Article #200 - The Straw Donkey

When your Dad is Sir Norman Foster, and your husband, the former editor of Esquire and Wallpaper* Magazines, it's likely you'll have some wise things to say about design. India Knight, doesn't disappoint.

Speaking about how design has become democratised [first brought to my attention by BMW designer Chris Bangle], and echoing Sir David Tang's bashing of "overly done interior-designed numbers", Knight brilliantly speaks of 'straw donkies'; the things we display in our homes that we love. Freed of the tyranny of 'ghastly good taste', we're confident to design for a taste that is uniquely ours.

A fitting manifesto, and for Design Trawler's 200th article, something which I continue to believe in. For as 'tasteful' as show homes and hotel suites are, the very best interiors are the ones with the confidence to be original. Read the full article below...

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Bull Market Reflections

While cost-conscious consumers have been spurred on by the 'innocent smoothie' approach to quiet design and paired-down home crafts, the ultra wealthy have been charting new territories with taller, bigger and more innovative interiors than ever before. True of Moscow, like many global capitals, this Minotaur Mirror sits in the city's excellent DesignBoom store.

With the head of a bull, and body of... whoever happens to be gazing in to it, the functional/sculptural work is similar to the superb mirrored sculptures by Chelsea based artist Arran Gregory.

Havana Inspired Home Fragrance

I'll always remember the time I was at an 'open day' at London's Jermyn Street. From shirts to cigars, local stores were showcasing the best of London's fine handmade crafts. In the Davidoff shop on the corner of St. James, a father and his two young children were leaning over a Cuban craftsman rolling tobacco leaves in to perfect torpedoes. All three gazed over the man, with the father pointing to the perfectly cut cigars in formation; "look how they're all exactly the same size" - the delightful young daughter perfectly quipping "Daddy, this shop smells like you when you come back from London!"

Priceless. And if ever you wish to accentuate your home with the fragrance of Havana's finest, Boticario de Havana Fragrancia de Casa by Archipelago is the scent to go for. While not exactly the scent of 'Daddy ex London', think coffee, jojoba and tobacco flower with extracts of orange, sugar cane & pineapple.