Tag Archives: design

fab four: planters.

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It is a super busy week here in London, with Clerkenwell Design Week, May Design Series at Excel and Chelsea Flower Show all vying for one’s attention..

This is my homage to Chelsea Flower Show, celebrating its centenary this year, fab four: planters.

fab four on owls house.

  1. Bauhaus-inspired, laquered steel Kubus Bowl from Story North
  2. Clever little upside-down Sky Planter, here 
  3. Case study ceramic bowl from Modernica
  4. Beautiful Japanese terrarium by 10¹² TERRA

Do you have a favourite?

More on Chelsea Flower Show celebrating 100 years in AnOther Magazine, here 

More fab four, here 

house of lightness and glass.

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I love floor to ceiling glass, allowing the inside and outside to coexist, bringing light in and blurring the boundaries between outside and in. Glass boxes, however, where the glass forms two or three sides and a ceiling, can so easily feel cold and clinical. Perhaps it has much to do with the climate in this country, but I can’t think of anywhere I’d less rather be on a cold, grey day.

This addition, however, feels like a place I would like to be. Perhaps it is the sculptural quality – not a box, but an architectural form with a raking roofline. Perhaps the interplay of solid white planes with the glass, or the double height space allowing the light to plunge through the volume. Contrasting against the darker, more formal spaces of the original house – lounge, study, dining room – are the lighter, informal areas of the new – the open plan kitchen and casual living. Vertical voids cut through the house to unite the cellar, ground and first floors, allow light to filter down gradually, creating beautiful shards of light and shadow.

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The joinery and furniture is kept simple and rectilinear, further emphasising the lightness of the space, with pale ceramic flooring (not timber, which would fade over time in the sunlight), and glass stair treads.

Glass house in Winchester, England, by AR Design Studio, via

More wonderful spaces, here

at the fair – the mid century show.

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Once you have your Richard Neutra-designed home (see my previous post, here), you will need to furnish it. Here’s my take on last Sunday’s Mid Century show at Lord’s in North London; a wonderful trove of Scandinavian classic furniture, simple, functional lighting, local salvage, industrial pieces, jewellery, art and ephemera. Forty seven businesses were represented, here are just a few of my favourites:

E&T photo by owl's house london

1. These gorgeous ducks also have the most wonderful provenance:

One particular spring day in 1959 in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen, a policeman found the time to stop the traffic in order to let a young duck family pass. It was a meaningful enough event to the passers-by that all the newspapers published a now famous photograph of the ducks. This captured moment ‘encapsulates the Danish attention to nature and detail and the ability to appreciate small everyday miracles’. Inspired by the duck family, Hans Bølling designed this pair of small wooden duck figures.

Duck and Duckling in teak by Hans Bølling 1959 at Elliot and Tate, specialists in finding and rsstoring the vintage Danish Furniture of Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, amongst others.

LandCo photo2 by owl's house london l&c photo by owl's house london

2. Lovely and Company are an on-line vintage furniture store based in Brighton, UK.

One gets the same thrill scratching around here as any flea-market – they carry a clever mix of 20th Century design classics alongside soda crates and multi-drawer haberdashery chests. Ferm Living is represented, along with House Doctor and Tas-ka. They carry reams of Eames original fibreglass shells (the new version of the chair is in polypropylene), which can be mounted on new walnut bases.

Saunders Fine Art on owl's house london.

3. Beautiful mid-century art at Saunders Fine Art, specialists in Modern British and European painting (all images, Saunders Fine Art). Clockwise from top left:

Esbjörn (Bo) Lassen, Still Life, Daily News, Watercolour, 1946

Douglas Swan, Composition, Mixed media on paper, 1962

Jürgen Von Konow, Lowering the Nets, Oil on canvas1949

TMW photo by owl's house london

4. Based in Victoria Park, East London, The Modern Warehouse specialise in buying and selling mid century modern furniture and accessories from Scandinavia, U.S.A. and the UK. The collection is made up entirely of original vintage pieces, not reproductions.

The Modernist photo by owl's house london

5. The Modernist based in a wonderful little antique emporium in North London, is one of my favourite haunts: stunning vintage Georg Jensen silver jewellery along with other precious pieces, all from early to mid-century and all fabulous. I wrote about The Modernist in an earlier blog post on the Hampstead Emporium, here.

VU photo by owl's house london

6. Vintage Unit source and refurbish industrial furniture, lighting & accessories, with examples from Britain and the continent from the post war period. Their pieces are beautifully refurbished things of beauty as well as utility. Practical but decorative and collectable in their own right.

Retrouvius photo by owl's house london

7. Retrouvius is a stalwart in the architectural salvage business, full of wonderful reclamation pieces. They have released a book, Reclaiming Style, outlining the Retrouvius ‘re-use’ philosophy,  from sourcing material at demolition sites and filtering this into the warehouse to adapting materials for re-use in homes via their in-house design practice. I loved the stacks of worn, colourful aluminium pendants.

TCA photo by owl's house london

8. Twentieth Century Antiques are Edinburgh based, and specialise in modern design from 1920-1970. I rather liked the idea of the Jacobsen Egg chair, Danish rosewood sideboard and original Picasso exhibition poster on display in my own home…

AG photo by owl's house london

9. A fabulous array of classic lights including the sweet Pinnochio desk lamp from Augustus Greaves, who specialise in architect designed, post war modernist pieces (and have a beautiful web-site, as well).

Which pieces would you like to see in your home?

All images owl’s house london, unless noted otherwise.

More happenings, here.

house of 150 trees.

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One of the most important elements of good design is context – the way a building sits within its environment, or the way the setting influences the design. Just as design is a response to a set of needs or problems, context shapes the design response. Without context there is only  art or decoration. This beautiful Danish summerhouse is a perfect example of context in design – the owner harvested 150 pine trees from the land, then cut them into beams to build his home.

Wood in its different guises create the horizontal planes – panels of ply on the ceiling, knotty pine floor boards. The interconnecting vertical planes are of complimentary materials – steel, glass and brick – all kept in their raw state. A towering, angled chimney made of blonde, double-long bricks sits centrally within the open-plan space, housing the fireplace and oven. A white concrete bench top wraps around the chimney from the kitchen to the living area. The house features large floor-to-ceiling windows, the glazing angling up and folding over to form the roof, creating views up and beyond the trees to the sky. Over the kitchen and dining area, a matte-black roof follows the same plane, then breaks form and folds straight outward, hovering above a patio. Adjacent to the main house  is the studio, whose slanted exterior beams and horizontal knotty pine walls repeat those of the primary structure.

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The exposed, galvanized-steel framing is echoed in the pendant lamps over the dining table and chair legs;  the table was made from the same pine that was milled on-site.

Summerhouse, via dwell and http://www.brask-leonhardt.dk/

More good design series, here. More wonderful spaces, here.

vertigo.

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I spied this pendant lamp in the interiors of beautiful spaces long before I managed to find out any more about it. I have now tracked it down, and it’s of French provenance: Vertigo by Constance Guisset. Reminiscent of a parasol, or a wide brimmed hat; it is incredibly light which means it becomes mobile when it catches a breeze, turning and floating. And casting the most wonderful, graphic shadows.

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It comes in black, turquoise, copper, white and big and small: 2m diameter (500g weight) and 1.4m.

What do you think of Vertigo? Would you have one in your space?

More found objects, here

a contemporary classicist.

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Originally built in1929, this Melbourne home has been meticulously restored and updated to create a cohesive series of beautifully proportioned, contemporary spaces.

Marking the transition between original and new, openings are lined with steel to become portals, frames are painted black allowing them to recede. A two storey glazed structure to the rear brings light to the centre of the home, defining a new circulation core to the building. A large, glazed skylight tracks the path of the sun, filling the interior with more light.

A blackest black, high gloss floor becomes a reflecting pool for the furniture pieces that sit upon it. White walls are a counterpoint for the contemporary art to reside. Kitchen and bathroom cupboards are white and elegantly minimal. The joinery is allowed to break through the external wall at the rear as the connection between indoor and outdoor living. Furniture is classic Scandinavian – Wishbone chairs, Tulip table, AJ floor lamp, as well as Italian, with simple and bold pieces by Antonio Citterio.

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A perfect backdrop for a modern family, who will add the vibrance and colour to this masterfully restrained home.

South Yarra residence by Carr Design Group, via

More wonderful spaces, here

fab four: glass things.

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fab four

1. Carat – wonderfully heavy, geometric, facet-cut glasses by Swedish vanguard, Orrefors

2. Perfectly monikered, Babushka by the Finland based glass designer Heikki Viinikainen launched at Milan Design Week 2013, via 

3. Amber, blue, smoke and green; Groove pendants designed by William Couig, NY based glass artist of Further Design, via The Modern Syberite

4. A simple, rotational form resembling a spinning top: Spin lights by Lucie Koldova for Lasvit, via

Which is your favorite? More fab four, here

fab four: colour-dipped things.

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fab four

Two years ago it looked like a trend. But here it is still. It’s been renamed for fashion, too – dégradé, or the modern dip-dye.

1. Konkret pendant light by Jonas Edvard. More, here 

2. Kebnekaise pouf from Story North.

3. Pulp pendant light from Folkore. More about Folklore on owl’s house london, here.

4.  Frost glass for Stelton.

And I love these (entirely dipped!) rooms:

dip rooms

(first image Pinterest, second image unknown)

What do you think of colour-dipped things? Would you have them in your home?

More fab four, here

sculpture house.

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A double-height, fully glazed wall at the garden side of the house, extends the sense of the outdoors through to the interior. The interior of the building features three sculptural elements – a block of stone forming the central kitchen unit, a perfectly formed, curved stair, and a stone shelf and fireplace wall.

Interior finishes are kept simple – painted white or fabricated in super-hard white Corian, a man-made, solid-surface material composed of marble dust, bauxite, polyester resins and pigments. All floor surfaces, including the stairs are wood, stained almost black.

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The furniture pieces are sculptural, classic, fabulous: Egg chair, Cherner chair, Smoke chair, Butterfly stool, Rosy Angelis floor lamp…

Russel Hill Road by gh3, via 

Images courtesy © Ben Rahn

More wonderful spaces, here

now house.

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It is one of the biggest challenges facing designers – how to integrate traditional and contemporary and make it fit for now.  Pastiche doesn’t work, nor does simply ignoring the original. This house shows one way of mixing new with old, with an end result that is functional and fabulous.

The existing house is a typical, Eastern Australian 1920s bungalow, highly decorative to the street, or public, elevation. In stark contrast, the side elevations of the house were – originally – completely unadorned. The new addition to the rear takes its cue from this diminution in decoration and presents a flat elevation to the rear garden; a simple box form with playful, cut outs for windows. Within, the decorative elements lessen too; the walls become simple planes dressed in white, the free-standing kitchen units stand on a poured concrete floor. All that is left to add are lovely pieces of furniture and a family.

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Hence, ‘the public face of the house is decorative and frilly, while the private face is quiet, honest and unadorned. It is the unpretentious face of private family life’.

House Boone Murray by Tribe Studio Architects via

Photographs, Peter Bennetts

More wonderful spaces, here