How Dark Is Dark?
Recently I’ve been getting into Abigail Ahern a UK interior designer who has more than a penchant for colour. I love her irreverent use of all things quirky, she mixes scale, texture & colour in a way that is always interesting & I think somehow liberating. She’s not afraid to literally spray paint a room in one colour! & happily throws together anything in an effortlessly artful way. To use her term she constantly bangs on about using dark inky hues on interior walls & using strong pops of colour in furniture, objects & art. Just quietly I’m seduced by the idea & have been coveting the concept of going dark in my apartment. But how dark? And what shade or hue? Colour to me should be uplifting, never a downer, so this kind of thing is a real commitment & you’ve got to get it right. I want my heart to skip a beat when I walk in. I’ve always been a big fan & still am of dark colours for exteriors, i have been known to call black an environmental colour when thinking about it for a house. But in the interior? I’m thinking petrol blues & dark gasoline grey but not sure yet. I’ll be happily experimenting on myself during May so stay tuned for the results. Above images are from Abigail’s blog. So fab don’t you agree?
Kabinett – Kyneton
This is my last post on little Kyneton gems for a while. If you’ve never made the trip before, take a day & head down to Piper St, there is so much creative stuff going on. Great little cafes like “inner biscuit” & a lovely old style gastro pub The Royal George are well worth a pit stop. Artist John Lloyd has a shop there, you’ll often find him painting out the back in his studio. Make sure you also pop into Prunella (recent post).
My last Kyneton find: Kabinett. It’s a vintage shop which has any number of great things in it. The difference is that often country stores hold a whole lot of promises but once inside there’s a bit of a mish-mash. Not here, and I’ve got to say, this isn’t the case for any of the shops in this strip. They’re very well curated & run by passionate people who are all creatives at heart & doing great stuff. Quite a few pieces like the deer head & the green cabinet from the country house project we did came from this store. Well worth a look.
Flowers by Prunella – Kyneton
Which five words best describe you?
How did you get your career started and what path have you taken since?
What’s your proudest career achievement?
What are you passionate about?
Bronzed Beauty
Whilst in Kyneton for a rare weekend away a couple of weeks back we visited Stockroom – an art gallery, vintage & retail store on Piper St. Look out for a post specifically about the space & the people who run it as my photographer partner is planning to do a series on “creative spaces”. Apart from the art, Stockroom is now also the destination to see Boyd Alternatives beautiful engineered stone baths & basins. I just fall in love with the romantic shapes & scale of these pieces every time i see them. You may remember we used the big oval bath in the bedroom of a country house which is about to feature in Home Beautiful.
My new discovery is Deborah Boyd is now doing basins in cast bronze which I nearly died for they were so fantastic. They’re the kind of thing that’s both olde world & achingly chic at the same time. Complemented with aged mirrors, the bronze basins, for the right client, are my next favourite thing.