While I write this, the sun is definitely shining and the temperature outside is still positively warm, although there was a huge downpour last night and this morning. Perfect for mushroom foraging, which Cass is doing right now in the vain hope of securing a few West Dorset porcini...
This week, like last, is proving to be unbelievably slow. Trade seems to have fallen off a cliff, and most people are certainly drinking more coffee than they are eating food or drinking wine. This does seem like the first ‘lull’ since the sun started to shine and the heat beat down in May... so if you’ve been waiting for a quiet table now’s your moment!
Anyway, who knows? Half-term is upon us, and for many it is a two-week break, as a number of schools across the country are trialling a longer October half-term to support students and staff. So if you’ve got children at home for a fortnight, do come and see us. And if Cass comes back with porcini (HE DID!), you’ll find them on the menu. We are scarily close to the clocks changing, so I for one will be making sure I savour the last of the longer days. My son has a two-week half-term, and we are heading to London to see some of the exhibitions I have suggested. One in particular is Tate Britain’s The 90s: Art and Fashion, as it was such an exciting era for Cass and me (we didn’t know each other then, but The Conran Shop, Daphne’s and The Collection were all within spitting distance of each other). We will also be sampling some of the extremely hyped, newly opened restaurants, Cassette being the first of a few...
Cassette is the new Covent Garden bistro from the team behind Levan in Peckham. It opened in September on Maiden Lane, with chef Essa Fakhry cooking proudly old-school French food: a Koffmann-style stuffed pig’s trotter, a coq au vin jaune pie for two and île flottante, alongside martinis, Calvados cocktails and a quarterly-changing wine list.
While in London, I definitely want to head to the Gagosian Gallery in Mayfair for their THIS IS STILL NOT A PIPE - The Afterlife of Magritte which is on until 12th December. The exhibition examines the artist’s legacy through significant paintings, works on paper, and sculpture from all periods of his career. Featuring loans from museums and private collectors, these include some of his best-known subjects, from apples and pipes to bowler hats and cotton-cloud skies. As mentioned in last week's blog, Frieze and Frieze Masters opens tomorrow. I used to be lucky enough to go to the press day, prior to the event opening, not so lucky now I live in Dorset but it is always a feast for the eyes.
Since I last went to Frieze, the eating options have gone up a gear, and there are now three pop-up restaurants on site... Trullo (one of my favourites in Islington) returns again this year, and Sessions Arts Club and Ham Yard have also brought their restaurants to the show.
Trullo will be serving a special menu for the duration of London’s headline art fair: expect Salcombe Bay scallops with garlic, fresh pasta such as beef shin ragù pappardelle and tagliarini with Dorset crab and Amalfi lemon, and, of course, their signature tiramisu. At Sessions, it’s duck with sloe and sourdough, guinea fowl with potato, and halibut with smoked eel and apple, with opera cake or fragola grape sorbet for pudding. And Ham Yard Hotel’s restaurant has made the trip from Soho to Regent’s Park for its fifth year, with a bold pop-up designed by Kit Kemp, modern European cooking and creative cocktails.
On a different note, but something that caught my eye was that Citroën has brought back the 2CV as an electric concept car at the Paris Motor Show this week. It keeps all the charm of the original: round headlights, a fabric sunroof, patterned seats, Bakelite-style details and even a nod to the original’s famous egg-carrying test - In the 1930s, Citroën’s boss Pierre-Jules Boulanger set out what the original 2CV had to do. It became one of the most famous design briefs ever written. The car had to carry two farmers in clogs and 50kg of produce to market at 60 km/h. Most famously, it had to cross a ploughed field carrying a basket of eggs without breaking a single one. It isn’t on sale yet, but Citroën plans a production version by 2028 at around €15,000.
Citroën chose to launch the concept car in red, and that is my next topic... Last year I wrote about The Unexpected Red Theory, where a ‘pop of red’ can transform an interior and enhance the base palette. I still live by this, and I still think it is relevant this year. Although I worked in ‘trends’, I don’t think interiors change that much; I still have the same Conran Shop sofa, and I left working there in 1998!... Anyway, I love all of these examples, even if some are way out of my budget.
Top left: Englefield Road by Waldo Works
Top middle: Chair by Felix Aublet, France, 1935, The Apartment, Denmark
Top right: Componibili cabinet by Kartell, Heal’s
Bottom left: Red hallway bench by OB Luxton
Bottom middle: Carimate chair in Liberty fabric, Vinterior
Bottom right: Garden designer Christopher Masson’s Clapham home
Now this is one I am rather excited about...
My Duchess sees Dame Joan Collins play Wallis Simpson in her final years in Paris, opposite Isabella Rossellini as Suzanne Blum, the formidable lawyer who took control of the Duchess’s life. Directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) and with a cast including Miranda Richardson and Charles Dance, it promises faded glamour, Parisian interiors and two screen legends at their most deliciously steely. Coming soon, I hear.
Tom Hammick’s woodcuts from The Making of Poetry are on show in the Print Room at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. The series is his collaboration with the writer Adam Nicolson, inspired by Nicolson’s book about Coleridge and the Wordsworths and their extraordinary year of walking and writing in the Quantock Hills in 1797–98. Hammick’s prints have everything I love about his work: dreamlike, luminous colour, night skies, and that wonderful sense of being somewhere between a memory and a dream. If you’re anywhere near Chichester, it’s well worth the trip, and Pallant House is a wonderful venue.
One day I might be able to invest in a beautiful Tom Hammick painting or print, but in the meantime below are a few things I have my eye on...
On the left: The Wildflower Crocus plates comes from La Pittura, HAY’s hand-painted tableware collection by the American artist Emma Kohlmann. Each piece is painted by skilled artisans in Sri Lanka, so no two are quite the same. On the right: is a fantastic ceramic lamp base by Alice Palmer (I have AI’d it to have one of the fabulous Loving String shades on it). It’s cordless and rechargeable, a versatile solution inspired by traditional Moroccan candlesticks, and when fully charged the battery lasts eight hours.
On the left: I mean, Zara, wow, really? This embroidered jacket with metal fastenings is absolutely stunning. I am in two minds whether to purchase, as I have no idea where I would wear it. The jeans on the right, however, from Marks & Spencer, are perhaps the perfect jean for me: the Harper Cigarette. They’re so comfortable, available in various different lengths and colours, and at £28, what’s not to like?
On the left: The Penguin x MOEBE Book Stand is a thoughtful collaboration by Danish design studio MOEBE to celebrate the book publisher Penguin’s 90th anniversary. It’s a bookmark, a book stand and a bookend, and it saves your place in the book without dog-earing (I have never been one to use a bookmark). On the right: Edmund de Waal, the ceramicist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, has a new book out in November. How to Begin is built around letters: his grandmother Elisabeth’s five-year correspondence with the poet Rilke, and the advice she later passed on to the young Edmund when he wanted to be a poet and a potter. It’s a book about failure, starting again and learning your craft. I love his work, those quiet, pale porcelain vessels, so I can’t wait to read how it all began. Out on November 5th.
I’m hoping this blog will always round off with some affordable houses abroad. This week there are only two. On the leftis one in Baccarat. I’m not too sure it’s a place I really want to go and live, but still, what a house for the price of €310K! And on the right is a sweet little one-bedroom in Provence. There’s not much outside space, but it’s perfect as a bolthole, with an evening drink by the front door...
Leave a comment