Jona Hoad is a UK-based lighting designer, who specialises in wallpaper-like lighting panels and lighting installations for hotel bars, restaurants and your house if you’ve got enough money.
Here are some pictures from the DeVigne Bar in Marylebone and the Vanilla Bar in Soho. Sometimes I do like a bit of spangly overthetopness.
I also liked these pictures from his website, which reveal that things are not always as they seem in the world of interiors photoshoots.
If you’re mourning the loss of Domino and live on the West side of the US, you could do a lot worse than to pick up Sunset. It’s more of a lifestyle-y magazine than pure decor, but they do feature some great ‘real-life’ interiors and gardens and also have some fabulous recipes. The website is really excellent too.
A couple of nights ago we made this recipe for supper which I share with you because it is perfect weekday supper fodder – quick, easy, healthy, unusual and utterly, utterly delicious. Chicken is braised in a sauce of chopped tomatoes, canned chickpeas and chopped dried apricots with middle-eastern spices, which we served with couscous and spinach. The only changes we made from the recipe in the link was to use chicken thighs not breast and to not add any extra sugar, the apricots make it quite sweet enough as it is.
I took some photos but wasn’t very happy with the performance of my little point and shoot camera in the low evening light. Instead I took my slightly blurred photo and ran it through the completely awesome Poladroid app, which makes your existing digital photos look like Polaroids – not just the border but also the intriguing white balance and slight soft focus. You even see them ‘developing’ before your eyes. Huge fun.
Patrizio di Renzo is an International fashion photographer from Switzerland. {via Kanye’s very cool blog}
I’ve just received a copy of some great coverage we got just before Christmas in Homes & Gardens – Germany of all places, including a great full page picture of the Boudoir Embroidered Cushion by Dishya. (From what I remember of A-level German the text is pretty complimentary.)
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The Husband only offers tech support for PCs so there’s no way I could ever get a Mac, however much I might crave the ethereal beauty of their designs.
And I have been able to keep my jealousy under control because, to date, only PC users have been able to use Picasa – Google’s utterly, fantastically, amazing and FREE photo editing software, which I use for pretty much all my photo post-production and to make clever collages like the one above.
Now though, not only do all you Mac users get to taunt me with the slimness and whiteness of your laptops, but you can also sign up for the Picasa for Mac beta. I hate you all.
We are back. UK was fab. I have flu. Off to bed. 
Here are a few pics of lovely OLD buildings….and one or two new ones.
Apologies for the lack of posting recently. As you can imagine this is a crazy time of year for us, with lots of re-ordering, getting new stuff on the site, crafting emails to send to our mailing list and sending out press releases. This morning I was photographing a ‘roomset’ shot of the Pearl Lowe lace tablecloths for the Daily Mail (one of the UK’s biggest newspapers), so please keep your fingers crossed that they decide to use it.
Getting the exposure right on this one was hard. This was one of the few I took which showed the detail of the tablecloth while still retaining the colour and detail in the curtains. Fortunately the sun came out at just the right moment to add some texture to the shot.
We don’t usually get good sunsets from our house since it faces southeast (some very fine sunrises though) but this evening there was a sunset that filled the whole sky.
The press really seem to love our stacking things by young Manchester-based designer Hannah Tofalos.
This month we’ve had some great coverage of Hannah’s Stacking Eggcups in Easy Living magazine
and her Stacking Jars in Grand Designs magazine.
The latter also represents another press showing for the picture I took in natural light on my dining room table.
Our Bee mirror by Atelier LZC also got a nice mention on the Ideal Home website.
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We’ve still got a couple of Press opportunities which still might materialise this Christmas so keep your fingers crossed that they actually happen. All a bit on tenterhooks here, still waiting for Christmas to start properly…
