Not For Squares

As a child I was, like most chil­dren, a massive Enid Blyton fan. Massive.

The highly inform­at­ive Enid Blyton Soci­ety list all the book jack­ets and I found the ones that I actu­ally read. And the memor­ies came flood­ing back. So I thought I’d share them with you.

My all time favour­ite books were the Faraway Tree adven­tures, where I spent many a happy hour hav­ing fun with Moon-Face, Mis­ter Watzis­name, Silky, and the Sauce­pan Man. I ima­gined feast­ing on Pop Bis­cuits and Google Buns and slid­ing down the slippery-slip that spir­als down inside the trunk.

And of course I can’t for­get the Fam­ous Five…

What’s your favourite?

I used to live in Scot­land. At the very top. In the High­lands. With views of purple heather clad hills and the wild north sea.

The air was cold and clean. Whisky was pure single malt. Made in the vil­lage where I lived. And ven­ison was a staple.

So I thought I’d revel in a little bit of Scottishness.

The first is ANTA. Their fact­ory shop was just down the road. And I fell head over heels in love with their hand­made tartan stoneware.

Everything from ANTA is made in Scot­land. The woolen yarn used for their car­pets and tweeds is sourced in the West­ern Isles and is woven in the Bor­ders. The oak fur­niture is made in the High­lands and some of the wood is homegrown. ANTA was cre­ated by design­ers Annie and Lach­lan Stew­art. And this is their amaz­ing home.

The second bit of Scot­tish love­li­ness is Papa Stour. An online mar­ket­place for all things hand­made in Scot­land.  Papa Stour embraces art, crafts­man­ship and design in its purest form, like this bone china pod…

or this hand­sewn notebook…

or this lambswood baby blanket…

Slainte Mhath!

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Bovey Lee felt a spe­cial con­nec­tion to the fad­ing Chinese folk art of paper-cutting. Her work, using impossibly thin rice paper, is obscenely intric­ate and utterly beautiful.

Bovey Lee, “Spine”, 2007

Bovey Lee, “The But­ter­fly Gown”, 2010

Bovey Lee, “Tsunami-Enmeshed”, 2008

Bovey Lee, “Tsunami-Enmeshed”, 2008

Bovey Lee, “Atomic Jelly­fish”, 2007

(pho­tos cour­tesy of Beau­ti­ful Decay)

Bovey is cur­rently a full-time artist based in Pitt­s­burgh. Her works have been exhib­ited at the Brook­lyn Museum of Art;  Museum Belle­rive, Zurich; National Glass Centre, UK; Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing; Fukuoka Museum of Art, Japan; Hong Kong Museum of Art; and Museum Rijswijk, The Netherlands.

Bovey’s art is rep­res­en­ted by Grotto Fine Arts Gal­lery in Hong Kong.

Do visit her web­site to see her enorm­ous col­lec­tion of work. Amazing!

Just came across the most dreamy set of pho­to­graphs ever (via Bliss) and had to share with you.

Intro­du­cing the amaz­ing work of Lo Bjur­ulf, interior stylist …

Now I usu­ally only write about things that get me going, hence why it’s called Macleod’s Mus­ings. I like a little bit of vin­tage, a little bit of con­tem­por­ary design, and quite often just ran­dom bits of girly loveliness.

But I’ve been politely nudged (actu­ally more like heckled) to write about this online magazine because basic­ally they’re shame­less pro­moters. And I’ve suc­cumbed because they’ve been very good to Coulson Macleod. Our per­son­al­ized art was fea­tured on their Gift Idea page and they also got us onto the US wed­ding site Wed­ding Gawker.

So I intro­duce you to Staggered, whose edit­or­ial mis­sion is: Wed­dings. Blokes. Sorted.

Yes, Staggered is THE place for men get­ting mar­ried. Or dream­ing of get­ting mar­ried (I’d like to believe that some men do dream of this).

Staggered says, “So, if you’re look­ing for the sort of wed­ding advice that wins you Brownie Points from the lady in your life, guid­ance on wed­ding suits or speeches, or how to make the hon­ey­moon go with a bang. Or you simply want to read some­thing that makes you laugh: that’s what Staggered is all about.”

Staggered claims they can help to make mar­ried life go more smoothly. And as I like their illus­tra­tions and their witty banter, I’m all for believ­ing them.

I’ve men­tioned tex­tile designer Stephanie Miles (who owns and runs Smiles Design) on a pre­vi­ous post as I fell in love with her hand­made black and white wooden bird­cage cards.

Stephanie emailed me yes­ter­day to say she has now launched Bower­bird, her new ven­ture to spe­cific­ally sell her cards and jewellery.

Cur­rently Bower­bird designs are only sold via the online mar­ket­place Not On The High Street.

The reason for the name? Appar­ently Stephanie is fas­cin­ated with the little Vogelkop Bower­bird, a nat­ive of New Guinea, who are so named because of the beau­ti­ful shel­ters or ‘bowers’ they build.

Stephanie says she’s a bit like a Bower­bird “a bit plain, but likes dec­or­at­ive things and col­ours”. The Bower­birds dec­or­ate their shel­ters with incred­ible detail that show a nat­ural eye for attract­ive design. Some use col­our­ful flowers and leaves, some col­lect stones or other objects, which they lay out in patterns.

For any­one inter­ested in learn­ing more about the Bower­bird, here’s a clip from BBC One’s nature pro­gramme Life…

The Vogelkop Bower­bird. Nar­rated by David Attenborough.

Stephanie has many more designs up her sleeve so keep an eye on her Not On The High Street shop.

Any­one who reg­u­larly reads our blog will no doubt have real­ised that we love a bit of vin­tage. And we just came across a fab store in Ams­ter­dam called Neef Louis (found via blog 26 Olive Street)

If you can’t get to Ams­ter­dam, then have a rum­mage around their great web­site.

Came across the work of Ohio-based artist Mark Lan­gan who cre­ates superb art from cor­rug­ated card.

Mark recre­ates some great cor­por­ate logos…

You can con­tact Mark to request him to cre­ate your com­pany logo too. I’m think­ing a Coulson Macleod logo would look pretty good!

It’s my birth­day today, and yes, I’m an April Fool!

I’ve been sal­iv­at­ing over the Ginkgo print from Daniel Baer since I first saw it, flick­ing through the graphic design magazine Grafik. This morn­ing I unwrapped my gift from Coulson, and Ta Da!

A gor­geous A3 poster of ginkgo leaves by the super-talented Daniel Baer.

Very excited over our new pur­chase and thought I’d share it with you.  We were rum­ma­ging in a junk shop yes­ter­day and came across this vin­tage bottle crate…

This bottle crate is from Arnold, Per­rett & Co. Ltd, a brew­ery in Gloucester­shire that was foun­ded in 1820. Arnold, Per­rett & Co. ceased brew­ing in 1924. The site is now used by Wick­war Brew­ery.

Not sure how old this crate is, but it doesn’t date to any earlier than 1887 (that’s when the com­pany changed its name to the ver­sion on the crate).

The best thing about our new crate is that the super­mar­ket plastic herb pots fit exactly into the bottle slots. I’m off to buy 11 more tubs of mint for a fant­astic win­dow planter.