Karin Eriksson

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KARIN AT WORK

I loved the glimpse we got in the Decor8 article mentioned below of Atelier LZC’s stunning design studio. At mirror mirror we get enormous pleasure from sourcing products from talented designers and craftspeople who make their products themselves, often fully by hand or finishing them by hand, rather than producing them by machine or in some vast sweatshop in China. It means that you won’t see many of our products on your local High Street and that very often the product you end up buying will be completely unique.

One such supplier is Swedish ceramicist Karin Eriksson. Reading her beautiful and inspiring blog was one of the reasons I started blogging in the first place. She recently wrote a great post showing herself at work making her beautiful Signe vases. I knew that she made her things by hand, but I’d just never focused on just what that entailed (duh!) – the amount of skill and practice and time and patience and effort that has gone into and goes into creating each piece.

THE FINISHED ARTICLE

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Atelier LZC

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A few new products from Atelier LZC added to the site this weekend – two stunning oval screen-printed mirrors and some cute little cut-steel hanging butterflies and flowers. Just festoon (isn’t that a nice word?) them around the house for a bit of Springtime jollity.

I absolutely love Atelier LZC’s stuff. They have an incredible colour-sense – using unusual colour combinations which always work together perfectly – and their designs are spare, modern and pretty, whilst never ever veering towards the sugary or twee. We’ve been stocking their things since mirror mirror started up 18 months ago and they’ve been going from strength to strength – appearing with great regularity in the design press and with more and more people looking for them on the search engines.

As well as the mirrors and hanging objects, we also stock teatowels and a wonderful cut-steel hanging Tree of Life which have always been amongst our most popular products.

I wanted to do a little piece on the company itself, but Holly at decor8 beat me to it and has written a fantastic article on them, including an interview and pictures of their glorious workspace.

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Nostalgia

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Have just watched a documentary about the rise and fall of Smash Hits – the pop magazine to end all pop magazines – which closed last month.

Haven’t looked at it in years of course, but read it religiously in ahem, the early 80s – when Neil Tennant was a journalist and not a Pet Shop Boy – when it was witty, irreverent, glamorous, trashy and exciting.

The programme was like an anthem for my lost youth and now I’m feeling sad, nostalgic, overweight and old. RIP.

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Vogue drops on my mat

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I’m an absolute magazine junkie and keep thousands lying around, thinking that one day I’ll cut lots of inspirational pictures out of them and create fabulous mood boards to inspire and focus the buying process (which to be fair I used to do pre-Minx).

I hate to throw them away knowing that they are full of incredibly important information which will no doubt come in useful one day, but which I just don’t quite know how to use at present. (The fact that when I do find myself needing information I invariably look for it online is by-the-by).

But today marks a new beginning. As each magazine arrives in the house I’m going to scan in the things I like and then THROW IT AWAY. (The very thought is making me feel quite peculiar).

So, April’s Vogue. The whole world is clearly having Rachel Weisz moment. Vogue has a big interview and fabulous photoshoot where she is looking quite ridiculously beautiful (whereas normally she doesn’t do much for me).

Not sure about the sequins though

She’s also starring in this ad for Burberry which I rather like (though obviously not the fact that it’s Burberry.) Rather twee – for content I preferred the edginess of the Kate Moss days – but I do like the effect of photographs layered on top of each other and was thinking it would be fun to do a catalogue like that.

It’s funny that Rachel is supposed to be this classic English rose, when I think she’s the daughter of Eastern European immigrants.

Also really loved these pictures though wasn’t sure why – definitely not the clothes. Then saw that they were taken by Mario Testino which explains a lot. I like their dayglo perfection juxtaposed with the raw, blurred black and white and he makes the model seem so appealing.

Finally was rather taken with this lovely picture of beauty packaging which reminded me of these gorgeous soaps on the Decor8 blog and also our own candles from Sage Jewelry.
Oh and I found this picture rather inspirational.

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Daffodils

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Steely skies, bitter winds, driving rain, bare trees. But today I saw the first daffodils of Spring. Winter is over.

Taken with my phone in Battersea Park
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Make Mother’s Day

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In between all the gadding about we’ve just managed to add some new bits and pieces to the site – kitsch but gorgeous Swarovski crystal mobile phone charms; a new fragrance of Mathias candles and bath confetti ; a lovely white beaded lariat necklace (perfect for this season’s white mania), a small butterfly bowl by Mizuyo Yamashita, a new tea towel design from Atelier LZC and the crystal Peacock bracelet by Darling It’s Perfect.

We’ve also set up a page of Mother’s Day gift ideas (so now there’s no excuse to get her a boring old bunch of daffs) including three new themed gift sets – Yummy Mummy (for the mummy who loves to cook), Mamma Mia (for the mummy who loves to garden) and Groovy Mama (for the mummy who loves to shop).

Hope these help you all spoil your mothers rotten. (Now that I am one, I have finally realised that mothers are indeed HEROINES).

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Yo ho ho and a bottle of … milk

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Fancy dress day at the Minx’s Sing and Sign class. The theme was ‘the sea’ so we thought we’d be original and go as pirates – the Minx as the captain and Mummy as the mate.

Daddy duly manufactured a sparkly pirate hat and off we went, to find that every single other person in the class had also turned up as a pirate (AND made a lot more effort than we had). Still a lot of fun was had by all. The hat was, of course, not worn at all, though we much enjoyed torturing her with it.

(In answer to your inevitable questions – no the Minx is nothing like the baby in ‘Meet the Fockers’. She only knows one sign, and since that is the sign for ‘hat’ I doubt very much that it is going to be much use.)

Have just seen Cally talking about the incredible costumes for her ‘Under the Sea’ party on her beautiful new blog and I am further shamed.

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Cultural afternoon

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Six mummies, six babies and six buggies (and NO lift, thanks V&A) finally made it to Fashion-ology – the V&A exhibit on Anna Piaggi, the legendary writer for Vogue Italia and designers’ friend and muse.

The exhibition was interesting but ultimately slightly disappointing – too many display cabinets showing back copies of Vogue and not enough of her fabulously eccentric clothes. I must confess that I also didn’t really know enough about her to understand exactly what I was seeing at the time – now that I’ve had a chance to read the excellent mini-catalogue, I’d like to go back and see the exhibit again.

To me there was also an element of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ about it all. It can’t be denied that her clothes, while undeniably striking, eccentric and most beautifully made, are often completely ridiculous. Still it must be nice to be able to just phone up one of your designer friends, tell them that you want to look like a magazine or such like and have them run up a little number for you.

We also applauded the fact that Anna checks out the location of a soiree or reception ahead of time, to ensure that her costume is appropriate.

I actually much preferred the second fashion exhibit currently on at the V&A – Popaganda: The Fashion and Style of Jean Charles de Castelbajac . This was much more about the clothes, cabinets full of crazy, experimental, humorous Pop Art clothes, which, with the benefit of hindsight, one could tell had been both hugely influential on recent fashion trends and occasionally looked surprisingly wearable.

I loved the iconic fur coat made of teddy bears, the ‘Tribute to Jimi Hendrix’ mini dress with afro hair tutu and the parachute ballgown, though I must confess to having a soft spot for de Castelbajac ever since someone gave me his perfume when I lived in France twenty years ago, which I wore all the time until I ran out and couldn’t find it in England.

Interestingly the Minx was also completely captivated – though I think mostly by the accompanying pounding music and the great lighting. She did however stare long and hard at this outfit before looking away rather bewildered. Surrealism is clearly wasted on the young.

We repaired afterwards to Patisserie Valerie on the Brompton Road, which was VERY child-friendly, with handsome waiters for the Minx to flirt with and the best ‘pain au raisin’ this side of of the Channel and agreed that our cultural afternoon had been a roaring success.

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