Mid-century at The Oval

On my travels again - this time only to south London for a day looking at things I mainly can't afford, but there's no harm in looking. This is the MidCentury Modern show at The Oval - love the living wall!

Inside is a treasure trove of beautiful design and memories from my childhood. 

I wander round drooling over stunning Danish designed sofas and chairs, either in their original upholstery like this Hans Wegner settee (in order to remove the beautiful rosewood panels to reupholster the arms you'd have to destroy them)

or lovingly reupholstered. 

Or reminiscing about Ladderax modular shelving and mid century ceramics. 

This was the type of furniture that I was surrounded with when I was growing up (we had a cruet set exactly like the one above). My Dad, being an architect, loved the clean lines and contemporary styling of the sixties, and my Mum tells how they spent their honeymoon looking round Heals in London, planning what they needed to save up for. I clearly remember the curtains in our living and dining room when I was probably only about six - a design called Sweet Briar by Barbara Brown for Heals - very striking when you have wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows to display them on. Mum says they're probably still in the loft - what a treat!

They had the blue and olive version, which I can't find online at all. The photo above is from the V&A museum archive . There were very few vintage fabrics today - those that were there, from Forgotten Fabrics 

tended towards the warm side of the spectrum, typical of the late sixties and seventies, but I was looking for blues and greens, so miraculously managed not to spend any money today.

We rounded the morning off with lunch at a tiny new cafe called The Sugar Pot round the corner on Kennington Park Road. Great light lunches, tea, coffee and yummy gluten free cakes, and service with a smile.

And the star of the show? Undoubtedly this stunning Arne Vodder Triennale sideboard from The Modern Warehouse.

At 2.5m long it was huge - with a price tag to match. But so beautiful, with reversible sliding doors - what looked like Formica (but could have been paint) on one side and rosewood on the other. I just love the detail round the drawers. Now where did I put that lottery ticket?

Summer's here ...

...so I've been working in the garden instead of in my work room ...



Still some rust involved mind. Nice to be able to sit out for lunch at last.



long may it continue!

A real Indian market

The market in Mysore is a wonderful place - so much produce, intended for local people, not tourists.

Lovely colours and textures

Each stall holder seemed to specialise in certain things - root veg, onions and tomatoes; squash, cabbage and cauliflower; peas in a big pile on the floor

Chilis and spices; mini aubergines 

and red carrots.

These weird things are jack fruit apparently 

Bananas: the green ones are ripe, just a different variety; and the purple flowers can also be eaten fried

Tobacco leaves - chewed on their own or with betel nut.

Metal items - these are water pots, but also tiffin cans and cooking pots, and loads of brass. And loads of stalls selling colourful plastic items and bangles - forgot to photograph those!

Colourful dyes for Holi (the festival of colours) with joss sticks, and little clay oil burners

and the flower garland sellers - marigolds and jasmine flowers are knotted onto a long thread and sold by the cubit. 

All in all a feast for the senses, all behind these ancient dilapidated walls.

Rajasthani crafts - hand embroidery and textile trickery

We went to Rajasthan to see textiles, and we had plenty of opportunity to do just that, with varying degrees of orchestration and hidden agendas.

This guy in Jaipur was apparently a textile designer. He showed us a huge variety of stunning hand stitched textiles and bed covers in traditional styles, clearly made by local women. So far so good. This was a slick operation, obviously geared up to bus loads of tourists, and the real shame was that he claimed all this work as his own designs. His catchphrase 'look my art' has become our go-to phrase for whenever we feel we're being ripped off (with a couple of letter changes - use your imagination!).

In Pushkar we looked in what appeared to be a tiny shop which opened out into a huge cave of a room with a Hindu shrine in the centre, surrounded by textiles. 

The quilt below is Punjabi and probably over 100 years old. It was huge and the simple kantha style stitching really complemented the now faded colours.

All over you see wallhangings made from recycled tribal dresses, the embroidery on which is a lost art form. Indeed, the guy in Jaipur had many of them that he claimed to have designed himself. The young guy in the Pushkar shop brought out several and explained which part of India their embroidery came from.

This yellow one contains canvas work with dense areas of shisha mirrors and could well be from Punjab or Pakistan (but I might have made that up) 

Gold thread work from cuffs and bodices in this one comes from a specific region, but I can't remember which now. These were our favourite, being more subtle than the others and often on a dark blue or green background.

These are traditional Rajasthani embroideries, featuring bright colours and shisha mirrors. The shapes of the collars and yokes can still clearly be seen.

Pieces like this are exported, so often seen in England, and it appears that there is an inexhaustible supply of old costumes with which to make them, although that cannot be true. 

This warehouse in Jodhpur (underneath the hugest junk/antiques shop full of incredibly quirky things) was packed to the ceiling with old and new textiles, mostly for export. Their stash certInly beats ours!

It does seem a shame that this is the fate of such beautiful family textiles, but perhaps they were not seen like that by their owners as progress happened. And India is nothing if not expert at recycling everything, so at least they can be appreciated again.

New work is being created for the export market (designers such as Hermes and Miu Miu, and various Italian houses) in the traditional ways, and the manager of the Jodhpur warehouse showed us this selection of bed covers - those at the bottom in this picture are the traditional work, with commissions from design houses in silk and woven throws above.

This is local embroidery worked in the home and would have taken six months to complete, using designs of elephants, camels, butterflies and pineapples.

These beautiful cut-work covers have organdie backings making them translucent; they'd make great curtains.

Below is Rajasthani embroidery with four layers of cut back appliqué - making it quite heavy

and this is complex canvas work with shisha mirrors, taking twelve months to complete.

A stunning Kashmiri throw commissioned for a European design house.

Perhaps the most amazing thing is that items that we could have purchased for around £100 would sell in Europe, the US or Japan for ten times that price. I think the manager thought that we were buyers, so we didn't disabuse him of that idea, but though sorely tempted we managed to leave without buying anything! That was a first!

From the sublime to the ridiculous - Pushkar

We arrived in Pushkar in what appeared to be the middle of the night, even though it was only about 8pm; it was surprisingly cold.

Pushkar is surrounded by the Aravalli Hills and Snake Mountain on three sides and desert on the fourth, and is built on the banks of Pushkar lake.

Our hotel had to be seen to be believed. Modelled on a Maharaja's palace (could actually have been one as every city had its own King centuries ago), it was huge and empty and a bit like visiting your grannie. Rooms were furnished with basic wooden framed beds and heavy dark brown furniture.

The bathroom was right out of the thirties, and plug sockets and light switches from the same era! Outside doors were huge and ornate and heavy enough to repel an elephant. Or several elephants.

Every ceiling was decorated with a frieze of hand painted flowers and glass hurricane lamps to die for.

It seems that the 'Maharaja' collected clocks. On each floor of the hotel were at least 10 old wall case clocks, with the odd grandfather clock thrown in for good measure. Four floors per block and two blocks - that's a lot of clocks! There were also at least two clocks in each outside summer shelter. All were working, and many chimed the quarters and on the hour - but not all at the same time! Not sure whether that was a good or bad thing.

Legend has it that Lord Brahma dropped a blue lotus flower from Heaven, and the lake formed where the flower landed. So Pushkar is a holy city, and a place of pilgrimage for devout Hindus (and hippies and every man and his dog). It is the site of the only temple dedicated to Lord Brahma in India, and there are 52 ghats around the lake.

This means that the place is heaving from dawn till dusk, and unfortunately seems to be license for some to fleece western tourists. Our driver tried to warn us not to take the flowers offered if we did not wish to visit the temple/ make a wish/ receive a blessing, but we were daft enough not to listen - or not to understand the implications. It was not possible to visit the temple empty handed you see.

So we took the flowers and soon found ourselves tipping the shoe minder and the camera locker minder and following everyone else barefooted up the steps to the temple. Our flowers were exchanged for different flowers (probably the 'student' who told us what to do expected a tip too, but he didn't get one) and we exited the temple. 

Now we could have stopped there, but the next step is to throw your flowers into the holy lake in order to receive a blessing for you and your family and your departed, and we found ourselves being swept along ('what harm can it do?').

BIG mistake! Like religious sites the world over there was a load of hype and a load of willing helpers to part tourists from their cash. 

We were led (separately) to the lake - our blessed flowers from the temple added to this plate containing rice, sugar, red and yellow a'body colour', and threads (which are eventually tied around your wrist). Lots of chanting which we had to follow, blessing every member of the family, alive or departed, and the threads were placed on a coconut (!) and blessed (more chanting), holy (aka lake) water sprinkled on us, red dye and rice marked on our foreheads and the flowers chucked in the lake (rinse and return the plate please).

So far so spiritual. And then the hard sell began - 'how many dinners do you want to provide to help our work? One month? (at £20 per day), two week?, one week? Try telling them that you don't have that kind of money but you're happy to make a small donation and they get very pushy. Having already played mind games and made you feel vulnerable, somehow you find yourself about to empty your purse. And don't forget to tip the Brahmin.

Hmmm - not my idea of good karma. And to cap it all our lunch/ kitty purse was stolen; so all in all not a good morning. 

Having regained our equilibrium we retraced our route back up the engraved stone steps to the town for a wander through the bazaar and the back streets. There are some beautiful old buildings, now crumbling and decrepit, still showing signs of past splendour, and a complete contrast to the shops full of tourist tat in the main streets. Here are a few of my favourites ...

A look through this red arch reveals a colourful passageway 

Peeling paint and exuberant decoration 

The building bottom right had a frieze depicting transport near the top

And this sign seems a bit pointless, given that pigeons are sacred birds and everyone feeds them so consequently everything is covered in their droppings (It says 'clean monument, clean India').

Also on the positive front, Hazel managed to buy some fabric - the bundles sealed with wax are orders waiting to be posted;

we ate two of the best meals we've had so far, both at restaurants recommended by our driver, the second whilst watching the sun set over the lake without a hint of tourist hype, whilst putting the world to rights with a Canadian guy who'd had a similar experience to us;

and on the way back to the hotel we managed to find the temple we had meant to visit in the first place, and the ever obliging Shyam stopped the car so we could nip out and make a record of it (we did ask permission first) - as you can see it was much more interesting than the other one!

So all was not lost on our day without a guide in Pushkar, and over our G&T we managed to have a laugh about our day, looking forward to our trip to the Stitching Project.