Sania Pell

family treasure

June 17, 2011  in homemade, vintage finds

I think I may get my love of collecting and keeping little things from my Grandmother. She has always been a magpie. She is elderly now so her wings have been clipped, but she always kept everything. And I mean everything. As children, whenever we were at her house and asked for something then she had it. Somewhere, from a draw or a cupboard or a box on a shelf, she would pull out what we needed.

Last year, when my mother and I were at her apartment helping organise things, we discovered a whole wealth of treasures squirrelled away; beautiful vintage tins, my mother’s baby clothes, embroidered table linen, amidst other saved items like old egg boxes and tinfoil sweet wrappers all flattened in a pile.

Amongst the items was this lovely little pinny. It was my mother’s when she was about three or four, a similar age to my daughter now. I love the detail in the simple dots and pleats and my Grandmother’s darning just adds to it. Little patches of history of that give it so much character.

Like my grandmother, I love to collect and keep little things that I don’t have a purpose for. But I know that at some point I’ll have an idea for… or an occasion to use… those beautiful felted balls, that vintage ribbon or that old tape measure. It means that when I have an idea and want to get straight on with making, then I can usually rummage around and find something suitable to make it special, rather than write a shopping list and lose the momentum of the idea.

The clothes hanger in the photo is one that I made using scraps of fabric that I already had. It is a project from The Homemade Home with step-by-step instructions if you want to try it at home. It now hangs in my daughter’s bedroom to be enjoyed by a fourth generation of little girl. Something to make me remember my family history and smile.

To me, this kind of family treasure is priceless.

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in the sunday telegraph

June 15, 2011  in flowers, news

Although I have worked with lots of amazing photographers, I think this may be the first time I’ve seen one of my own photos in print!  I was very flattered when The Sunday Telegraph contacted me to ask if they could use one of the photos from my recent Forget-me-not post.

Anne Cuthbertson wrote in her piece ‘A nostalgic return: remember forget-me-nots’:

“The forget-me-nots have been the biggest surprise [in her garden]. They were nowhere to be found when I moved in, but this spring, tiny blue flowers have been frolicking along the base of the greenhouse and the ancient yew and through the borders. I have always considered it a childhood flower – sweetly nostalgic but, like buttercups. an uncontrollable nuisance. But so stunning is the frothy baby-blue bank that I am converted.

“I am not alone. The interiors stylist Sania Pell posted the most beautiful “bloom in miniature” pictures of forget-me-nots on her blog (www.saniapell.com) recently. She writes “to me forget-me-not conjures up old-fashioned love letters and romantic messages”.

Anne went on to write “Forget-me-nots also made rare appearances at the Chelsea Flower Show… Eyeing the show gardens I realised my shabby garden had stumbled into chic.”

Big thank yous to Anne for mentioning me in her lovely article and also to Rona from Flowerona for pointing her in my direction.

To read my original Forget-me-not post click here.

P.S. The graphic floral mug in the photo is one that I hand painted at a ceramics cafe a few years ago.

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wild strawberries

June 12, 2011  in flowers, food styling

I seem to be obsessed with miniature plants and flowers at the moment and I photographed these little wild strawberries that I’ve been growing in my garden. Like my Forget-me-nots, these mini strawberry plants also came from my parents’ garden a few years ago. They grow happily everywhere, little off shoots creeping onto other bits of soil, the runners creating new plants where ever they touch.

My children love the little plants and tiny flowers and watch them closely from when they begin to flower in April and change from charming little flowers to these sweet little strawberries by May and June. They watch and learn about plants, without realising, and then harvest the tiny crop, eating them straight from the plant. When the children were really small they used to run out into the garden every morning and see if any had ripened overnight and nibble them up before the snails got to them. They are still intrigued by the mininess, the novelty of such a small version to the larger ones everybody knows.

This little vintage vase was given to me by my mother and is an absolute  favourite of mine, I love the way it mimicks a little strawberry, it has a certain charm but also a graphic quality. The wonky plate it’s sitting on is one that I made by rolling out a handful of white, air-drying Das clay on a chopping board and then cutting the shape out with a sharp knife. I left it to dry and then sanded down the edges with an emery board to a smooth finish. The typed card in the background was bought at a most wonderful book shop in Notting Hill, Lutyens & Rubinstein.

The wild has been tamed in my tiny London garden with tiny strawberries loved by tiny children.

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the homemade home now in german!

June 10, 2011  in diy craft projects, news

I was delighted when I heard about this!  The German publishing company Callwey have translated my book and LieblingsDeko: Schöner wohnen mit kreativen Ideen is now available and has had great reviews in Living At Home magazine and NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.

A copy winged its way over to me from Amazon.de and it looks great.  Callwey have chosen a different image for the cover – the loverbird pillows, which is one of my favourite projects. I think it looks great. A big thank you to everyone at Callwey!

If you know anyone German who you think may like it, please pass on the link to them.  You can buy the book here on Amazon.de

Who knows, maybe The Homemade Home will be translated into other languages too?

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what view do you wake up to?

June 7, 2011  in handmade goodness, interior styling

I think waking up and seeing some of your favourite things is the perfect way to start the day, especially if your bedroom window doesn’t have a great look out.

This is the shelf on the wall at the end of my bed. Some of my favourite prints and vases in soft, natural greys with a splash of warm yellow and a little bit of wrongness to make it right – a block of fluorescent yellow.

The framed print is one of my favourite possessions. It’s a signed print by the artist Craigie Aitchison that I bought about ten years ago as something I could really enjoy every day and that I could pass down to my children.

As well as homemade and vintage things, I really appreciate handmade work by artists and crafts people and love to support them when I can. The elegant tall dark grey vase and rounded mid-grey one are both by Sophie Cook who produces beautiful ceramics. The little white ceramic cube with the black line is by Niina Kuosmanen. I bought it from her at ‘One Year On’ at the New Designers show a couple of years back and love them as every cube is unique. The little white vase I bought at Origin a while back and I love its simplicity and shape.  Unfortunately the stamp on the bottom is unclear ( ‘MO’ I think) and I can’t remember who made it!  If you recognise it please let me know in the comments.

The bright yellow cube screen print is by Sophie Smallhorn who does really beautiful, graphic work. The vintage spectacles are a car boot sale purchase and the flower brooch is by my friend and very talented jeweller Grainne Morton. I bought it as a gift to myself when I finished writing The Homemade Home.

What view do you wake up to?

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bootylicious

June 3, 2011  in vintage finds

The last car boot sale was fabulous. I was there at 7.30am on the dot – an early start for a Sunday! At this time people are still setting up but the regular sellers know that keen buyers start early so there is always lots to see.  So the early bird found lots of interesting bits and bobs, some of which are useful(ish) and some not at all! I bought a few pieces for an up and coming project that I’ll tell you more about in due course.

These are just old balls! The white one is a well used polo ball, no longer round from all the knocks. I think the wooden ones are just from vintage games like skittles but I just loved the simplicity of the shape with the natural materials and tones. The three placed together work really well and no longer look like sports/game balls but take on a kind of 1950s’ sculptural feel.

This game of “Muggings” was £1.00, I’m sure I’ll use the numbers it in a project somewhere.

The little night light holder on the right is from around 1890 and very sweet and the old box of matches have a lovely graphic quality. They’re sitting on an old note book with beautiful writing, someone’s little diary dated July 1939. These pages are from a little holiday they took “…a perfect blue sky, not a sign of a cloud!”

I bought this immaculate and beautiful vintage box of starched collars too. I’m not sure what I will use them for yet, but they are just great to have.

A vintage pair of scissors, I love their sculptural shape and sharpened they could be practical too, and another old fabric tape measures. And yes… more keys! I admit I may have a key problem, I just can’t stop buying them. I think it’s the fact they had a purpose once and now you don’t know what lost treasures they could unlock.

I just loved this old disco dance champion medal, who could resist? Now where did I put my dancing shoes…

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