Faded patchwork

Richard Diebenkorn

I am very pleased to have caught the Richard Diebenkorn show at the Royal Academy before it closed. I have to confess I knew nothing about him beforehand, but looking through the RA website I expected that I would love the later abstract paintings.

In fact when I got to the show I found that it was his mid-career figurative works that spoke most to me. I find the sense that the landscapes above and below are both flattened and contoured very interesting, and I love the sense of light and shadow. You can anticipate the clean abstraction of his later paintings, but it is the detail and the specificness of the landscape which make these so wonderful.

Perhaps my favourite paining of the show was this one of a knife in a glass of water. Again you can see some of the qualities of his later abstraction - the flattened planes of colour and clean lines and shapes - but it is the weighty realness of the objects that most appeals to me.  

Pleasing patterns

Here are some nice examples of patterning in architectural details I have spotted recently.

From top: Smithfields market, Clapton Methodist church, Smithfields stall roller,outside Temple underground station, Smithfields market,

Sfera - Milan 2015

We were so pleased to have our Aerial fabrics used by Sfera again for their feature at Milan. This year they showed a new range of furniture for children designed by Shigeru Mashiro and made by Kyoto master woodworker Naomi Toda.

The Sfera showroom is always an oasis of calm serenity and the new pieces are exquisite - beautiful organic shapes with lovely use of different woods. It is no surprise that Monocle listed the collection among their highlights of Milan.

You can read more about the pieces on Sfera's magazine here.

Hitch Mylius

The Hitch Mylius factory is a magical place. Housed in a beautiful reconditioned 1950's industrial building in Enfield, it is a real working factory with a wonderful team of specialist craftsmen.

Although much of Hitch Mylius's upholstery is done in plain and textured fabrics they are masters in pattern matching. This is Mustafa (above) cutting out the pattern pieces for their hm46 chair in our Totley fabric.

The precision is extended to every detail - this is Trevor measuring the buttoning and giving the chair a final check before the arms are added.

For details on the Hitch Mylius pop-up at the Malmaison Hotel in Charterhouse Square during Clerkenwell design Week please see their news page.

For more details on the Hitch Mylius product ranges please see their website.

Stanley Spencer - Sandham Memorial Chapel

We went the other day to have another look at the Stanley Spencer paintings in the Sandham Memorial Chapel at Boughclere. It is a magical place - you really sense Spencer at his most visionary and his most humdrum at the same time. And I guess that is precisely the point. 

The paintings fill the walls of the chapel entirely and feel like Renaissance frescoes. They all are about the day to day details of Spencer's life during the First World War - first as a hospital orderly in Bristol and then later on the Salonika front. They record the minute everyday routines of jam sandwiches for hospital tea and washing out lockers. There are none of the horrors of war that Spencer undoubtedly witnessed here, and yet you feel that the process of painting them must have been a really therapeutic one for Spencer.

Spencer always pays meticulous detail to textures in his painting and I love the way he depicts textiles. You can see it particularly in the paintings of the sacking aprons the orderlies are wearing in the painting above. He really understands the texture and feel of the fabric.


There is a great article about the paintings on the Guardian website here, and details of the chapel on the National Trust website.

Photos: John Hammond - National Trust.

Artek 402

This is the iconic Artek 402 chair designed by Alvar Aalto in 1933 and upholstered in our Totley fabric (A side). It is amazing how clean and contemporary the design still looks.