Monthly Archives: July 2011

A mismatch made in heaven

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If there’s one thing we salvage sisters love, its a good old chair. There has been no shortage of recent posts on chairs (lucy, gemma), but why stop there…especially when i have another chair project up my sleeve, together with a need for some joinery advice for those so inclined. I bought this for a few quid from Drum Farm Antiques, fast becoming one of my favourite edinburgh salvage venues. It obviously needs the dowel replaced, and a lick of paint, but the basic structure is sturdy enough.

 My vision is for a fine and varied collection of cunningly sourced (ie cutting out the middle-design-man) mid-century, personally restored chairs for our kitchen table. In a perfect world, that would include a selection of these beauties.

1. Wishbone chair by Hans Wegner2. Bentwood bistro chair

3. Industrial stacking chairs

4. Vintage Ercol

There are a few different approaches to mismatching dining table chairs.

1. Different colours to accentuate variety

2. Keeping a theme on colour and mixing up the styles

3. A wide variety of styles (era, texture, shape…)

The best thing about mix and match chairs is that you can constantly replace and re-arrange as you gradually build up your collection.

Pallet hi!

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Hello from the end of a sunny national holiday in Northern Ireland. I don’t hold a lot of sentiment for the spirit behind the 12th of July Jubilations, instead I enjoy the eerily quiet roads and streets (as long as you avoid any band parades!) as the annual mass exodus of our wee country occurs, for those who also seek to avoid the annual face off between our communities!

We did mark it with our own camp bonfire, and first experimental camping-with-toddler expedition.. summary: it takes a lot of pain to have that much fun!

Anyway I just thought I’d be lazy and share these rather more novel and useful ideas over at design sponge (one of my favourite design blogs) for what you could do with any spare pallets, if it’s possible to find any round here, where on earth do they get them all every year?

 

I must say seeing one of these constructions in real life is not uplifting but definately breath taking! Wonder how it would go down, if I attempt to nick a few next year to complete some nice salvage projects!

Oh and here’s another great idea, a spare bed always comes in handy!

Check out this photography blog for some more heart stopping images of the 11th night traditions.

And for more pallet gems for all you junkies.. look here at Bettyjoy’s blog, and here on google images.. yum!

Image credits: title image – tell it in colour blog. Pallet hi image – Megan Young

Pallet bed images at Funky Bear Decor blog

 

Homes and Antiques

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If you happen to be so inclined, this month’s (August) Homes and Antiques magazine is worth a look. Its a vintage special, in celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the Festival of Britain, which is marked at the end of this month by a Vintage festival at the Southbank centre in London. These 50s living rooms are currently on display in the Royal Festival Hall.

This month’s mag is a winner for all things kitsch and retro, including fabulous and 50s-inspired homes, an exhaustive list of the 50 best vintage shops across the UK, an interesting feature on 1950s (surprise surprise!) hand bags, and lots of other tit-bits and knowledge.

I have subscribed to a few ‘interiors/lifestyle’ magazines over the years, and i must say as a recent subscriber to H&A i’m pretty impressed with this one. They seem to achieve a good mix of covetable homes, events, designers and artists, and informative content. Each month features a product traced through the years, charting key design developments, last month featuring a particular salvage-sister favourite – chairs. Not being particularly designer-savvy, i have recently felt marginally more informed on key trendsetters (Ercol, Lucienne Day, Arne Jacobsen….). My only complaint would be its south of the border focus, for example only one Scottish vintage shop is featured in the list of 50, though certainly worthy of merit (Herman Brown, West Port, Edinburgh.)

I leave you with a few classic h&a ‘mid-century’ home pics to whet your appetite.

 

Type drawer update

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I thought i’d update folks on my type drawer efforts, considerable as they were. The main unforeseen challenge was the logistic aspect of putting all the eyelets on the upper part of each square. The angles just weren’t made for such an activity. However having eventually figured out a way, i then realised all my earrings were too long for most of the squares. So now i need to find some other little trinkets to go in those slots. Overall, i was pleased with the outcome: pretty storage/display with a vintage feel. Its all good!

Economy Gastronomy

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Shopping for cookbooks in second hand shops can be quite unsatisfying. Rows of 1980’s m&s freebies, rubbish cupcake booklets and the odd obligatory delia smith classic. Purchasing cookbooks is something i would suggest requires considerable selectivity and deliberation, given the vast array of options on the market. Which means buying second hand becomes even more of a challenge. In general, i tend to only buy books written by specific favoured chefs, ones who have actually written the book and thus tried and tested all the recipes themselves. I can heartily recommend the following 4 books, all lovingly discovered in my local charity shops.

This completes my set of much loved covent garden soup books, the above one containing more pulse and beans recipes in addition to yummy soups and other liquid glory.
Sam and Sam Clark wrote this one some years after the original Moro cookbook, both of which are based on mediterranean/middle eastern cuisine. Before opening their london restaurant, they drove from spain to the sahara in search of recipes and ingredients. This latest one is based on using ingredients grown in their london allotment, together with sumptuous spices and sweet flavours from the med.
I can’t recommend highly enough Allegra McEvedy, she is my favourite food writer having discovered her a few years ago via the guardian food supplement. Her Leon books (1 & 2) include all the recipes from the london-based fast food restaurant, plus a ton of other family heirloom kitchen secrets, plus fabulous styling to boot. This latest book was recently a bbc 1 series of the same clever name. The ‘economy’ is not based on buying cheap food, but buying something exciting (eg a massive leg of lamb) and then using it in various ways over 3 meals.    These books need no introduction! I recently toyed with buying them on amazon at a hefty cost (for, realistically, a set of book that i will never use, but feel the need to own having enjoyed the film a lot). So i was pleased as punch to pick these up last week for £1 each. Who knows – maybe one day i’ll try my hand at Quenelles de poisson, or Rognons de veau en casserole…