazines, anyway. Very nice pictures in here: a selection of watering cans, a beekeeper, nicely laid out food, interestingly dressed ‘normal’ people…

Inevitably one thing leads to another. Getting the magazine means going back and looking online for information about things I spot in it. This then leads me to yet more blogs to subscribe to. Yet more intriguing Japanese products to hanker after. Yet more nice things to think about putting on my shelves.

Great. Dixter.

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:34:00 +0000

On a very lovely Saturday last weekend - sunny but not sweltering, I found myself in the gardens of Great Dixter, in East Sussex.

I didn’t know anything about this place or the famous gardener and writer who lived there - Christopher Lloyd. In fact, I don’t know much about gardening at all. I don’t even have a houseplant. I only know how to buy cut flowers along with my groceries.

But, if you are going to design a garden, this is the way to go about it. Masses of different coloured flowers, not too clipped about. Lots of big statement blooms. Lily-strewn pond. Big Dragonflies. A Mulberry tree. Not much grass. Crafted sets of steps leading off. Meandering, seemingly unplanned and blissfully peaceful.

The original garden design (and parts of the house, which remain private) was by Edwin Lutyens. The gardens wrap around a medieval house and outbuildings, which are really well preserved. Inside, the rooms have been left in a moment in time.

The long barn, with its red tiled expanse of roof dipping low, probably looks just as it did when Lutyens set about sketching. It contains drying bunches of flowers and thistles. These were used throughout the house in vases. Like blowsy, crackly, fragile sculptures.

The wooden shelves I photographed were in this dusty low barn. On them, a lovely line of cotton-wool-like seed heads lay drying in a picturesque fashion. I like to think the shelves were built just for that very purpose.

Not only but also:
Great Dixter nursery tells me these seed heads are from a plant with the impressive name of Cynara cardunculus, or cardoon, or ornamental thistle. Related to Globe artichokes. Parts of it can be eaten and it's being investigated for its biodiesel potential. Well I never.

Hook and eye

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:29:00 +0000

The Missoni exhibition at the Estorick Collection. It’s always nice to see exhibitions in this venue. Nice small size so no museum fatigue. Nice café. Nice staff. Lovely Georgian building. And a good excuse to potter through Islington, people-watching and dodging the buggies.

If you work in museums you always need to take a mental step back when visiting exhibitions for pleasure. Otherwise you only see things you would change: objects that need dusting, typos on labels or - shudder at the thought – no labels at all.

That said, the Missoni exhibition had fewer clothes and textiles than I expected. I really wanted to see more archival pieces. But what was there was pretty amazing. Colours and shapes. Yarn, knits and weaves. Unlike anything else out there.

And the additional objects from the Missoni family private collections were great – a zinging citrus coloured Futurist suit and a beautiful 1950s painting by Tancredi.

Best of all, there was a really engrossing long film on show. It fully immersed you in family Missoni. Their love of colour and craft was palpable. And worth watching to see the grand dame of the label, Rosita Missoni, wearing the mad mixed patterns as they should be worn – all at once, one on top of the other.

All in all, I came out knowing more about the label and having a greater respect for the craft behind it. Can’t ask for much more than that. Except maybe a piece to own…

Junk Mail

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:17:00 +0000

I first trotted down to Few and Far in a lunch hour, always happy to investigate a new shop. It’s an odd mixture, a sort of lifestyle boutique where you can’t quite identify the lifestyle. Some really nice things. The stronger designs packed away downstairs. A bit of a jumble to the eye upstairs. But interesting.

Still, their bits of advertising and signage dotted around the shop were rather nice and so I signed up for their mailings. Happy to have done so, too, as I just got a nice little leaflet - with illustrations by Christopher Brown – through my door.

Christopher Brown, an erstwhile pupil of Edward Bawden is beloved of St Jude’s Gallery in Norfolk. St Jude’s have their finger laid gently on the pulse of a burgeoning nostalgia for comfortable interwar and mid-century art and design.

Browns small linocut prints embody the word charming. The Few and Far Autumn leaflet has a twig-carrying hedgehog on the front, making me smile and think happily of cooler days ahead.

A life of order

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:27:00 +0000

A bit of a tie-in this time. Whilst researching amongst Ernő Goldfingers bits and pieces in his office at 2 Willow Road (for my exhibition) I marvelled at how he’d designed himself drawers with compartments to fit every little stationery thing – rubbers, rulers, pencil sharpeners. You name it.

The desire to order, compartmentalise and label lies heavy with me (in a Star Wars kind of way) and it’s always nice to find kindred spirits. Imagine then my squeak of joy and rustle for my iPhone camera when I saw this treat of a display a few weeks back. It was the window at Labour and Wait. I mention them often enough on this blog to make readers suspicious.

This display speaks for itself, does it not? Ordered lines of inconsequential but rather perfect everyday objects. Amongst the clutter, debris and tat of a hot, muggy Sunday on Brick Lane - this window gladdened my retentive little heart.

Window display is a funny thing, hard to judge. You want to show off enough merchandise to tempt people in, but not so much customers feel you have 100s of everything to sell off. You want to catch the eye but not repel the imagination.

A lovely old chap I once interviewed - who had been a window dresser in London from the 1930s on - told me that the art of displaying home goods (like stationery, kitchenware and linens) was done best by the John Lewis Partnership. They still do it very well. And whilst I know that their archive contains many albums of images of their window displays, frustratingly, I could find nothing digitised on their websites.

The Partnership perfected a system of measured lines of tightly grouped objects, keeping to a grid, with harmonious colour combinations. Very tasteful. Ordinary objects laid out as art. It’s a form of display that came straight to England from Germany in the early decades of the 20th century, carried in the minds of the many escaping émigré artists. It was taught in London by the Reimann School, amongst others.

All you have to do is picture the lines in one of those Bauhaus graphic designs and you’re almost there.

Goldfinger and the child

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:25:00 +0000

I don’t often toot my own horn on this blog but last week we put up my exhibition Design for a Modernist Childhood, at 2 Willow Road, Hampstead. This is the rather lovely home of architect Ernő Goldfinger, owned by the National Trust these days.

Goldfinger was an urban modernist. Much of his work is domestic and realistic and feels liveable. 2 Willow Road, in particular, is redolent of the family that lived there.

Researching the exhibition, it was the relationship between Goldfinger and the educationalists Paul and Marjorie Abbatt that interested me most. The Abbatt toy shop, designed by Goldfinger, was more a gallery built at child-height. Full of traditional wooden toys, sourced from all over the world and sharp children’s furniture (like the toy cupboard pictured here) commissioned from Goldfinger.

Goldfinger’s design for the Abbatt shop was beautiful, one of the best examples of Modernist shop design of the 1930s. RIBA has some nice pictures of it, along with most of Goldfinger’s archive. It seems he kept everything: from receipts for the X-ray lamps that lit the shop interior, to sketches of the Abbatt logo he designed. I am pretty sure Goldfinger took his inspiration for the logo - a silhouette of two children - from a Père Castor childrens book Ribambelles I found amongst his belongings. How nice it was to get back to researching amongst primary sources and finding connections like that.

Of course, with any exhibition, the story is as much about what wasn’t included, as what was. Once I'd edited down the content to visitor-sized pieces, the bulk of my research sits in a lever arch file on the shelf, labelled ‘use one day - probably not.’

The exhibition will run for at least a year or two in the nursery at 2 Willow Road.

Bird is the word

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:24:00 +0000

A bit of east London pottering usually results in a trip to Shelf in Cheshire Street. Obviously we both like the word shelf – and I like a lot of the things they sell there too. It’s a heavily curated gallery-like space, like a lot of the shops on this street. Nice though.

Anyhow, I bought a few cards and asked for them to be put in the brown paper bag with two birds on it - pictured here. The bag was too small, but they gave it me anyway. Good thing too, as I was in my: ‘I want that. Now.’ mode. I have almost got over my embarrassment at being more excited by packaging than the purchase. It has taken a long time.

These birds by German Frerk Muller were also available in the shop on mugs and as prints. Oddly, there isn’t much on the internet about Muller. Unusual these days, when you expect to get at least a few mentions about the most obscure anything.

And especially odd as birds seem to be an obsession across craft-y blogs and in craft-y design-y shops at the moment. Felt ones, patchwork ones, wire ones. Bird patterns on booklets, journals, wallpapers, fabrics, mobiles. You name it.

Frerk’s birds are rather amorphous birds, the sort of birds you might see in a dream. They have sour expressions - annoyed at being exploited in every material going, probably.

Dappled rabbit

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:53:00 +0000

The heat is on. For me, there aren’t many redeeming qualities to the summer. But as I’m in a minority, I tend to keep it to myself. Well, mostly.

But tonight as the sun was going down I got some fabulous shadows on my bedroom wall from the trees outside. And my felt Jaeger rabbit, who sits on his lonesome on my fire mantelpiece, suddenly got an impressive shadow friend (his Harvey?). It was almost enough to make me like a hot evening.

The rabbit was an early eBay find and he has been sat in a box in bubble wrap for a few years - whilst I got around to decorating and found somewhere to put him. Jaeger, now known purely for their adult fashion, did a nice line of children’s clothes and toys in the 1930s.

The toys, from what I found whilst researching a dissertation on shop display in the inter-war years (as you do) were mainly animals. Fat felt animals. I only found them featured in trade journals and shop photographs, never pictured in advertisements.

Jaeger have hit their 125th birthday this year, with a nice wee exhibition at London College of Fashion and a swanky book, that I’ve yet to justify buying. The company had a fabulous history of display and use of illustration in their advertising. They used one of the best inter-war advertising agencies – Colman Prentis and Varley and great architects, interior designers and display people. Despite a recent re-launch of the brand, though, they have struggled to match that peak of creativity of the pre-war years.

A picture is worth...

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:05:00 +0000

My Colette e-news brought me an illustration that intrigued. Even better, the artist’s blog satisfies the intrigue. Now, how often does that happen?

Darcel Disappoints, blog name, character name - and the artist seems to sign himself with this moniker too.

This blog is lovely. Really sharp observations - moments in urban time - each delivered with a really great illustration. I found myself looking back through the whole blog, which is easy to do as the whole thing consists of images and brief comments. But it doesn’t need to be anything more than that.

The illustration here is accompanied by the words:

‘A quiet afternoon in the African wing of The Met was just what I needed.’

It made me think of a favourite therapy destination I have – the lusciously peaceful Elizabethan room at the National Gallery.

Darcel Dissapoints has just done some designs for the French place to shop trend: Colette (who have just launched a nice new website too). But I prefer the blog and look forward to seeing more posts. They just make me think, in the best possible way, 'yeah.'

This is Sasek's London

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:23:00 +0000

I have to admit that my shelves are very slowly filling with London-related books and booklets. I tried not to do it - but it seems my penchant for illustrated books now includes London ones.

There is something captivating about seeing the city through the eyes of artists - recognising landmarks, vistas and scenes of everyday life. London certainly can look picturesque in reality, but how much nicer to see it re-drawn, re-coloured, re-imagined.

Before I came to live in London in 2000 I already had my favourite book on the city: This is London by Czechoslovakian artist Miroslav Sasek. Sasek produced 18 This is... books and the illustration here is the artist himself. He appeared, in suitably themed attire, on the frontispage of each one. I’m not sure the book made me want to live in London but it conjured up a vision of late 1950s shops, museums, flower sellers and city gents that I have been looking for ever since.

There is still an M. Sasek London to be found. In Mayfair and Piccadilly with their gentlemen’s requisite shops and porticoed clubs. Around Smithfield Market - whilst it waits to be completely gentrified - there is sometimes still a feel of bustle and trade. The French Lycée in South Kensington, with its chattering Madeline’s and evocative baguette emporia. And certainly in the big national museums, which Sasek drew, there is still authentic 1950s dust to be found on exhibits not yet removed to make room for shiny re-developed galleries.

There is a great web site called This is M. Sasek with all his books listed and intriguing bits and bobs on his other work, including early animations of the books. The recent interest in Sasek has led to his books being reprinted, nice editions in the original large format. Meanwhile the originals are hotting up in price on eBay. I found my copy in a suitably drab and damp charity shop in the North West..

How much is that...

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:28:00 +0000

Spotted this lovely window display at Dover Street Market. Barbie’s 50th isn’t so very interesting to me but it’s an iconic visage. This one represents the first Barbie, I think. It looks great in the window, a nice play on dolls, mannequins, miniatures and over-sized Jeff Koons sculpture.

I like it even better that, Dover Street being Dover Street, the website tells me who designed and who made the display. They take their presentation very seriously there. Very much fashion as theatre as fashion.

I always find it a great place to mooch about in, although I like to take a fashionable friend as my 'in'. I rarely buy anything but it’s as relevant as going to see an exhibition in the fashion court at the V&A. The range of labels is impressive and spot on. It's great to be able to examine the workmanship on the Azzedine Alaïa dresses and try to work out the cut on the Comme des Garcons’ pieces.

There are usually some interesting in-house exhibitions and the staff aren’t sniffy at all.

And when you've debated over buying another covetable, sweetie-like Comme wallet or purse, there amongst the clothing is a Rose Café (the subject of one of my very first blogs) and a Labour & Wait, for that essential curated ironmongery purchase.

Happy Birthday Shelf Appeal

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:20:00 +0000

This blog is two years old. To celebrate - a scan of a chocolate 'dazzler' sweet, which was eaten very soon afterwards. I was pondering the idea of who actually designs sweets the other day. Much 'research' to be done...

A paper tale

noreply@blogger.com (shelf appeal) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:08:00 +0000

I received a lovely book in the post a couple of weeks ago, from a friend who also has shelves full of stuff, both metaphorically speaking and in reality. The book The New Practical Display Instructor dates from 1954 and is full of ideas and step-by-step recipes for the window display practitioner in your life.

The Instructor was printed by the Blandford Press, printers of many similar sorts of books in the first half of the 20th Century, some of which I already had on my shelves. The Practical Display Instructor books were produced regularly and - particularly in view of their low production values - seem to have been the Dummies Guides of their day. But the photographs were usually updated with each edition, making the books great for researching changing trends in window display.

Paper cutting and paper sculpture was a skill that was peculiarly Polish, developing out of a common folk art into a fine art. It came to England and America, like so many aspects of shop window display, with the arrival of émigré artists fleeing Nazism in the 30s and 40s.

The only remaining evidence of these artists is often found in these funny window display books, which almost always have a chapter on paper sculpture. The cracker pictured here is credited to Jan J Kepinski & Associates. It was obviously chosen as an exemplary example of the genre. But who was Jan J Kepinski? Where did he work?

And through whose shop windows did this chipper gent stroll, in his jaunty checked trews, trying to keep his magnificent beard dry under his paper umbrella?