Blog/News

Homes & Gardens Designer Awards 2012

Feb 27, 2012

I am thrilled to have been nominated for the prestigious:

HOMES & GARDENS DESIGNER AWARDS 2012

To be announced at The British Museum on Wednesday 7th March

There is more information about the awards and the other wonderfully talented nominees here:

http://www.housetohome.co.uk/product-idea/picture/homes-gardens-designer-awards-2012/9

Watch this space!

Deep Sunset in Kathmandu

Jan 6, 2012

One of the reasons we are here in Kathmandu is to supervise the final finishing of a large Deep Sunset rug with bespoke colours before it is sent to our client in Mexico. The weavers have worked incredibly hard to produce this piece ahead of schedule. We have seen the progress of the rug on the loom and are now excited to see it in its last day of production. Here is the original design and the colours we picked together with the interior designers to adapt Deep Sunset to work with their colour scheme.

Below you can see the Deep Sunset's progress as it is being woven.
Each weaver weaves the width of the shoulders - about 1m - so this 6m rug required 6 weavers
to weave side by side - at a 100 knots they weave around 12cm a day.
This is the ancient art of weaving on the loom that has not changed in centuries!

After the weaving was completed the Deep Sunset rug was washed in Himalayan rainwater and
then dried in the sun on the roof tops - you get an idea of the scale of it in this picture below:

Once the rug has been dried the final finishing starts - binding the edges and carving definition
between the colours with very large hand held carving scissors.

We double checked the rug's colours, the finishing and made an general inspection of the rug -
We were very happy!
 
The Deep Sunset was ready to go after a couple of hours of final finishing. It took quite a few
strong men to get it loaded on a palette and into the FedEx van.
It left the Kathmandu Valley on Friday the 5th January and by Monday the 8th January it was with
our client in the USA where it was going on to Mexico. Well done FedEx we are once again
impressed that you can go from Kathmandu to California in one weekend!

Our client (one of the top 100 interior designers in the USA) was delighted:
"The rug will be stunning in the home in Mexico and I can't wait to see it pull everything together.
Thank you so much for everything".
We celebrated with a slap up Nepalaese meal with our weavers -
the local spinach we ate in this restaurant is absoultely wonderful!

Back in Kathmandu!

Jan 5, 2012

What a wonderful way to start 2012 back in the foot hills of the Himalayas on the outskirts of the Kathmandu Valley!
We finally landed here yesterday after circling above Kathmandu airport for over an hour - the pilot didn't feel the cloud conditions were safe to land.
To land you need to drop 3,000 feet very quickly to get through the hilly peaks around the valley to the relatively short runway and the pilots rely mainly on sight rather than radar. The thick cloud covers today made this very tricky. So we -my daughter and I - had the opportunity to take in the wonderful scenery of the snow capped Himalayan peaks jutting through the sea of clouds for an hour !

Finally the pilot decided the time was right and we dropped 3,000feet very quickly and the hills surrounding the Kathmandu valley and city appeared and before we knew it we were finally safely landed... here are the stunning views from our Air Indian flight:

Guardian Weekend Magazine

Oct 29, 2011

The Guardian Weekend magazine published a wonderful article:
 "Home is where the art is" Be inspired by 20th-century masters - Picasso, Matisse, Miro and Mondrian - and bring home some colour. Styling: Susanna Powell  Photography: Franck Allais

Here is the spread from the article featuring the "After Matisse Rug".

SuperDesign

Oct 13, 2011

SuperDesign curated by Patrick Brillet now in its 5th year opened with a fantastic party -
the place was buzzing with lots of excitment as this year's offerings were unveiled.