Turn those carefully-curated hipster frowns upside down, Shoreditch: we have some tips to cheer you up this weekend, courtesy of Jess, Ayo and Will, AKA The Conran Shop marketing team.
Firstly, get your hands on a SwiftyONE scooter – the happiest way to travel, hands down. Scoot over to the Jasper Morrison studio, right on Shoreditch High Street.
Jasper Morrison is one of our absolute faves, and we’ve all spent far too much on his kitchenware in our time.
Then, we strongly suggest you make the most of the weather and get outside! The Bounday’s rooftop bar and grill should be open all weekend (you can check on its Twitter feed), and offers some pretty amazing views of the City.
The Boundary’s rooftop bar and grill
To round things off, The Book Club is hosting The Big Ten Inch on Saturday. We’ll call it an ‘electric mix’ of rock and roll, punk and RnB, if that doesn’t sound too Hackneyed (ha).
You may remember Holly told us to go to Dulwich Open House in last week’s tip. For those of us that didn’t make it, Holly has agreed to suspend her scorn and give us a little review…
After years of talking about it I finally made it down to SE22 a few days ago for the last weekend of Dulwich Artists Open House.
First stop after a little browse on Northcross Road (and an impromptu guitar serenade in Arterie Gallery) was Sally & Peter Nencin. Products on display ranged from brightly coloured knitted cushions in a variety of fun, graphic designs to reupholstered chairs and stools each decorated with delicate embroidered designs, half sampler, half story-book. Read more about my favourite, the Tyrella chair, on their blog here.
An open house is clearly a great opportunity for a Lloyd Grossman-style snoop around the often eclectic habitat of the artists themselves and this was no disappointment.
Around the room books, unique wall art and numerous collections of tiny objects and old toys made this light South London sitting room the perfect place to start my tour. The frequent call of the lovely and unusual cuckoo doorbell could be heard as new guests arrived to have a gander.
Moving on, up the hill and down Crystal Palace Road I found jolly, brightly coloured flower-inspired felts and textile collages at the house of artist Charlotte Clowes.
I had been tipped off in advance that a visit to the Skip Sisters at 284 Upland Road was a must and I wasn’t disappointed. Skip Sisters, a group of local women artists reclaim discarded items and give them a new lease of life, reincarnating old clock parts into jewellery, vintage fabrics into cushions and bags, postage stamps into cufflinks, and much, more more. The sitting room was a treasure trove of unique objects and I left happy with my purchase of a colourful cow pincushion made using scraps of fabric and an old plastic toy.
I couldn’t come to SE22 without a gawp at Sophie Cook’s infamous ceramic vessels with necks delicate as they come. Apparently there’s a queue around the block on the first day. I wasn’t disappointed by the beautiful selection of matt and gloss glazes and bright yet sophisticated colour palette.
I’ve missed out a bunch of other houses I visited, all wonderful. Bring on next year!
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