Sometimes fashion is the leading edge in capturing the zeitgeist, and sometimes it's a follower. In this instance, when Marc Jacobs sent his models out at the recent Autumn/ Winter 2015 Ready to Wear show in New York, he was way behind the times - the prints that he used for his collection were all sourced from William Morris & Co, founder of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic movement, and were in many instances 140 years old.


There's a shift in Interiors and Fashion at the moment to embrace quieter, more muted tones, pattern on pattern, a bohemian vibe and to embrace individuality and the hand made.


For the past 8 years or so the feel has been decidedly influenced by Hollywood Regency style as demonstrated above - lots of painted  bamboo furniture, bright white walls offsetting strong saturated colour and bold geometric prints, Foo dogs, bar carts, zebra print, and gourd shaped lamps (or the cockatoo lamp bases) with mismatched shades. It's a little bit preppy, strongly graphic, and has a 50's retro vibe to it. It's also been beloved of bloggers the world over (just add peonies and a colour matched macaron) and is now a look that's been widely commercially copied and filtered decidedly into the mass market with Target enthusiastically joining in.

The shift towards the Arts and Crafts movement comes from the current embracing of the home made, the artisanal, the bespoke… a nostalgia perhaps for the notion of individuality and honesty in design. All those people with beards running Bars who like to tell you earnestly about their specially foraged herbs arranged on the share plates and the selection of crafted artisanal beers they stock are a key leading indicator of the seismic shift in the creative sphere. When the world gets a little bit crazy, as it is at the moment with rampant mass consumerism and the instability terrorism is creating across the globe,  people seek a feel of the unique and the sense of bohemian individuality, the authenticity of provenance, and hand in hand the desire for comfort and home.


The Arts and Crafts movement has its genesis with William Morris, principle founder in 1861. Morris was an artist, and his designs for fabrics, wallpapers, tapestries and furniture, and the approximately 600 books, published letters and papers he wrote during his lifetime about his subjects of interest were highly influential around the world. They captured the mood of the time, which was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851 which displayed the mass production of consumer goods. The disappearance of the hand made and crafted - the disappearance of the artist - he and others in the movement worked in direct opposition to.



 His designs were influenced by the Medieval period, with a lyrical and flowing use of repetitive naturalistic pattern, and had a complexity and richness of design by the layering of pattern on pattern. There's a very strong play of foreground and background in his designs giving them a three dimensional quality and great depth. All his wallpapers were printed using woodblocks, and his fabrics used natural dyes which faded evenly and gave a gentle patina. The fabrics and wallpapers are still produced in England today (the company is now owned by Sanderson), with a very hand made feel to the papers and fabric produced with more modern techniques.


To modernise the range many are being recoloured to suit the current palette in interiors (the originals are also still available) with muted neutrals across the range, and foil elements in the wallpapers. Many new designs have also been created using tile patterns found at his original house (The Red House). I was at a showing yesterday for Morris & Co, and the way in which they were presenting the fabrics (as demonstrated in the images above) proves how modern they can be -  they've mixed in Mid-Century Modern furniture with the traditional wallpapers and fabrics to give a freshness and vibrancy to the designs and show how it can  fit with modern life for a younger generation of Morris enthusiasts.

Here in Adelaide we are very well aware of Morris's influence on design - the second largest collection of original William Morris & Co pieces are held at the Art Gallery of South Australia (the largest collection is held by the V&A in London). His biggest patron was a wealthy Adelaide family - the Barr-Smiths, who furnished 7 of their large houses with near continual shipments of rugs, stained glass windows, furniture, tapestries, wallpapers and furnishing fabrics sent from England.


The Arts and Crafts period influenced many of the very large houses and their interiors designed in and around Adelaide (Stirling in the Adelaide Hills has many of them) - Adelaide had many wealthy families at the time from Agricultural and mining booms. As tends to happen amongst friends you will often find that one will influence the others, and many of the wealthy Adelaide families collected Morris & Co and designed houses in the then fashionable Arts and Crafts style. Most of the houses have subsequently been modernised and redecorated and lost much of the richness of the original interior design schemes as a sparser aesthetic took over. A good example is below - this grand Victorian era staircase and entry hall would have originally had rich persian rug style runners on the stairs rather than pale carpet, and walls covered with a patterned wallpaper, rather than being painted out in varying shades of cream.

If you're fortunate to be in Birmingham in the UK this summer, then you'll be able to view the exhibition of Birmingham's Holy Grail tapestries at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. They are exhibited very infrequently due to their light sensitivity, but are stunningly detailed and large scale - worth a look if you can get there.


Apparently there is also an upcoming collaboration between British clothing manufacturer Barbour and Morris & Co with Barbour jackets being lined with his iconic fabric designs.

This all just proves that everything old is new again, it's all just tweaked a smidge to make it current… and that the fickle wheel of fashion is moving yet again to embrace the Arts and Crafts aesthetic.

Up until the past few days, it's been an unusually cool start to Autumn in Adelaide. This has meant that for once the weather is matching what the season says it is supposed to be - we've had rain, grey days and crisp days and nights, rather than the usual March bake of 40C weather and Autumn fashions in the stores.


Leaves are turning bright crimson and saffron colours in the garden, but there are still the last of the roses putting on a display as well.


I went to a lovely Afternoon Tea at a friend's house out in her garden (it's currently School Holidays) - this was the setting. It wasn't quite so serenely peaceful as it might look in this photo though, as sitting at the adjacent table were 7 children under the age of 9 all demanding constant top ups of drinks, scones and sandwiches.



My children have spent a day collecting pine cones up in the hills in my Dad's garden, which which I've created a few arrangements in lieu of flowers about the place.  

And I've been cooking up a storm out of my new cookbook, Jamie Oliver's "Comfort Food". I've always found his recipes to be very reliable. I've so far made the Moussaka and the Slow Cooked Shoulder of Pork with a fennel and potato gratin. Both were big hits, although the Moussaka was frankly very time consuming. The Pork was cooked for an Easter Lunch with my family, and was perfect as I put it in the oven the night before and let it cook away slowly overnight leaving the morning free for the egg hunt and other Eastery things with the children.


With the change in season I've been turning out cupboards and drawers all through the house and taking large boxes of outgrown or worn out clothes to the Charity shop. I haven't yet read the cult book "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo but may yet do so - have any of you read it? Thoughts? The clear out has left room for a couple of new Winter additions though.



Above is my new Cable Melbourne jumper in grey (this is the back view of it - love the detail in the stitching and the curved hem). I've written about Cable Melbourne before as they are my favourite knitwear brand - much of it is made in Australia and the designs are modern and flattering (and warm!). I will usually buy one or two of their excellent pieces each Winter to add to my existing repertoire of knitwear. This jumper goes well with two of my existing scarfs, one silk in grey with orange edging (it's Fleurs et Papillons de Tissus), and a more casual grey toned Mulberry one that was a gift from a friend for my 40th. I've already worn all of these combos out and about with skinny jeans and ballet flats, and once it cools down further the new leather leggings that I bought heavily reduced in the January sales from Joseph (via David Jones).


On house interiors news I finally had confirmation that the lamp order I've been patiently waiting on from the US has finally left, and is now on a very slow boat inching its way to me. I have 10 lamps in the order, so I can't wait until they're here… it will certainly be a little brighter at night in the house. I've also just ordered two more chairs for the Sitting Room/ Library. They are going to go on either side of the card table under the painting, and will be in this Neisha Crosland fabric (swatch in the photo above) that I've been wanting to use for a very long time somewhere. Believe it or not neutrals can be the hardest thing to decorate with - there are literally a million shades of beige out there ranging from grey/ yellow/ pink/ green and brown toned shades so it was a happy day to find this fabric works perfectly in the room. The cushions I've got underway are still being made up by the workroom, so I'll likely have everything arrive at once to finish off this room with the lamps/ cushions/ chairs. Fun!

I haven't done a Before and After of the house for a while, but I think this one is a pretty good transformation. Originally this room was the kitchen in our house, and would have been a kitchen from the time the house was built in 1901. It had last been renovated in the 1970's, and we used it as a kitchen/ dining room for the first three years we lived in the house up until the time the new extension was completed. We had made some small adjustments - during the renovations of the front of the house prior to moving in we'd bricked up one of the doors into the kitchen to the small adjacent servery (which became the children's bathroom), leaving one access point from the hallway.



The other additional problem with this room is that the cellar is directly underneath it, and when a bathroom had been added onto the back of the house the original stairs were covered over, so a hatch had been cut out and a very steep stair/ladder added to access the cellar. As part of the extension we reopened up the original stair location which enabled us to remove the hatch in the old kitchen floor and re-board over the floors. A bedroom with cellar access would have been a little odd...


The kitchen was definitely past its use by date, but the main problem that I had with this space related to the change in use and the plan for the reorganisation of rooms that we made. This room faces South so gets very little natural light, not ideal for a Child's bedroom, and was something that is exacerbated by the veranda that runs around the entire perimeter of the old part of the house making it even darker. The other thing was that I planned to take out a corner of the room to create the Guest W/C/ powder room with access from a new door in the hall. This bedroom was already going to be the smallest bedroom in the house, and was becoming even smaller by removing part of it for this purpose…. coupled with it being dark, having no interesting architectural features such as cornices, deep skirting boards or a fireplace (as it was a kitchen, these things had never been put in the room), it really was the worst room in the house.

To overcome all these deficiencies I decided that the best way to deal with the small space was to build in furniture. We needed to accommodate a desk (for future study, as my son is currently only 4 years old), bookshelves, somewhere to sit, a wardrobe, bed and bedside table. The room could easily have ended up feeling crowded by all these disparate elements, but by blocking the wardrobe, bookshelves, desk and seating into a custom built in unit I designed, it freed up floor area for playing, and created a neat and practical storage solution. With the absence of visual clutter the room feels more spacious than it is.
I designed this unit to run along the wall that has the window, as our windows are unusually low it precludes having standard height furniture like a desk or bed against it as they would cover over it. So the seating for the room is a window seat with a deep cushion and built in storage under, a wardrobe to the left of this, and on the right a built in desk with bookshelves above that are covered by doors when not in use. The desk has a pin board backing to it and built in power points for a lamp and for computer charging points.

In terms of colour choices for the room, that was determined by my then 2 year old Son. I really believe it is important to involve children in the design of their bedroom. Even very small children can usually tell  you what colour they want their special space to be. I do try to balance this out though by making a room that can grow with the child into teenage years. It was therefore a slight challenge to be informed by my Son that he wanted an orange bedroom - his favourite colour. There was absolutely no way I was going to paint the walls orange - it's just not a restful colour, and I worried that he may well not want an orange bedroom as a teenager at any rate, particularly if it was so in your face. So the Anna Spiro for Porters Paints wallpaper "Higgledy Piggledy Stripe" in Chilli Coral was the perfect choice - all the white balances out the orange nicely - it's cheery and bright without being juvenile or unsophisticated. My son then said that he wanted light blue for his blind and window seat cushion - his second favourite colour. So China Seas "Aga Reverse" fabric in turquoise was the final choice (he approved all samples of wallpaper and fabric). The wallpaper needed a vibrant blue, rather than a pastel.
The main problem I then had was bedding. Unfortunately in Australia if you have a boy your choices are either blue (navy or sky) or grey bed linen. Any turquoise is usually in girls bedding and comes with flowers, as does anything with orange - usually it's balanced out with pink. In the end I ordered from the US from Serena and Lily a turquoise bedspread and matching pillow shams. I also ordered a white doona cover with orange frame border… it was irritating to have to do this, but I held off buying it for over a year in the hope that something would turn up locally that would work - nothing did.


The bed is from Lilly and Lolly (Australian company), who manufacture in Australia, and is solid Tasmanian Oak. It's the colour box bed and matching single drawer bedside table unit. I've been really happy with the quality- very solid, well made and should last a long time.
The bedside lamp is a cheapie from Freedom Furniture that fortuitously matched the turquoise colour with the shade and cord, the artwork above the bedside is from Tiggywinkle children's boutique in Melbourne who carry a large range of original artworks suitable for children. The artist is a botanical artist, so it's a beautifully detailed illustration. The other art in the room is the large framed animal alphabet scarf over the radiator, and the room really doesn't need anything more than that. I've hung all the artwork deliberately lower - you are supposed to hang art with the viewing point at eye level, but as this room is for a small child I decided to keep the scale low by hanging it lower - it works better with the low lines of the bed and bedside table too.