Hello All!
I am a little behind on my journal as you may have noticed. With lots of lovely African baskets arriving, catalogues to compile, pricing to nail, styling and photography to crack on with for the Xmas fair season kicking off. But I am conscious my little journal needs some attention (aka content) so here goes.
With Autumn well under way (although I am loving these warm days), our thoughts return to the interior or as we call it, our home.
I know I have posted this quote a couple of times already, but as we retreat into our nests now the nights draw in, this beautifully-written description of a home and what it gives us, always pops into my head.
But ere he [Moley] closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back …He saw clearly….how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life ….. and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to; this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”
Dulce Domum: The Wind In The Willows
Kenneth Grahame
It is our familiarity and affection with the ‘stuff’ in our homes that makes them our homes.
So I have put together a simple collection of my own favourite and familiar things.
For you, they read as “series” of images and for me they were a great experiment back in the spring, to practice my hand at interior styling. But, looking at them now in a “styled” setting (for the purposes of this journal), they have more resonance for me as individual objects: granny’s teapot, old Vietnamese trays, new fabric from my library, birthday present spoons, a beautiful new planter-with-pink-stripe, mysterious Prussian helmets…..
But styling is a way of telling a story to those who are not connected with those objects on the page and mixing up a whole load of details: texture, reflection, colour, pattern all wrapped into one happy whole-I hope.
