Blog

Victoria sponge was always my favourite cake.

Yes, there’s the fact my dad told me it was named after me when I was a kid, which made my sister furiously jealous – both things that gave me enormous pleasure.

But more than that there’s something so delicious about the simple elegance of vanilla sponge, cream, jam and a light dusting of icing sugar. 

I’ll never forget holding the first roll of my wallpaper that came off the printing press. 

I’d thought long and hard about the design, spent weeks sketching, pondering the balance of realistic versus cute dinosaurs, agonizing over shades and colour combinations, researching the relative benefits of different weights of paper, imagining how the finished product would look…  

Well, let me tell you. 

As I write this 100 planes have just flown over Buckingham Palace to celebrate 100 years and 100 days since the RAF was formed on 1^st April 1918. 

More than 2 dozen different planes took part including 22 Typhoons in the formation of the number 100, and one of the two remaining ‘Dambuster’ Lancaster bombers still flying. 

Does this look familiar? 

Does it make you feel uncomfortable? 

Could it be because you remember ..... 

‘If you just want to make money, go buy property: if you want a happy life in business, make relationships.’ 

Simon Brown, Senior lecturer at Harvard Business School

I’ve been in business for 9 years now, and when I started I had the impression that it was going to be about driving deals, ‘leveraging best practice’, ‘establishing core competencies’ and ‘thinking outside the box’. 

Serious, business- like activities that would carry me through the grown-up world of business as I strode about in my padded-shoulder suit and fierce red lipstick. A bit like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

I made this wallpaper because I loved the idea of making shadow puppets. 

I remember playing happily with nothing but my tiny hands and an illicit torch after lights out. 

There is something magical about being able to conjure an elephant or an eagle from light and shadows.

‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’ 

This was William Morris’ approach to design and I often return to it when I’m thinking about making my home lovelier or simply decluttering. It’s so easy to follow.

Second in our series of #WallpaperWednesday blogs about iconic wallpapers.

Timorous Beasties founders Ali McAuley and Paul Simmons have some pretty high-brow ambitions for their designs. ‘They are devoted to how…a universal connection between art, nature and society…impacts as pattern design in our daily experience of furnished spaces.’

Yes I’m sure. But I like them best when they surprise a laugh.  

Orla Kiely’s rounded leaf pattern, Stem, is so popular it functions as a trade mark. 

It can be found on wares from notebooks to mugs to cushions.  It even featured on a Citroen car!

So why did her design become such a classic? 

Silk. Silky. Silken.

We use the words to describe everything from chocolate to shampoo to a persuasive tone of voice. 

It’s a wonderfully sensuous description whether applying to touch, taste, sight or hearing. It conjures up images of something smooth, lustrous, soft, fine, flowing, touchable, luxurious.

Everything that silk is.  

Well, actually, not everything ...